disclaimer: I do not own the canon

author's note: this pairing is adorable - a little implausible, but such is the way with mortals and gods. a small experiment with a slightly different style.

summary: three is the magic number, four is back luck - we make our own chaos/lokixdarcy

(four is bad luck)

(three is a magic number)

okay, so yeah – their first meeting isn't actually a physically hey-let's-shake-hands and their second is less than stellar – but while everybody decides to point fingers and try to throttle each other, Darcy sits with her iPod and waits. She actually hasn't met the guy-god-villain-anti-hero yet, and while his actions haven't screamed I'm-actually-a-really-nice-guy, she has read books before and feels that right now is a bad time to make a decision about the Trickster's morals (because she knows of him but she doesn't know him and therefore knew diddly-squat about anything related to him).

(also, she's an intern and her opinion is more or less worthless; she's here for her credits and the money SHIELD gives her to keep her mouth shut – so everybody's eyes just sorta glaze over when she appears in their line of vision; thanks you assholes, you can get your own damn coffee)

./*/*/.

if you are a friend, Darcy will buy you coffee. This pretty much guarantees you a direct passage to saint-hood; no need to pass go and collect your two hundred dollars, just stroll right on up to those pearly gates 'cause they're waiting for you. Because Darcy is a college student, her love affair with coffee is very nearly it's own version of the flying spaghetti monster so if you are her friend your coffee will be the best coffee you'll ever encounter.

(darcy makes her own coffee – coffee, cocoa, spices, milk, honey – coffee is her second lovechild with creation, music being her first and her taser the third)

because she is the intern are her job is to sort files, find files and occasionally schedule things, Darcy does really very little. Her boss is set to be the next queen of the viking gods so the workload is pretty much non-existant – a week and a half's worth of work takes only one afternoon, so she spends her time writing essays, shopping on iTunes, babysitting the big bad god and playing far too much World of Warcraft.

Like all of the other kids in college, her whole life fits into her backpack and her little gizmos and whatever is in the travel mug in her hand. It also means that her schedule is shit because she sleeps at work, works between classes, does homework in class and does her reading on the train. In between she's started to try running again, so she's after she's done babysitting, the treadmill her best friend for nearly an hour. (really no need to do weights, her backpack and her files are quite enough, thanks)

She visits with Loki in her spare time so that they can make records and measurements and other things that she doesn't want to know because it makes her a little angry and she's promised herself that she'd lay back on the gin. She breezes through the door at strange times and sits at the table that he doesn't use because he is deeply in love with his long-lost love, the far left corner. Every time, she drops a cup of her coffee beside him, hooks up her computer and then her textbooks and iPod charger take up her side of the room.

The god cannot understand this because it makes no sense, she makes no sense. Her books are a strange amalgamation of current thought (politics and viking mythology and law and cheap romance and history and art and physics) and her music is so strange and so loud with too many variations. She struggles with essays and takes strange pens to her books and folds paper into angry turtles when the answers do not come to her.

He likes to think he is strong enough to make her find another place in which to carve out her own space, to hold her hostage or to be rid of her completely. He won't, not now and maybe not ever. Partly because he knows who's protection she's under and mostly because she comes and she sits to (to watch the traitor) but she gives him strange beverages and does not attempt to pry him into conversation. The table is her table, to give order to her books and her music and her strange coloured pens and paper turtles. Loki knows what it means to lock oneself up with literature and philosophy and history when everyone else looks past you and out towards the sunshine and bright, shining pedestals.

(the girl is a threat and a warning, he knows, to keep him in line – but Loki knows what it's like to be the black sheep)

(she's never told anybody, but she keeps a spare deck of cards on hand at all times and until she was nine her life's ambition was to be the next Houdini)

Once exams are done she pours over battered books, the pages yellowed and dog-eared and the coveres regrettably and unavoidably stained. There are biographies on magicians of course, how-to books for the simpler tricks. But her favorites are the stories, the sort of tales that you can crawl into and not notice what is happening beyond the pages. The Magician's Nephew, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Alchemist, The Mists of Avalon, Chocolat – her life is solidified under facts and figure, laws and legislation, bills of rights and dark sunglasses that are always following her when she enters the office. Science and reason make sense, she knows and believes, but magic is something she craves like candy apples and sex and a great pair of shoes.

Loki has spent his life being under-appreciated because he was not of warrior-mind, unwilling to cleave a potential enemy without thought. Darcy understands the strength in waiting and not striking first -

- it is with great grim glee that she paints her nails a rich green and walks into work with sparkly gold heels.

(loki laughs when they accuse him of corrupting her)

(they don't know that he knows that she hates green and she's only wearing it to boost loki's spirits and to piss the others off)

./*/*/.

some women clean when they're stressed, others cook. Darcy know a few that procrastinate and one or two that hit the streets for historic bar-crawls. She is a mix of all of them – waits until the last minute to be stressed and then pours herself too many gin and tonics, dusts like a maniac and makes far too many cream puffs; all before spending hours on websites where she can laugh at the fails of others and make snarky comments at the world and its bastards on twitter.

Her charge has been sent back to Asgard with his brother and Jane. Term is over, and all she has now is paperwork from Coulson (hallelujah, paperwork for agents with no sense of humor and bad tastes in coffee; and Hel below, she cannot stand Stark).

It was never supposed to last forever, she knew, but everything is changing now and it sucks because she has to wait. Left behind again, the intern, her credits and her darling iPod will wait for the triumphant heroes to return. An intern isn't really a proper part of the team but damn, she's put a lot of time and effort and drank too many shots for these people.

(she's also terrified of what will happen when-if they come back and what is happening to them now and why won't anybody tell her anything)

But she doesn't have time to mope – there are files to sort, classes to enrol in, new albums to snag and that boy at the coffee shop has really pretty hair.

Darcy is human, Darcy is normal, Darcy is not dependent.

They leave in the fall, leaves too bright against Loki's fair skin and too dull against Thor's cloak. They come back a couple of years later in the spring when the trees are too bright against Thor's pale hair and too pallid against the glitter of Loki's eyes.

Credits and classes and secret agents have come and gone – Darcy does contract work with SHIELD now, but mostly manages a book store and her apartment is crap. Her coffee and her taser are still life lines, her iPod'd been upgraded a few times. Her social group is small – nobody from the old days has time or the inclination to visit (and really, she has nothing to say to Eric or Fury and they barely remember her as it is).

Loki slides a book across the counter, a thick leather-bound volume embossed with strange script.

"You used to like magic," he said slowly. "Magic of the common kind."

"Yeah, and because it can't kill gods or blow up dimensional pathways, I'm a little more inclined to want anything to do with it." she snarks back, folding her blue post-it note turtle with care. Loki dips his head in agreement, in understanding – they left her here, the little intern that could and she is not playing dress-up anymore.

And neither is Loki.

There is nothing wrong with magic, nothing wrong with having an unusual history, of wanting more that what is solid beneath your feet.

"I thought it might interest you." he says. Her eyebrows are sarcastic accents over her spectacled eyes. Darcy tosses her hair back with a sniff, plum laquered nails tap-tap-tapping on the book.

"That's nice and all and I'm glad you were thinking of me, but I can't read it and therefore, it's useless."

Loki smiles, a tingle of power tightens the curls in her hair.

"Knowledge is never useless," he corrects with a flourish, drawing her from behind her counter. "And if you already knew the secrets of the un-common sorcery, then what would I have left to teach you?"

Loki teaches her magic, Darcy teaches sarcasm and wit. She introduces Volstagg and Sif to coffee, and her legendary cat fights with Amora go down in infamy. Frigg smiles and Odin suffers in silence when she twirls in her purple and gold, the large span of Loki's hands at the small of her back.

"It was one thing for Thor to bring us Reason,", Odin grumbles to his wife. "It is another for Loki to bring us Change and Chaos."

./*/*/.

-fin