This is going somewhere, I promise. I have an idea but it's slow to develop; bear with me. Thank you all who reviewed by the way, it's wonderful to read them!
Psychology made sense to Darcy. Her body was now permanently broken; she was paralyzed from the waist down, as well as covered with a myriad of scars on her chest from lacerations she suffered from her fall. Her mind however was sharper than ever; she was almost a decent astrophysicist, however unqualified, and Jane really did put her to work recreating their research which had been lost in the attack. Darcy initially enjoyed working for a SHIELD lab- Erik was back and his former self, making her comfortable with her two favorite people by her side all the time.
Her tasks used to include her usual research coupled with odd jobs and coffee runs; now that she was in a wheelchair, Jane and Erik made a point to get her coffee from the SHIELD break room. Their floor was quiet and filled with scientists, all making very important discoveries related to various matters of international import. Their lab in particular was quite silent on a normal day; Darcy typing, typing, typing, as Jane computed figures and Erik designed innovative ways to recreate the Einstein-Rosenbridge. Her work was normal, if not easy, and she fell into a routine almost immediately.
At home it was a different story; she and Jane had moved in together, more for Darcy's sake than anything. At first it took a while for them both to adjust to the two-wheeled elephant in the room- Darcy needed help just using the bathroom or reaching the microwave. Jane was the martyr type, feeling immense guilt for her rescue and Darcy's injuries, so she took on her role as caring best friend far too seriously. She would check on Darcy in the middle of the night, and be overly nice to the snarky woman. It was a week before Darcy screamed at Jane to "back off", to which Jane sassily replied "fuck off", and suddenly they were both giggling and crying at once.
After that, they made the apartment more wheelchair friendly, including a special bathroom for Darcy. (Jane always used Darcy's bathtub, claiming that her period cramps went away in it). Compromise was made; Jane could worry over Darcy over certain things only, so Darcy wouldn't go insane from the intensely smothering effect of being an invalid.
Their lives were stagnant barring that; after the attack, SHIELD employees were forced to maintain extremely private lives, as in very little outside socializing. Darcy couldn't visit her family that first Christmas, because they had no idea that she was now a paraplegic pseudo-astrophysicist working for a secret government agency with superheroes in it. It wasn't as hard as she thought it would be, but her relationship with her parents suffered tremendously.
Speaking of superheroes, Darcy hadn't seen much of the Avengers in her first year of SHIELD employment. Occasionally she'd see the douchey agent from the hospital room walking down the halls, issuing orders to the more important projects, but mostly her area of SHIELD was hero-free.
Her life went on that way for a while; slow, boring, sterile. She didn't meet new people, she didn't try new things. Jane lost more weight, but made leaps and strides in her research- working in a top of the line facility helped immensely.
It was around the end of Darcy's first year at SHIELD when she realized that she was unhappy.
Not just, "I'm in a wheelchair because an alien threw me off a building and now my life is an endless cycle of boring" unhappy, but a bone-deep, cesspit of unhappiness. She would wake up bored, and go to sleep listless, dissatisfied with where her life had gone- and only at the age of 23.
Then Jane hit the jackpot- she managed to recreate the Einstein Rosenbridge in a field in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and that was when Thor returned to his love.
It was mid-summer, blazingly hot outdoors, but chilly inside the SHIELD research tent/lab. The three of them had flown out with SHIELD operatives to observe the newest additions to Dr. Selvig's demo for the laser he had been designing for most of his life.
Before the test, Jane and Darcy sat together, reading over their final calculations and checking for any potential disasters. Erik calibrated the device for the millionth time, except this time he was going to actually test it out.
With a press of a button, they activated the laser- the Agent Coulson replacement was on his phone while they tested, clearly disregarding their experiment as unnecessary for his attention.
It worked.
With a blast, a bright blue beam shot from the laser and created a portal of swirling colors, causing Agent Asshole to drop his cell phone and Jane to burst into hysterical tears.
Facing Darcy, she screamed like a little girl. "WE DID IT! WE DID IT D WE DID IT! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!"
Erik hugged both women before shutting off the laser and discussing the implications of their success with the Agent, whose name Darcy had chosen not to learn.
Life changed after that.
First of all, they moved up in the hierarchy of SHIELD. Jane was put on several committees for Earth-Asgardian travel and relations, essentially making her the expert on transportation between the two realms. Erik was called upon to perfect other teleportation technology; working in a new lab in a new section of the vast headquarters they called work.
Darcy also felt the effects of their success- she got a raise, and a whole other week of vacation time allotted to her. People didn't look at her as the useless crippled secretary anymore- no, now she was the useless cripple because Jane no longer needed her to do her paperwork or research.
It stung Darcy to have worked so hard and yet to have achieved nothing in particular- one whole era of her life seemed to have gone to waste. Her depression was already pulling her down; now she felt the blackness threatening to swallow her permanently.
Things got momentarily brighter, if not happier, in December, months after the first portal was successfully activated.
Jane had decided that two years was a long time for a girl to not see her godly boyfriend and had begun a campaign for bringing Thor to Earth for a short visit.
Darcy remembered the first time Fury had reacted to her suggestion-
"Burn me three times, shame on ME is how the saying goes- I don't need unnecessary meetings between our realms if it means potentially causing another intergalactic conflict! Ms. Porter, please don't ask me again for something this impossible. Thor will come when Earth needs him. Trust in that."
And that was that, for Nick Fury. For Jane, however, the battle had only just begun. At first she unsuccessfully tried to design a way for her to communicate with Asgard- the designs were ambitious, and impossible to complete before ten years' time. Jane also began badgering Tony Stark- a show of courage which only proved Jane's love for Thor- for support in terms of calling Thor to earth. It didn't work, of course. Tony Stark was probably the world's most capable man when it came to figuring out how to talk to "aliens", but even he couldn't manage it while saving the planet on a private and Avengers basis.
Darcy personally felt that Thor would come when the timing was least expected, and of course she was right. He came 3 months after Jane had begun lobbying for her boy-toy.
It was for a world summit meeting, and though Thor was invited as a formality, no one had thought the god would actually show up.
It was a bit of a shock for all of SHIELD when Thor appeared on top of the Empire State building, brandishing his hammer with a bolt of lightning shooting out of it- never a subtle one, Thor.
Jane was thrilled to the moon and back; she walked into her office that morning and screamed at the sight of a blonde man facing away from her sitting in her rolling chair- spinning in said chair, for that matter.
Thor broke the chair in his effort to reach his beloved quickly, but Jane didn't care. Darcy had already heard the news but had kept the surprise for Jane's sake; she did however roll to the vicinity of Jane's office so she could witness the hilarity which was their reunion.
It involved disapproving Fury, passionately kissing Thor and Jane, and a painful sprained ankle for Agent Asshole who tripped over Jane's broken office chair. All in all, it had been a great day for Jane and a great distraction for Darcy. That afternoon, though, Jane approached her best friend and cheerily announced the news that she had booked a hotel suite for Darcy that weekend- "Wheelchair accessible and friendly, of course!"
Who was Darcy to deny her friend a few nights of passion, considering how long distance her relationship was?
Still, it was shameful; a grown woman asked to leave her apartment so her roommate could have some really hot sex with her boyfriend. If Darcy didn't love Jane so much, she would have been furious.
That was how she ended up in a hotel room Saturday night, watching a crappy Lifetime movie while sobbing, and breath hitching as the cause of her sadness shifted from the little girl on television that had gotten lost to the fact that her life was a wreck.
She cried for her lost dreams- however unclear, her future had been very bright. She was going to be an attorney, the good pro bono type. She had wanted a real boyfriend who would someday propose to her, and together they would have two babies and also adopt a third if finances would allow. Darcy had laughingly joked a week before the attack that she planned on drunk-dancing at Jane and Thor's wedding…
Now even that was a fantasy.
…..
The next morning Darcy woke in a mess of tangled sheets. She struggled to free herself, noting that for a paraplegic she was quite capable of tossing and turning like any able bodied person.
After using her handicap able bathroom she pulled out her phone from her purse, absentmindedly checking for the odd text.
New Message from Jane flashed across her screen.
Wondering what could possibly be so important that Jane would interrupt her weekend orgy with her blonde hunk, Darcy grabbed a bottle of water from the minibar (it was Jane's after all) and read her message.
One very grammatically correct text spelled out before her:
"Darcy, last night Thor proposed! He tried to make me dinner and almost destroyed our stove, and as we cleaned it up he popped out this amazing Asgardian ring! I AM ENGAGED TO A GOD. I'm so happy and I wanted you to be the first to know that I AM GETTING MARRIED. OH MY GOD DARCY I LOVE YOU AND I NEED TO CALL YOU TO SCREAM AND JUMP BUT I CAN'T THOR'S LEAVING THE RESTROOM TTYL BYE!"
It took Jane's innocent declaration of joy to her best friend for Darcy to realize that she needed to make some life changing decisions- like hell she was going to be third wheel (plus 4 extra wheels) to Thor and Jane's marriage.
The time had come to ask Fury for another favor.
That was how Darcy became a psychologist. First she made a deal with SHIELD- she would promise to remain employed to them within whatever capacity her qualifications allowed for. Then, she applied to NYU and within two months was in a new, handicap able apartment with a different roommate who had had a brother with spina bifida. It was then that the dark cloud which had haunted Darcy for almost two years began to clear away. Despite her being older than everyone else, Darcy did have enough credits to have a considerable jumpstart on her classmates. She excelled in her classes, unaccustomed to having the greater expertise in a subject for once. As time passed, Darcy realized just how much she hated astrophysics and the Einstein Rosenbridge- the research she had done brought her no joy because she got nothing from finding results, except the memories of Thor, Loki, and the flashing recollection of a broken spine.
She specialized in criminal and forensic psychology and took an internship at the more investigative branch of SHIELD simply labeled, "Investigative Procedures".
Crippled at 22, depressed at 23, and a psychologist by 27. Darcy Lewis made friends in that time; casual friends from school (SHIELD prevented close relationships), new friends in her new department, and even managed to make peace with Agent Asshole (his name was Keith).
Thor and Jane had to stall their wedding more than 4 years- some kind of Jotunn threat had consumed the Avenger/god's time, leaving Jane to perfect her technology and to completely disprove countless esteemed theorems.
By the time the insurgence died down between the two realms, Jane was thirty and desperate to reunited with her love, which she had only seen a handful of times during his absence.
Thor came back to Earth a wiser, older god. He was nevertheless joyful at the sight of his beloved, crushing her to his chest for a long time, weeping shamelessly along with Jane (and Darcy who'd planned the welcome home party).
And then Thor announced that the time had come for him to take his betrothed and wed her, as befitting a goddess of science and stars- although the wedding had to take place on Asgard.
Jane agreed, willing to do anything for a lifetime with Thor. Darcy resigned herself to watching a video of the space-wedding (if it was possible) and sending Jane edible underwear as a joke.
She didn't expect what came out of Jane's mouth after they announced the wedding date.
"You're invited to come with me to Asgard, of course."
Jane's smile was wicked, and Darcy nearly spilled her red cup of cheap rose wine.
"What the hell?! Jane, how? Fury hasn't let anyone up there besides Thor!"
The smile grew wider. "You and I built the technology allowing them to do that, and also you paid a price for SHIELD which Fury will never be able to forget- I won't let him. You're coming, okay?"
Darcy felt the misty sheen of tears cloud her vision, and she could only nod, wondering if wheelchairs would work in a different realm.
Thor joined his fiancée, putting an arm around her shoulder- Darcy felt a sting of jealousy- and boomed, "Lady Darcy, I would be honored if you were to be the Maiden of Honor at my Jane's wedding. There is little responsibility involved, so there is no need for you to tax yourself."
His cheeriness made Darcy laugh and she finally spoke. "I'm up for that! I get to give a drunken speech AND roll-dance with your sexy best man, whoever that would be Thor."
The super-couple exchanged a glance and Darcy spoke up again. "I get it if there's no best man, I'm cool with foreign weddings. I went to the best Indian wedding when I was 19, wore a sari and everything!" Jane interrupted; "Darcy, there is a best man."
"Great, I'll have someone to sleep with while you two are eating cake! Who is it?"
Thor looked down at Darcy squarely and grimly said, "You will not like this. I am sorry for this, but I cannot do anything about this, little sister."
Jane lightly nudged Thor as if to say "hurry up!"
Darcy took that as a bad sign and groaned inwardly.
"Say it Thor. I'm a big girl, I've heard plenty bad news."
With a deep breath Thor replied, "Loki is my best man."
"Fuck."
Jane sat next to Darcy's chair and rubbed her knee. She brushed off her hand, wheeling herself next to Thor, head bowed and hair billowing by her face like a curtain.
"Why, Thor? Why invite me if he was coming?"
Jane answered for Thor. "I asked him this too, but he has no choice. Asgardian law- law, Darcy, dictates that blood brothers are to be present for each other's nuptials, and are to hold several duties as traditions state. He can't not have Loki there; otherwise his throne is at stake."
Thor chimed in again; "Also, Lady Darcy, you must believe me when I say Loki is a changed man. Time on Asgard passes differently than on this realm- your 4 years is a bevy of decades to us, and Loki has been punished to the fullest extent of the Allfather's powers. He has been cleared of his crimes, and is forbidden to leave Asgard for the rest of time. His magical capabilities have been taken from him and with the Jotunn threat extinguished, he has very little room for extensive damage under my watch."
Darcy's head was spinning- why did she have to go?
Couldn't someone else do Jane's maid of honor duties- anyone else?
Apparently not.
"I have no one else in the world Darcy! SHIELD told me that I have to screen potential guests and sweetheart, you're the only one I can take and be happy with, so please? I promise, minimal contact with Thor's brother in the ceremony and at the reception! Promise!"
Jane was about cry, and Darcy could not handle a sobbing astrophysicist- the lady rarely ever shed tears, but when she did it annoyed the fuck out of Darcy.
Darcy bit her lip, thinking it over for a minute- could she handle seeing the person who ruined her life so effortlessly and carelessly in any setting, nevertheless a social one?
Then she thought of her current life- psychology was a rich part of her world now, and she was helping the world by analyzing SHIELD's bad guys and potential employees.
Her life was weird but okay, and she could take an awkward, painful few nights for the sake of her best, best friend in the world.
"Okay. I'll go, but I will drink heavily. I promise, Jane, you'll be so blissful with your Ken doll that you won't notice me finding a hot Asgardian to inappropriately throw myself at."
Okay…. I didn't like that chapter much but this is where my plot took me.
Was it awful? Comments, criticisms in the review box! Sign in so I can reply, I love it when you do that!
