Kama-Loki/Sacred Darcy
or
The Five Dharmas of Midgard
(Part 1: Faith and Release or The Third Age of Man)
"That's it, Loki, I have had it with your detours! I specifically told you to avoid that part of the city!" Darcy said angrily.
Several sets of eyes, ears, heads, and necks all turned in the direction of the approaching otherworldly family. Darcy, Loki, and their daughter Gaea made regular visits to earth, but one day in particular every year saw Gaea placed directly in the care of either her 'uncle', Darcy's distant cousin Tony Stark, or her newly appointed Godfather, Volstagg. Loki had enjoyed the sundry visits to Midgard in various regions, some of them extended as Darcy's obligations as an ambassador demanded, but the interactions with Stark were rarely pleasant and the trickster loathed all the more that his daughter seemed to adore him. The two had arrived on the balcony of Stark Tower after a brief and unwanted detour in the lower east side and all its degradation, a deliberate defiance of Darcy's wishes. Waiting in the large greeting room were Pepper, Stark himself, Dr. Banner and his own assistant Chandi, and Rogers as well. As soon as the sound of Darcy's voice manifested itself, Rogers bid his companions goodbye (not wanting any further confusing interactions with the trickster at the moment) and Banner announced that he and Chandi to would go and wait downstairs.
The three appeared in the doorway with Darcy clutching the wailing toddler as she hurried past her husband. "One simple thing, Loki, every time we come back to earth no matter where we go I always ask you to do one thing and you never listen!" she exclaimed. Her voice was loud and angry enough to carry over Gaea's pained bewailing. "Why do you do this? You always do this! Every time we come here you've got to go somewhere run down and . . ."
"Lacking in the very care and guidance that I personally offered humanity at least five years ago," Loki said defensively, placing a hand on his chest in a noble fist. He feigned pity and concern. "I am only trying to show her how blessed her life on Sylvanheim is and what duties she will have to change the state of the mess in this realm."
"No, Loki, you want to terrorize her into thinking your stupid delusions are truth and I'm not taking it anymore!" Darcy shouted. Pepper glanced uneasily at Tony who frowned and shook his head. "Why can't you just do what I tell you to do when we're in my realm? MY realm . . . we'll do what you want in your realm but here the human's wants come first!"
"You are much more than a mere human, Darcy," Loki said smoothly, trying to placate the anger he had once again incensed. This was made all the more terrible by the fact that it coincided with their nuptial anniversary, a time which humans held sacred and Loki had come to know as a time of both celebration and dismal disappointment for Darcy. "Besides, as her father I have just as much a say in her tutelage as you do if not more so being her king as well. Furthermore . . ."
"Don't you dare start that up again," Darcy warned. Pepper felt an unusually high amount of tension this time. Whatever had happened before their arrival it had made his custom display of appearing in a slum or violent area near where Darcy was actually called to be all the more aggravating for the young woman. She glanced back at Tony and nodded towards the two. He raised a brow in confusion and then recognized her meaning. He nodded and rose slowly, trying to approach the fierce pair without creating even more of a problem. "You're a king on Sylvanheim to people that need you, but you're not going to start your superiority crap on me or our daughter. For cripe's sake, what the heck do you think that's going to do to her when she's a teenager?!"
Loki stared back at Darcy in confusion. He was king, what was so difficult or upsetting about that? "She will have learned well how to respect her sovereign and I would hope that her lessons and manners would make her a refined princess by the time she's beyond her girlhood," Loki replied casually. Pepper groaned inwardly and Tony shook his head. The trickster had a way with words with everyone, it seemed, but Darcy when irritated particularly now that they had become a family with conflicting obligations to very different realms. Even Odin had backed away from involvement in their issues as of late. "And by the time we find her a suitor she will also have . . . "
"Holy cow it never ends with you! Are you really that much of a chauvinist? Maybe that's the reason you won't listen to me you can't hear me all the way back in the Neolithic era you troglodyte!" Darcy shouted. Loki frowned at her. He had noted that she had been in poor spirits weeks before they had left, but had felt it best to say nothing. The detours to the suffering of humanity, something he felt Gaea would learn well from, were nothing new. Why was she so angered now? Gaea began to cry more loudly and cover her ears as her parents continued carrying on. "You see this? Do you see what you've done to your daughter? This is your fault, your fault, Loki!"
"My fault?" Loki countered. "You, madam, are the one shouting."
"Yeah, because of you, you big . . ." Darcy began.
"Hey, hey, hey, come on people, give peace a chance will ya?" Tony interjected as he finally made his way quickly to Darcy's side. The two grew silent as Gaea continued to cry and turned towards her uncle holding out her arms to him. Stark sighed and firmly, swiftly, took Gaea into his arms and stepped a few safe inches away from his 'cousin'. "You two need help, you know that, right? Serious help. This is like the fourth or fifth time this year you've gone at each other on a visit." Loki growled low prompting a furious and reproachful glare from Darcy who then turned and watched her only living relative gently holding her child with the tenderness and affection that were the perfect answer to the situation. She whined pitifully and rested her forehead against his collarbone, not wanting to lock eyes with anyone as she furiously wiped tears away. "Now I get that you took one of your little miniature dark-expose' detours into some run-down part of the city," Stark commented with a caustic smirk at the trickster. Darcy quickly shot her husband a look of smug approval at her cousin's statement. Loki simply sighed heavily and frowned, folding his arms behind him as Stark continued. "But what exactly happened that made this little angel's world collapse like this, huh? Did you finally show her the footage from your little visit back in 2012?"
"There was a puppy sitting in a box with no mommy and daddy and no toys and no bed and it was all was sick and it had only one ear. And I wanted to take him home and make him better and daddy says we can't because someone's already going to kill him and eat him!" Gaea wailed. She buried her face further into her uncle's shoulder and wept.
"Wow, you're a really sick bastard," Stark said turning back to Loki with feigned surprise. "So you took her to Little Korea to the livestock section, is that it?"
"Tony!" Pepper shouted indignantly. "Try not to be an insensitive borderline racist this week."
"And watch your language in the presence of my child," Loki warned. "And it just so happens that in that portion of the city that is part of the circle of survival."
"I will watch my language meticulously, your highness, but since you're so into her knowing the truth I don't see why I can't call you something accurate," he retorted.
The trickster clenched one hand into a fist, allowing it to turn its natural blue as his eyes glowed red and hungry. Darcy cleared her throat and raised one brow, signaling him to cease all of it at once. Loki suddenly realized that he had become exactly what he had seen in his father; a king under the rule of powerful wife. He groaned inwardly and watched with restrained hatred as Stark assured the girl that everyone loves dogs which is why they're called 'man's best friend' and that no one would ever eat their best friend. Loki took a furious step towards the two as Darcy caught his arm. "He's lying to her," he whispered furiously. "You chastise me for playful deception and here you let him lie to her!"
"It's not really a lie, not all of it, and it's better than what you were doing," Darcy whispered back.
"Is it, now?" Loki snorted indignantly.
"I have to be ready to speak to the summit tomorrow morning," she said a little more loudly. He nodded. "I'll get Gaea settled here and I'll be turning in soon . . ."
"I take it we will be saddled with our usual quarters, then?" he grumbled. As magnificent as accommodations at Stark Tower might have seemed to any human, they were anything but pleasant to the trickster even beside his beloved. Darcy turned and looked at him, a tear glimmering in the corner of each eye.
"I want you to go home," she said flatly.
"What?" His eyes widened in disbelief. "Why?"
Darcy looked down and fought back a sob. "You're not here to be a diplomat, you just want to be superior to everyone and everything," she said softly and then turned looking at their daughter. "You don't love me."
"How dare you say such a despicable fabrication! How can you think I feel anything but love for you? For Gaea?" he demanded in a harsh whisper.
Darcy shook her head. "Every time we come here, every time we go anywhere, all you do is point out how weak humans are, how backwards, how unrefined, how . . ." she fought back another sob. "How base we are."
"As a general rule, Darcy, most humans are weak, a great deal more backwards than most, consistently unrefined, and mortals by comparison are base," he argued. "Is that not why I lifted you above them? You were much more even before your immortality and now you refute that you have become something greater? Few humans are the diamond you are that lay hidden in the filthy lump of coal I carried away from your world."
Darcy turned and glared hatefully at him, her nostrils flaring. "Loki, that was the most hurtful thing you have ever said to me," she said, unable to hold back all of the sobbing, but able to restrain a good portion of it. He frowned and reached out for her as she stepped backwards. "I've never thrown it back at you that you murdered people, that you enslaved people, and that you kidnapped people, but you can't let anyone else's flaws go, can you?"
"Darcy, it was never meant as an insult to you personally, it is scientific fact," Loki countered, hoping that using a logical argument would work more to his advantage. Darcy shook her head and turned away. Stark stepped into the other room, still holding onto Gaea and offering her the same protection from the horrors of a faltering romance that his mother had tried to offer him with his father's ever drunken exploit. Pepper stood a safe distance away watching sadly as Darcy folded her arms. "If it upsets you this greatly, if it has truly offended you . . ."
"If? IF?! You're stupid enough to put in the possibility that it didn't offend me?! What the heck is wrong with you that I haven't already had to address with your various family members or hear about in newscasts?! Are you stupid or just careless? Huh?! Which is it?!"
Darcy had shouted the last few words and Loki felt an ache in his heart. He breathed deeply and lowered his head. "Darcy, I apologize . . ."
"For what?" she interjected angrily. He breathed deeply and tried to think of something perfect to say. A silvertongue was useless in the volcano of rage that she had become. She was right, though, this was his fault. Somehow he had missed something important, something significant and it had created a small crack in her heart that had grown to a full fracture causing her such pain that he could not easily soothe. He looked away once more, unsure of how to remedy this. "Huh? Why are you are sorry?"
"I don't . . . I don't know what you want me to say, but I am pained to see you in such ferment," he replied softly.
"You don't know? You don't know?!" she said loudly, dropping her arms in exasperation. "Really?"
"What do I say to you to when you already angered that would in any way assuage the fire I started?" he said with sincere regret.
Darcy groaned and grasped her forehead. "Loki, I just . . . I just can't deal with you right now." The two could hear Gaea's voice from the other room where she sat in her uncle's lap, a decent escape from the hostility of her parents. The two moved towards the doorway and peeked in at the little girl settled happily on the man's lap with her tiny hand on his chest, fingers resting just below the glowing arc reactor.
"Why is your heart blue?" she asked innocently. Unaware of the other, both her parents slightly grinned.
Tony shifted and sighed, pulling her closer. "Well, it might be because I haven't found a wife of my own yet and it's blue because I'm lonely," he explained. Gaea looked up at him with innocent, enormous green eyes. He smiled back, feeling as wonderful as ever with this truly lovely and innocent creature in his presence and knowing that he had essentially rescued her from certain misery and tears. He leaned his face closer to her and spoke very softly. "I'll tell you a secret, though; it changes if something magical happens."
"What magic happens?" she asked in a hushed and excited tone.
He grinned and pushed a lock of dark, swirling hair away from her pale brow. "Well, I can't be sure because it hasn't happened yet, but if I get a kiss from a princess . . . " he said with a grin. "It'll turn pink."
"Why pink?" Gaea asked in confusion, sitting back away from him.
He shrugged. "I guess princess magic is pink, that's all," he said with a sigh.
Just as he had hoped, Gaea leaned forward in a flash and tenderly placed her small, innocent lips against his well-aged cheek, cupping either side of his head affectionately before pulling away. Tony smiled and, unseen to the small child, pressed a button on his wristband. As Gaea sat back down on her knees in his lap and turned her gaze downward to scan for any changes to the glowing light, the reactor's blue slowly faded and then lit up in a fluorescent pink. Gaea gasped and clapped happily. "It worked, it really worked!" she said happily.
"Of course it worked," Stark replied, stroking her head softly. "You're a princess."
"Such impertinence with a child that isn't even his own," Loki seethed enviously. Darcy turned to him and shook her head. Yet another moment ruined by his jealousy and anger. She walked away, arms still folded. He frowned and followed after her as she reached the door to the room that she was accustomed to sharing with Loki when they visited her cousin that she would have to herself this night. The trickster sighed and watched her stand in the doorway, turned away from him. "I will return and wait for you to complete this mission," he offered cautiously. She said nothing, leaning against the facing of the door almost sadly. "When will you be returning, then? Tomorrow night or the night after?"
"I don't know," Darcy replied flatly in nearly a whisper. Loki's mind went numb and his body suddenly detached from every sensible nerve at those words. He tried to speak but felt his mouth go too dry for several moments. They stood in silence as he finally found the presence to draw in a labored breath and ask if she planned on coming home at all. Unseen by the trickster, several tears had streamed down Darcy's cheeks and she shook her head a little. "I don't know."
Loki felt his knees buckle ever so slightly under the shock of those words. Not far away, too curious to resist, Pepper watched and listened and felt an ache all her own in her heart. From what she had seen Darcy genuinely adored Loki and the trickster had utmost adoration and sincere affection for Darcy while both were tremendously in love with their daughter. Whatever had caused this rift it was serious and she felt oddly obligated to stop it at once. Loki had been a very selfish, childish, and cruel beast until he had captured the spritely Darcy. Pepper fought away the urge to rush forward and make a firm, verbal stand to both of them. Instead, she continued to watch patiently as the trickster nodded heavily and reached out for his beloved, placing his hands softly on her shoulders. She shifted and shoved both hands away as she walked forward to the window and looked out.
"You should get going before the kingdom falls to ruin," she muttered sarcastically.
"I am returning alone, Darcy," he replied sadly. "Ruin is inevitable." With that he turned and walked silently, out of the room. He bid a quick and obviously heavy farewell to Gaea. The child sensed something odd in her father, but was too distracted by the wonderful tricks her uncle was sowing her. Loki then hurried toward the platform balcony. Pepper drew in a deep breath and followed after him. She sprinted a few paces, unable to keep up with his long-legged gait. He sensed her presence and froze, waiting for her to speak. Pepper sighed and glanced from one side to the other. How did she address him? For that matter, how did she address the situation in general? "Unless you know, verbatim, Miss Potts, what I should say and do for my beloved this very moment to bring her back to my side and undo any mention of my being alone and her being so wounded then I suggest you go back to your own duties."
"Darcy isn't just mad that you took the detour, I'm sure you know that, but it doesn't seem right that you keep doing that when she's told you not to. Haven't you thought about the effect it's having on your little girl?" she asked. Loki glanced over his shoulder and lifted a brow at her obvious question. "Look, what I heard from her, and I speak 'woman', is that she feels inferior. If you really want to get her back, to prove your love, you need to appeal to her humanity by, well, exposing yours."
"Exposing my humanity?" Loki laughed as he turned to face the woman. "My dear I am no human, not by any means. You'll have to give better advice than that."
"Well, then, put on some kind of pretense. Show her that you don't think everything about her world disgusts you or is something else to conquer," she offered. Loki took this inwardly and thought for a moment. "Think about this, every time you call humanity or the earth weak or base or useless other than being a throne to rule, she sees you calling her that. Heck, she hears you calling everything and everyone she loves that as well."
"But there is so very little of your world that transcends a superficial need to consume and squabble," Loki countered. "Even you know this."
"I'm just going to ignore that subtle attack on my intellect for now. Transcending isn't something new to earth, people practice transcendental meditation and yoga all the time," she added. A light went on in the trickster's mind. He knew someone with access to information about both of those things and so much more. "I mean when you think about it, looking at your Norse texts versus the majority of everything that came out of the east we could argue that your world hasn't reached real enlightenment since . . . "
"Where is Doctor Banner?" Loki suddenly asked with a renewed enthusiasm. Pepper gave him a strange look. The trickster had purposefully avoided the raging green menace even in human form after the fiasco in Manhattan. "Where is he?"
"Uh, he's staying in one of the rooms downstairs for tonight, I think," Pepper explained cautiously. Loki grinned brightly and turned away. "Wait, you're not going to do anything, you know, weird and dangerous with him, are you?"
"Of course not," Loki replied with a smirk. ''It is enlightenment I seek."