Short but sweet this week - it covers what it needs to.
Thanks to Jen, Lindsey, Rhi and twiggy for betaing.
Chapter Thirteen: Paradox
Darcy needed a paper bag to help her breathe. Or a bottle of Jagermeister. Or a machine to help her jump to a universe where this wasn't happening.
Frigga retrieved the mirror from where it had fallen. Thankfully, it hadn't cracked, so Darcy wasn't subject to seven years of even worse luck than she was already experiencing.
It took her a minute to remember how to speak. "What was that?"
The mirror rested across Frigga's lap. She polished the glass gently with her sleeve, drawing Darcy's attention back to the image it held. It played out, like a brief snatch of home video, if home video was filmed by Dali. "A glimpse of the future."
In the glass, Darcy knelt on a lawn, vibrant plant life sprawling on the edges and reminding her of Loki's roof garden. He crouched beside her and their attention focused on a small boy a few feet away on the grass. He was tiny, not even a toddler yet, his shaky legs indicating he might still be finding his feet. Beyond him, Thor stooped, holding his arms out. Thor said something, and though the mirror didn't provide a soundtrack, his smile and gestures indicating he was trying to get the little boy to run to him. Instead the boy glanced at him, shook his head with a stubborn frown, and ran to Loki's open arms.
Just before it looped to show again, Darcy got a good look at the boy's face: pale and narrow even with the roundness of baby fat, crowned with fine black hair. There was no doubting he was Loki's son. Yet she recognized those big eyes too. She saw them everyday in her own mirror.
"That's not possible," Darcy replied, tearing her gaze away from the glass. "Nobody can see the future—and that's…that's Loki. And me. No!"
"While we may wish for some things to be impossible, it doesn't mean they are," Frigga said softly. "I do have the ability to look at what is to come. It is a skill I must use prudently and frugally. Alas, what you see here passes neither of those requirements. This was the folly which drove Loki to Midgard."
"He's seen this too?" Keep breathing. This is a bad dream.
"When he returned to Asgard, it seemed nothing could reach him." Frigga's expression turned pained, her eyes staring at something beyond the room they sat in. "He was going to spend his life locked away, without knowing or accepting love, not even from me. In an attempt to ease my own heart, to provide hope that he would know some measure of happiness in the days ahead, I called upon my gift and this is what I saw. Then I was compelled to show it to him—I believed it would lead him onto a path of redemption. Instead—"
"So you showed Loki his future?" The words came out sharper than Darcy intended. She bit her lip to stop the tirade brewing inside, to prevent herself from railing against Frigga and the damage she'd done. Frigga was their strongest ally—and an alien queen who Darcy knew little about. Instead, she asked the question that was making her do mental gymnastics to work through. "Doesn't that create a paradox?"
"I never said my actions were wise. Look at all they have caused. I thought I was showing him family, love, and acceptance—I know the last to be his deepest hope. Rather, he saw an heir, and if he had an heir, he needed a throne to pass to him. For the child to run to him, Loki must be deserving of respect and have something that Thor did not. Loki could not see that his son would run to him out of unconditional love. I failed to understand how his time away from Asgard and imprisonment had changed the way he would react. I underestimated how much he's been cut off from some parts of himself."
Darcy fiddled with the edge of her blanket, resisting the urge to burrow under it and hide from the world. "I guess now I know why he's taken such an interest in me, even if it's not the answer I wanted." She suppressed a shudder at the memory of Loki holding her hand, the day he'd captured her in Albany.
"I did warn him that he couldn't use force to reach that future. I don't believe he listened."
Darcy gave a hollow laugh. "No, I don't think he did either. I guess it also explains the way he looked at me the first time he saw me—if looks could kill… Probably wasn't expecting me to be a lowly Midgardian. Or working with the Avengers."
"Perhaps not. Even I did not know who you were, not until I met you upon my arrival. It was as much a surprise to me."
"Not good enough?" She said it in jest, though she had to wonder at the truth of it.
"Darcy, I do not know you. It is not my place to judge you, and I do not share my son's antipathy towards your kind. But he can learn, just as Thor did. To reach this future will require much work—"
"What? No. We aren't going anywhere near that future. I don't want it."
Frigga held up the mirror. "Look again. Look at yourself. How do you appear?"
Despite her best intentions, she did. The version of her in the mirror was older, and wearing some fancy silk. She also radiated joy. "Happy," Darcy said grudgingly.
"That surprises you so much?"
"Yeah. Kids aren't really on my radar and Loki…Look, I know he's your son and you love him, but I can't ever imagine him making me happy."
"I understand. You have met him at his worst. You have yet to see what he can be."
"Can be? Is that a definite, or one of many possibilities?" What Darcy wanted to know was whether the future was nailed down, or whether she was free to run screaming away from it while she had chance.
Frigga offered an enigmatic smile. "That would be revealing too much."
Not a helpful response. "But see, you already thought him knowing about a son would make him do the right thing, and it didn't. Dangling me like a carrot—and I guess that's your plan here—is pretty unlikely to work too. He showed minimal interest in me even when he held me captive, so I'm pretty sure he sees me as a means to an end."
"Darcy, I showed you this only because it is your future too, and you have equal right to know about it. I made a grave error, and I am here to remedy it. All I seek is to have Loki returned to Asgard. What you do with this knowledge is your own decision."
Darcy doubted it was as simple as that—Frigga enraptured glance at the glass, at her future grandbaby, suggested she was not above meddling to make it happen. It didn't matter: if there was one thing which was categorically never going to happen, it was that.
"I'm with you on getting Loki sent back to Asgard," she said. "As for the rest, there's no decision to make. That vision is never going to come true."
Ta-da! Now you all know where Loki knew Darcy from.
To anybody now thinking "I did not sign up for kid!fic", don't worry, it's not going to become one.