A/N: TRIGGER WARNING: attempted violence against a minor and descriptions of gun wounds.
Thank you pardon-my-crackships and JPElles for your reviews of the last chapter!
Secrets
Loki's eyebrows shot up. Of all the things he'd expected to come out of her mouth—do you breathe under water, do you eat polar bears, how many genitals does your species have—that was certainly not what he'd anticipated hearing.
"Thinking of offing yours?" he checked quietly, wondering how much she could get away with considering what SHIELD owed her versus how many buttons she tended to push. There was no denying that the quick and quiet murder of Doug Lewis would certainly be a long-term solution to the problem she was facing now—Loki had even been considering how he might go about it without getting caught, or at least set things up so that the criminal would be caught breaking the terms of his parole and tossed back in jail. He hadn't really expected that Darcy would come to the same conclusion herself, however. For all her bluster and love for her Taser, she wasn't a particularly violent soul.
"No," she responded, shaking her head. "I feel like that would be giving him even more power over me, 'cause I'd become a murderer just over him. But…" she added, so quietly he had difficulty hearing her, "I was going to, then.
"I planned it," she admitted. "I didn't see another way out, I didn't think anyone could help me. I was so scared, so scared. What you're seeing now is just a watered-down version," she assured him darkly. "I watched him so I'd know the code to his safe; memorized it so no one could catch me writing it down. I got his gun out while he was asleep in front of the TV—well, I thought he was asleep." A shudder ran through her, and the air seemed to cool by a few degrees. "I was wearing gloves, so the gun wouldn't have my fingerprints on it—only his. I was gonna shoot him in the side of the head, then stick the gun in his hand so people would think it was a suicide. Just like TV," she whispered with a shrug and a dead-eyed smile.
"He came upstairs when he heard the lock open—it was this old, clanky safe, definitely not built for getting into it quietly. He started shouting, telling me to drop it, waving this big rock paperweight around, threatening to kill me if I didn't put the gun down…" She was squeezing the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left, staring off into space as she described the scene.
"The first shot missed, and I had about half a second to realize that now he was definitely going to kill me. The next shot hit him about here," she pressed two fingers to a spot just below her clavicle, "and the third went through his lung, over here." When she gestured to the site, Loki noticed that her hands were shaking.
"He fell backwards, and just kept coughing. It was that nasty, wet pneumonia sound, but it wasn't mucus in his lungs, it was blood.
"I just stood there, watching him drown on the carpet," she murmured. "But then it was like I woke up—actually, it was more like somebody shocked me with a cattle prod. And then I was fumbling with the phone and calling an ambulance.
"I've always wondered what would've been different, y'know? If I'd been strong enough or bad enough or however you see it, to let him die." Taking a deep breath, she cleared her throat, rubbing casually at her eyes, then looked him in the eye for the first time since starting her story.
"I know all of your dirty secrets," she said with a shrug. "And now you know all of mine.
"Well," she amended, seeming to return to herself, "that and I used to sleep with V, and now I call him one of my brothers. I guess not actual incest, but still weird." She shrugged and smirked. "You'll meet him next month. He's the hot Russian one." Loki snickered a little, but then sobered.
"I don't regret killing Laufey," he admitted dispassionately. "I regret some of the other things I did in those days," he added vaguely, "not the least of which was not sitting down and thinking everything through so I could make better decisions, and a cleverer plan. But Laufey was a monster long before he was the father who abandoned me to the mercies of his enemies. The fact that an accident of birth meant we shared blood really just disgusts me even more.
"When I was growing up, we'd always hear stories about how the Jotuns were these uncivilized monsters. They were the bogey-men of Asgardian children; the perpetual, stereotypical 'enemy.' Now that I think about it, I don't know what it was we were supposed to hate, exactly, but when you're a little one and they aren't giving you details on historical battles just yet, what you hear is that they've got eyes like glowing coals and skin like a frozen rock and they probably eat naughty children whole."
"So… basically, racism," Darcy summed up when he fell silent for a moment. He looked at her thoughtfully before shrugging and nodding. It hadn't really occurred to him in that way, but he supposed she had a point.
"In any case, I don't suppose it would've upset me so terribly, to learn that I was adopted. But what did upset me, what still makes me want to rip my own skin off sometimes," he gritted out, realizing that he'd made a fist and slowly releasing it, "is that when I look in the mirror, I see something I was taught to hate. And I resent that Odin allowed me to grow up hearing these stories and never once contradicted them, gave me no window, no thread of hope that I might someday respect myself for what I was instead of reviling the beast he'd hidden from me.
"You would think!" he exclaimed, flinging his arms wide, "that if you were going to adopt a child from an enemy people that you might at least make an attempt to tone down your explicit hatred for that people. Mother was better at it, but she's not the sort who hates easily, so that's not saying much," he sighed moodily.
"I need a drink," Darcy decided after a moment of silence. "You need a drink? Let's drink to terrible parents." She stood up and headed into the kitchen to retrieve two cider beers from the refrigerator.
"To horrible parents," Loki toasted as he popped the top off and inclined his bottle towards her. She returned the gesture, and they each took a long draught.
"I suppose what I resent most is that I tried so long and hard to earn Odin's approval, when I was never going to get it. And I think I could've understood that I was never going to get it, but nobody ever bothered to tell me, so I wasted years and years of pain and effort for nothing." Another long draught and the beer was gone. He was sorely tempted to smash the bottle against the floor just for the satisfaction of destroying something, but Darcy was still a little on edge, and he didn't want to find the last of the glass shards three days later with his foot. He settled for discarding the bottle on the table and retrieving another in five total steps and one deft twist of his fingers.
The cold glass against his palm made him remember Darcy's request from the train, and he looked at her critically. She was only about halfway through her first beer, and looking at him expectantly, assuming he had more to say.
"Do you still want to see?" he asked.
"Yeah," she nodded honestly, eyes widening. Using the chill from the bottle as a catalyst, he let the spell fall away from his hand, then switched the drink into the other to hold up his now blue appendage for Darcy to inspect.
"Whoa," she whispered, reaching out seemingly without thinking about it, and gently running her fingers along the ridges that decorated his skin. "Cool…"
"Really?" Loki demanded flatly, not sure if he should laugh or roll his eyes. "You see a Frost Giant hand for the first time, and the first thing you say is 'cool?'"
"Hey," she grumbled, grabbing his hand between her fingers and maneuvering it out from her line of sight so she could glare at him, and he thought she probably said something else, something that roughly translated to "pun not intended," but he missed it as his mind caught up with how easily and casually she touched his blue skin. He'd gotten so caught up in thinking that this form was some foreign thing, like a disease or a parasite plaguing his body, that it never occurred to him that it was still just him; that anyone else would ever see it as just being him. His heart did a remarkably undignified stutter, and he found the rest of the spell lifting involuntarily as he lost focus.
Darcy stopped speaking as she saw the blue flesh creep up his neck and over his face, watched his blonde hair turn black again and lose its curl to cling closely to his head. Her eyes stared unblinkingly into his vivid crimson ones, and for a moment he felt the overwhelming urge to look away, close them, hide himself again. He hadn't intended to show her so much, but there was no going back now. He forced himself to remain stoic, not wanting her to see his discomfort.
Slowly, she raised a hand—still holding his with the other—and ran her fingers across the ridges on his cheek, her index sliding down the bridge of his nose to follow the trail.
"Incredible," she breathed.
"What." was his ineloquent response. He had anticipated a great many reactions, but not this one. How could he have foreseen the look of amazed wonder, in reaction to what he'd just shown her? He'd never imagined that anyone could look at a Jotun that way.
He'd never imagined that anyone could look at him that way.
"Well, I'm human, and I think you look spectacular," she responded in total seriousness. "I get the whole internalized prejudice thing, I'm not trying to say I don't," she added quickly, withdrawing her hand to gesture, but not releasing his with her other one. "I just… I think you look fantastic," she finished a little lamely.
"Alien-looking enough for you?" he joked lightly, trying not to let himself be overwhelmed. She nodded, looking pleased.
"Totally real alien," she agreed with a grin, and finally let go of his hand to retrieve her beer bottle and take another sip. He swallowed a few more gulps of his own, then exhaled, letting the spell come back up.
"So, does your junk look the same as ours, then?" she asked at the exact right moment for him to snort and get beer up his nose.
"I knew that was coming eventually," he grumbled as he wiped his face, shaking his head and glaring at her.
"What, it's a legitimate question!" she exclaimed innocently. "You have an eternal case of the blue—"
"So help me I will pour this over your head, human," he cut her off threateningly, but without any real malice. Darcy was laughing and making off-color jokes (quite literally, in this case) and after everything that had and hadn't happened that day, that meant that all was right with the world.
-0-
It would later transpire that Doug Lewis had moved in with an old friend in southern Indiana, as he had little money and less ability to get a job or housing immediately upon release from prison. With said friend's help, he'd eventually managed to get hired on a corn farm, and was working long hours for little money. Consequently, he would hardly be able to afford to make the six-hour trip into Chicago, much less the fourteen-hour drive to Colorado all for the sake of slashing Darcy's tires.
Loki wasn't entirely sure how Coulson knew that he'd want updates on the situation, but then again this was the agent whose job it was to keep tabs on the most dangerous criminal on the planet, so it wasn't that much of a surprised when the unassuming man wordlessly slid the relevant file across the table to him at their meeting that Saturday. Darcy had often made a big deal about the issues surrounding the American prison system and its aftermath, but it was clear that she was comforted in the knowledge that her abuser would be too hard pressed to survive to be able to do her harm. As days without incident went by and she thought about him less, her anxiety waned, her natural humor waxed and all was right with the world again.
For his part, Loki found himself walking on air as finals came and went and they packed for their trip to Chicago. Darcy's awed face when she saw his true form stayed with him like a prized possession a weary soldier might carry in their breast pocket. The memory of that moment buoyed him up at the most unexpected times. Of all the things he thought perhaps he might find on earth, never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that someone might accept him so completely, being what he was.
Even Rowena Ahlström noticed that his mood had noticeably improved, although he accredited some of it to her advice that day in her office. He had a little magic, he had a month off of school to catch up on Stephen King, he had two weeks off of work in the middle of the Holidays, and he had Darcy Lewis in the bedroom across the hall; something which he was coming to appreciate more every day.
Perhaps even a little too much.
But that was a problem for another day.
A/N: Well, well, well, lookie where we're heading?!
In other news, INFINITY WAR TRAILER INFINITY WAR TRAILER INFINITY WAR TRAILER IF I HAVE TO WATCH ANY OF MY AVENGER BABIES DIE ON SCREEN WITH MY OWN TWO EYES I WILL FIND MARVEL AND I WILL CUT THEM ALL OF THEM I WILL CUT THEM ALL DO YOU HEAR ME MARVEL YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Also, my favorite pen that I use at work almost exclusively has only a hair's breadth of ink left in it… What will I do when it runs out? I'm at the point where I don't have to write my name on notes anymore because everyone knows that I'm the one who writes in Robin-Hood-green.