By the time Germany and Italy finally managed to occupy, entirely and solely, France and almost all within it, there was a certain discomfort in the atmosphere, a very heavy lingering sense of dread that infected every citizen. Most of the German soldiers liked to hold steady to the idea that they could, under the right leadership, help change the world, but Loki knew that regimes had a tendency to fall rather than flourish, and it was only a matter of time.

He'd fought in the invasion of France, had killed many a soldier without a second thought, but the current situation was bringing those memories back, making him regret what he'd done. They were all promised greatness, promised that it was all for the best, promised that they were making history in the only way they could, and yet it all suddenly felt so wrong, staring at the poorer French citizens walking with hungry stomachs and moneyless pockets, ushering the prisoners of war into camps so that they could work themselves well into a heart attack, damaged their health and their minds.

He'd left Germany to avoid the sight of the camps, but they'd followed him to the country from which he'd most wanted peace. Not the peace that everyone else wanted, but the kind of peace that could only be given by ignorance. He didn't want to see the ruin that his kind wrought, but it had found a way to haunt him.

It was a complicated thought process, one afflicted by both pride and guilt, and Loki had long been torn apart by it, all until he met Sif.

She was a very demure woman, living with her sister in a run-down part of Paris, the only place she could likely afford, with a real penchant for tea and long hours spent talking with him. He'd been scouring the local area for Allied spies, under orders and determined to fulfill them, determined to distract himself from the setting around him, when he'd came upon her in her home. She'd looked so genuinely surprised and fearful that he'd instantly dismissed the notion that she could be a spy, standing in front of her decidedly younger sister, eyes bright and cheeks flushed with heat and blood. He'd noticed her eyes and lowered his gun, nodding at her in apology after storming into her house so unexpectedly. They'd been told to use force, to find the spies and take them to the officers to no doubt be tortured and interrogated, and so Loki was hesitant to report back empty-handed.

But her eyes were so bright, grey irises shining in the dim lighting of the room, lips parted as she took trembling, stunted breaths, that when the officer asked if he had found anything, he'd been oddly relieved to report the lack of spies in his assigned area.

In the week that had followed, the meeting had stuck with him, playing back in his mind, and it was so vivid and distracting that he'd almost missed the sight of her browsing around in the near-bankrupt tea shop, only barely managing to spot her through the window in her brown knee-length trench coat, cinched about her slender waist, her black hair pinned up and her dark skirt hugging her hips.

He was in the poorer part of town, where it was most obvious that people were affected by the German occupation of their country, and so even a single presence in a shop had stuck out to him, after seeing abandoned building after abandoned building. He'd gone in, and the fear had felt electric in the air, no doubt because of his soldier's uniform and the insignia on it, his presence and what it meant, and he'd noticed her eyes widen as she caught sight of him.

He'd grinned just the slightest, letting her know that there was nothing to fear, not from him, anyway, and her gaze had softened.

Over the next few months of knowing Sif, who never did divulge her last name, but then again, Loki never did ask, he began to think rather suspiciously of the woman. She talked endlessly of her sister and the life they'd gained by moving to Paris, a life, though not luxurious, that had given them such valuable insight into the city life. She claimed that they were natural born Frenchwomen who'd moved to Paris to find better work, which hadn't exactly worked, but had allowed them a new outlook from their monotonous country lifestyles. Her accent, he finally decided, was an odd one, and it took him a few more months of talking with her over tea at the local diner to realize that it was fake.

He doubted that anyone else could hear the effort she put into it, and he'd always had a very good sense of perception. He never let her know that, after even more months of knowing her, he suspected her of being a spy, and he was reluctant to turn her in. He came to that specific revelation abruptly, once when the thought of turning her in crossed his mind, and he was far beyond surprised when his first instinct was to protect her.

Her, a woman he'd only just met around 6 months ago.

A woman that had let him into her house for the first time the other day, hands nervously fidgeting with one another as she glanced to her feet, smiling at the ground in that subtle way of hers, the corners of her mouth curled up, dark hair tumbling loosely in front of her face.

Hair that he'd wound his fingers through, mesmerized at the feel of the silky strands sliding against his skin, his fingertips brushing ever so lightly against the soft, milky skin of her cheek.

The urgently rapid pound of his heart spoke volumes of his loyalty to the army.

Loki's mission remained the same throughout the next year, while those of his friends changed so often that he rarely ever saw them in the area, and when he wasn't "looking for spies"-since that had been abandoned long ago, all when he'd first kissed those warm lips of hers-he was entertaining Sif and her sister with tales he'd heard throughout the years, with the tiny things he'd noticed during his travels to Paris from Germany, with almost every part of his life that he could remember. Sif returned his stories in kind, always over a steaming cup of tea, laughing as she recounted her childhood years, and Loki knew deep down that the stories were mostly false, littered with half-truths and near-lies every now and then, when she felt like adding them.

He'd accepted her status almost as easily as she'd accepted him into her home, and he felt lighter for the burden he carried-her burden. While she wasn't aware that he knew, he felt far more welcome in her life than he'd ever felt in his own, far more accepted than ever before, and there came a day when Loki looked at her and realized that he loved her. He loved a spy, a threat to everything his uniform stood for, a person that made his pulse race and his skin yearn for her touch-and he was perfectly content with it.

In the years that followed, she told him more and more of her true life, the lie in her eyes not as obvious as it slowly dwindled out of sight, and he even figured out from where she actually had come. Her accent slipped frequently when she was nervous, when her heart pounded so fiercely around him and at his touch and beneath his searching gaze, and he caught the sound of Britain in her voice.

Sif was a British spy and Loki was a German soldier, and they were both living in the most dangerous place imaginable.

But he realized that it didn't matter, not nearly as much as the shine of her smile, and he made the decision to protect her, at whatever cost.

He could be tortured and still not reveal the spy he'd found.

He could be killed and buried with the most important secret of all.

And it would all be worth it. And so, when France was finally liberated in those later years, Loki made a plan of escape, taking into account his resources and the difficulty and the two sisters he would have to smuggle out of France, and a fragile, fluttering happiness washed over him for the first time in years, a very delicate sense of hope that seemed to spread to all corners of Europe.

If freedom could be found, if love could survive, if hope could persevere, then anything was possible. On a day filled with celebration, Loki grabbed Sif's hand and smiled at her, a grin not unlike the one he'd first given her in that tea shop, and her gaze softened in the same exact way.

"Do you trust me?" Loki murmured, grip secure and loving against her palm, her eyes wide and round and staring, captivated, into his own.

"I do," she whispered, almost breathless with anticipation, and in that moment, their new life began.

Based off a prompt given over on Tumblr. Forgive the historical inaccuracies, please. xD I did some research, but I couldn't find anything real specific about what uniforms soldiers wore in relation to their status, so also forgive the lack of detail on Loki's part. ;D

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