She thanked the Norns the Bifrost was down. Odin probably would've sat on her for using this much magic in front of humans and on humans.
After a casual momentary distraction ("Hey look! Is that a flying monkey?") she whispered the incantation for the sleeping spell that immediately sent all conscious humans slumped to the ground. She then turned to her soldiers and thanked them for their work and, of course, remembered to sign the documentation for their free room service. Satisfied, they crowded back into the SUV — this time with Toyoda at the wheel — and the vehicle reversed back into the chasm, which closed up after them, leaving no trace of the dead behind.
Then she turned back to the pile of bodies before her. Sighing, she set to work.
Jane came to two hours later — still not enough time for Darcy to gather her nerves for the inevitable confrontation.
Her friend stirred from her somnolent gnosis as the last rays of light were leaking into the room through the window blinds. Her eyelids fluttered open, then squeezed shut, then opened drowsily again. Darcy watched silently as Jane kneaded her forehead, the same spot on which Darcy had placed a small healing spell on after she'd teleported Jane and Larry to her own room.
Jane moved to sit up, groaning slightly as she did. Darcy had to consciously resist the urge to run to her aid. You can't, she had to mentally chant in her head, she'll see —
"Darcy?" Jane whispered. "What happened?"
A small spark of hope ignited momentarily. "You don't remember?"
Jane's brow furrowed. "There was a...a ship...a fight..." her eyes widened and looked up at Darcy. All remaining drowsiness disappeared from her eyes. "And you."
The hope died.
"It was you, this whole time," Jane's voice struggled to keep together. "You were an Asgardian, and you didn't say anything?"
"I'm technically not — "
"You didn't say anything when Thor came, you didn't do anything when the Destroyer came." Her tone was tethering on the edge of anger.
"Jane — "
"I bet you had a good laugh, watching me speculate and fumble over the workings of the Bifrost while you knew everything about it!"
"Jane — "
"Why, Darcy? Or should I say, Hela? Why did you just stand by the sidelines, when you could have done so much more — "
"I was selfish! Okay?" Darcy finally exploded. "I wanted to keep my mundane, ignorant mortal life. I was enjoying it! I was enjoying having normal mortal problems, going to normal mortal university, having normal mortal friends! I wasn't ready to lose it all just 'cause my uncle decided to piss off my granddad and gatecrash my life." She didn't even know where she was going with this. She just wanted Jane to see, to understand...
"And I guess one of the reasons why I didn't tell you is that you were the only mortal friend I had left," she continued. "At least, the only mortal friend I had who didn't look at me like I could send them to their deaths at any time — which I won't, just to make that clear; Odin will strike me down and it would be a lot of paperwork for the fellas down there. It was nice, for a change."
"And I'm sorry I didn't help you with all that Einstein-what's-his-name stuff. Trust me, I don't understand the Bifrost at all, I haven't even taken it in a hundred years!"
Jane remained silent. A mask of passivity had passed over her face.
"I understand if you want me to go. No one ever wants to be associated with me or my brothers - at least, the ones who didn't suck up to Granddad by offering to be his personal Uber. But Fenris and Jormangundr and I, we are literally a triple threat. The Ragnarok Trio, they've been calling us. Would've been a good band name if it weren't for the underlying message of doom and destruction — "
"Darcy."
Her rambling came to a shuddering halt. "What?"
"Come out of the corner." Darcy looked up. Jane's expression had now taken on something almost close to empathy. Almost.
"What?"
"You heard me, Darcy."
"I can't," she whispered hoarsely.
"Can't or won't?"
"I...Jane, I can't cast my glamour spell."
She'd known this herself, of course, but somehow saying it out loud made it real. As if the words leaving her mouth solidified her situation, cementing her fate with no way of undoing it.
"The spells I used on the Chitaurti and the SHIELD agents drained my seidr." She closed her eyes, momentarily replaying that moment when she succumbed to that white-hot rage, that instant where she lost her focus and lost control of her magic. "I don't have enough yet to recast — "
"I don't care about the glamour spell Darcy, just come out."
Jane's voice was oddly reassuring. It was so tempting to hold her to her word, that she really didn't care. It was so tempting to believe that Jane could accept her for who she really was.
But it was just too tempting to be true.
"It ain't pretty, Jane," she choked out.
"I'm sure I've seen worse."
Too tempting...and yet Darcy's feet stepped out anyways, bringing her full visage into the sunlight.
Jane's eyes went wide, her jaw falling slack. A shuddering gasp escaped her lips.
"I warned you." Darcy tried to shrug it off casually, barely managing a lighthearted tone she knew would soon crumble in light of her friend's imminent rejection.
It was in that moment that Jane seemingly became conscious of what she had done, and a hand flew to her mouth, as if to pull back that reaction which she had implicitly promised to withhold. But it was too late.
Darcy couldn't blame Jane. She understood her reaction. She was used to it after centuries of seeing that same expression.
But why did it hurt so much?
Jane opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could annunciate anything, a shriek pierced through the room.
"It's her! She's come! She's come to take me away! Oh, Odin above please have mercy!"
The women whipped around and saw that Larry was now fully awake, fully functioning, and fully scared out of his wits. He tumbled from the bed in a flurry of bedsheets, and reached for the nearest piece of furniture - a ceramic-based lamp on the bedside table. He wielded the lamp in an attempt to look threatening, (then again, it was Larry — 'threatening' was a term Darcy would never ever use to describe him) and circled around so that he came between Jane and Darcy.
"D-don't worry Miss Foster," he stuttered. "J-just run, as far away as you can. I'll distract this monster."
Darcy was all ready to protest at the derogatory term, but Jane beat her to it.
"Firstly, Mr. Larson," she cut across coldly, "it's Doctor Foster. Secondly, that is not a monster, that is my friend."
Darcy had the uncanny feeling she was mirroring Larry's floored expression. Did Jane just call her her fr — ?
Larry glanced between the two, flabbergasted. "But...but..."
"Just...lower the lamp, Larry," Darcy pleaded cautiously. She didn't want to risk the lamp breaking and sending shards flying Jane's way.
"No!" His voice trembled. He readjusted his grip on the lamp. "You've probably got her under some sort of enchantment! I'm not falling for any of your tricks, daughter of Loki!" With that, he swung the lamp.
Darcy instantly leaned away, the hat of the lamp barely brushing her nose. She then ducked under, grabbing his wrist and securing the lamp, before using whatever little seidr she had left to cast the sleeping spell on him. Larry's eyeballs rolled up and his body went limp against Darcy. She nearly buckled under the sudden added weight when she felt an extra pair of arms support his ribcage. Jane.
Darcy looked up at her friend in relief, but noticed that said friend would not meet her gaze. Suppressing a melancholic sigh, Darcy gently set down the lamp, before the pair hauled Larry back to the bed, settling his prone body on the mattress.
"Jane," Darcy began, breaking the tense silence, "did you really mean what you — "
"I don't know."
Darcy's heart plummeted. "Jane..."
"I...I need time," Jane admitted, voice still trembling. "To wrap my head around all this. It's a really, really big secret, Darcy."
"I know, I'm sorry."
Jane shook her head, her arms folding protectively around her chest. "Please understand, I'm just a bit confused now."
"I do," Darcy assured her. At least Jane was not flat out rejecting her — it was already more than she could have hoped for.
Jane glanced down at Larry's sleeping form. "What do we do with him now?"
"Leave it to me." Darcy leaned over the bed and placed her fingers on either side of Larry's head, just behind the ears.
"What...what're you doing?" Jane sounded as if she almost hadn't dared asked.
"Now that he's under my spell, I can properly tap into his neural synapses and alter his memory. There'll still have been an attack on the lab, and Hela would still be there, but she would be a separate entity from me."
"You can do that?"
"Yea, it's a technique my dad taught me." She felt a small wrench in her heart as she openly mentioning her dad for the first time in a while. But she ignored it. Now was not the time to think about him and his stupidity. "I did it to the rest of the lab workers and SHIELD agents, which is why I don't have enough seidr yet to recast my glamour." She scoffed. "I'd say it's a sacrifice worth making, though. Don't exactly like the idea of SHIELD having a file on me saying anything other than 'Darcy Lewis, blur unpaid and underappreciated intern'."
She completed the memory alteration and turned back to her friend, who was now seated on the other bed in quiet contemplation. "Are you alright?"
Jane's eyelids flickered, and her gaze rose to meet Darcy's, almost timidly. "Are you going to...?" she began hesitantly.
"To...?" Darcy echoed tentatively.
"Do it to me?"
"No!" Darcy exclaimed immediately. "I mean..." She paused as somethingjs occurred to her. No, Jane wouldn't want that, would she?
But she had to ask.
"Do you want me to?"
A/N: ...oops. Hi again. Not dead. Yet.