Hey guys, sorry for the slow update. Unfortunately, my head hasn't been in the best place for writing. Depression is a bitch. But I am really looking forward to hearing what you think about this chapter. I really enjoyed getting to mess around with certain characters and I kind of wanted to take the story back to a little more of the hijinks vibes from the earlier chapters...hopefully I was able to pull that off. We'll see haha.

I also wanted to take a minute to say thank you to those of you who have left reviews. Ultimatrix bearer, Katie McAlpine, Seraphina 987 and ParadigmShift. I see you guys and I appreciate you! Motion in the Dust, not sure if you're still reading, but I did want to say that I am still really touched by your kind comments.

Jhessill and ElflingoftheShire, as well as a couple of anonymous reviewers, I'm so glad you found this story and are enjoying it so far.

Laura, Lisa, Lillian, L*#%

At a little café, in the shadow of a ghastly monolith of a tower, sat a young woman. She had long dark brown hair, a furrowed brow, and glasses that she only used to see distances, but forgot to take off when she was reading. She sipped a cappuccino, wondering idly why she had ordered the bitter drink instead of something that had more sugar.

Occasionally the woman glanced up, her eyes wandering to study her passersby. She observed the crowd of pedestrians with equal parts boredom and suspicion. The years had been kind to the girl in some regards, but in others, they had been quite cruel. A war waged between those two elements of truth, and she carried the evidence of it in the set of her shoulders.

Returning to her paper, the young woman briefly felt a flash of self-pity which she then buried down deep inside herself. Self-pity led to self-loathing and she lashed out at herself mentally for being weak. For sniveling about her life's tragedies. For being—

Darcy felt something itch in the back of her mind and she glanced around for the millionth time since she'd sat down at her table. She couldn't relax. Had felt so...off since returning back to the daily grind. Her time with Sam in D.C. had been needed to say the least. She missed Maisy. Thinking of Maisy made her think of Fury and Darcy wondered if maybe she was feeling odd because she needed to go home, grab the little tabby, and curl up on the couch for some snuggles and television.

She rolled her shoulders, shaking the pages of her newspaper to regain her focus. Why had she bought this thing again? She never read the paper. The article in front of her was on the most recent Senate hearing regarding the fallout of Hydra's infiltration of several sectors of the security and intelligence community. Her chest rose and fell harshly as she fought down a flare of annoyance at the state of things. How could anyone trust that these people weren't Hydra as well? Some days it felt like she was witnessing the breakdown of democracy at its finest. Hydra's success. Others, she told herself she was being dramatic and paranoid. And then she told herself that she was gaslighting herself and her first thought had been justifiable. And then, and then, and then. Eight hours later. The day was gone, and she'd spent the entire thing trapped in her own mind.

"Can I get you anything else?" The waitress in front of her was tall with black hair and sharp cheekbones. In the back of her mind, Darcy envied the woman's beauty.

She smiled at the waitress, zooming in on her nametag. "No, thanks, Laura. I'm good."

The woman nodded and cleared Darcy's plates before hesitating.

Darcy raised an eyebrow.

Laura opened her mouth and closed it again, turning to leave before stopping.

"You okay there?" Darcy asked, her voice dry.

"Well...I just," the waitress dropped her tray on another table, before deftly pulling out the chair across from Darcy and sitting down. She leaned forward, a crease in her forehead from her frown. There was a twinkle in her eyes that betrayed the seriousness of her demeanor. Something in Darcy's gut twisted when she looked at her. Something was off. Maybe they'd met before? Or she'd seen her around somewhere? Maybe she—

"I'm sorry," Darcy interrupted. "Were you on SVU?"

Confusion flitted across Laura's face for a moment, she drew back, before her eyes filled with recognition. A smirk drew itself on her lips.

"Ah—no. I'm afraid not," she said. The smirk remained.

"Right..." Darcy studied her for a second before shaking her head. "Sorry. I interrupted you—what were you saying?"

"I only meant to say..." the waitress trailed off, still staring intently at the younger girl. "You just seem like something is weighing on your mind..."

"Oh, ha, well I mean isn't that kinda the case with everyone these days?" Darcy scratched her neck uncomfortably. Laura shrugged.

"You work in that thing?" the waitress asked Darcy, gesturing up at Avenger's Tower. It had eclipsed the sun from this angle. Darcy supposed a lot of Stark and Avengers employees passed through here. She wouldn't know really...when she left the tower, she didn't tend to hang out so close to it, electing instead to get as far away from the suits, boots, and cameras as she could. This, she had probably, inadvertently, learned from spending time with Steve and Bucky, neither of whom wanted to get caught surrounded by anyone related to work in their downtime.

Darcy opened her mouth, but her mind stalled trying to figure out how to answer what was supposed to be a simple question but when she calculated in her clearance level and Clint's warnings about vulnerability and Sam's conversation with her about the security alert Steve had put out on her. It was...trickier to answer simple questions than it used to be.

She was saved from the conversation by a loud crash and a string of curses. The culprit, a tall man in a fitted white t-shirt and dark-wash jeans, crouched down next to the tray of dishes he had knocked off the table. Looking up at Darcy and Laura from the mess.

Darcy looked between the clumsy man and Laura who, for some reason, seemed to have barely registered that all the broken glass and ceramic on the concrete were her problems to deal with. The waitress was looking at Darcy instead as if she was still waiting for her response.

Darcy cleared her throat and jerked her head to the floundering man. He coughed uncomfortably, before speaking.

"Excuse me," his voice was surprisingly deep, and Darcy squinted. He had a jack-booted thug voice, but his face was earnest, and she couldn't think of a single agent that would be clumsy enough to knock over a tray like that. "Waitress, I'm sorry...could you help me get this cleaned up. I'd be happy to pay for the damages." He shook his head and held up his hands awkwardly. There was a small cut on his palm, that bled profusely but Darcy could only look at it and think the man was lucky his injuries weren't worse than that.

The man's voice drew Laura out of whatever was going on in her head. The waitress turned to him then, took in the mess with an unhappy twist of her lips, before making her way to the back to grab a dustpan and a wastebasket.

The man watched her go before turning back to Darcy. He gave her a bashful grin before rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck, accidentally smearing blood on the collar of his shirt.

"Oh, shit, dude, your shirt," Darcy said with a grimace. She hastily snatched up her unused napkins and grabbed his hand without asking, setting it in her lap. With her left hand, she applied pressure to his cut. With her right hand, she dipped a napkin in a cup of ice water before dabbing at the fabric to get the blood out. It wasn't until she was halfway through the action that she realized she had done all of this without his permission.

She slowly stopped dabbing at his clothes, releasing his injured hand and letting it fall from her lap. Her mouth was stretched in an uncomfortable grimace and Darcy hissed at the awkward pit in her stomach. For his part, the man looked amused.

Darcy turned away from him. Faced forward in her seat and studied the newspaper in front of her, trying and failing to read what it said.

Giving up, she stood, shoved the paper in her back pocket. She threw a hasty apology over her shoulder and made her way through the crowd.

The man stayed where he was, but he had stood when she did. He shook his head in bewilderment at the younger woman. Darcy didn't notice him watching. She didn't notice Laura watching her from inside the café. And she definitely didn't notice that her departure was followed by the departure of several other customers at the café that morning. Three men. Two women. They had not sat together. Had not spoken to each other. They all wore plain clothes.

But the first man, the one with a cut on his hand, he saw them go. He stayed where he was, pulling out a cell phone and made a phone call. He gave one last cursory glance around the café, trying to spot the waitress from before, but couldn't seem to locate her.

Laura saw him look for her from her place on the far end of the café, body tilted in just the right way to keep her out of sight. She watched him leave with a smirk on her face, watched the group of men follow Darcy, and watched Darcy herself make her way into Avenger's tower.

Laura's smirk turned into a grin.


Life in a gilded cage was tiresome for the young woman. She felt as though she were watching others live their lives, fulfilled, while she just drifted in and out of consciousness. Only ever alert when another giant came along – one who looked at her like the little pet that she was – one who wanted to crush her and free her of her own inadequacy permanently.

She made her way through the guarded doors, past the checkpoints and the lackeys, to the elevator where a faceless keeper determined how far she could rise on any given day. Complacent little dove. The girl never made a noise or complaint. The keeper took her to the highest places of the ivory tower, knowing full well that the girl could not fly away if she wanted to. No. This young thing was far more adept at falling—

Darcy sneezed and shook her head. Throwing a brief thanks at Jarvis for operating the elevator for her. She was so itchy today. Figuratively and literally. It was like she was reacting to something in the air. She popped in to check on Bruce. Ducked away from Tony's lab when the faceplate of the Iron Man suit went flying toward her head. The man's litany of curses and half-formed apologies followed her down the hall until she was out of sight, safely tucked away in Jane's lab. There, the danger was present but relatively predictable. At least...that's what Darcy told herself in the mornings to make her mind and body accept that she was returning to a workplace she no longer wanted to be in.

She was surprised to see a steaming cup of coffee sitting on her desk. She looked down at it, stumped.

"Umm," Darcy pointed her finger at the drink and swung around to look at Jane. "This yours?"

Jane looked up for once, eyes a little glazed over from science, but more alert than usual.

"No, I made a fresh batch. Figured I'd give you a refill."

Now, Darcy had come to realize that sometimes she doesn't notice there is an imbalance in her life until the thing she was lacking comes back to her. Staring at Jane, a mug of fresh coffee sitting innocently at her desk... Darcy couldn't remember the last time someone had just handed her a cup of coffee. Darcy had poured and toasted and popped and stirred all day, every day for as long as she'd known Jane. But Jane hadn't done those things for Darcy in a long time, if ever.

Jane looked nervously between her frozen friend and the cup of coffee.

"That's how you like it right? I thought that you—"

"It is," Darcy shot out in a high voice, suddenly feeling very awkward. She didn't have the heart to tell Jane that she'd just come from a coffee shop. She picked up the mug and smiled at her friend, still feeling that uncomfortable twinge of realization in her chest. She sipped the drink and sighed into it. Jane had gotten it right somehow. "Thanks, Janie."

She made her way to her seat. Jane nodded once to herself before turning back to her work. Darcy sifted through her paperwork rapidly, trying to find an approval that she needed to shoot up to Pepper before 5 p.m. that day. As the papers came loose chaotically around her, she felt something thunk onto her desk somewhere in the pile. Curiously, she swept her hands around for it, clearing the mess to the side until she found the mystery object. It was a pin.

She just stared at it for a second before moving closer. The pin was a small snake, green and black with gold trim. It was beautiful. But it wasn't hers. Darcy picked it up.

"Is this yours, Janie?"

"Hmm?" Jane didn't look up from the formula she was writing on a blackboard.

"This pin...is it yours?"

Jane started muttering to herself under her breath, pulling her sleeve over her fist to erase something she had written there. Writing a new symbol over the blank space she'd cleared.

Darcy's lips twisted a little, bemused at her friend's typical behavior, and let it rest. Turning the little object around in her fingers, she shoved it in her pocket. She'd ask again later.

The aliens came at noon. This upset Darcy because noon was lunch and there was a slice of pepperoni calling her name just another block away. She was a woman of simple tastes and her simple tastes had gotten her halfway to her destination before the sky opened and chaos ensued.

They were all black – more shadow than a monster if she were being honest. And they let out horrible screeches as they fell from their ships to the New York City streets below. The force of their landing made craters in the earth; pipes burst, cars were crushed or fell into the giant sinkholes the monsters left in their wakes. The ground was kind of wobbly and nothing felt stable. Darcy walked like she was walking on a bridge that was about to collapse. She gritted her teeth but moved through it.

A man ran into her, knocking her down in his panic. She let out an aggravated yell before heaving herself off the pavement and continuing to make her way to the pizza joint. So close and so far away. But then there was a little girl crying a few feet from her – the daughter of the man who had knocked her down she assumed from the girl's wracking sobs. So, she knelt beside the girl, trying to help her calm down.

"Hey, kid, hey," Darcy held her hands out for the little girl to take if she wanted. "Hi, I'm Darcy." There was an explosion, causing Darcy to grab the kid and tuck her under her body. When the noise dissipated, she released her once again. "What's your name?"

The girl sniffled and hiccupped, snot running down her nose.

"Lisa," the girl released her name in a long, breathy sob. Her voice cracked with panic.

"That's a pretty name," Darcy gave a tight-lipped smile. Glancing around her. "You know, Lisa. You have the prettiest green eyes ever. I think my friend back at Avenger's Tower could find your parents if he just got one good look at 'em." Darcy cringed and rolled the words over in her head...way to sound like a fucking predator. But it was true. She couldn't stick around and wait for the dad to realize he'd left his kid in the middle of an alien invasion. Jarvis could find him quicker than it would take for the man to retrace his steps and come back. Darcy was pondering her options, tugging the little girl along behind her and trying not to feel creepy about it, when a shadow monster landed directly in their path.

The earth concaved and the pair of them fell with it. On her butt, at the feet of the shadow alien, Darcy gripped the kid's shirt and pushed her behind her body, crab walking backward and edging the girl away from the screeching invader. She was steadily attempting to get the kid up the wall of the crater before the thing in front of them made its move. No such luck. It sniffed and screeched before descending on the pair. The edges of its shadow body licked out at Darcy trying to suck her in.

"GO GO GO GO GO! MOVE KID! SHIT!" She backed up faster, her momentum the only thing moving the now frozen child. Something warm ran down her back, her hand landing in a puddle and she could only assume it was the girl's urine. The shadow monster grasped her in its misty clutches, wrapping its tattered edges around her ankle, and pulling her in. Tugging her close and trying to consume her whole.

Distantly, Darcy registered that she was screaming. The kid had started sobbing once again. People everywhere were running for their lives. She heard the crack of thunder. The roar of the Hulk somewhere far away. With one leg, Darcy began to inch away from the monster again – fighting a losing battle as it dragged her closer to its body. Frantically, she twisted at the ring on her finger, satisfied when it hummed and engulfed her hand in gloriously electrified metal. And then, without abandon, Darcy took a deep breath, sent a prayer up to Heimdall, and lunged. She heard the whir of the charge as her glove cranked itself up to a five – Natasha's warning about it still being untested echoing in her mind.

The glove passed through the shadow first. Darcy's body followed. She fell into the shadow monster but did not come out the other side. She was suspended there, trapped within the black mist of the alien beast that now surrounded her and held her captive in its grasp. The air – if it was air – inside of the thing was thicker, louder, vibrating. And now, thanks to her, charged with enough electricity to knock out Captain America and the Winter Soldier... theoretically. She was detached from the pain though – floating – suspended from all corporeal sensation. Her eyes had bugged out, heart stammered from the stress, hair stood on end as the electrical currents rolled through her, but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel any pain. Any sensation at all except the heavy, misty nothingness that the alien monster's body apparently was composed of. This one would be a bitch to fight for the supergroup. Internally, she cringed.

She couldn't feel the electrical current running through her, but she most definitely felt it when another body tackled her – shooting through the shadow figure and shoving her out of the alien's grasp.

Darcy hit the pavement hard, but the person who had freed her from the shadow's clutches had done their best to absorb the impact of her fall. She was still shaking from her own tasing. The pain began to register in her body, along with her hijacked heart rhythm. Darcy groaned and squinted, clenching her fist, and turning the glove off.

Through the slits in her eyes, she caught a glimpse of dark hair and a calculating gaze. At first, she didn't recognize him – in her confusion saw someone else's features. And then a shadow appeared in her periphery. Her eyes widened, and with a rush of adrenaline Darcy's rescuer came into focus. She flinched away from the monster that had descended on them. She watched in fascination as a vibranium fist came up and clenched tightly around the alien's throat. Bucky squeezed tightly there, impervious to the shadow's loud screeching, impervious to the grip the thing had on him and the way it tried to pull him in. He had it by the throat and didn't let go until suddenly there was a pop. A blast of compressed air. The monster was gone.

Out of breath, Darcy looked wildly at Bucky trying to comprehend what had just happened when he pulled her to her feet.

"Get back to the tower, Darcy. Run. Don't look back. Don't slow down."

"I want my pizza."

He flipped her behind him, ducking under the reach of another creature, coming up behind it with his metal hand and choking it just the same as the last one.

"You outta your mind, doll? What in the Sam Hill are you on about right now?"

She backed up a bit as Captain America's shield flew past her. She felt her stomach drop when it boomeranged back toward her – this time heading straight for her face. Steve's hulking form appeared from out of nowhere. He planted himself directly between Darcy and his shield. He caught it. And it briefly blocked the gore he and his shield had created. Darcy looked Steve up and down for a minute, noticing the tense but underwhelmed way he stood – the serious set in his eyes.

"Really?" She exclaimed and poked him in the abdomen. "You're not even winded dude. What the hell." The look he gave her was long-suffering. Then another shadow appeared, and he maneuvered Darcy behind him to engage the creature. There was a high-pitched whir of a powerful charge when Iron Man's stern voice sounded from above her.

"Everybody hit the deck."

Steve and Bucky dropped automatically, but Darcy? Darcy looked up at the source of the voice, screeching when an arm wrapped around her from behind, forcing her to the ground, there was a grunt above her and a string of curse words.

"Jesus, Darcy," Clint's voice cut in. "What the fuck kind of game are you playing right now."

"I was just trying to get lunch!"

There was a blast that knocked the wind out of her, heating the air around them, briefly casting everything in a yellow glow. The shadows froze and for a moment appeared to become solid.

"Whoa, holy shit," Darcy muttered to herself, still laying on the ground as the gathered Avengers shot up and took the opportunity Stark had afforded them.

Darcy began to crawl her way out of the kerfuffle, flinching away from stray feet and falling bodies as she did. Once she was clear of the group, Darcy stood and looked around for the kid. Sighing in relief when she saw that Wanda had trapped her in a small protective bubble off to the side of all the fighting. The Scarlett Witch sent a wave of energy across a large swath of the makeshift battlefield, dissipating the shadow monsters there with relative ease. As if sensing the human girl's presence, Wanda whipped her head around to look at Darcy with an incredulous eye.

"Go home," she said as though she shouldn't need to say it at all.

Darcy just shrugged and acquiesced.

"Fine. When you're done can you pick me up a couple slices from Joe's?"

"Yep, just go," Wanda said easily, her accent becoming more prominent the longer Darcy lingered in the middle of the conflict.

"Thanks," Darcy said before picking her way through the chaos. She made her way back in the direction of the tower, admitting that she was outranked this time.

She stepped around a shadow guy, content that Wanda wouldn't let the thing grab her, nodding her head in satisfaction when a wave of red energy licked up the bottom of the shadow monster, holding it in place as Darcy passed.

This continued for the rest of Darcy's journey. Wave after wave of red energy appeared at exactly the right moment every time, a few brief glances behind her told Darcy that Wanda wasn't anywhere within sight, probably wasn't even paying conscious attention to Darcy herself. She appreciated the help, nonetheless.

Back inside the lab, it was as though there wasn't an intergalactic emergency happening outside. Jane was mumbling to herself, sipping on a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. The ERBSimulator was out and busted open in a way that would make Tony cry.

Darcy made her way to her desk, slumping down in her chair and dropping her head into her hands. She let out a long, tired groan before rubbing her face viciously.

Jane's mumbling stopped.

"There's no way they ran out."

"Aliens."

"Huh?"

"So many aliens."

"Aliens stole our pizza?" Jane's voice was flat but not disbelieving.

"Aliens got me sent to my room without lunch."

"Huh..." Jane's voice got that far away sound to it, but Darcy ignored it. Instead, head still buried in her hands, Darcy closed her eyes and tried to forget the monumental tasing she'd just given herself. She wondered idly if she should start seeing a doctor more regularly what with all the injuries she'd accumulated as of late. Something stabbed her thigh. Darcy's eyes popped open at the sensation. She reached into her pocket, digging around for the offending object, staring accusatorily at the little snake pin she had found earlier that morning.

"Yo Jane, this thing yours or what?"

The lab was quiet. Darcy received no response.

She looked around. Jane was gone.

"Fuck this, not again," Darcy groaned. Eyes doing a second turn around the empty lab. "Jarvis?"

"Dr. Foster is on Earth, Miss Lewis. She has simply gone to study the alien beings that have declared war on humankind." His tone sounded less than approving.

Darcy leaned back in her chair with a huff, turning the pin over in her hands. Too tired to chase after Jane this time. If her friend had a death wish, Thor could figure it out.


And so, life carried on, minutes blurred into hours which blurred into days. And the passage of time meant nothing to one with such a meaningless, unfulfilled life as the one the young woman. She found herself repeating the same arbitrary tasks day in and day out, drowning herself in a sense of false accomplishment and satisfaction though... if she were to actually look within herself... she'd find that she was deeply dissatisfied with her own mortal inadequacies.

The young woman was irrelevant to the point of being forgettable in the fabric of her own life and world. But at least her cage was well kept.

Darcy sat on the tufted sofa awkwardly, scrunching her nose and rubbing her ear on her shoulder to try to scratch an itch. There was a pillow positioned unfortunately at the small of her back. She wanted to move it, but she'd already placed nervous hands in her lap and was now too unsure of herself to move them. And she wasn't sure how Dr. Lillian would feel about Darcy placing her fancy-looking pillow on the floor.

Across from her, the psychiatrist sat cold and prim in a chair of her own. Her legs were folded cleanly, a notebook rested in her lap and her pale, slim fingers lazily clicked a pen. She was not looking at Darcy, instead, she was studying the page in front of her. Preparing to begin their session; Darcy felt as though the direction of the woman's gaze was deceptive. She felt inherently seen. But it was no comfort to her.

With the swish of the papers, Dr. Lillian snapped her notebook shut, brought her gaze up to Darcy, and didn't react when the girl in front of her jumped, though Darcy could swear her eyes became smug, and her lips turned minutely upward.

"So," her voice was silver – cool and smooth. "Where shall we begin?"

Darcy's mind, as of late, was everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. It was either in hyperdrive or sleep mode. And she had come to realize that sometimes certain words or phrases, and in this case, certain questions...had the ability to overwhelm her system and shut it down completely. She'd had a million things to say before sitting down in this room, a million more to say when her new therapist wasn't looking directly at her with sharp, studious eyes. But one question – that question. Where to begin. Darcy didn't know.

Her hyperactive system overheated and conked out. And now all Darcy could do was look at the woman with wide, panicked eyes...her mouth open around the first word of a sentence she'd already forgotten.

And suddenly all she could think of was New Mexico. The Destroyer. And then Dr. Lillian didn't look like Dr. Lillian anymore...she looked like a man – a god – that once tried to kill Darcy and everyone else she knew and loved. Darcy blinked, bringing a nervous hand up to rub at her tense forehead. She was projecting. Paranoid.

"Umm.." Darcy trailed off, willing her brain to pick back up to normal pace. To wake up and remind her why the fuck she was sitting in therapy. She knew she had reasons. Valid fucking reasons. But they had just poofed the fuck out of her mind and she was beginning to sweat.

Instead of the Destroyer, Darcy told Dr. Lillian about how much she regretted not finishing her degree. Instead of near death, she talked about debt. Instead of Jane or Asgard or abandonment, she talked about being tired all the time and she talked about how much she lacked her parents' approval; she talked about Pops and how much she missed him. Missed home. Phone calls weren't enough. Nothing was enough. Darcy didn't say half the things she had intended to say – went off on tangents she hadn't even thought about in a long time. She felt like she was wasting Dr. Lillian's time by talking about the wrong shit – and by all accounts, Dr. Lillian did look monumentally bored. Suddenly, Darcy came back to herself. She came out of the therapy trance, pulled her emotional unloading to a stop, and studied her therapist who had yet to notice she was no longer speaking.

Darcy cleared her throat. Dr. Lillian, whose manicured index finger was digging its way into a manicured brow, refocused her eyes and sat a little straighter. Her face became more solemn and she hemmed and hawed as though to recover from her obvious gaffe.

Darcy fidgeted, a feeling of being a burden weighing down on her once more. She brought a hand up to the scar on her throat that no one else could see. She rubbed it nervously and wondered if it would start to bleed. It had yet to heal properly. She doubted it ever would.

She smiled politely at Dr. Lillian, who returned it though it did not reach her eyes.

Darcy excused herself to the restroom.

Tranquil music filtered through the stalls of the women's restroom. Moving to wash her hands, Darcy accidentally knocked her wrist on the door. The map of Asgard popped up in front of her. Startled, she glanced around herself to make sure the bathroom was in fact empty before moving to turn the thing off.

She brought her hand up to deactivate the hologram when a small blinking dot caught her eye. Her location was charted on the map. Something that hadn't happened since she had been on Asgard. You can't show up on a map of a place if you are not, in fact, in that place. Yet there Darcy was. She looked closer...her eyes wandering over now-familiar landmarks. The Sorrow and the Valley, the Warrior's Keep, the Lower Markets. But the map did not say Darcy was in any of that places...no. The dot blinking innocently up at her was doing so from a place beyond the Asgardian Mountain Range, on the coast of the Sea of Despair. Darcy blinked. Rubbed her eyes and looked closer to be sure. The dot was situated in the heart of Loki's castle.

Now...Darcy had been through a lot of shit in her life. Had spent many a day in shock and in horror, many more days running for her life or hiding in fear. She'd fallen out of towers and off of cliffs, cuddled up to a radioactive green rage monster, and watched cartoons with a veritable thunder god. One of Darcy's closest friends was an artificial intelligence that may or may not be tracking her every move, and she had once cut his billionaire-playboy-philanthropist father off from his own money for 48-hours because the man refused to sleep, and she had been within her rights to do it because when he didn't get enough sleep he tended to create genocidal murder bots. Darcy had been through it. And she had questioned herself and her reality all along the way.

But now, standing in a pristine, empty bathroom, in the office of a psychiatrist she didn't even remember hiring, Darcy's gut told her that she had been in this scenario before. She'd been in it several times during her stint in the Valley. It was that surrealist moment when everything you thought was reality was just a projection on the walls of your mind. However, unlike in the Valley, all of the faces she encountered were very clear. Well, one face in particular. The only face that mattered. It was there... in the dark-haired waitress at the café the other morning, the one with the sharp cheekbones and the deep, calculative eyes. Again, in the little girl when the aliens attacked, the same features were prominent there. She knew – she fucking knew – it was him she saw when he broke her free from the shadow alien, not Bucky. It was all in her head. This wasn't real.

Darcy sucked in a breath and held it there, letting it burn her chest and lungs before blowing it back out of her mouth in one long whistling exhale. She didn't need to see the map again, turned off the hologram, and straightened her shoulders.

When the door to Dr. Lillian's office slammed open, the force of the blow sent drywall flying into the air. Dr. Lillian, with her black hair, pulled smoothly back into a bun, and her glasses framing her trickster's eyes, looked nothing short of alarmed.

Darcy stood there in the doorway, fists clenched, eyes both tired and fuming. This mind game shit was getting old.

"Is everything alright, Miss Lewis?" Dr. Lillian asked innocently.

"Cut the shit, Loki."

The psychiatrist looked as though she had been slapped. But Darcy could see past the mirage now, stared at Dr. Lillian until the woman before her began to fade and the sardonic mien of the trickster god settled firmly into place. Loki didn't move from where he was perched in his great leather chair. His pen and notebook disappeared. He looked for all the world the regal asshole he was born to be.

"How am I on Asgard?" She asked.

"Who says you are on Asgard, silly girl?"

Darcy hit the beads on her wrist, watching Loki try to cover his surprise when the map appeared before him.

"The question remains, mortal," He recovered quickly, studying her with a calculated smirk. "Who says you are where the map says you are?"

"The map does not lie."

"For the map to not lie would mean that there is a determined measure for truth. And in all the millennia I have seen, truth is rather...subjective."

"Fuck you. Fuck philosophy. You kidnapped me, you creep. You messed with my head. Send me home."

"You are home." He rolled his eyes and gestured around him. The façade of Dr. Lillian's office faded away. Loki presented Darcy with her own bedroom.

"Yeah, sure, okay. God of Mischief created a fucking mind prison for me. He used me like a puppet to fuck around on Earth, and now that I am looking at my bedroom, I'm just supposed to believe that what I am seeing is real and not an illusion?" Darcy scoffed and fixed him with a glare. "Really, dude?"

Loki's eyelids drooped with obvious disdain for the human in front of him. He was growing bored with this bit she was playing.

"I have no reason to lie."

"You had no reason to hijack my mind and take me to your Asgardian palace."

"Castle."

"Same difference."

"Actually—"

"I swear to Heimdall if you try to explain the difference between a palace and a castle—"

Loki brought his hands to his temples, growing more impatient with their exchange as time passed.

"As I previously stated," Loki said through clenched teeth. "You are not altogether on Asgard. I do not have that kind of power in my current state. Loathsome as it is to admit, it is true. Lady Darcy, the map is correct that you are in my castle. But what it fails to tell you is that my castle is not a physical place, and its location is not fixed to Asgard alone."

Darcy just glowered at him.

"It is a mind castle of sorts...my magic became quite powerful when I was young. So powerful, in fact, that Asgard's ecosystem registered it as a physical place...though it is more of an astral plane. The map recognizes the energy and manifests it by name in the geography of Asgard."

She studied him for a long minute. Glanced down at the map, and back to him. Her face was unreadable.

"The shadow monsters the other day..." She started slowly, needing an actual confirmation.

He nodded with a raised brow.

"You tased me, you dick."

A slow mirthful grin stretched across his face, he brought his clasped hands up to his mouth and tapped his lips with his pointed index fingers, lost in a particularly amusing memory.

"Technically speaking, you tased yourself."

Darcy let out an enraged scream, lunging for the second time that week. This time, at Loki. Her fingers were almost at his throat when she saw him begin to phase. Just like the shadow monster from before, Darcy passed through her target...this time crashing over the top of his chair and landing in a heap on the floor.

A chuckle sounded from the other side of the room where Loki was leaning casually against his desk.

"Loki, let me go."

"No one can stop you, mortal." He said with a regal wave of his hand. "The door is there."

"You know that's not the exit, you bastard."

"Orphan actually. If we're being technical. I am the legitimate child of a pair of royal blue monsters."

She stood from the floor, wiping her hands on her jeans, glaring at the smug alien prince in front of her.

"Don't change the subject! Wait—blue?" Darcy paused and looked at him incredulously. "Like...blue?"

He quirked an eyebrow and nodded.

"Huh..." Darcy trailed off. "So are you..."

Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. She edged closer to Loki. "Could you like show me?"

He opened his eyes then and jumped, startled by how close she had gotten without him realizing it.

"I am quickly tiring of you, mortal."

"Ya know..." Darcy said drily, wringing her hands in front of her. "I could say the same, you royal blue asshole."

Loki opened his mouth to make a snide remark but stopped short when his ears registered a high-pitched whirring sound and the click of metal. Before he could react, Darcy shoved her glove-clad palm straight into his face. The glove had been cranked up to the highest setting and she trapped his face tight in her electrified grip.

Darcy used her forward momentum to tackle him to the floor, holding him there with her body weight.

"LET. ME. GO. NOW." Her teeth were clenched, her entire body tense with the exertion of keeping him down and the adrenaline of having tackled a god. She doubted she could hold the upper hand for long. She was, after all, the ant under his boot. She didn't doubt he would kill her, but it was too late to think about it now.

His undignified shouts were muffled by the metal covering his face, but she could vaguely make out a string of insults and threats. When he fell still, her stomach plummeted. There was no way she knocked him out...she didn't trust it for a sec—

Two strong arms wrapped unforgivingly around her torso from behind, heaving Darcy off Loki's prone form. Loki's voice hissed 'enough' in her ear as she kicked and screamed at him to let her go. He dragged her back and tossed her to the side. The Loki on the floor faded away and disappeared. Darcy turned around to punch Loki with her metal-clad fist, but he caught her arm easily and tsked at her with a dark look.

Darcy opened her mouth, ready to spit venom at the audacity of the stupid blue prince but froze when a heavy-handed knock sounded from the door on the far side of the room. Loki, eyes wide, froze as well.

The pair of them stood there together. Darcy with her fist still aimed at Loki; Loki with Darcy's arm caught in an inhuman grip. Violent sneers melted into shocked looks of curiosity.

"Loki..." Darcy growled at him. "What kinda shit are you pulling?"

But Loki only shook his head. It was then that she registered this fearsome, megalomaniacal alien invader who hijacked her mind and the minds of many, many others, looked...was he...scared?

"That's not me," he said, very lightly, as though he could scarcely breathe.

The knock sounded at the door again, this time more forcefully. It was accompanied by the booming voice of Thor Odinson.

Darcy looked at the door, desperately, while Loki squirmed. She looked back and forth between Loki and the door a few times before desperately trying to break her arm out of his unbreakable grasp. She threw herself bodily away from him, desperate to reach Thor. But Loki held fast, clasping a hand over her mouth as she began to scream.

"Silence, you sniveling child." He shook her gently to get her to fall quiet. She bit his hand and screamed against it. He pulled her back further from the door, watching nervously as Thor's shadow hesitated on the other side. The thunder god called out for Darcy again, asking her if he could please have a moment of her time. He sounded nervous about something.

Darcy had never regretted more that she had spent so much time avoiding him as of late. In the past, Thor's complete disregard for doors and boundaries had been an annoyance. But now Darcy would give anything for that very same disregard.

"Quiet," Loki shook her again, before turning her around to face him, his hand still firmly clasped on her mouth. He looked her in her eyes and pleaded with her. "I will release you. I swear to you, you are in your bedroom still. You are in Avenger's tower. But you must be silent—"

The door began to open. Darcy's room remained as it had been when Loki revealed it to her just moments ago. But Loki's hand disappeared from her mouth, his grip released her wrists, and Darcy turned around to cry out for whoever was opening her bedroom door.

Jane peeked her head around the corner, Thor...who had been nervously shuffling his feet behind his future queen...pulled himself to his full height at the sound of Darcy's shout. He pulled Jane back from the doorway and barreled into the room.

He took in the cluttered space, looking for any sign of an intruder. But all Thor could see was one wide-eyed, disheveled Darcy. Her mouth was open in abject terror, her hand was clad still in an electrified metal glove. He watched the relief flood her as he made his way toward her.

"I didn't think you would hear me," she said with gratitude before gesturing behind her. Thor looked over her shoulder but could not make out the meaning of the gesture. He looked back at Darcy, eyes flooded with no small amount of concern.

Jane was beside him now, eyeballing her best friend warily. The hum of electricity still sounded from Darcy's glove and Jane didn't fully know how punchy Darcy was feeling right now.

"Lady Darcy," Thor rumbled gently. "You are safe. You may disarm your weapon now. You are among friends." He reached for her wrist, to relieve her of her gauntlet, but she snatched her arm away, shaking her head. He ignored the alarmed face Jane made at him, keeping his eyes on the hypervigilant woman in front of him. Gently he coaxed Jane behind his body.

"Nuh-uh big guy," Darcy pulled back. "I'll deactivate this thing when you take care of—" She swung around then, gesturing at the space behind her before stopping short.

Darcy was quiet for a long moment. Thor and Jane did not move but to share glances, concerned for their friend.

"He was right..." Darcy pointed at the air of her bedroom. "He was right here."

"Who...?" Jane asked her hesitantly.

"L—" Darcy turned back to her friends. Both were looking at her like she was completely unhinged. Darcy glanced in the mirror then.

She had dark patches under her eyes, her hair was falling out and there was a red mark on her mouth from where Loki had gripped her face with his hand.

Her clothes were askew from her and Loki's fight, and her eyes were wide and dilated. Nostrils flaring. Teeth bared from adrenaline. Darcy looked wild. Darcy looked...frantic. She looked unwell.

They thought she was freaking out. And Loki had just...gone. All that was left of him was the tiny snake pin, sitting unobtrusively on the floor where he had once stood.

She clenched her fist, deactivating the glove, watching as it folded itself back into a harmless-looking ring. She tried to smile reassuringly at her friends, but it didn't seem to assuage their fears.

"Darcy..." Jane started but trailed off, suddenly unsure.

Thor placed a gentle hand on Jane's shoulder and nodded at the door in askance. She pursed her lips, shot her friend a look, and left the two of them alone.

Darcy moved over to her bed and sat down gingerly, watching Thor with weary eyes.

"My lightning sister with a warrior's heart..." He said this solemnly, kneeling in front of her to look her in the eyes. "I fear we have much to discuss..."

He hesitated before reaching out to gently hold her hands in his own.

"For many centuries I have commanded armies, sent men to kill and die for the peace and safety of the nine realms along Yggdrasil. And many a warrior has struggled to comprehend the things they have seen and done..."

Darcy knew where this was going. And she appreciated the sentiment, but she didn't want to hear it. She knew why Thor thought she was losing it. Maybe she was...but she knew for a fact that Loki had been in her room. She knew for a fact that he had disappeared because he was afraid of his brother.

She had wanted Thor to come in, to save her from Loki and his mind games. But now that Thor was here, all Darcy could think about was the panic in the younger prince's eyes. She looked over Thor's shoulder, to the space where she and Loki had fought only moments ago. Tried to comprehend the rapid shifts that she had experienced in such a short span of time. She was disoriented, but weirdly enough...she was adjusting pretty well to this altered-reality thing.

She forced an appreciative smile onto her face, leaning forward to give Thor a hug. Squeezing him as tight as her arms could allow. He gladly hugged her back. They stayed that way for a beat. It was comfortable. Darcy suddenly felt incredibly tired.

"I appreciate the concern," She mumbled into his shoulder. "But I'm just not ready to have that conversation yet."

He sighed before releasing her and standing up. He made his way to the door.

"I am to embark on the quest of Mortal Kombat with Sam, Son of Will, and the Hawkeye. It would be an honor to have you fight by my side," he said with an excited grin.

Darcy couldn't help but smile back. "Think I'm gonna take a rain check this time, big guy. Might need a nap first." She gestured to the bed with a shrug.

Thor nodded in understanding. "Join us later then," he requested kindly, closing the door on his way out.

The silence was loud in his wake, but Darcy picked up the sound of shuffling of paper and flipped around to face the man she who she knew had reappeared behind her.

Sitting in one of the leather chairs that had been in 'Dr. Lillian's' office was Loki. He was flipping casually through an Abnormal Psychology textbook that Darcy had kept from college.

"Tiresome oaf, isn't he?" He hummed casually as though he hadn't just wreaked havoc on her sense of reality, peace of mind, and the state of her relationships.

It was Darcy's turn to pinch the bridge of her nose in exasperation.

"What do you want, Loki?"

"Who, me?"

He sat up straight and closed the textbook when he heard her glove begin to unfold itself along her hand. He spread his hands out innocently before him.

"I simply wish to be left alone," he said.

"Then, by all means," she hissed. "Go be alone."

"Tricky thing, being alone..." Loki trailed off. "I am alone. Technically. I am on Asgard. Locked in a cell of my father's making. Thor made sure of that...or didn't he tell you?" His voice was snide.

"So, you got what you wanted," Darcy said with a sneer. "Go be there, then. Alone in your cell."

His smile was all teeth and Darcy fought the urge to shrink away from him. There was a glint of something dark in his eyes. Something feral. He was an animal in a corner. No one could see it, but Darcy could see it then with startling clarity.

"The part of my magic that is attached to that pin, allows a physical manifestation of me to wander where it goes. And the pin has, for some reason or another, chosen you as its host."

"Take your pin then and go be somewhere else. Get a new host."

"This is not that kind of magic," he snapped as though she were a fool he no longer wished to suffer.

"Fine. I'll just call up Heimdall and give it back. I'm sure Odin would be pissed to find out about all the souvenirs I took from Asgard. He'd probably throw me in the cell next to you. Wouldn't that be ironic—" Darcy laughed a bit to herself at the absurdity of her life before noticing the stammering, red-faced man in front of her.

"You must not tell Odin. You—"

She threw up her hands, studying him. "Whoa dude, it was just a thought. I won't tell your dad."

"That deceitful, self-righteous, repugnant—" he spluttered for once at a loss for the word he was looking for. "that—that king is no father of mine."

Darcy pressed her lips together, raising her eyebrows and shoving her hands awkwardly in her pockets before mouthing 'oookay' to herself under her breath. Loki, in his rage, barely noticed.

"So, what are we gonna do about this?" She asked him. Gesturing awkwardly between herself and him.

His lips twisted in displeasure.

"I will need time to come to a satisfactory solution," he said begrudgingly.

"And in the meantime?" She asked him with an exasperated droop of her shoulders.

Loki paused for a moment, staring at her, but lost in deep thought. When his eyes refocused, he studied the mortal girl with calculating eyes. There was a spark there that she didn't like. A long slow grin stretched its way across his face.

And then Loki was gone.

Ignoring the clench in her gut, Darcy grabbed the pin from the floor, bringing it up to her face and studying it more carefully. It looked harmless enough, but she didn't want to take any chances.

Loki said the magic had chosen her. Maybe it had. She would do her damndest to get it to unchoose her though. And she would start by getting rid of this stupid pin.

So, she flushed it. Forgot about it. Went to hang out with Thor and company and play some Mortal Kombat. She smiled at the chorus of welcomes she received from the group gathered around the console.

When she plopped down on the couch next to Thor she hissed as her skin was pierced by something sharp. Thor looked at her curiously, but she just smiled at him in dismissal. She reached into her back pocket, pulling out the pin with a look of absolute disdain.

The next day, when Jarvis lit the fireplace in the living room, Darcy tossed the snake pin into the flames. Only to discover it again later on the floor of the shower, where it embedded itself in her big toe.

After an emotional meltdown caused by severe toe pain, Darcy took the pin down to the gym. She batted her pretty eyes at James Barnes and his metal arm. He had looked at her suspiciously, but when she asked him if he could do her a favor no questions asked, he agreed. She held up the pin surreptitiously and asked him to crush the ever-loving shit out of it. Despite the sinking fear that the girl was losing her mind, he acquiesced and crushed the pin in his fist. When he tried to return it to her, she shook her head and told him to make it disappear. 'Like disappear, disappear Bucky. Like hardcore Winter Soldier level, make that pin disappear.' He had flattened his mouth into a thin line and cocked his head at her, about to tell her to quit being dramatic, but she hushed him and shook her head with wide desperate eyes. She was serious. He studied her. 'Just make it go away, Bucky. It's a bad pin. Treat it like it just slapped your mother.'

So, the Winter Soldier took a trip. He was gone for a few days. Not even Captain America could tell you where he was. But he came back and told her in all seriousness that the pin was gone. She was so goddamn relieved that she had gripped his face in her hands, kissing both his cheeks only barely remembering to stop herself before planting one straight on his mouth.

She coughed. That would have been...

She avoided him for a couple days after that.

It was a few nights later when she was laying in bed, wondering if the floor was gonna fall out from underneath her, that something hard fell from out of nowhere and hit her on the forehead. Darcy sat up, turned on the lights, and turned to stare incredulously at the little green and black snake pin, with gold on its trim, sitting innocently on her pillow. It glowed unnaturally, and its scales rippled with magic.

Darcy let out a tired groan before clunking back down onto her pillow in capitulation.

"Fine," she grumbled. She flicked the pin off her pillow, reveling in the brief sense of satisfaction when she heard it hit the floor and slid under her dresser. "You can stay."

The next morning. She woke up, got dressed, and ready for the day. She was just about the brush her teeth when she noticed that there, sitting on the counter next to her tube of toothpaste was her stupid, snake pin. She took a couple of deep breaths in through her nose, clenched her fist to relieve some tension, and maybe cried a little bit though she wouldn't admit it.

Darcy picked up the pin and attached it to her jeans, high enough that it would be tucked out of sight. Shaking her head, she tried to recover her mood. Picking up her toothbrush, she told herself all the ways this day would be better than the ones before it.

It had to be.

And so, the young woman went back to her dull life with her barbaric friends and resigned herself to a life of inadequacy. In the shadows of obnoxious, arrogant, do-gooders who could not tell their wits from their withers, the girl stifled the little potential she had...for she was human, and she knew only how to squander the small amount of good that did exist in her world.

She ate horrid food, and watched horrible plebian forms of entertainment, she chose a life of service as it was all she could really aspire to—

Darcy felt the itch again but this time she was able to register what the fuck was wrong, looking around herself, paranoid, Darcy waved her toothbrush around like a weapon. Mouth foaming with a special mix of Colgate and rage, Darcy growled up at the ceiling.

"I swear to god, you alien jackass, if you don't quit narrating my life, I'm gonna take this stupid pin and I'm gonna give it to your freaking mother. Ya feel me?!"

All was silent.