Some help here would be nice, please. Seriously; God, Buddha, Oprah...anybody.
Darcy looks around the restaurant, buffeted by an assortment of sounds as they filter through a sudden haze of confusion, like a bomb has just gone off near her ears and everything seems like it's numb and far away. She hears Sophie's bright red nails tapping on the edge of her plastic order pad, children laughing as they blow the ends of paper straw wrappers at one another, the cute giggles of a couple at a table on the other side of the bar counter - and Darcy finds that her mind has drawn a total blank. She's officially gone brain dead.
Definitely not something you want to do when faced with the arrival of the most wanted person in the world. Especially when said person has literally just told you that he expects your compliance in whatever insane plans he has in store or he'll kill you and everyone around you.
Darcy shakes her head to clear the strain from her mind before fixing Loki with wide eyes, her mouth open in shock. The afternoon Texas sunlight is shifting into evening, tones of red and orange filtering through the large restaurant windows and giving the place a cozy warm feeling completely at odds with the clenching cold that Darcy's insides have twisted themselves into. Loki settles himself into the booth across from her, resting his folded hands elegantly on the surface and looking every bit the picture of 'egomaniacal supervillain'.
Not that anyone else around here seems to see it.
As she glances around at her fellow restaurant patrons, Darcy wonders if she could live with herself if something happened to them. A small, terrible part of her mind whispers that she doesn't know any of these people, and Sophie really is the only one out of all of them who has shown her any sort of kindness or acknowledged her existence. What sort of obligation does she have to perfect strangers? And that's even assuming that he's not bluffing. Maybe he's just trying to scare her.
Glancing up at him, she sees the dark expression on his face.
Yeah, no - more like he would hurt them anyway, no matter what she says or does.
With that thought in mind, Darcy asks probably the only question she can at this juncture.
"What do you want?"
Loki raises his eyebrow at her again. He frowns, like he'd rather be anywhere else than sitting across from her having this conversation. Yeah, well, her too, buddy.
"I believed that perhaps you might like to thank me for sparing your life," he says.
Darcy blinks rapidly, mind replaying her last few encounters with the man sitting in front of her in vivid, terrifying detail. She tries not to let her shoulders shake as she remembers him breaking and entering into her motel room and the subsequent mind-meld shit that followed. At least this time he isn't wearing all his armor like in the Base. Instead it's the same black leather coat and green tunic from the motel, his black hair swept back and curling gently under his ears. There is no battle-worn armor in sight, no rough scratches that hint of destruction past, no golden horns to draw the eye and enhance his otherworldliness. It's…better, but not much.
Darcy swallows heavily. "'Thank' isn't exactly the word I would use. And my life wouldn't have needed sparing if you hadn't shown up in the first place."
He doesn't look sorry. She doesn't expect him to.
"You exaggerate," he says blandly. "Had I wished to harm you I would have."
"You don't think what you did harmed me?" Darcy asks incredulously. "Seriously?"
"You are alive, are you not? You have no great injuries that I can see, nor are you incarcerated. You must know I might have done much worse."
"Yeah, I know, you said. The whole 'visiting upon me my greatest fears' thing," Darcy says. "Why would you want to read my thoughts anyway? I already told you that I don't have the files, I don't know anything about what was in them, and I don't know where they are now."
"Yes, you've relinquished your control of them." Loki tuts, "How very foolish of you."
Darcy blinks. "What?"
He gives her a patronizing smile. "You are not nearly as adept at strategy as you think yourself, Miss Lewis," he says.
Darcy pauses, not understanding what he's trying to get at. Her confusion must show on her face because Loki chuckles softly.
"I admit that your presence in the underground facility was intriguing. The sudden appearance of so many young mortals in such a place? I surmised your goal was the same as mine. I was wrong of course, as I later discovered." Darcy feels the beginnings of a flush creep up her neck at his casual dismissal of what he did. "Your true aim, however, was easy enough to attain. Yet here you are - without friends or files." He sighs. "To think I made such haste to intercept you after the fact."
Darcy opens her mouth to respond but is interrupted by Sophie, who chooses that moment to come over to the table, clutching a receipt in her scarlet fingers. Her black mascara-rimmed eyes sweep over Loki and back at Darcy with obvious confusion and a little bit of question.
"Everything okay here, sweetie?" Sophie sets the check down by Darcy's empty plate and digs in her apron for a pen. She sets it down by the folded receipt and leans on one hip, not so subtly eyeing Loki even though she's speaking to Darcy.
Darcy holds her breath, willing herself not to act too strangely or do anything that would make Sophie suspicious of just who exactly is sitting here with her. Loki is looking at Sophie with nearly the same expression he gave Darcy when he appeared before her - like she's a giant bug that he would like to squish but whose guts he doesn't want to get all over his shoe. Sophie, bless her, seems more concerned with making sure that Darcy is okay and not being harassed by a wayward reject from a Hot Topic clearance sale than with potentially being squashed.
"Um, it's cool, Sophie," Darcy says as nonchalantly as possible. "Thanks."
Sophie gives Loki's attire a once-over that almost matches Loki's in disgust and condescension, and while Darcy is impressed with the woman's fortitude, she also definitely doesn't want her to end up as gooey bits on the floor.
"Hey, Sophie, could you get me another shake? You were totally right, it was awesome. And can you tell the bartender to add more rum? Like, lots more rum."
Sophie doesn't drag her eyes away from Loki but nods an affirmative to Darcy. "Sure thing, honey," she says, and picks up the check.
"Thanks, you're amazing," Darcy says quickly. Go away, go away, go away. She lets out a sigh when Sophie leaves. She turns to look at Loki, whose hands are splayed on the table and whose jaw is clenched. Darcy reads his expression like he's almost upset that she made Sophie leave because now he can't dismember her. Totally fucking creepy.
Darcy looks down at her own hands, which have shifted underneath the table to twist in the hem of her shirt. She's got to think. There's got to be something she can do to get herself - and everyone else - out of this in one piece. She just needs to know what he wants, or at the very least a distraction so she can get help. Loki's right - she doesn't have the files anymore, and her leverage for negotiation with SHIELD is certainly gone, but if getting arrested means that he also gets picked up, it would be worth it.
And then she sees it - the pen that Sophie left on the table, lying right next to her napkin.
It's desperate and risky, but she's got to try.
She sneaks a peek at Loki, who is looking around the restaurant with an expression of growing disgust. Moving slowly, Darcy inches her hand up to the table and grabs the corner of the napkin with her finger. She slides it towards her, and when he doesn't look at her she covers the entire thing - napkin and pen - with her hand and slides it down into her lap. She hides her sigh of relief.
Okay, now for a distraction. Sophie will be back soon with the shake, so she hasn't got a lot of time to do this.
"You read my mind, so you know I wasn't lying when I said that I have no idea what any of that stuff in those files meant," Darcy brings the conversation back to gain his attention. "And I don't have them anymore, so I can't give them to you. I'm having a hard time figuring out what you think I could do for you."
Her eyes hold Loki's, but under the table Darcy is trying to form letters on the napkin and praying to every conceivable deity and pop icon she can think of that this pen is not like every other pen you get at a restaurant and actually works. She hopes that writing "call 911, Loki, New York" will be sufficient. Now that Loki's back and SHIELD is looking for him, they're probably monitoring everything for any mention of him. They'd have to pick this up if Sophie places the call.
"I want the files your friends have," he says. "The boy, Mark, and the blonde woman, Shannon. You will assist me in finding them, promptly and without drawing undue attention."
Darcy almost drops the pen. He wants her to betray her friends? To him?
He sees her expression and taps a slender finger to his temple. "I know where they're going and what they look like. I will find them, whether you help me or not."
"If you can find them without me then why the hell are you here?" Darcy asks.
"Things are often much simpler when one seeks a path of least resistance." He tilts his head, "I had hoped you would assist me in this very small request."
It's not small. It's so very, very not small. Mark and Shannon got away, they made it out of this whole fucked up thing unscathed. They deserve their freedom, their happiness, and Darcy isn't sure she can help him with this, even though in the grand scheme of all things she would have ever considered he might want, it really is not at all what she expected. He says it like its so simple a thing he's asking. He isn't asking her to kill anyone or bomb an orphanage or anything super sinister...just to help him find her friends and get their files.
Loki leans towards her. "If I were to find them without your assistance, I would be forced to expend my abilities so as not to draw unwanted attention. Were they to encounter me in such a state, I would have little incentive to be as generous with them as I was with you."
He makes a subtle flicking motion with his fingers, and Darcy yelps when the pen in her hand is suddenly burning hot. She drops it and looks down at her lap, expecting her fingers to be burned, but they aren't. Her note is gone, the napkin empty of any signs she had been writing on it at all. She clenches it in her fist and takes a deep breath, trying hard to stop the urge to scream in frustration.
So, either she agrees to help Loki find Mark and Shannon, plus their files, for ultimately unknown reasons and potential damage on a huge scale, or she refuses and dooms them, herself, and the people around her to certain death. As far as choices go, this one sucks big time.
Since when is she qualified to make these decisions? She's twenty four years old for god's sake, and yeah, she did go to college, but nobody in her Political Science classes ever told her she'd have to be making life-altering decisions for other people, at least not until she ran for office or something. She's a waitress, not a politician, and he wants her to make a choice that could potentially affect millions of people, based on fear and threats of violence against the ones she loves? It's a surreal moment, as Darcy's mind flashes back to all those late-night study sessions, reading theories about dictatorships and crimes against humanity, about leaders of nations during times of war and the sacrifices they made for the good of their people. About choosing participate in something even while knowing it might have greater consequences down the line but taking comfort in the knowledge that you personally didn't get your hands dirty. About rationalizing the sacrifice of lives as something beautiful because it represented what needed to be destroyed to accomplish an even worthier goal. Can she go blindly into the fray, having better knowledge than most about both what history says could happen and what Loki is capable of? She's afraid of what her help might lead to, but the most tangible fear - the one that makes her heart clench and her stomach ache - is stopping whatever chance Shannon and Mark have at a life together, and of living at all.
And suddenly she understands all those clichéd moments in comics or on TV, when the villain kidnaps the hero's family and offers them a "choice". The hero always makes the right one, and everyone is always saved. But this isn't pretend, and her choice will have a very real consequence. Choose life or death, make decisions so far out of the scope of your own power with outcomes you can't control. Save one person or risk a million. Take a chance on the future for the safety of the present. Make a deal with the devil to save innocent people.
It's a moment of clarity, and Darcy finds that she doesn't envy any of the Avengers. Not that she did in the first place, but now she definitely has more of an appreciation for the whole 'wounded and brooding hero' shtick. She gets why Captain America never looks comfortable on the news when someone asks him about saving that waitress in New York, why Black Widow and Hawkeye went AWOL after the fight was over, why Iron Man only comes out when Tony Stark can't joke away the severity of a situation...why Bruce seemed like such a lost soul, almost desperate in his attempt to give her a clean shot at a life away from SHIELD's influence, why Thor always appeared so serious and burdened despite his obvious advantages of being immortal and an alien.
Wait a minute…
Thor!
She hadn't really put much thought into it before when he said he could be 'summoned'. Maybe it's something like praying? But she's been doing a lot of that to a lot of different supposed deities since Loki sat down, and you'd think one of them would sink through to him if they were really gods. Hmm, that also means that Loki would have heard them too, she guesses.
Darcy glances quickly at Loki. He seems unaffected.
Okay, so summoning does not equal praying...or Asgardians aren't really gods? She remembers something about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, except this magic is from outer space but is somehow connected…Damn it, she should have paid more attention when Jane lectured her about this shit. But she knows about magic, kind of. Maybe it's like Harry Potter and the Room of Requirement...if you wish it really hard and really specifically, then it will happen.
"Thor…" Darcy mutters under her breath. She waits, listening hard against the soft sounds of eighties music drifting through the restaurant speakers and the distant voices of Sophie and her table of guests.
She waits. Nothing happens.
"Thor?" she tries again, a little louder this time.
Nothing.
"Come on dude, what the fuck?" Darcy huffs, desperately. "Thor!"
She looks up startled when she hears a soft chuckle from the opposite end of the booth.
Loki is laughing at her, the prick.
"Shut up," she tells him, and then yells more loudly "Thor!" She bangs her fist on the table and curses, "God damn it, Thor!"
Silence follows her little outburst, and when Darcy chances a glance around at the restaurant she finds that one or two of her fellow clientele have taken to staring at her with looks of bewildered confusion. Yeah, it probably is pretty strange for people to randomly be shouting names of Norse gods in truck stop restaurants, but if only they knew.
She looks up at Loki, who is still definitely taking some sick amusement in her desperate tactic when he asks her, "What are you doing?"
Oh yeah, like she's the strange one.
Darcy rolls her eyes, because seriously, this is really messed up.
"Thor?" she says, a touch of her frustration bleeding through her words. "You know; tall, blonde, totally cut, Mew Mew? Your brother?" His eyes darken at her last words.
"Thor," Loki hisses venomously, "is an oaf. He is a lout, an overbearing blowhard who deserves to be stranded among the mortals he so disgustingly covets."
Darcy's hands clench in an abrupt wave of annoyance. "Thor's all right," Darcy says hotly. "He might be weird and lacking in social graces, but he helps people." She pushes her glasses up her nose. "He knows that he's more powerful than us but he wants to use his power to protect people, not enslave them." This is taking a dangerous turn, Darcy thinks, and she can see where it's going to end up if she doesn't shut her mouth but god help her if she can prevent it. She continues, feeling her face heat up with all the fear and frustration she's been keeping in since he sat down, "We don't need a ruler, dude. Yeah, we're fucked up and we do stupid shit, but we learn from our mistakes. We mess up and we do better the next time, and you had no right to try and make us any different than we already are." She pauses before adding, "And if we were going to have someone rule us, it wouldn't be someone who needs an army of space dragon aliens to do it."
Loki's eyes flash. "You speak of that which you do not understand," he hisses . His fingers shift and turn inward, clawing at the table-top so hard that Darcy imagines she can hear the screech. It's that visual, combined with the wave of palpable anger she feels from him, that makes Darcy wish that for just one second she could not put her foot in her mouth.
But the door is already opened, and since he seems like he's probably going to kill her anyway Darcy walks right through it.
"Dude, you lost. However you want to justify it, you got your ass handed to you by a bunch of superheroes. I don't know if they have comic books or Sci-fi movies where you're from, but your odds weren't great from the beginning." Darcy runs her fingers through her hair. "There's nothing that any of us can tell you that's going to change that."
"Failure is for those who lack the conviction of their principles." Loki fixes her with a penetrating stare that holds her in her seat, fingers itching and legs starting to ache with the intensity of muscles straining to flee.
"But, dude…" Darcy says slowly. "You lost."
She watches his fingers bend, this time definitely seeing the grooves left in their wake, and Loki tilts his head and glares at her from under his dark brows, bits of inky hair falling forward and framing his face like shadow.
"A temporary setback." Loki fixes her with an intense stare and continues, "Hear me, mortal. Your race and your world are operating on borrowed time. Whatever comforts you have enjoyed due to the intervention of your precious Avengers are to be repaid tenfold."
She opens her mouth to speak, but is cut off by the flash in his eyes. He breathes in sharply, "You and your kind will kneel before me, and I care not whether it is in blood or by choice."
They fall into silence and Darcy thinks that Loki looks suddenly weary. His mouth is drawn into a thin line and his eyes are downcast, deep shadows underscoring a sense of fatigue. He lifts his hands, almost absently runs his fingers along the gouges they have left in the table's surface with an expression that almost looks like confusion, before he rallies whatever internal crazy juice he uses to get himself pumped up and turns his bright eyes on Darcy.
She can see that his mind is made up without him having to say anything, because if there's one thing that seeing and talking to Loki three times in the last week has taught her, it's that the second he isn't looking like he wants to kill you is probably the most dangerous moment in your entire interaction. It's this new look, when he looks defeated, like he has no other options but to follow through, that is the most frightening.
In a roundabout way he's told her that he plans on staging another attack on Earth, for whatever messed up and convoluted reasons he thinks he has, and he's definitely already told her he will go after Shannon and Mark as his first stop on that crazy train. It's all about the files - those fucking files - and if Darcy could go back in time she would never have touched or even looked at them. She knows, almost without a doubt, that Shannon and Mark still have theirs if they haven't been caught. When (because if isn't even an option) Loki finds them, he'll kill them, along with anyone else who gets in his way. And once he has the files there's no telling what he'll do with the information inside them, which obviously means a hell of a lot more to him than it did to Darcy. He'll use that information to attack people, he'll kill and maim until he gets his way. And he'll start right here, in this Texas truck stop diner with all these customers, with Sophie and with her.
And, god help her, Darcy doesn't want any of that to happen.
"Look," she says. "I'll make you a deal."
She doesn't want to die. If it means that her friends might be safe, that more innocent people won't die in Loki's desperate bid to reclaim his power, and that she might be able to stop (or at least slow down) his plans to start another New York alien party, then she'll do what she has to.
Loki raises his eyebrow at her, and yeah she too is still wondering why she's doing this.
"Let me take you to Mark and Shannon, and let me talk to them - convince them to give you their files - without violence. I'll help you find them and you don't kill or hurt any more people trying to get there. And then...then I will help you with whatever plan you have to get your mojo back."
It's a lot more than what he was asking her for, she knows, but this is the only way she can think of to make sure that Shannon and Mark will be safe and that he simply won't kill her after she's led him to them. He does seem to like minions, she remembers from reading the files, and while she isn't any old Erik Selvig, she's better than what he's got right now, which is apparently nothing.
And if she can get some information from him about his ultimate plans in the meantime and get that intel to Thor or SHIELD…that's even better.
Loki is silent for a moment, looking thoughtful as his eyes wander around the restaurant. He is still and silent for such a long time that Darcy wonders if maybe he's already killed her and her mind hasn't caught up with it yet, but then he turns his eyes on her and smiles, that guiltless smile that is anything but.
He nods his head to Darcy, a regal gesture that is underscored by the corners of his mouth curving upward.
"I accept your proposal, Miss Lewis."
Darcy swallows, and for a brief moment in the face of Loki's acquiescence, she wonders why her brilliant and selfless plan suddenly feels like it wasn't her idea at all.
A/N: Hi guys! Thank you so much for sticking with this story. I have an announcement, and I'm pretty excited about it actually.
This story is officially being converted into an original fiction! Yay! I'll still keep up with it here, of course, but there's a spin-off in the works. So, allow me to beg (I'm on my knees, really) and have you go read the first part of it that's up at Wattpad. It's called Legendary: How a Sidekick Became a Big Damn Hero under VaiVedrai. I'd love your reads and your feedback - at least let me know if I'm on to something or if I'm wasting my time.
As always, your reviews/follows/favs are greatly appreciated! Thank you!