A/N: Thank you NeverUnderestimateWords, xbecbebex, Guest, pardon-my-crackships and for your reviews!
Hero
'I rub shoulders with gods.'
Darcy sat perfectly still, head tilted downwards, eyes trained on the armed man's shoes so she could watch where he was without him feeling eyes on him. It was possible he hadn't seen her yet; she wasn't visible from the outside.
Unless of course he'd followed her here, then just waited a while to make her sweat it out.
'I rub shoulders with gods,' she told herself, shifting slowly in her seat so that she was poised, ready to stand up and make a break for it. 'I convinced an entire secret government agency to let me take an intergalactic terrorist home with me. That intergalactic terrorist made me breakfast this morning, and is on his way here right now to send this guy straight to the pits of whatever version of hell the Vikings believed in. I rub shoulders with gods.
I have nothing to be afraid of.'
Gripping her Taser, she raised her eyes, willing herself to look at him. The man sniffed, wiping his nose with one shaking hand, and Darcy frowned, noticing a few unexpected things.
The man's fingernails were as short and blunt as she'd expect, but his pinky nail was noticeably long—a coke nail, something that in all his years drowning himself in alcohol, her father had never once shown an interest in. The next thing was that he was short; at first she thought it was just because she'd expanded him in her mind, but after staring at him for a moment, she realized that he was indeed a bit shorter than she remembered.
But oddly enough, it was none of those things that made it click in her mind—no, it was the Colorado Rockies bottle-opener keychain hanging from his jeans pocket, and the fact that her dad was an avid Chicago Cubs fan.
She made herself look at the face—really look, in spite of the hat and the sunglasses and the coat collar. She hadn't seen him since she was sixteen years old, but she hadn't forgotten what he looked like, and this man's chin and cheekbones were completely wrong.
It wasn't him.
A flood of relief evaporated in moments by an inferno of rage. Rage that a complete stranger had had the audacity to make her think that her father had somehow hunted her down; this ordinary scumbag had reduced her to a trembling teenager, waiting helplessly for rescue to arrive. She exhaled slowly, heat flaring through every part of her, as her third adrenaline rush in twenty minutes slowed the scene before her and he slid the gun out of his pocket to hold it low at his side.
'I rub shoulders with gods,' she thought, looking down on him from the inside of her mind as she glided fluidly to her feet and crept towards him, her Taser an old friend in her hand.
'And the last time a god scared me half this bad, I Tased his ass too.'
-0-
Two police cars passed Loki with their sirens on as he ran flat out towards Darcy's place of refuge. To his horror, they pulled into the parking lot beneath the signature Golden Arches, and the officers immediately spilled out, leaving their lights flashing, to enter the restaurant. Panic jolted down his spine, and he gripped the switchblade he'd carried in his pocket ever since his disastrous kidnapping at the hands of rogue SHIELD agents. He missed his daggers, but he couldn't really carry anything larger in the garments typical of American mortals.
Keeping the knife concealed for the moment—there was no point in alarming the police and having to hack his way through them prematurely—Loki slowed and rounded the building so he could get a look through the brightly-lit windows while the outside darkness kept him hidden. Two officers were escorting—well, half carrying, half dragging—a heavily bundled, handcuffed, and totally unconscious man from the building. A third was placing a run-of-the-mill handgun into an evidence bag, and a fourth was listening to something the shaken but apparently unharmed cashier was saying.
There was no sign of Darcy anywhere, and the arrested criminal could not have been genetically related to her. For a moment he thought that perhaps he'd found the wrong McDonald's—they were bloody everywhere, after all—but then he heard an unusual sound. Someone nearby was humming faintly; the opening to Light Em Up, if he wasn't mistaken. And below that, there was a faint buzzing, which would start and stop at random.
The sound of someone clicking a Taser on and off like a nervous person might click a pen.
He found her two buildings down, in the entryway to an alley—far enough in that it was hard to see her from the street except for the tiny blue spark of electricity she was gripping like a lifeline, but not far enough in that if someone were hiding behind the trash bins at the end of it, they could get to her without her seeing and electrocuting them.
"Darcy," he said softly, more to announce his presence than because he doubted it was her. She was crouching down, and her head whipped up at his voice, her eyes wide, skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Before he could say anything else, she'd scrambled up and flung herself at him. His arms wrapped around her instinctively. After the panicked dash to get to her, he needed to feel that she was here and whole.
"It wasn't him," she murmured after a long moment. "There was a man with a gun, but it wasn't him—just some dumb thief. I freaked out and fried his ass," she added with a little more strength, holding up her Taser for emphasis. "But…" she turned her face to look back in the direction of the restaurant.
"I panicked after. I didn't want to draw attention to myself and I was scared that what I did might count as assault, even though I probably saved lives, so I just ran out the door, but my backpack's still in there, with my dart cartridge and my ID and my keys…" she trailed off.
"And you don't want to explain to the police why you left in such a hurry, he finished for her. She nodded mutely, and he could see her teeth clenching.
"I can retrieve your things without being seen—that's no challenge," he assured her. "Will you be all right out here by yourself for another two minutes?" she looked up at him questioningly.
"And what if they think it's weird that some guy is coming into a crime scene and picking up an abandoned bag?" she demanded shakily.
"I said," he replied evenly, placing his hands on her shoulders and quirking an eyebrow, "they won't see me. Do you trust me, Darcy?"
"Y-yeah," she responded, nonplussed. "Of course I do. But how—?" she cut off as Loki vanished from view. A soft chuckle from a few steps away and the removal of the warmth of another living body were the only thing to alert her to the fact that he'd already started to head back towards the restaurant.
True to his word, Loki emerged from the gloom two minutes later, Darcy's backpack slung casually over his shoulder. In that time, she'd had the chance to compose herself, realize that someone whose magic had been taken away half a year ago shouldn't be able to turn invisible at will, and then remember all the reasons that she'd trusted him so far, and apply them to the present situation. Leaving the bag where it rested against one side of his back, he wrapped an arm around Darcy and started to walk back towards the train station.
"I altered the security video so your face doesn't show," he mentioned casually. "Unless you tell anyone or the cashier you saved happens to recognize you on the street, tonight should remain safely between ourselves. Though I doubt you would be charged with anything, if I'm understanding the relevant laws correctly." Darcy nodded.
"You're probably right," she whispered, trudging along as the weight of that deeply exhausting evening began to hit her. They carried on in silence until they reached the train station, and then without her prompting him to do so, Loki led her into a private sort of alcove at the end of the empty car, sitting between her and the rest of the carriage so that, of the two of them, the only thing really in view was the shoulder of his coat, and even that only from a particular angle.
"When'd you get it back?" she whispered after a few minutes. He'd left his arm around her, and she was leaning against him, so she could feel the very slight rise of tension in his muscles. It was subtle, but Darcy was still on edge, poised to notice absolutely everything. "Your magic," she clarified, although it was obvious he understood. "I thought your mom did something to drain it?"
"She did," he explained after contemplating his answer for a moment. "But she had to leave a remnant to let me maintain my human appearance. During my unfortunate experience at the hands of the vengeful former SHIELD agents, I discovered that by deactivating that spell, I could harness and use trace amounts of my former power. This is nothing compared to what I can really do," he added bitterly. "But yeah, I can be invisible for a few minutes and tamper with a few frames of security recording." He felt rather than saw her nod as he glared aimlessly at a random point on the car wall in front of them. But a moment later, she drew away from him, sitting up straighter and turning her head to look at him.
"Wait, you don't just mean your hair, right? What human appearance? I thought Asgardians looked human to begin with?"
"Well, first of all, it's the other way round," he corrected her dryly, wishing he hadn't brought it up and had instead made up a clever lie about his magic. He was too much in the habit of defaulting to the truth with her. "Humans look Asgardian. And second, I believe I mentioned that my real parents are beings known as Frost Giants?"
"Um, yeah," Darcy remembered, wracking her brain for details. This was good. It was better to focus on some fascinating new alien nuance to her roommate than to think too hard about what had and hadn't happened that night. "You didn't mention that they… you… look different though."
"Well, we do," he responded quietly. "What you're seeing now is an illusion—a caricature, I suppose. This is what I would look like if I were Asgardian. Or human," he allowed. "All I did tonight was alter the appearance to reflect the background behind me. It's like a disillusionment charm, instead of an invisibility cloak," he added, suddenly realizing the Harry Potter parallel.
"Huh," Darcy nodded thoughtfully. "Can I see?"
"You already saw," he responded, although the pit beginning to form in his stomach was warning him that she hadn't meant his handy little chameleon trick.
"No, I mean you," she corrected, elbowing him in the ribs. "Can I see what you really look like?"
"Why?" he demanded, realizing that he was sounding petulant when he meant to sound offended.
"Because, I've never seen a real alien before! I mean—" she added quickly as he opened his mouth to remind her for the umpteenth time that he and Thor were 'real' aliens, thank you very much, "y'know, alien-looking aliens."
"You saw the Chitauri on all those recordings," he grumbled.
"Real alien-looking aliens who don't want to kill me, then," she sighed. "How come you don't want to show me?" she countered.
"We're on a public train and I'm meant to be a human named Luke Randle," he shot back, rolling his eyes.
"Okay, when we get home, then," she shrugged. He opted for a noncommittal jerk of his eyebrow and folding his arms across his chest, figuring he could do a better job of dissuading her in the moment than he could getting her to drop it so far in advance. Deciding she'd won, apparently, she settled back in beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He could tell that she was still tightly wound, but she was doing what she always did in scenarios like that; distracting herself by anything and everything she possibly could. They rode in silence for a while longer, got off the train at the stop near their apartment, and made their way down the darkened street towards the square of light from the lamp that Darcy always forgot to turn off.
Once they arrived indoors and shed their coats, Loki immediately set about calling the insurance company to arrange for the car to be towed and have the tires replaced. Luckily, the foolish criminal had slashed all four, so the insurance policy would cover the damage. Darcy sat down on the living room sofa, but didn't put on a movie or grab a book or even take off her shoes. Once he'd disconnected the call, Loki sat down beside her, trying to gauge if her silence was the pensive, frightened, brooding kind or the plotting-how-best-to-make-Loki-show-me-his-true-form kind.
Then he heard her swallow.
"Hey," she started, and her voice was uncharacteristically rough and quiet. "I'm… gonna ask you a personal question, okay? You don't have to answer—I'm not gonna push you, or whatever."
"I think that is quite literally a first," he quipped, looking down at her warily. "What do you want to know?"
"Do you…?" she swallowed. "Do you regret," she finally whispered, "killing your birth father?"
A/N: Another cliffy! But Darcy's not in potentially mortal peril in this one, so it's a little better, no?
My coworker, when confronted with the Chevy vs Elevator dilemma, pointed out that while we heard a conversation speculating about the hammer in an elevator, we've never actually seen Mjolnir in an elevator without Thor, either going up or staying still, so we don't actually know if the elevator would go up. Therefore it neither proves nor disproves the truck theory. Thank you for weighing in, pardon-my-crackships, but an elevator is still operated by a human pushing a button; it's not a machine doing things on its own any more than a truck is a machine driving on its own. Now an AI like Jarvis or whatever software Dum-E is running would be a machine making "decision," so theoretically that should be possible. Wouldn't it be hysterical if Dum-E picked it up, just 'cause, 'cause Dum-E never really does anything purposeful? Tony would be on about how his robot was worthy and so he was worthy by proxy…