AN: I'm beginning to realize that this story won't be nearly as long as "Mendacity," but fear not: there will still be plenty of action and plot-line…ness…that's a word, plotlineness.

CHAPTER FOUR

Loki stretched languidly as he made his way up the staircase to his room. He absently began undoing the fastenings on his chest plate, his mind wandering in circles around the possibilities for enchantment on the Apple. He grimaced. He would have to change the spell on his room; he couldn't possibly focus enough to maintain two doppelgangers at once for such a long period of time. He would have to hope that the Sleeper Spell would be sufficient to keep people out of his chambers.

A flash of lavender danced through his peripheral vision. He froze, halfway towards opening the door to his room. He sighed as he looked down at the base of the wall. Please don't let that be who or what I think it is.

Darcy lay curled up against the dark wall in a heap, obviously sleeping. He sighed heavily and stared down at her for a moment—this was, after all, a rare opportunity to just look at her without getting caught. He frowned. She didn't smile in her sleep anymore. Her lips, rather than turning up almost imperceptibly at the corners, were frozen in a neutral expression and parted slightly. As he watched, her brows furrowed as though she were thinking very hard about something serious.

His stomach knotted guiltily. He did this to her. What had happened to the goofy, carefree Darcy that used to make up stupid poems and blurt out random things that he could only assume meant something to Midgardians, because to him they made no sense at all—but he liked hearing them anyway.

Then again, she apparently had gotten the brilliant idea to sneak into his room to talk to him once he got back from the meeting. More than talk, the voice in the back of his mind nagged. He looked away from Darcy suddenly—this could very quickly turn from just admiring her face to, frankly, ogling her. But he had to admit that perhaps he was overanalyzing things; Darcy was still the same light-hearted, eccentric, surprisingly bright young woman he had fallen in love with. She still joked and flirted and did random things. She just…did them less often.

"Darcy Lewis is a very strange little creature, isn't she?"

Loki spun on his heel at the intrusion—and then he recognized the voice as his own, merely coming from somewhere decidedly outside of his own mouth. He narrowed his eyes at his doppelganger irritably.

"I thought I told you to permit her access to my room."

"I did permit her access. It's not my fault she fell asleep the second she stepped in," the doppelganger protested, smiling smugly. Loki suddenly understood why some of his facial expressions could generate the reactions they did—standing on the receiving end for once, he felt the urge to wipe the smirk off the doppelganger's face.

"I order you to refrain from enacting any of the protective spells I have charged you with upon her," he said through gritted teeth.

"Are you sure that's quite safe, to permit someone besides yourself unguarded access to your room?"

"What are you suggesting?" Loki snapped. "That Darcy might try to steal something, or break in for some reason? Besides," he muttered, "I think she's already demonstrated that if she wants to figure out how to get through something, she will. Now do as I command, remove the enchantment from her, and never again use your protective spells upon her."

The doppelganger narrowed its eyes. "As you wish," he growled. "Will that be all?"

"No." Loki slid his arms under Darcy's sleeping form and scooped her into his arms. Her eyelids fluttered softly, no longer sealed shut by the spell. She nestled into his chest as he straightened up. "I order you to temporarily cease your protection of my chambers and proceed to the passageways where the frost giant relics are kept. There you will find a golden apple belonging to the Olympians, the Apple of Discord. Guard it as you would this tower. Do I make myself clear?"

"Transparently." Without another word, the doppelganger vanished into the shadows, his arrogant smile nothing more than a nagging memory in Loki's mind. He frowned. He knew that smile…he made that same expression when he had just thought of some particularly clever loophole, when he knew something that Odin or Thor didn't. He gritted his teeth, trying to think of what vague, exploitable wording he might have used. A quiet, hoarse voice interrupted his train of thought.

"Hey," Darcy mumbled.

"Hello," Loki replied stiffly. He brushed a stray lock of Darcy's hair away from her face. "I assume that you are up here for a reason. You're quite a long way from your room to have simply gotten lost."

Her cheeks flushed deep pink. "Sorry." She shifted slightly; Loki loosened his hold, and she lowered her feet to the ground. She swayed as she tried to stand up. "I…just wanted to say goodnight. I didn't realize you would be gone for so long." Loki reached after her with a start as she broke from his embrace towards the staircase. "Goodnight," she slurred, her voice fading into a yawn.

Loki caught her gently by the wrist. "Darcy, you aren't honestly going to try to walk all the way across the palace like this, are you?" he said.

"What—" she yawned again, "—what else should I do?" she said thickly. The words sounded as if they were stumbling off her tongue without any thought. "I'm too tired to s-stay up and do anything else." She held out the last 's' for a half-second, and then burst out giggling. Loki was struck by the thought that he might be getting a good idea of what a drunk Darcy looked like. He sighed exasperatedly.

"You should sleep, Darcy. And at the moment, it doesn't look like you can get yourself back into your own bed. Not without collapsing somewhere in the corridors." He draped his arm around her shoulders and steered her back towards his room.

Darcy said something incoherent that might have been a protest, or perhaps the beginnings of a snarky remark, but she stumbled alongside Loki down the hall into his room. His room. For a moment, Loki panicked and considered casting a spell on Darcy to give her enough energy to stagger back to her own bedroom, or maybe an animation enchantment so she would walk there in her sleep. Then he realized that he was being a complete fool; it wasn't as if Darcy hadn't already slept with him in the literal sense of the term.

Well, yes, but it's the less literal sense that I'm concerned about. What if she wakes up in the morning and gets the same brilliant idea that in all likelihood brought her up here in the first place? For that matter, what if you get some brilliant idea?

He was already getting brilliant ideas. But he knew well enough to push them away. Not yet. Not while she was still a fragile mortal. Surely he would be able to remember that much, even in the early morning when his mind was clouded by sleep.

He looked on with forced detachment as Darcy crawled onto his bed and under the covers, practically asleep before her head touched a pillow. He watched for a moment to make sure that she was truly sleeping, and then removed his armor and shirt. As he undressed, he noticed that Darcy's features were relaxed again. He hesitated, leaning against the bedpost to study her more closely—perhaps it was a trick of the light.

She was smiling. Not the small, half-smile he had seen on Jotunheim while she slept, but a fully fledged smile that made her eyes crinkle up and the corners of her mouth dimple. Loki shook his head, running a hand through his hair to muss it up so he could sleep comfortably. His doppelganger had gotten one thing right: Darcy Lewis was a strange girl. He couldn't tell which was really her: the smile or the frown. Was she smiling for his sake, to make him believe that she was happy when she was really miserable on Asgard? Or was it the other way around—was it the frown that was a fluke, a random thought that crossed her mind and caused her to scowl so?

Maybe, he thought as he slid under the sheets, Darcy instinctively curling into his side with her head on his shoulder—maybe it was some combination of the two. Maybe that was Darcy: a mixture of smiles and frowns, not because one or the other was faked, but because she truly felt the need to smile at some thoughts and frown at others. He sighed and shifted slightly, his chin brushing the top of Darcy's head. He was overanalyzing, as always. There was no reason for him to suspect Darcy of anything, so why was he paying so much attention to every minute detail of her response to the world around her? What was he scared of?

He already knew the answer to that question—and that was one of the things that scared him: his answer. He loved her. And he was terrified that she wouldn't love him in return.


"That's it…" Loki said in a low voice. "Focus."

"I'd have an easier time focusing if you didn't interrupt me every five seconds telling me to focus," Darcy grumbled, but she smiled nonetheless. Her hands shook slightly as she extended her fingers over the ground, as though they were tied to the invisible strings of a marionette. Abruptly, a shoot of bright green sprang up from the soil, flowering and thickening before her eyes.

"I got it!" she cried, smiling broadly. "That is so freaking cool!"

Loki laughed as Darcy made an entire shrub begin to grow from the first shoot, sending roots growing madly in all directions. "Careful," he said, sobering suddenly. He held his hand over Darcy's and lowered her arm a fraction. "Even with your endurance, you can't do too much magic at once." He frowned, feeling something tickling his lower leg. He glanced down. "Darcy—"

She snorted. "Sorry," she said, not sounding very sorry at all. She bit her lip in a vain attempt to stop smiling as she killed off the branch that had begun to use Loki's left leg as a trellis. He shook the dead plant away with a sharp cracking sound, sighing in a way that hinted at annoyance but mostly came across as amused and affectionate. Satisfied that the plant had finally stopped growing—or at least, growing on his person—he looked up at Darcy seriously.

"That's very interesting," he murmured. "I didn't think of it before, but in the battle for Asgard, you used plants as a weapon, didn't you?"

Darcy nodded. "Yeah. Plants and a statue that I reanimated—a horse."

Loki tapped his lip thoughtfully. "Interesting," he said under his breath.

"What's interesting?" she asked.

Loki began to reply—only to be abruptly interrupted by a loud CRACK from across the garden. He spun on his heel, reaching instinctively for his dagger. He groaned aloud.

"Oh no…"

Darcy opened her mouth questioningly, and then saw exactly what Loki was looking at. Her eyes widened slightly.

A tall man with shaggy red hair and deep purple robes stormed across the garden in a fury. A second CRACK rang through the garden; a woman in a billowy purple dress stormed after the red-haired man, a long curtain of dark, wavy hair fanning out behind her, the grass beneath her bare feet turning brown whenever she touched the earth.

"Oberon, stop this nonsense!" the woman wailed. "You tell me where the girdle is right now, or I'll…I'll…"

"You'll what?" the man replied, laughing mockingly. "Grow flowers at me?"

"I'll sleep with a mortal."

The man glowered. "You wouldn't."

"I would! I don't care how weak they are, I'm sure that any man, mortal or not, would be better than you in bed! Even—even if they have an asses head!"

"Fine!" the man snapped. "If that's what you want, fine! I don't have the stupid girdle! But if you still want to sleep with a mortal, that's alright by me, because you know what? I've got my eye on a couple of mortal children."

"You bastard! We had an agreement! We share custody of changeling children! One week with mummy, one week with mummy's idiot husband! You can't just go back on a contract!"

"Watch me!" Oberon pulled a piece of paper seemingly from mid-air and tore it in half viciously. The woman gasped loudly—and slapped the man with a resounding smack that echoed all through the gardens.

As the couple continued to bicker furiously, Loki heard a small pop. He turned to look at the source of the noise. Hermes scowled back at him, looking weary and bedraggled. He jerked his head significantly at the arguing fairies. Loki grimaced sympathetically, and decided that the time had come to cut off the unhappy couple.

"Hermes!" he said brightly. "How nice to see you so soon! Oh, and Titania," he added as an afterthought, trying not to roll his eyes too obviously. "And Oberon. What brings the three of you here this fine afternoon?"

Before Hermes had a chance to reply, Titania stepped forward, her eyes blazing. "I'll tell you what brings us here," she snarled. "My husband, instead of guarding Aphrodite's girdle like a responsible man, has stolen the girdle for his own, as a gift for one of his mortal lovers."

Hermes tried to interrupt, but Oberon cut him off with a humorless laugh. "Oh, that's rich, coming from you, Titania! I'll bet if we were to take off your dress right now, we'd all see that you're wearing the silly girdle yourself! Probably trying to hop into bed with the trickster prince, again."

Titania yelled in protest.

The fairy couple continued bickering in raised voices. Darcy raised an eyebrow at Loki. Her? she mouthed, looking somewhat repulsed. Loki shook his head. No, he mouthed emphatically, shaking his head. Darcy continued to stare at him questioningly. Later, he mouthed. She nodded, and returned her attention to the couple, crossing her arms.

"Excuse me!" Hermes was saying loudly.

The couple ignored him, and continued to argue in raised voices.

Loki gritted his teeth. "Excuse me!" he repeated for Hermes' sake, a little louder. The couple showed no reaction.

Darcy groaned audibly. "OY!" she yelled, loud enough to make Loki and Hermes jump. Titania and Oberon fell silent all at once, staring awestruck at the mortal girl screaming at them; they seemed to have just noticed her for the first time. "Jeez Louise, will you two please shut up for a few minutes so we can figure out what the hell is going on?"

Titania stammered quietly. "You…y-you…" She mumbled something in a soft whisper that Loki thought might have contained the name "Nick," but he couldn't be certain. Oberon suddenly turned very red, and he glared between Darcy and Titania furiously.

"Oh, surely…" he growled. Titania turned pale, looking back at him with something bordering on sheepishness. "Titania—" he snarled.

She vanished with a loud CRACK.

"You aren't getting away from me so easily!" Oberon snapped. And with another CRACK, he too disappeared.

Darcy blinked at the space where the fairies had stood moments before, completely at a loss for words. "What the fuck was that about?" she said finally.

Hermes sighed. "I haven't the faintest," he said, rubbing his temples. "But whatever it is, it's certainly put both of them in a very foul mood. I originally came here to collect the Apple; you see, that's what they began arguing about—the girdle has gone missing, so we now know what it is the thief was after, and can thus take back the other artifacts." He sighed again, exasperated. "I'm afraid I'll have to come back later to retrieve it, though. I really should follow them to make sure they don't do anything too dangerous. Those two can be very destructive when they're fighting." He bowed slightly to Darcy, and tipped his hat to Loki. "I will return as soon as I can, within a day, I expect; they usually calm down pretty quickly. Until then…"

Hermes vanished with a small popping sound.

Darcy stared at Loki, open-mouthed. "Are they always that bad?"

Loki nodded fervently.

AN: I love Titania and Oberon. They're so much fun to write. (Also, to act. SOOO much fun.) Sorry for the somewhat cryptic ending to this chapter—it will all make sense in due time.

Also, I feel the need to share with you all the soundtrack in my head for Titania and Oberon's scenes, since (at least in my mind) the music just makes their hamminess that much more awesome: "Professor Umbridge" (from HP5), "Gilderoy Lockhart" (from HP2), and "No Ticket" (from Indiana Jones 3).

Reviews are love!