A/N:

1) I know I should be updating my other stories, something that should be accomplished by tomorrow night, but I just saw "Sherlock Holmes, a Game of Shadows" the other night (part of a family outing, yes, they are still here which is one reason why it's been hard to find time to write) and it was so amazing I just had to write this.

Of course, it is AU in that in AGOS Holmes survives his jump into the waterfall, and in my fic he does not (I mean after all, breathing device or no, his chance of survival with already a serious injury and the cold as well as the force of the water would have been practically zero) and for this I apologize since though I love a happy ending and would have been very upset if he had not survived in the movie, apparently for me the angsty 'what ifs' are addictive.

I also assume that Tony Stark is his reincarnation, so just to clarify this is in a different universe that my fic "Stark realizations."

2) IN THIS FIC - and only in this, italics show omniscient narration designed to set the scene/provide background.

3) In case anyone wants to know, Ouroboros is the symbol of a snake that devours its own tail, and for many cultures is a symbol of reincarnation and cyclical destiny, so though I can't say I get esoterica, it feels fitting.

4) I own nothing... as I usually forget to mention.

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While visiting Midgard in 1889, Loki meets and is intrigued by the detective Sherlock Holmes, eventually developing feelings for the mortal, but complications arise when his attempts to assist the detective raise too much attention, and knowing that both what would be considered black-magic and homosexuality are punishable by death, he breaks ties with the detective and returns to Asgard never having acted on or admitted to his feelings for the mortal.

In 1891 on Midgard, Holmes dies in a final confrontation with the scheming professor Moriarty, and Loki returns to Midgard for a short time to grieve the mortal.

It does not matter that he believes the deranged professor right in his assessment that a world war is inevitable given human nature, it does not matter that Loki cannot understand why the world was worth so much to the brilliant eccentric detective that he sacrificed his life to preserve the fragile doomed peace for just a little longer – or was it perhaps to a large extent ultimately to save the life of a friend who had done so much to push him away?

It does not even matter that as expected, a world war does break out just over two decades from Holmes's death ending the lives of tens of millions of people, and the next one is even more catastrophic …. None of it matters, because for all Loki thinks that the mortal's sacrifice was indeed in vain – that even if it prevented war for more than twenty years, the world was not worth that one fragile life, he knows that to Holmes it had been worth it.

With the mortal's brilliant mind, he had to have known that he could only postpone catastrophe with his sacrifice, that he could never save a world doomed to destroy itself, but even that small mercy – even that gift he had bought the world at the price of his own blood – was enough in his eyes to necessitate his actions.

So for all that Loki wants to wreak havoc on the tattered world, to end without mercy the lives for which the detective had given his – a paltry substitute for vengeance on the man who had tortured and ultimately in a sense killed Holmes, he holds back the wrath, pain and…. devastation burning within him and quietly sits by the icy black granite which is all that remains of his friend, too lost within the pain of missed possibilities and hidden truths to care about the few curious onlookers who stop to observe him, no doubt wondering who he is.

He remains on Midgard for another three weeks, learning all he can from those who had known the detective in his last days, he reads the words written by Watson, but finds himself more interested in what has not been written, so by night he lurks in the shadows, sifting through the memories of the sleeping man, and finding some bitter solace in the fact that for all his attempts to push the detective out of his life, he truly had cared for him….. but it hurts unbearably when he reaches that last memory – when he sees that last expression in Holmes's eyes before he closes them forever and throws himself and Moriarty into the icy crushing waterfall…. because in that single instant, Loki can see and feel the overwhelming grandeur of the mortal's soul – his courage, the enormity of his sacrifice and the calm though sorrowful acceptance thereof, mingled with an apology for the grief he knows his friend will have to endure, and past all of it, a silent suggestion to the friend he is leaving behind – to move on with his life, to be happy.

Something shatters within him as those eyes close and he sees Holmes thrust with his foot, sending himself and the man who would doom the world to a certain death – and thought millennia will pass, Loki swears he can never forget those eyes.

When the time comes for Loki to return to Asgard, he makes one last stop. Hoping to find some closure and ease the pain that is ripping him apart inside, he sits on the bank, one hand within the deadly churning water that crushed the life from the detective's body which now lies within its icy depths, and says softly as he allows the first tears to fall:

"I'm sorry I could not save you…. but most of all I'm sorry I never told you that I loved you."

He feels like he should say more, but it does nothing to ease the pain, and no-one will ever hear him, so instead he gets to his feet and returns to Asgard.

Loki knows that at some level he should be grateful for Thor's attempt to comfort him – for his support even after finding that he'd developed feelings for the mortal that went beyond friendship – but nothing Thor does or says can ease the pain that is eating at him, and slowly Loki draws in.

For the first few decades on Midgard after, Loki looks, knowing that Holmes died childless, but hoping to find at least something – someone within whom a small flicker even of the detective's spirit resides – which can perhaps ease his pain, but eventually hoping itself becomes too painful, and he turns away from that lesser world, promising himself that he will never look back, never embrace so devastating a hope again.

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