Chapter Thirty-Three: Earn It
Loki leaned back in the armchair, still with perfect posture as he tried to relax. He continued to pet Sasha rhythmically as he tried to arrange his thoughts. His method of taking things as they came and adapting as the moment suited him had gotten him nowhere. His spur of the moment ideas and hasty reactions led him in fact further away from what he wanted. Then again… He had to pause. What was it that he wanted? Underneath the anger, resentment and entitlement he knew were ruling his actions, what was there? And where did Eve come into it all?
"So…" Darcy trailed off with her finger tapping on the comforter.
"What?" Loki glared at her for interrupting his self exploration. He hadn't made any progress. That wasn't much of a surprise.
"Do you want me to go over there now? What do you want me to tell her?"
Loki laughed derisively. "I fear you've misunderstood."
"You asked if I could get a message to her…"
"Yes. Not you in person. Your face."
Darcy stood up in a flash and ran toward the door, which had already been magically sealed shut. She turned to the bathroom and attempted to run inside, but Loki slammed the door in her face with a flick of his wrist. She backed into a corner and pointed at him. "Hey, man, listen, I'll help you out, but you cannot cut my face off!"
Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. "No. No, you-"
"I love this face! This face gets free drinks! I mean, it's probably not so much my face as it is my-"
"Silence!" Loki boomed as he took to his feet. "I'm not going to cut your face off. I'm just going to borrow it."
Darcy shivered in a visible panic before shouting, "You're not making any sense!"
He took a few steps toward her without saying a word. The girl was a disaster. Still, it was great fun to watch her mind fly out of sorts. Darting from one terrifying possibility to the next. When he was bored with her whimpering, he took in her appearance, scanning her from top to bottom. "Turn around," he commanded.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Darcy kept saying in rapid succession.
"Make no mistake. I can force you. I'm trying to be polite." The final word burned on his tongue. He frowned and tried to scrape it off with his teeth in one quick motion.
"No, no, no, NO, NO, NO-" she was getting louder by the moment. He twirled his finger around and rolled his eyes. She spun about and shrieked. She stared into the corner, unable to turn her head, and waited for some kind of pain. A stab or a sudden, piercing ache. The anticipation became more than she could bear. "Is this gonna be like some Blair Witch bull shit or-" she felt the force keeping her in place release and she hesitated. After a nervous lick of her lips, she turned around slowly. There before her was, well..her. She squinted her eyes. "How the-" she took a step forward. She grabbed the figure's wrist and lifted the arm up to examine it.
Loki swat her hand away. "Don't touch me," he warned, but it was her voice that came out.
"How on god's green earth are you doing that?" she wondered with her eyes now open in child-like wonder.
"It's one of my many talents," he replied.
"Can I just say…" she nodded her head a few times, "I am really good looking."
Loki wiggled his new fingers in front of his face as though checking to make sure they work. "Alright, so you'll stay here, and I'll just head in and-"
"You'll just head in?" Darcy put her hands on her hips and Loki mimicked her, watching closely to try and get down exactly how she held herself. "Why? Eve and I aren't friends or anything. What's your reason? SHIELD is all about reasons. I get asked what I'm doing when I'm on my way to the dining room sometimes."
"I was actually going to bring Sasha with me. Claim I thought, or, well, you thought they could use a visit."
Darcy was stumped. "Yeah, you know what, actually, that is something I would do."
"Alright, so you'll stay here, and I'll-"
"Wait!" She held out her hands in front of him to stop him from walking. Again, Loki mimicked her and studied her stance. "Okay, first? Stop that. I get what you're doing, but it's freaking me out and stop. Second-you don't even know what my name is. How are you going to carry on a conversation with someone as me?"
"It's not as though I'm going to be strolling down the hall looking for people to chat with!"
"That's the thing! I talk. A lot. I talk a lot. You don't know the first thing about me and you're going to get me fired or something! And Jane! What if you run into her? She'll know if something's off about-"
"Fine. What's your name?"
"Darcy," she told him and smiled a bit, thinking she'd made progress in her argument.
"Alright. Darcy, I'm not going to get you fired. However, I don't need to know anything else. I like a challenge anyway."
"Wait," she begged. He stared at her and pursed his lips impatiently. "That's a very good face, actually," she pointed and nodded. "But how is Eve going to know it's you?"
"I gave her the sight, she can see through my disguises," he explained.
"Can I have that?"
"No, you may not."
"Why not?" She pouted.
"You've done nothing to earn it," he scoffed and began walking.
"What did she do to earn it?"
Loki stopped. At this rate, he wouldn't be at the door for another three hours. It was an interesting question she posed. What had Eve done to deserve it? He bestowed it upon her for no real reason. It was based on the idea that if she saw him in another form, she may stop fearing him, she could have gotten a moment of bravery and tried to tell the agents about him. Then he would have had to kill her. And he didn't want to kill her. So by giving her the sight, he had been protecting her. Protecting her from himself. And that was something he feared now he would have to do often.
"Was it something dirty?" Darcy went on with a wink and an over-enthusiastic smile.
"How can you go from being scared of me ripping your face off to teasing me?"
"It's hard for me to be scared of you when you look like me. I'm a total weakling."
"I have magical abilities."
Darcy winced at the thought of herself with magic powers. Actually, that would be fairly horrific. "That's fair. Get the dog."
Elsewhere
Eve was still sitting in bed. Her babysitters club had shrunk from a massive hoard to just two people-Thor and Jane. They sat quietly conversing across from her, not loud enough for her to hear or participate in. She had the blanket up over her legs and was trying to think of some idle conversation to make. She'd done fine at dinner with them. A lot had changed since then, though none of it was her fault. Or was all of it her fault? If she had just spurned Loki's advances in the first place- If she had just been strong enough not to let Sam kiss her- If she had-
She bit the inside of her cheek. She thought of Natasha and her kind words. She tried to focus on the fact that Sam was alive. She repeated it over and over in her head like a mantra. Still, thoughts kept creeping in through her barriers. About how Sam's life would have never been in danger if not for her. About how Loki was not a man she should be getting close to. She shook her head and all the thoughts she'd carefully organized on the metaphorical shelves of her mind came crashing to the floor. There was no point. No logic or reason to be comforted by. What had happened had happened. It was as simple a statement as any. She couldn't continue to wallow in the shame of her decisions. Should she have slept with Loki? No. Should she have gotten even remotely attached to him? No. But she had-and that was that.
With the pain of the night prior still pulsing at the pit of her brain, she let herself feel it. The passion and panic of the night bloomed in her like a flower. She relived every crucial moment. And as it opened up, she found another, smaller urge beneath it. She took a deep breath and let it go. The urge floated to the outer layers of her brain and hung there without being understood for a few seconds. It waited for her to catch up.
She inhaled sharply and tried to ignore it. It wove itself into the wrinkles on her lobes. She missed him. She hated it, she felt shame and annoyance and tons of other little things. Then once that subsided, she let the ache resume. Was it worth it to try and suppress her emotions? Was it making her feel even slightly better to be so tightly wound? She knew the answers to these questions before she asked them. These people couldn't read her mind. Acting like she was so innocent on the inside was tearing her apart. It was a lie. She'd had her hands in everything. She'd wanted Loki to kiss her in the way she'd sometimes fantasize about a coworker or a man at a bar she didn't have the guts to talk to. And then he had kissed her, and she wanted more. She egged him on and backed off time and time again, always fighting her inner do-gooder for control. It had always been about what Sam would think, what her mother would think. Well her mother wasn't around, was she?
She missed him. But at least she wasn't pretending anymore.
