Hat-Trick: Thundertaser #2

Song: Sorcerer ~ Stevie Nicks

Genre: Romance/Fantasy

Spoiler Alert: Thor: TDW

Rating: T


Eternal


Darcy's head hurt. That was the first thing that registered when she woke up. Her head hurt, her back hurt, her arms hurt, her whole damn body hurt as though she had been tossed from a cliff and rolled down several miles of rocky terrain. Her eyes shot open at that thought and looked up at the great peak above her. Oh.

"Lady Darcy, I would suggest watching where you are going from now on. I may not always be there to catch you." Thor towered over the woman on the ground, his massive shadow completely eclipsing the fading golden light.

"It wasn't my fault, she threw me again! Plus, I'm on the ground, you didn't catch me." Darcy groaned as she tried to sit up. Living around all those superheroes, Darcy would admit that she had been jealous of their powers and strength. So it was no wonder that she was more than a little ecstatic when she found out that she was more special than she had realized. Turned out her parents had not been her parents after all. Hell, she wasn't even human! She had to admit when she first found out she had a bit of a Clark Kent moment, which Thor promptly squashed as he informed her that he would be returning her to Asgard.

"It would not happen if you would pay attention." Thor completely ignored the comment about failing to catch her and simply reached down to clasp his hand in hers. It was so much smaller than his own, almost childlike in its fine bones and slim fingers. Not that there was anything childlike in the rest of her appearance though. Something he had noticed long before her true heritage was reveled…and something that was causing him great distress as he had to scare off more and more suitors.

"I am paying attention! I pay very close attention as she pushes me off that damned mountain again and again! I swear she hates me." This was the sixth time just that day that Sif had herded her towards the cliff edge and promptly kicked her off. She didn't understand how she was supposed to learn anything if her mentor hated her guts.

"She does not hate you. I dare say she likes you." He knew that Sif could have her moments, but he had seen what she was like with those she truly hated, and it was nothing like how she treated Darcy.

"She has a funny way of showing it." Once standing she had to lean against Thor's chest, her legs still not strong enough to support her. Not that she was complaining; Thor was more than easy on the eyes.

"She has gone easy on you, had she hated you she would have run you through before kicking you off the cliff." Thor chuckled as she raised her hand from beside her and made a purely mortal gesture.

"That is good to know. Thor, I know you have this idea in your head about me becoming some great Asgardian warrior, but I think you forget that I'm not you." Darcy felt a large pair of hands clasp around her shoulders and sighed as Thor carefully pushed her just far enough away that she was able to look up at him.

"Just because you have lived on Midgard for these past years does not make you any less an Asgardian. I have had over a thousand years to perfect my skills, but you are still so young. Now, return to the mountain and we will go once more tonight, then we will rest."


Darcy leaned back against the large pile of furs that would serve as her bed for the night. She hadn't been doing so well since she had returned to Asgard. It wasn't that she wasn't accepted, she had come to make a great deal of friends beyond Thor and the warriors. Still, she felt out of place. She had grown up believing herself to be human; there had been no reason to question such a fact. But there she was.

Maybe she should have seen it years ago. She had never had a broken bone, and it took more than falling from her bike to scrape her knee. Colds, flues, nothing seemed to affect her. She had been the only kid in her kindergarten class that hadn't gotten chickenpox. The only thing that seemed to be wrong had been her eyes, something that was easily corrected by Eir once she was on Asgard.

Thor had noticed how out of sorts she had been and had suggested an outing. Darcy had thought it a wonderful idea, she used to go camping with her parents when she had been younger and she delighted in the idea of doing so in such a beautiful realm. Of course she had thought it would've just been her and Thor, under the stars and all that shit. Instead Thor had come up with some idea about bonding and helping her find her place.

"Lady Darcy, come walk with me." Thor stood over Darcy, the light of the fire creating golden highlights in her hair. He had thought her beautiful when he believed her a mortal, and now he found her just as magnificent in all her Asgardian finery.

Reaching up, Darcy grasped Thor's hand and allowed him to pull her upwards. She tripped, maybe on purpose, and ended up in the warm circle of his arms. He chuckled and instead of pushing her away, just turned her and started leading them out to a path she had seen earlier in the forest.

For a while neither spoke; both content to walk along the partly overgrown path in comfortable silence. It allowed Darcy to take in the forest around her. She had expected the place to be dark and imposing, but the trunks of the trees were covered with some kind of glowing substance. Every day she learned something new about her birth planet, and it always made her head spin.

"Jane would probably kill to see this." Darcy motioned to the glowing trunks, though as she noticed the look on her companion's face she instantly regretted mentioning her old boss and friend.

"She would. I had planned once on showing her this, among other things of our home." When Jane had been there before he had had so little time to show her his world. What she had seen had been but a drop in a world of oceans.

"I know…I…" Darcy felt like an absolute heel for bringing Jane up. She knew Thor still hurt over the end of their relationship.

She still didn't fully understand what had happened. Thor had returned to London after everything that went down, and for a while everything seemed perfect. Thor had Jane and she had Ian. It was around a year later that things started to fall apart. Darcy had already broken things off with Ian, though he still remained her intern, even if it was a little weird from then on out.

Neither Jane nor Thor had told her why they had ended things; the only thing Darcy knew was that it had happened around the same time Thor had discovered her real heritage. It hadn't been too long after that she had returned to Asgard with Thor. They had yet to visit Earth again.

"We call it White-Fire." Thor slipped his hand lower until he could rest it against the small of her back and directed her off the path. He pushed all thoughts of Jane and their failed relationship to the back of his mind. It had been unfair of him to allow himself to dwell on it when with Darcy. She deserved more than that, she deserved his full attention and his full heart. He knew he would always hold a part of Jane with him, but lately he had come to realize that part was much smaller than he had once believed, giving way to allow another in.

"What?" Darcy moved onto the thick groundcover willingly. She laughed silently to herself as she thought about the various Earth stories cautioning one from being led off the path. Though Thor was no scoundrel or wolf in disguise, she figured she could get into plenty of trouble with him in the woods and she wouldn't give a God damn about it.

"The light on the trees, it's called White-Fire. It is a type of moss that only grows on the trees in this forest and in no other realm. As children we were told that the fires belonged to small beings that made their homes in the trees." Thor brought her up to one massive trunk, his eyes not on the glowing moss but on the woman in his arms. The white glow reflected off her face like starlight, softening her features in a way no other light had. He relished the thought that he was the only one able to see her in that moment, that somehow this image was meant for him and only him.

"Like fairies?" Darcy looked up at the man's silence. His brow was slightly furrowed as though quietly questioning her. Sometimes it was just too easy to forget that Thor had not grown up on the same stories as she had, that the myths of Asgard and those of Earth were not the same. "On Earth we have this mythological creature called a fairy. Most of the modern depictions have them out to be small humanoid like creatures with butterfly or dragonfly wings. Normally they are shown to be nude, or maybe dressed in flowers and such, but they are mostly good and are representations of nature. The fairies in actual mythology though were not so nice; in fact they were pretty terrifying."

"I know what fairies are; I was simply confused why you would associate them with the Firelings." Thor had been surprised when he had fallen to Midgard. So much of their history had been twisted, turned more into caricatures than anything. He had been utterly shocked, and at times disgusted, with the way they had handled stories about his world.

"Is that what the creatures are called, Firelings?" Darcy smiled, the image of little creatures of fire, dancing around like flicking flames in her head.

"Yes, they are said to be the size of your thumb and covered head to toe in bright red fur. I spent one summer out here when I was a child trying to catch a glimpse of them. I was so disappointed by time the season changed and I had not seen one." Thor smiled at the White-Fire. It was sad, but not as much as it once had been. "I remember thinking that I had failed when Loki had pulled me a little further into the forest and told me to look closely. There was a small clearing, maybe only a tree wide. We had gotten down on our knees and quietly crawled until we reached the edge, and there in the middle there were four little Firelings scurrying around collecting fern leaves to weave into their beds."

"Were they real?" Since his death, Darcy had heard more stories about Loki. At first she had refused to listen, Loki was evil, he was the one that brought the Chitari to Earth. It wasn't until she saw honest to God tears in Thor's eyes as he talked that she took the time to really listen.

"At the time I believed so, but no, they were nothing more than an illusion. Loki hadn't always been evil, once he had his full mind. We all had our part in his downfall. I'm just glad that he is in no more pain and rests alongside our mother." After wiping away a tear, Thor carefully pressed against Darcy's back and directed her once again towards the path. "Come now, this was not what I wished to show you."

The further into the forest they went, the thicker the White-Fire became. By time they stopped, a good forth a mile in, the entire forest around them was lit up with a glowing white light that reminded Darcy of sunlight filtered through her grandmother's window sheers.

"Through here." Leaning forward, Thor pushed aside the large fern fronds though he kept his eyes on Darcy.

"Wow." Darcy had rarely ever been rendered speechless, but the sight before her left her struggling to even remember what words were.

Thor had led her to a small clearing that was about the size of her old flat in London; which really wasn't all that big, mostly compared to the rooms Thor had insisted she receive in the palace. The light of the moss illuminated everything and gave the clearing a very otherworldly feel…which thinking about it, Darcy realized was rather appropriate considering. Still, looking in from the edge to the small, glittering pond and truly magnificent flora Darcy felt as though she were in one of the fairytales her mother used to tell her as a child.

"Where are we?" Darcy took a step into the clearing, her heavy-soled boots making almost no sound against the thick blanket of grass.

"This was my favorite place when I was a child. Though few would believe it, many see me as nothing more than a warrior, spending all my time in the practice rings. So many forget that I was raised to be a king, and as such I spent as much time with my books as Loki did." He might not show it as readily as others, but Thor had the mind of a scholar. It was to be expected of the future ruler of Asgard.

"I can see why…that this was your favorite I mean. I think I could spend days here and not even realize it." She looked over her shoulder to glance at Thor. She knew that it upset him when someone treated him as though he were slow or stupid. Not that he ever actually came out and said anything, but she had come to know him well in the time she had been on Asgard.

"It is easy to do. There was one year when Loki and I spent the warm months here with Mother. I spent most of that time in this clearing. I found it calming, there is a feeling here unlike anywhere else in all the realms." He had never been able to understand the power of the clearing, only that he had never found another place that could calm his soul the same way.

"I know what you mean. It's almost like time here has stopped; a little bubble of space that has been suspended at that moment of complete calm. Shit, I don't know what I'm talking about." She shook her head, trying to get her muddled thoughts back in order. Even with everything she had now, she thought life was much easier when she had believed herself to be a human. Things like magic and space travel had been nothing more than dreams and stories. Now she lived in a world where both of those things were commonplace. She wondered sometimes what her sixteen year old self would have thought to know she would one day take day trips to other planets just to buy new shoes.

"It is possible; that time here has been suspended. This place never seems to change, when the rest of the forest succumbs to the cold, this clearing remains untouched." Though he had never actually been allowed to travel this far during the cold months, he and Loki had snuck out to visit several times in their youth.

"Are there any stories connected to this place like with the White-Fire?" Darcy stopped by the edge of the pond, taking a moment before kneeling down to curl up by the water. She figured she had already fallen down the side of a cliff several times in her clothes, a little bit of mud wouldn't do much damage.

"Yes, would you like to hear it?" Thor curled up on the ground beside Darcy, allowing her to lean back against his chest. He reached in front of him to grasp a hold of her unbound hair, running the thick locks through his fingers. He would admit to himself this was the reason he had brought Darcy to the clearing, even if he hadn't realized it until they were half way there. He wanted to share all of himself with her, all the stories of his childhood, all his memories and special places. He wanted to tell her all of the stories his mother once regaled him with, the stories of his…of their people.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." Darcy nudged him in the stomach with her elbow, rolling her eyes as he made a grunting noise. She might have been stronger than a human, but she was nowhere near strong enough to actually cause him any harm.

"It is said that this place had been created by a great sorcerer as a refuge for his lady-love. She had been married off by her father when she had been young, and while she loved her husband he had nothing but contempt for his child-bride. He had refused to touch her even as she had grown into the full bloom of womanhood. His coldness towards her pushed her into the arms of his nephew.

"Through him she found love, warmth and tenderness. They were together for many years until he was called to fight for Asgard. The young sorcerer knew just what his uncle was, and knew that once he was gone his love would once again have to endure the cold hatefulness of her husband. So he built her a refuge in the middle of the forest. He filled it with all his love and warmth and told her that as long as she was there he would be with her." Thor pulled Darcy closer to him and pressed his nose into the hair atop her head. There was a smell that was beyond the fine oils she used, a scent that was uniquely Darcy. He wished he could breathe in and hold that scent forever.

"Is that it? Come on, did the sorcerer return from war? Did they ever get to be together?" Darcy ignored the shiver that ran up her spine when she realized that Thor was breathing in her hair. She had always seen Thor as her friend, her hot friend, but her friend nonetheless. But over the past few months Darcy had begun to realize that her feelings were changing. It scared the shit out of her, mostly since she had no idea where Thor's feelings stood in regards to her.

"I think that we should return to the camp." Thor started to pull back from Darcy, only to be stopped by her hands around his wrists. He looked down at her and sighed. He shouldn't have started the story, when he had begun he had forgotten the ending. Now he realized that it was most probably not the best story to tell when trying to woo a woman.

"It ends unhappily, doesn't it? It's ok, many Earth stories that are considered to be the best romances have bad endings. There is something about a tragic end for two lovers I guess. Go on, I want to hear it. This is a story of my people after all." Darcy was never really big on tragic love stories. Star-crossed lovers and all that shit. Her high-school English teacher used to loath her. Though a big part of that was probably the two-hundred page essay she had written on just why Romeo and Juliet were selfish, dramatic, dumbasses, and why the play was the most unromantic story ever told in the history of ever. Still, like she had said, she was Asgardian and she really did want to learn as much about her people as possible.

"No, it does not end happily." Thor pulled Darcy back against his chest once more, smiling at the way she seemed to melt into him. "The sorcerer did return, whole and healthy, but while he was gone his uncle had found out about his affair with his wife. He had noticed his young wife stealing out at all hours and followed her. Though he wasn't as strong in magic as his nephew, he could easily feel it. He had known from the moment he entered the clearing who had built it.

"When the sorcerer returned he went straight to the clearing hoping that his love would be there waiting for him. Instead he found his uncle, seething from the betrayal of his wife and nephew. The sorcerer went to confront his uncle, but fell to his knees when he saw the body of his love at the man's feet. The uncle raged at his nephew until the sorcerer's own rage grew too much and he simply removed all life from his uncle's body and vanished him." Thor slipped his hands down to clasp Darcy's in his, their fingers twisting together.

"What happened after?" Not that Darcy really needed to hear, there was really only one outcome to a story like that.

"The sorcerer gathered his love in his arms and wove spell after spell before ending his own life. It is said that the spells the young sorcerer wove kept them alive in this clearing. Their bodies simply sprouted roots and grew to become those two trees there." Thor lifted one of their joined hands and pointed to a pair of trees just on the other side of the pond. They had grown so close that their trunks and branches had woven completely together, reminiscent of a lovers' embrace. "For as long as I've been coming here those two trees have never changed, growing neither taller nor bare."

"That's just a little eerie. Do you think it's true?" Darcy eyed the trees, unsure if her eyes were playing tricks on her or if they actually did look kind of like bodies.

"Sometimes I believe it to be simply another one of Mother's stories, and yet other times…" Thor took in a deep breath before letting go of one of her hands so he could reach up and cup her chin. He turned her face just enough that they could easily see one another. "…other times I swear I can feel them here. That I can hear them whispering to each other."

"What do they say?" Darcy leaned in, her free hand reaching up to rest against the curve of his neck. A tingling spread across her back, and she shivered as though cold fingers were caressing her flesh.

"They speak of eternal love. He whispers to her about how he will protect her, never allow harm to come to her. About how much he thought of her while he had been at war, how she had been the only thing to keep him going. He tells her that though he had loved before he had never given his heart to someone so fully until he met her." Thor could hear the whispers rise against the gentle breeze, he could feel the magic in the air as though the sorcerer were there weaving his spells around them.

"She tells him that she loves him every day, and that though she had once loved another it paled to what she felt for him." Darcy closed her eyes as she spoke, strangely sure of her words. She felt the warmth of Thor's forehead as he rested his against hers. She allowed herself to forget all her worries, all her fears about what it would mean to give into the man before her, and just spoke. "Why did you bring me out here, Thor?"

"I find that my feelings towards you have changed, Lady Darcy. Where once I thought of you as my friend, I now find that I have given you my heart. I understand if you cannot accept…" Thor's voice came to an abrupt stop as the woman in his arms moved forward just enough to press her lips to his. The kiss wasn't frantic, but given and taken with a slowness that seemed to honor the feeling of the clearing. It was a homage to the lost lovers and a preview of things to come. When they pulled apart Thor couldn't help but smile at the smirk gracing Darcy's swollen lips.

"In case you didn't understand that, I accept." Darcy leaned back in, her lips pressing against his once again.


Neither Darcy nor Thor noticed that when they left several hours later, the White-Fire dimmed until only the faintest of glows remained. The further they walked, the darker it became. Whispers could be heard on the wind by those willing to listen, whispers of gratitude as the clearing was quickly grown over. Within minutes nothing remained but two trees twisted tightly together, frozen forever in a loving embrace.


Author's Note: Uh….yeah. Not how I planned to end this, but I kind of like it. Anyway, this is seriously AU of course. You can chose to disregard the end of TDW in regards to the whole Odin/Loki thing, or you can count it and believe that Loki is planning some real chaos later for Thor and Darcy. That is up to you.

Well, three more to go. I'm not sure how quick I will be able to get them or any of my other stories out. I've started college and am dealing with five classes as well as watching my nephew and niece on my off days. It wouldn't be so bad, but my God my Business Law book! Chapter one took me like three hours to read! I'm already ready for winter break, I'm telling you. Anyway, I will try to update when I can. I'm trying to write as many as these as I can on the weekends so I have a backlog of them to post through the week. I'm also working on a Shieldshock which I'm hoping will be ready to post by Thanksgiving….hopefully!

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.