title: the movement is not mine
rating: r, for violence, rape, dubious consent, abuse, mentions of suicide, imprisonment, miscarriages, unwilling abortion, torture, and future explicit sex scenes
summary: (AU like whoa.) An animal trapped sometimes gnaws off a leg to get freedom, even crippled. A woman with nowhere left to turn and nothing left to offer sometimes surrenders to the possibility of mercy and salvation. By chance a God worlds away hears her. Darcy soon learns that dealings with Gods may be more perilous than where she came from, especially when she finds herself in Loki's keeping.
notes: Given the nature of future chapters in this fic, I've decided to lump this first chapter in with my drabbles as a sort of teaser. The content of this one is vague enough that I do think it merits the R rating, but it's quickly going to be boosted to NC-17 which this site is cracking down on. Currently the rest will be hosted on my Avengers Tumblr (anoldfashionednotion) until my waitlisted ass can get in on Archive Of Our Own.
prologue: around and between
Somewhere between the clatter in her hair and her empty womb, Darcy decided she could take no more. Oddly, the man that had claimed her and threaded bones in her hair had little (and yet so much) to do with her flight, from a young age that had witnessed enough battles to be three times as old she had resigned herself to the understanding that if her tribe were conquered she would be a war prize or dead. It had been by sheer luck that one of the strongest had taken her, protecting her from the attentions of other men who thought to dominate him through her by forcing her to her hands and knees — for that she'd both despised and been grateful for the ample warnings to others twined in her hair, letting all know that she was a woman of a man fully capable of keeping her his alone.
No, the balance she'd struck between resentment and gratitude of this had only slipped completely into the former when a year after she'd been seized she still failed to grow round with child and felt twice as empty for it. Secretly, she'd decided the fault lay with him and her contempt only grew as she contemplated how a warrior of his prowess could let her down in this matter. Her husband before he'd been cut down in the last battle had successfully rooted child in her three times, and the loss of each babe had been the fault of hungry winters, endless running, and once when an enemy's knife had cut into her and the infection that came after had ravaged her body. She'd been on her back for the warrior more times than her husband ever demanded as was his right, she was well provided for, sheltered, and mostly protected. Everything pointed to him as the culprit.
There were few choices for a woman in her situation, Darcy knew. The easiest being death, the most terrifying being a plea to the Gods, and little in-between that was feasible. But she didn't want to die, and for a long time she'd debated whether it was better to stay with the demon she knew than the mercy of some unknown God. Never had she suspected she'd trace her blood on an alter, change the course of her life so much from what she'd accepted. It wasn't before her captor had lost his left arm did she realize that the situation had become too dire for her to stay. Before long the fear of him would fade at this weakness, his broken crown, and she'd be the one to suffer the result of the loss of respect. She refused. She absolutely refused to be made into the vicious tribe's whore. It had been enough when the leader had asserted his authority over him by taking her in the tent right before the hot eyes of the man who possessed her. Doubly so when after she'd been taken all other ways he'd brutally scrubbed her clean and proceeded to remind her who's woman she was. The pain hadn't faded even after her limp had.
(The baby seeded in her he'd gotten rid of by way of the tribe's witch's poison. He left no chance that a child not his would occupy his tent. She should've left then. But it had taken a month before she'd recovered enough to leave the furs of her shelter. By then she'd clung to a desperate hope that she could be given another chance at motherhood, knowing that the chance decreased if she succeeded in leaving.)
It had been a while before she knew she had no chance even laying with him every night.
She bled time and time again, and it almost didn't hurt to slice a wrist before the stone altar after so much wasted time and the cruelty of these reminders that she still had no one that she could actually foster love in.
As she traced the ancient patterns of her mother's mother's mother's and beyond, felt the pressure in her chest and the pop in her ears as she painted the last line and lifted her finger from the stone, she asked for freedom, but the prayer for all to hear echoed only her loss and fervent desperation that it bore.
Too much for her world to contain, reaching farther than just her various God's ears, and catching the attention of another who could actually slip through the cracks, swift enough that before she'd had time to regret (and Darcy had regretted almost immediately), he'd wrapped her in his power and tugged.
The tear in her felt like an eternity, though only a few seconds, but vast. Not once did his grip ease.
The stone bearing her blood crumbled, and whatever she'd left behind was no more.
Loki smiled.