Chapter Fifty-Five: Mad All Night
Darla was beyond ready to go home. In fact, she'd have been content to never leave her apartment again. The next day, she'd be forced to deal with misleading Fury. She was honestly considered ducking him altogether. Then she realized something else that made her heart sink: her phone. Loki had done god-knows-what with it. The phone was issued to her by SHIELD and had all these funky applications she had no idea how to use. One made her screen blink like a strobe light, she only knew that because she'd clicked it accidentally. She would have to tell the director she'd lost it. Not only that, but that she'd lost it on her third day. She was really living up to all that "chosen by SHIELD" stuff, wasn't she? She sighed dejectedly and stood. She couldn't bear to be in the house any longer, so she wordlessly strolled past Thor on a mission to get outside.
"Do you know how to get home from here?" He asked, stopping her on the stone landing.
"No," she realized sourly. She squinted around at the suburban homes and frowned. "I live in the city. Not far from work."
"We'll figure it out," he shrugged his massive shoulders and pulled her up into his arms with no warning. She yelped and he laughed. "The first time is always the scariest, so let's get it over with."
She fought the urge to say that's what she said. It was easy, since she was too scared to say a damned thing. Within seconds they were in the air, going impossibly fast. The wind was cold and sharp like night air can be. She clamped her eyes shut and buried her face into his neck, not even thinking about how dreamy he was anymore. No, those thoughts were far from her brain. Right now, he was the only thing between her and falling to her death. The arm that wasn't wielding Mjolnir was hooked under her knees snugly and she held on around his neck. She held on for dear life.
He landed them at an intersection in the city and she stayed in his arms with her eyes shut for a few moments. He understood with a small smile. Then she cautiously opened her eyes, half expecting for everything to be spinning. To her surprise, nothing was. "Turn so I can see the street sign," she requested. It was a good thing her timid voice was right by his ear. "Can you take us ten blocks or so that way?" She pointed west.
"Absolutely not," he joked before taking off again. This time she felt slightly more comfortable. Still, though, not at all comfortable. She knew he wouldn't drop her, at the very least. She must have felt lighter than styrofoam to him, no hindrance at all. She dared to open her eyes. Upon seeing the lights of the city below her, her stomach lurched. She slammed her eyelids shut so tight that it hurt. She begged herself not to vomit. Then they landed again and she leapt out of his arms, tempted to physically, actually kiss the sidewalk. Her legs felt like jello and she stumbled. Thor caught her, not phased by this behavior at all.
"Take your time," he assured politely, even though he desperately wanted sleep.
She looked to the street sign and smiled. They were only a block or two away if she was remembering correctly. She started walking and he followed. Her legs got the hang of it and stopped tingling at last. "Thank you for helping me," she broke the cool, crisp silence.
"Not at all," he spoke politely still, a bit restrained, considering what else was on his mind. Darla could potentially mess up his plan to be dishonest. Though he hardly knew her, she didn't seem overly unreasonable. "You must be looking forward to telling your boss everything you've seen," he eased in, trying to get a feel for her mindset.
She was a little startled by the notion based on the conversation she'd overheard between the brothers. "You don't want me to, do you?" She assumed.
"I'm debating that myself," he sounded very gloomy.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She offered.
"It's complicated," he grimaced.
"Start at the beginning," she prompted hopefully. Maybe if she could understand, she would know what she should do.
He laughed a flustered, forced laugh. "There's hardly enough time. We'd have to be walking to another region entirely for me to explain the emotional wreck that is my brother to you."
"Just the important stuff, then," she suggested. He didn't respond, deep in thought. "You don't have to give me any details, even. I couldn't possibly weigh in on this anyway. Sometimes saying things out loud can help you sort them in a way."
He took to this idea nicely. "At the base of all of this...behind every terrible thing he does…" the next words were hard on him to say, "he is my family. The way I feel as he hurts me again and again must be the way he felt when he found out…" she was listening eagerly, but he never finished the thought. "I want to believe I can have my brother back. I don't necessarily mean tomorrow, just someday. I can't be the one to convince him, he won't listen to me. He sees me as the enemy. I know his story in a way others do not. We were children together, we played and grew up and battled together. Underneath the madman you all see is a… is a…" none of the words circling his brain felt right. "Is a man. A man who has now made so many mistakes in such quick succession that coming back to his home could mean life imprisonment."
They arrived at her building, so she stopped walking. She didn't want to interrupt him. A group of people walking across the street stared but kept moving. He was silent. "This is me," she nodded to the structure shyly.
"I'll walk you up."
She fished her keys out of her pocket-good thing Loki hadn't taken them. Her keyring was sad. The only things hanging from it were actual keys-the one to her building's door, the one to her apartment and the one for her car. No cute keychains or souvenirs from places she'd been. She didn't even have the fob for her car on it. He followed her inside and into the elevator. It was nothing fancy, a sort of rickety, nervous lift that could only hold about five healthy people. She had to turn her key into a slot on the elevator to operate it, then she hit the round twenty-six button for the top floor.
As they rode, Thor went on. "I don't want you to think I sympathize with him. I don't. After all this, I couldn't. I only think he's backed himself into a corner. I have the strongest feeling that-" he abandoned this thought for one that came shooting up into his mind. "Do you think he really likes her?"
Darla thought about the way Loki looked at Eve. The way he spoke to her. She had very little to go off of. In itself, the fact that he'd take a mortal to run away from him didn't make a ton of sense. Eve was beautiful, that was true. Uncommonly so. She was obviously troubled and aggressive and-well, in a lot of vague, broad ways, she was like him. "I don't know either of them enough to say," the door opened and she led him to her apartment, "but I do think it's possible."
"Maybe, just maybe, he'll go with her and it'll give him some perspective. I want to give him a chance to experience something meaningful. I shouldn't. He doesn't deserve it."
"Do you want to come in?" She asked gently, trying very hard not to make it sound like some flirtatious advance.
"Thank you," he helped himself to a spot on her couch. Her apartment was plain. No pictures or artwork on the walls and only bare necessities furniture wise. Had he opened her fridge, he'd have seen yogurt, bread, meat, eggs, cheese and milk. Had he opened her closet, he'd have seen two neatly pressed SHIELD uniforms alongside four days' worth of t-shirts, jeans, underwear and pajamas. A bystander may have thought she'd just moved and would go looking for boxes. While the fact that she'd recently moved was true, there were no boxes with additional belongings to be found. She owned nothing else.
"Would you like a drink?" She recited like an expert hostess.
"Water, please," he answered and she was relieved, knowing she had little else to offer him. She got him a glass and he downed it, parched. "What should I do?" He lobbed the question up in the air. It felt rhetorical. "If I tell the truth, Fury won't rest until Loki is captured. My brother is sneaky, he could run forever. If we continue to pursue him, he may be pushed to using more drastic measures. I'm sure you're thinking I'm mad, considering doing the wrong thing."
"It's a grey area. You said yourself that if the Avengers keep chasing him, some may end up losing their lives. Then who would protect us regular folk?"
"Yet if I leave him be and innocent lives are lost-"
"I'm not qualified to help you with this…" Darla shook her head nervously. "Just know that whatever way you decide to go, I'll side with you. If you want to lie, all I have to do is, well, nothing. I wasn't supposed to be there. I do understand feeling devotion to family. I understand wanting to see him make the right choices on his own. You have to know that bad things could happen either way."
"That's not very comforting."
Darla sighed and paused. "I wasn't trying to comfort you. This sucks. Family issues only get more difficult when people who aren't close enough to the heart of it to understand. How about this…let the idea settle overnight. Decide in the morning when you're rested."
"I have to decide now! It complicates things if Jane wakes up and I'm not there."
"I'll set an alarm so you can get up before she'll be awake. Or you can just show up with donuts and coffee. For now, sleep is-"
"I don't want to burden you," Thor boomed as he realized what exactly she was suggesting.
"You said you would take me to work in the morning anyway, remember? You can even have my bed."
"I couldn't-" he objected.
"Yes!" She demanded firmly, leading him to her room. "You would never be comfortable on that damned couch. I insist." He eyed up the full-sized bed. The plush, diamond patterned comforter and the white matching pillowcases all looked so appealing. He didn't even notice the oddness of it. The bed was tidy like one on a movie set. Not a wrinkle or furl to be seen. "Goodnight!" She smiled and left abruptly. After she shut the door, she breathed a sigh of relief. She ran her fingers along the back of the couch fondly. Thank god, she thought before stretching out onto the firm cushions and retrieving the blanket folded over the back. If Thor had taken the couch, she'd have been faced with a strange predicament. Since moving, she'd yet to spend a night in her bed. After he was gone, she'd wash and iron everything and put it back the way it was, presumably never to be used again.
Elsewhere
Eve found her way back the main desk, flashlight in hand, where the color-coded maps were. The travel section was on the third floor. She climbed the stairs and felt very introspective. Why had he pushed her away? She knew that lustful look in his eyes by now. Maybe he was in too much pain to ravage her. Then again, maybe it was just that her hot-and-cold act really had put him off. That wouldn't be an extraordinarily surprising development. Soon she was faced with the section. There were hundreds of books. She skimmed the titles, soon feeling dizzy and sleepy. The world was so huge. It was something that was obviously true, but even more true when she thought about it this closely. Anywhere? Really? She'd never had a particular place in mind that she wanted to go. Not just now, but ever. She tried to think back as far as she could, before her father died and she had dreams. Back when her future plans went farther than surviving the current week. Travelling had always been an undefined goal, a someday possibility. Of course she wanted to go places. But where?
She closed her eyes and grabbed one at random. It was a guide to backpacking through Europe. That seemed like an okay idea. Europe, that is, not necessarily the backpacking aspect. The front cover had a picture of a happy group of friends that annoyed her for some reason. She chucked it aside. "Round two," she muttered to herself and randomly snatched another book. Ancient Ruins. She ditched the paperback. The next one she took was about Canada, which she decided wasn't exotic enough. The one after that concerned Thailand, which felt almost too exotic.
Annoyed at the fact her lack of strategy wasn't paying off, she retrieved the backpacking guide from the floor. Five racially diverse and impossibly happy faces gazed up at her. To justify opening the book, she ripped the cover off. She flipped carelessly through the pages, waiting for something to jump out at her. Nothing did. She wanted to quit and go to sleep, thinking maybe it would come to her in a dream. She held the book open in her hands without looking at it. "Okay," she breathed, "I'm just going to rip a page out and that's where we're going. You hear me, universe? Send me somewhere nice." She tore out a page and dropped the rest of the book altogether. She was getting used to the noises books made when they hit the ground. The piece of paper she held in her hand had a full-page picture of a beautiful beach with no words on it. She was excited to see there were plenty of words on the opposite side. Then as she read them, her face fell. It was the tail end of a section listing what to expect of the weather during each season in any given country and its respective cities. It used symbols and at least twenty countries were listed. she felt like balling the useless piece of paper up and eating it.
The inside of her head was a mine field. Everything upsetting her exploded and hit another mine. She couldn't give up on this and go home, she couldn't call Sam and beg him for some sage advice, or to bring over a bad movie to distract her. She couldn't sit down on the floor and cry for fear of being ridiculed. She kicked the bookshelf and it didn't even flinch. It practically laughed at her. "You're useless!" She screamed at it. She may as well have been screaming at herself.
Just then, Loki ambled up the stairs, which were right across from her. Of course. He surveyed the scene before him and it felt very familiar. "Do you hate books?" He queried.
"Why are you here?" She snapped. "You told me to go find a travel book. You pushed me away."
"I was looking for a couch, like you said," he replied evenly. "Also, you're shouting at a bookcase, so I think I'll ask the questions. First, why? Why are you doing that?"
"None of your damn business, that's why! Move along."
He ignored this request and moved to stand beside her, side stepping an ill placed chair on the way. He set his index finger on top of a heavy edition's spine and tipped it onto the ground where it thud densely. He shrugged. "I don't get it. I didn't think that was very fun at all. In fact, I feel guilty. Are you naturally a slob? Or are you doing this maliciously?"
"Shut up," she groaned.
"Help me understand," he begged playfully. Then he spotted the torn out page in her clutch. "Alright, you must hate books."
"I don't have to explain myself to you," she spat.
"Then explain yourself...to him," he picked up the book on Thailand and held it up to her. She had to bite back a smile. Then he saw the backpacking guide with the cover ripped off. "My lord, woman! Such violence! Such gore!"
"Will you stop?" She shouted. "I'm exhausted and angry and I have all this pent up aggression and nowhere to fucking put it!"
"So they should suffer? Because you're too stupid to control your-"
She knew he was sticking to his bit, but the second the word stupid came out of his mouth, she snapped. She slapped him across the face.
He rubbed his cheek briefly. "I hope you feel better now," he sneered.
"Not remotely," she bit through gritted teeth and delivered another well-placed slap to his other cheek, "but this is helping."
"I'm not just going to let you-"
She hit him again, her fist closed this time. And what's more? She laughed. "Maybe I'm not as quick with the insults as you are, but you know what? That's okay. I prefer actual fighting to catty manipulation anyway. You're not so good at this part, are you? Is that why they almost captured you? Maybe I should head back there and let your brother protect me…"
Loki jumped into her head. It was just a whirlwind of clashing thoughts and emotions. He couldn't lock anything down. "You wouldn't be happy with him," he commented coolly.
Eve was annoyed that her carefully chosen words hadn't thrown him over the edge. "I'm not happy now," she confessed. She stood before him, bloody and in her underwear like a goddamn savage. She was chaotic, ripping covers off of books and taking cheap shots at him, when she knew he could barely even feel it. She just wanted to flow with her emotions' tide and stop holding back. The crazed tint in her eyes, that had been there since they arrived, and her disheveled appearance drew him in.
He held onto her hip roughly and pushed her into the bookshelves against the wall. She winced momentarily. "You've been trying to make me mad all night," he noted, his voice low, "Why?"
"I'm just looking for a reason to scream," she confessed.
"Next time," he warned, "just ask."
For a second, she didn't understand. Then he ripped her underwear off. No, not like he took them off passionately. He ripped the fabric on either side and discarded them, they were condemned on the carpet with the mistreated books. He didn't kiss her. He wasn't gentle. Her hips curled into him involuntarily. Her face held this anxious, elated smile. When he was like this, somehow everything made sense. She was exposed but he wasn't touching her anywhere worthwhile. She bucked her hips out in a neat curve, but he snapped her right back to where she was.
"Why don't you let me take the lead this time?" She more demanded than asked. She wasn't in the mood to be teased or wait for him to come around or play games until he changed his mind.
He took in her determined expression. Her cool eyes were burning with intensity, practically melting themselves. He took a step back and let her loose. She met him and dropped the flashlight. Here, she knew her way around.
