Finnley's Pov:

I don't know how much time has passed.

It could have been minutes or it could have been hours, but I don't know.

I have been sitting, curled into myself with my blood-stained hands clutching my knees, trying to make myself as small as possible this whole time, but for how long that was I could not guess. My panic never ceases or quiets for even a moment.

I don't even know where I am. I didn't have a destination in mind when I started running and I didn't pay attention to where I was running, only the fact that I was running at all.

I can still hear the hecticness and busyness of New York on the other side of the crumbling graffiti-covered walls that I find myself in but I don't pay much mind to them. The thoughts screaming in my head are way too loud to allow me to be aware of anything else.

Occasionally the sound of a loud car horn, drunken voices, or police sirens would break through the deafening screaming in my head, but it would quickly pass, the thoughts in my head and my panicked breathing drowning them out.

There was even one moment that for a split second I swear that I heard the unmistakable sound of Iron Man's repulsor jets just outside of the building, but once again that thought was quickly pushed to the side.

For what felt like hours, I sat there, trapped in my own mind, playing through the entire day over and over. I even started going back and playing out many other days. I played out years in my head, always asking the same question, what went wrong?

Everything in my life seems to fall apart, it is inevitable, so why am I always holding on to everything so tightly if I know that it will just eventually be torn away from me?

I try to find a reason for everything that has happened to me, which is a hard thing to place on one thing. But eventually, I settle on something.

It all started when my parents didn't want me.

They, whoever they are, left me to face all of this alone.

That is what started it, but I suppose that I can't really blame them. They were not the ones that actually made my life shit, they were just the ones that didn't want to put up with my shit either.

No, who actually made my life shit was myself. I'm the one that allowed myself to get pushed around, I'm the one that didn't stand up for myself, I'm the one that wasn't there when others needed me, I'm the one that was selfish, and I'm the one that let all of this happen. And now, the situation that I find myself in now, is once again thanks to me.

My life will never be the same, and I know that, yet the only thing that I really find myself worrying about is the kids, still too self-sacrificing for my own good.

I clutch my head in my hands and pull my legs closer to myself; it is freezing and my hyperventilating and panic do not help soothe that.  I am so deep within my panic at this point that I don't even register the frost growing around me or the drop in temperature in the air surrounding me, and I especially do not notice the blue tint that my skin has taken once again.

When I finally shift my body slightly, trying to curl into myself even more, I freeze when I feel my hand brush over the ice coating the ground and walls around me. I finally open my eyes, and when I do my breathing increases impossibly more as my eyes land on my blue hand against the frost that I know was not there before.

I quickly place both my hands out in front of me and pull my sleeves up to follow the blue that covers every inch of my arms. I bring my hands to my face and feel the raised markings that also littered my arms and hands on my face as well.

I scurry away from the wall that is covered in ice, pulling myself across the floor to the opposite wall, trying to escape it, but as I do, the frost just follows me, coating the floor that I crawled across as well.

This has to be a nightmare, this is just one horrifying nightmare. I am going to wake up on the couch in Avengers Tower, the movie is still going to be playing, and I am going to go home right away and everything will be fine.

I try to repeat this to myself, trying to come up with explanations, but my own mind does not even believe me. I close my eyes tightly, trying to block out everything.

It's just a dream, it's just an awful dream.

Through this panic, I do not hear the shouting of my name by that familiar voice through the building. My brain does not pick up on the worried searching for me just a floor beneath me.

I am only finally made aware of their presence when my head snaps up as I hear Loki's shouting just about to round the corner into the room that I am in.

My eyes go wide and I try to crawl into the shadows to stay out of his sight. He can't see me like this! But I don't even know what 'this' is!!

"Finnley?!" He shouts. "Finnley, are you here?"

I try to hide myself as I see him turn into the room.

"Go away! Don't come any closer!" I try to shout, but my voice is horse and broken, my breath labored, trying to take in enough air but struggling.

"Finnley? I have been looking everywhere for you!"

"I said stay away! Don't come any closer!" I shout back, my face still buried in my arms.

Loki seems to finally look around the room, seeing the frost and ice that coats almost the entire room at this point. He then looks toward me, and even just by seeing the parts of me that are covered, he can clearly see that I am very hurt.

"Finnley- you are hurt, please let me help you." He says carefully and cautiously, but also with a gentleness that I would not expect from him.

I do not have the energy to even respond, I simply break down into sobs. I don't know what is happening, this whole night I don't know what has been happening. I just want it all to stop, I just want to know what is happening.

Loki slowly starts coming a little closer to where I am huddled on the floor in the corner.

"NO STOP! Don't come any closer! I don't know what is happening!!" I shove out my hand to try and stop him from coming any closer, but I quickly realize that this is a mistake, my hand is still blue. I hastily bring my hand back towards me, tucking in against me and hiding it from view.

Loki instantly stops in his place, there is a long silence where I can feel his wide eyes boring into me.

Eventually, he breaks this silence, speaking very quietly, emotion hidden from his voice. "Finnley, please look at me."

I feverishly shake my head, refusing to look up. I don't want all of this to seem real, I don't want this to be real.

"Please... I promise it will all be ok."

The way that he said it, it makes me actually believe it. After several long moments, I slowly and hesitantly lift my head from my arms that were resting on my knees, bringing my eyes, sore from crying, up to Loki.

I watch as he quickly takes in a deep shallow breath, gasping as soon as I bring my eyes to his.

This just scares me more. The tears continue to pool in my eyes even more rapidly, the tear tracks rolling unevenly down my face as they stream over the raised markings.

My breath hitches as I speak. "I don't know what is wrong with me! I don't know what is going on!" I shout desperate for answers but scared to hear them.

Loki once again starts to very slowly come closer as he gently speaks with a level of understanding and experience that I can clearly hear in his voice. "I know you are scared, you don't know what is going on. But I promise it will all be ok, I can help you, I just need you to trust me."

He holds his hands out in front of him as he continues to approach me, but when he is only several feet away, I stop him.

"No stop! I could hurt you!" I say fearfully, and with my increased panic the ice around me grows even more and spikes form even more dangerously.

"You can not hurt me, Finnley. Trust me."

"B-but I don't know what- look at this!" I say gesturing to all the ice sprouting from the walls and floor around me. When I do, and when I see my hands again, I flinch.

I'm a monster.

"Finnley," Loki says so softly, almost too soft to hear, but when I turn to him again he has such a sad and pained expression on his face.

As I keep eye contact with him, my eyes widen as I watch the same shade of blue that covers my body slowly creep onto his. It starts at his hands, slowly makes its way up his arms, across his neck, and onto his face, soon his entire body is the same frost blue as me and the same markings litter his skin just like me. I look back into his eyes which are now a deep crimson red, they look almost scared.

My mouth falls open as I try to form words, but I can not get them past my throat.

"I understand what you are going through."

That is all he says, and with it, it feels like my entire world just crumbled down.

"Wh-what is... why... what is going on?" I try to push the words out past my heavy breathing.

He comes closer, and I let him, he then sits down against the wall beside me. My breath slows and I calm down slightly just with his presence, that same full and comforted feeling that follows him is back, and I am very thankful for it.

He holds out his hand, gesturing for me to come closer. I very hesitantly do, and when I am close enough, he very carefully lays his hand on one of my more serious wounds visible through my shirt on my shoulder, healing it. I stare at the wound that is actively closing up in shock, but I am torn out of that shock when he begins to speak again answering my broken question.

"Apparently, you are a frost giant."

"A what?!" My head snaps towards him.

"A frost giant, they are a species that lives on Jotunheim-"

"Yes, I know what they are, but aren't they from an entirely different realm?"

He moves his hands which are glowing a very subtle green to one of my other wounds to continue to work.

"Yes, they are." Loki pauses before he starts again but he seems hesitant to ask. "I understand that you do not live with your parents, but do you know who they are?"

I take a deep breath. "No, nothing. The first thing I remember is arriving at the first orphanage I was in."

Loki nods in thought. "Well at least one of them must have been Jotun."

There is a long silence that settles between us, but it is comfortable. He continues healing my more serious visible wounds the best he can while allowing me the time to soak in all this information. Eventually, I am the one to break it.

"So... you are a 'frost giant' too?" I ask, almost testing out the word.

"Yes... I mean, you knew I was adopted though, you let me know that the moment we met." He responds with a slightly teasing tone.

I smile slightly. "I knew you were adopted, but it was never really specified from where. I just assumed you were also Asgardian since you looked like them... well besides your whole pasty, emo, greasy look." I reply with an equally teasing tone. "I really do not know how people did not figure out you were adopted sooner, I mean you look nothing like the rest of your family!"

Loki brings his hand to his chest in mock offense. "Hey! I do not know what those first two mean, but I am not greasy!" He pauses for a moment before he continues on, this time slightly more somber. "I am more concerned about how long it took for me to find out, or more so the fact that I did not want to find out. I always knew there was something different, deep down I think I always knew, but if I didn't acknowledge it I was able to ignore it."

"Yeah, I can understand that." My voice grows slightly somber too. "I don't even know if I would want to meet my biological parents. I have all these expectations in my head of what I expect them to be like, and I try to keep them all mostly positive, coming up with all these excuses as to why they couldn't keep me. There is a part of me that is afraid that if I met them I would get disappointed because of those expectations. I might just rather keep those images that I made of them in my head and if I never meet them, I can never be disappointed that they don't match."

Loki nods thoughtfully in response. "You know... If you ever did want to, we could probably find them, or at least your one parent that is Jotun."

"What? How?"

He reaches out his hand, gesturing to my arm, which I hold out to him. He holds it gently as his other hand softly traces the raised markings across it. "These markings mean different things, but some showcase your heritage, those are usually the ones on your face."

I look up at his face and tilt my head. "What do yours say?"

He takes a deep breath and sighs. "They say that I am the firstborn son of Laufey and that I am the rightful heir and first in line to the throne of Jotunheim."

"Woah, that's pretty cool."

Loki chuckles slightly at my response.

"Can you read mine? I-I'm just curious," I say fiddling with my hands.

Maybe this is a bad idea.

"I can, If you are sure."

I hesitantly nod my head. "It can't hurt right?"

Loki looks at me for a moment before he gestures for me to come closer, I move so that I am sitting right in front of him. He then gently turns my head to the right, slowly turning it back to the left as he deciphers my markings, but then, before he even finishes, he goes rigidly stiff and freezes.

"Loki?" I ask, concerned.

He doesn't say anything, he only turns my head back to the right, much more harshly this time, and quickly turns it again, rereading it. This time I keep my eyes on him as he does, and when his eyes grow even wider than before, mine grow more concerned.

"Loki, what's wrong?"

His breathing is heavy. He roughly grabs my face with both of his hands, but there is still a gentleness behind it, then turns me to look directly into my eyes.

As my eyebrows furrow with worry, I stare into his eyes and I watch as tears rapidly pool in them.

"Lulla?"

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

A/n - HEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHE