Contemplation

Darcy-21 years old

Loki- 25 years old

Loki clapped politely with the rest of the people in the church, privately admiring how the cream colored dress complimented Sigyn's skin so well.

He moved quietly from the church to the adjoining hall for the reception, he had decided against bringing a date because it felt impolite to bring a stranger to one of his best friends' wedding. Thor had been invited as well but he was somewhere else with Sif as his date, Loki had no wish to talk to Sif if he could avoid it.

He made polite conversation with the people at his table while dinner was served, he watched attentively while the first dance was performed and he politely refused to go into the throng of men hoping to catch the garter belt.

The reception was finally winding down when Sigyn came to look for him.

"Congratulations." Loki tipped his champagne flute and Sigyn gave him a soft, dazed smile as she took a seat next to him.

"I want to thank you for coming, I know how much you-"She stopped herself, clearly unsure on how to keep going.

"I would never dream of not coming, you are a dear friend and I value our friendship very much." Even if the jealousy of her having her soul mate before him made him burn inside, there was a childish voice reminding him that he should have met his soul mate by now.

"You'll find her Loki, she's out there somewhere." Sigyn told him encouragingly, Loki gifted her a weak smile.

"I'm sure she is." But the conviction of it was slowly dying inside him, because what if she wasn't?

He danced with Sigyn, a slow song that made his heart ache. There was nothing else he could say to her as she was swept away from him for a dance with her father.

He left then, returned to his apartment overlooking the city and poured himself a glass of scotch as he contemplated the twinkling city lights.

Loki was tired of waiting, tired of not having the person who he had been waiting for his whole life, the person that was promised to him through some of sort of magic modern science still couldn't explain.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture her, tried to picture a faceless woman kissing his cheek, caressing his neck and murmuring words of love into his ears. He would always picture her with dark hair, not black like his but a dark brown that would shine like gold in the sunlight, soft plump lips that he could trace with his fingers and maybe her eyes would be the color of the sapphire resting in the engagement ring his birth parents had left to him. Her ring, a ring that was still tucked away in his dresser.

He had succumbed once and tried one of the endless websites where people could try to figure out how their soul mates would look like, after endless hours of surveys he had ended up with a picture of a generic looking woman that met all the specifications he had always dreamed of. It had been a waste of time, the end result hadn't told him anything new except that he had a weakness for brunettes with fair skin.

The picture was somewhere in his home office, tucked away with all the other useless information he had gathered about soul mates through the years. At the end f it, all the knowledge on the subject hadn't granted him his soul mate and the hours wasted rested heavily on his chest.

She was out there somewhere, living her life without him and maybe even living it happily with someone else. The thought made his stomach churn and he took a drink of his scotch to wash the sensation away.

Loki was so engrossed in his musings that he completely missed his phone vibrating inside his pocket, the call going straight to voice mail.


"Jane! No one is picking up on the number you gave me! Are you sure it's the right number?" Darcy called out from her spot in the van, Jane was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get readings with a machine that looked like a pager.

"I don't know! That's the number they gave me!" Jane didn't even seem out of breath as she kept running, which Darcy thought was impressive since she hadn't seen the boss lady eat anything else but pop-tarts and coffee.

Not the healthiest of diets.

"We shouldn't even be calling anyway, it's late." Darcy checked her watch and whistled low, because it was super late to call anywhere, never mind the office that provided their funding.

"Let me see." Jane ripped the phone from her hands and double checked the number before redialing and handing it back to her. "It's a seven not a one!"

"My bad! It's still super late though!" Jane waved her off as she started running back and forth again with her pager, Darcy dutifully stayed on the line until it, that call too, went to voice mail. This time though the voice mail told her she was calling the right place, she left a short message about Jane and her bank account before hanging up and going back to watch Jane run around.

Working with Jane was exhausting, the girl just didn't know when to quit and typically she wouldn't care to stay up until dawn but Jane didn't want to do fun things like drink and go skinny dipping. No, Jane wanted to go out in the middle of the desert and do science with a good chunk of math that would put anyone into a deep sleep, that stuff was better than ambien.

If it wasn't for the fact that she needed the six credits Jane was giving her to graduate, Darcy would have bailed a long time ago.

"Jane! We need to go, you have that meeting tomorrow!" Jane hadn't told her much about the meeting except that some private company wanted to fund her research, it would apparently give them information to built machines to make better satellites.

Jane stumbled, threw a curse at the sky and slowly made her way back to the van all the while staring at the pager thingy.

"You are going to shower right? And maybe comb your hair?" Darcy asked her hopefully while she drove them back to their research lab that was once a gas station.

"I showered." Jane protested weakly, because they both knew that Jane left everything in the dust if it wasn't science related.

"Yeah, like five days ago. You have to make a good impression, this guy wants to give you tons of money, so maybe you can wear clean clothes too?" Darcy wondered what Jane would do once she met her soul mate, they all been taught in school about how strong the bond was that nothing else mattered for a good while after.

Darcy thought maybe Jane's soul mate was science itself but the words on her back disproved that.

It is the biggest of pleasures meeting the woman that will mean everything to me.

It was sweet as hell but Jane seemed uninterested in it, it wasn't science and therefore Jane didn't care.

"Yeah." She replied, still staring at the pager thingy and Darcy rolled her eyes as she parked the van.

"Shower, then bed. I'll wake you up at ten." Sometimes her job as assistant doubled as babysitter.

Jane made a noise, almost falling from the van when she opened the door and stepped out wrong.

"Give it." Darcy put her hand on her hip and gave Jane her best glare, Jane gave her a stubborn look before surrendering the pager and stomping to her trailer.

Yes, sometimes she wondered if the six college credits were worth it. That particular night they weren't but tomorrow when she woke up and remembered how close she was to graduating, then it would be a completely different story.

And she would be a liar if she didn't say that Jane's weird tics were starting to become kind of endearing.