A/N: Penname 'Corgin', previously 'Figg' - Author of Darcy x Loki 'Things Left Unsaid'.

No Coincidence

By: Thessaly Corgin (Corgin)

Chapter 1: The King of Lies

o

Nothing was going to be the same. Nothing would ever be the same. Regular life was just so boring, there was never anything to do. Luckily for Darcy, the summer was coming to an end and it was time for her to go back to her final year at university, which would give her something to do. Jane hugged her.

"It's been a pleasure working with you, Darcy. I hope it was worth the university credits!"

Darcy smiled sadly - she didn't care about the credits anymore, she never wanted to leave. After the disappearance of Jane's little boy-toy the trio had spent the rest of the summer chasing storms, which had been fairly exciting. Camp outs, ghost stories, warm nights under the stars... for once in her life Darcy didn't feel outcasted or odd - she simply felt a part of the crew. Even Erik, who had the habit of lecturing her, had loosened up and felt like a father to her.

"Can I come back next year?"

She asked tearfully, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Erik loaded her things onto the bus and hugged her as well.

"It's okay kid - next summer you'll have a big shiny bachelors degree and we might even be able to pay you! If you send us an email we can head over for your graduation - I'm sure Jane would love to go to New York."

Jane flashed a bright smile, "Oh, I'd love to! That's a great idea. I'm sure this year will go incredibly quick, Darcy, stop looking so grim! And I don't want to sound like your mother, but don't forget to register for your classes when you get home. Did you end up getting your apartment sorted out?"

Darcy rolled her eyes and laughed.

"Jeez, I'm a scatter brain but you've gotta cut me some slack - I wouldn't be leaving if I had nowhere to live. My scholarship pays for student housing as well, so I'll get to move right back in to my university owned shoebox."

After a few more parting words Darcy jumped onto the bus, and watched everything she had grown to love slide away as the bus pulled out of the city and headed towards New Mexico Airport. There were no direct flights to New York, so she had to stop over in Colorado Airport - she didn't complain, because the first thing she did when she hopped off the plane was head straight for the electronics store in the terminal and buy a new iPod. SHIELD told them that they would return all of the electronic equipment that was confiscated, but apparently her iPod didn't count or had been 'misplaced.'

Darcy dozed on the train from the airport into the city, feeling profoundly bored and sorry for herself. Even as she surfaced in the East Village of Manhattan, Darcy felt absolutely no form of passion or relief, just a growing dread that the dull feeling wasn't going to fade any time soon. By the time she finally managed to drag her suitcase up the steps of the building she lived in, she was legitimately tired. She rang the bell on the door, and after ringing it a few more times and waiting for a few minutes, she knocked. She was almost instantly met by someone opening the door.

"The bell's broken."

The girl who answered the door said, before quickly walking away. Darcy was glad that she had lived in the building previously, or she would have no idea what to do.

"No.. I don't care what he says, we don't have any rooms left and I'm not kicking a kid out... well tell him to go find a bloody apartment somewhere else in New York City... Do I have to say no again? ... well ... I ... I mean no disrespect but housing around here is seriously sought after ... yes? ... okay, well, send him over."

Darcy heard the sound of a telephone being put down in the property manager's - Mr. Denny's - office. He walked out of the room, obviously flustered. Mr. Denny immediately saw Darcy and smiled broadly.

"Ah! Miss Lewis, wonderful to see you! You're just the lady I was looking to talk to, let me take your suitcase."

He took her suit case with her and they began to climb the stairs.

"Now look, I know you enjoy being one of the older students here and taking care of our little freshmen... and by the looks of things I'm going to have to take another older student. I know how you feel about working with other people, but the accommodation offices from the university say he's a wonderful man... I'm sure that the two of you can figure things out."

Darcy saw a bead of sweat run down Mr. Denny's face, and wondered if whoever was on the phone had been threatening him. She shrugged.

"I don't care, that's alright. Maybe it's about time I start being social."

They got to her room and he put the suit case on the ground.

"Don't worry, we'll put him at the other end of the building so you shouldn't have to deal with him too often, and he won't be moving in for another couple of weeks. You have time!"

Darcy gave him a shallow smile as Mr. Denny turned to leave, before unpacking her bags. Her room was tiny to say the least - a single bed, a small desk and chair, and a window that looked out onto the busy street. Once she had unpacked everything she took out her diary and sat on her bed,

Dear Diary,

I've been back in New York for three hours and my life already sucks again. I'm back to living in my little shoebox world on a little island full of sky scrapers, at a university for rich kids in a city that never shuts up.

She looked at the words on the page and scribbled them out, as she often did with anything she wrote down. She threw the little book down onto the ground, and quietly began to cry.

o

"What do you mean I have to take one more course?"

Darcy's voice was angry but tired, lacking the volume of aggression.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but you need one more elective in order to complete your degree by the end of the year. It can just be a first year course if you'd like. Would you like a list of all the options?"

Darcy took a deep breath, wondering how she had managed to screw that up in course planning. She nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I would, that sound lovely. Thank you."

For the week she had been back in New York she had hardly slept, and found herself wandering the city late at night. Despite what the movies said, wandering the East Village of New York was actually an incredibly safe thing to do, even as a young woman. There were so many students from the university out and about that it created a large crowd at all hours of the day. The academic adviser handed Darcy a printed out list of course names, so she ran her finger down the list as she skimmed the classes. They were all pretty basic, and painfully boring.

"Introduction to Norse Mythology?"

She said with surprise. The advisor shrugged.

"Yeah, they're running that one this year because the lecturer finally got some grad student to teach tutorials. Usually no one shows any interest."

"I'll take it."

Darcy knew it would be incredibly easy for her because of her constantly mythology lessons from Erik and Jane over the course of the summer, and her first hand experience with a god himself. The adviser looked surprised.

"You'll take it? Well, okay then. Just give me a second to enroll you in that one and you'll be all set..."

o

"Norse Mythology consists of a set of myths and legends based on the worship of deities in ancient Scandinavia. You may recognize some of these deities from pop culture, or have read about them before. Some examples of more popular deities or gods are Thor and Loki, the heroic hammer wielder and maleficent trickster..."

Darcy was beginning to think that she made a mistake. Not only was she surrounded by freshmen, the lecturer of the class was some old man who could hardly see two feet in front of him. He spoke right off of a piece of paper in a monotone voice, and wasn't even using a powerpoint presentation to make it less agonizing. Darcy had her head down on her desk and was trying desperately to doze. The man drawled on and on and on, until finally he shut up and the class was over. Darcy felt like she had been through a war. She realized to her horror that directly after the lecture she had a tutorial, and that it would probably be just as boring.

She ran into the small room that the tutorial was held in and took a seat near the front like she usually did, preparing for the worst. She was usually able to deal with boring tutorials by engaging whoever the teacher was in conversation and slowly steering them off topic. Everyone else in the class appeared as dopy as she was after lecture, so she was glad to see she wasn't out of line by being dreadfully bored.

"Stop looking like someone in your family's died, you're paying to be at school."

Darcy's eyes snapped up to the man at the front of the room, who was leaning against a table with a coffee in his hand. He was tall and slender with a pale angular face, with eyes that glared cat green beneath high defined eyebrows. His face was framed by dark hair pushed back behind his ears that fell a few inches above his shoulders. He was wearing long dark pants and a long black jacket, with a white collared shirt and a green tie. What Darcy found most peculiar, however, wasn't his refined beauty but the long jagged scar that stretched from his ear down his neck, disappearing under his collar. She looked away suddenly when he realized she was gawking.

"I'm your tutor here, in case you didn't figure that out, and I'm going to make sure you understand exactly what goes on in Norse mythology. Now, put up your hand and tell me who your favorite deity is, based on what you learned today."

A student at the back of the class put up their hand, and the tutor nodded at them.

"Thor," the boy said, "he's like a viking or some shit."

The tutor laughed bitterly.

"You see, that's where you're wrong. You say Thor because you've been told he's a noble god in comparison to his counterpart. Someone give me another answer."

A girl put up her hand as she flicked through the text book, "Balder." she said. The tutor snorted.

"Look - you just did it again! You know what they call him? You read it right out of the text book, so obviously you know. Balder the Good. Good. You like him because he's good and wholesome. Next!"

"Odin."

"Odin Allfather. You like Odin because he's powerful. Next!"

"Sif?"

"No. Just no. Who's going to say the name we're avoiding?"

Darcy put up her hand, even though she was amused by the failure of everyone else.

"Loki. King of Lies."

She didn't look up, or make eye contact with the tutor as she said it, but somehow she knew that he was grinning.

"There we go! This lovely lady, named..."

"Darcy."

"Darcy..."

He stopped talking, and Darcy could have sworn she could hear him thinking. He snapped back into animation.

"Darcy has said exactly what I was looking for."

He picked up a white board marker and wrote LOKI on the board in handwriting. Below it he wrote an email address, a room number and a time.

"My name is Loki, you can call me King of Lies if you so desire, and this is the email I can be contacted by. This is my office, and these are my open office hours, so you can come by my office any time during these hours. Now, I'm afraid we have no content to go over today, since it's the first day of classes, so... you're free to go."

Darcy stood up right away, and started heading for the door, but turned around when Loki addressed her.

"You. Can I see you in my office at one o'clock?"

"Is your name actually Loki?"

"Would I lie?"

Darcy had a bad feeling.

"Why do you need me in your office?"

"Well, I was going to ask if you'd like to be the class representative, seeing as you already seem knowledgable, but I'll ask someone else."

He picked up his bag and promptly left the room, leaving Darcy to wonder exactly how he knew she was already knowledgable. She had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near his office.