CHAPTER EIGHT

"I see no reason why we should not leave tonight." Loki glanced between the two women. "I assume, of course, that preparations are finished?"

Jane looked disconcerted. "No, no, we have what we need, but…tonight? Do we really need to leave so soon?"

Loki shrugged. "It's as good a night as any. I am sufficiently rested, I am maintaining a pain alleviation spell upon myself, and you have what you require to get through a day or two of negotiations with the jotun."

She pursed her lips. "Could we say our goodbyes to Erik first? Well, mine anyway," she said hurriedly. "Darcy will be back. But this is it for me."

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I'm not stopping you from doing whatever business you deem necessary before we depart." He leaned back. "But I would like to be leaving in a matter of hours. The longer we remain, the weaker I become."

Jane nodded. "That seems reasonable," she said in the closest thing resembling a kind tone that Loki had ever heard used in connection to himself. She turned to Darcy. "Come on. Let's get this done with."

"You're going to bloody Asgard."

"I'm sorry you can't come with us, Erik," Darcy said glumly. "I'll try to take pictures, if the camera works there."

Erik scoffed. "Pictures? Bah. It's not the sights I'm interested in. It's the data. Do you realize how much we could learn from being in another world?" His eyes turned glassy and vague.

Jane smiled sympathetically. "I'll try to send Darcy back with some observations," she said. "And maybe I could convince someone who understands this whole magic thing to let me come back and visit every so often."

Erik sighed, giving the two women a sad smile. "Yes, well…in any case, it has been a pleasure to work with both of you. Take care of yourselves." He grinned. "And I'd tell you to take care of Thor, but I think he could take care of a planet single-handedly if he wanted to."

"We'll be safe," Jane said, hugging Erik briefly.

Darcy hugged him too. When she pulled away, she had a frown on her face. "Hang on…what are you going to tell SHIELD?"

Erik snorted. "Tell SHIELD? As far as I'm concerned, this conversation never happened. You two just vanished one night without a trace, and that's the story I'm sticking with. Eh?"

Darcy smiled. "We never saw you."

"Atta girl," Erik said jovially. His face turned serious. "Farewell to you both."

With a final clap on the back, he turned to return to his work. He hesitated halfway to the lab.

"Oh yes," he called. "Try not to irritate Loki too much. He might not have much magic right now, but I hear his children can be quite nasty when they intend to be."

Loki felt a pair of eyes on the back of his head as he transformed his clothing into something warmer and more suitably human. He turned around to see who it was.

Darcy stood in the doorway, apparently transfixed by the back of his head.

He quirked an eyebrow at her sarcastically. "I am not going to remove my shirt in the process of changing my clothing if that's what you're after."

Darcy was unruffled. "How many children do you have?" she asked simply.

Loki was taken aback. He had been expecting something more…shallow out of her.

"A few," he said cautiously. "All of them the result of magic performed by myself and a hag by the name of Angrbooa. We were associates in creating chaos, mischief, you could say, for a long time." He frowned, partially confused by her sudden interest in his life, but mostly because he realized the sweater he had just created was bright blue and hideous. "Why do you ask?" he said brusquely, turning the shirt into something more palatable…and black.

Darcy shrugged. "Just some comment Erik made about your kids being nasty at times. Probably mythology-based."

"Well, this Midgardian mythology may contain many errors, but in this case your friend Erik is correct." He smiled sardonically. "They did learn from the best." He turned to Darcy. "I assume, then, that you and Jane have spoken to him?"

She nodded. "Everything's ready to go."

"Good." Loki created a heavy black overcoat from thin air and slipped it over his plain clothes smoothly. "Get your things. With luck, we will be leaving shortly."

Darcy nodded and scurried off to find Jane.

Loki watched her leave and turned back to the mirror, glancing at his attire to be certain that nothing would give him away as a god. He scowled. The scarf thrown around his neck had somehow turned midnight blue. He changed it promptly back to black with a tiny wave of his finger.

As he left the room and turned the light out, he stretched his fingers experimentally. The gaffes in his magic bewildered and nagged at him until he felt the cool night air against his face.

The illness, he realized. It was interfering with his ability to do magic properly.

What he wasn't sure of, however, was why his mistakes were so focused on the color blue.

"Are you certain you have everything you need to survive the duration of our negotiations?"

"Yes."

"No."

Loki gave Darcy an exasperated look.

She smiled. "I mean, I'm sure we forgot something, but we won't remember it until we're gone anyway, so what the hell." She shrugged.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes with great difficulty. He had more important matters to attend to.

"Well," he said, "since we're as ready as we will ever be to travel, I'd best explain how this is going to work." He stepped forward into the crater where he had been found—they had all agreed with Erik's suggestion of erasing the evidence of their departure, not leaving any new traces behind lest SHIELD catch on.

"You will each take my arm," Loki continued. "I suggest you link your elbows with mine in case you become dizzy—we can't have either of you letting go while we are travelling."

"What happens if we let go?"

Loki gave Darcy a look. "You will fall into a swirling vortex of doom and despair that will suck your life away until you're nothing but a corpse plummeting through space and time."

Darcy's eyes glinted in amusement, but she rolled them nonetheless. "Yeah. Right. What really happens?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I was unconscious when I tried it. However, if you'd like to test it yourself, please, be my guest."

Darcy had no reply to that. Jane filled the silence quickly.

"Is there anything else we need to know? Do we need to think of our destination, or tap our heels together three times, or—"

"No," he said. "I will take care of the magic. Your job is to hold on to me and not let go." He paused. "And if you suffer from—what do you call it?—motion sickness, I think you ought to close your eyes."

"Why? Do we go upside down or something? Because upside down roller coasters make me totally sick."

Loki held out his elbows impatiently. "Just hold on and don't let go," he repeated. They'll be fine.

Jane linked arms with him obediently, tucking her elbow into her side to get a better hold. Darcy, with some hesitation, looped her arm through his and stood as far from him as she safely could.

Loki gave each of his arms an experimental wiggle.

"Good," he said. "Are you ready?"

Jane nodded fervently, her eyes screwed shut. Darcy just gulped.

"Hang on," Loki repeated.

And in a blinding flash of light and color, they were gone.

Darcy's heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. She had no coherent thoughts, just a base instinct to run and hide and curl up in a ball and get away from this sensation of falling, of chaos, of terrifying loss of control.

Her face found something solid and she buried herself in it, trying to sink her arms and legs and head into the tangible something, desperate for an object to cling to.

She forced herself to breathe slowly, allowing the something's scent of leather and musk and an aroma she couldn't name to flood her mind. Slowly, her heart stopped racing, and she opened her eyes to the multicolored chaos.

Loki almost cried aloud with the pain. He had known that he would have to temporarily cease his anesthetic spell in order to travel between worlds, that he would overload if he tried to do too much magic at once—but he had not expected this, this feeling of being torn apart, of having something shattering inside him.

His mind flashed back to the dream, and he felt the wound reopen in fire across his stomach.

And then he saw it…the dark hair, floating just across his vision as he faded. He followed it, turning to see where it went.

His sight dissolved into two spheres of blue, and he was gone.

Darcy tumbled to the ground, sending fluffy white snow flying everywhere as she landed. She made a muffled noise as she sputtered to breathe, to free herself from the pile of icy slush.

She emerged from the flurry gasping for breath, the icy wind stealing her breath away almost as fast as she regained it. She cast her eyes around desperately, looking for something besides white and cold and infinite.

"Jane!" Her voice cried back to her softly, echoing off some stony surface she could not see through the haze of snow.

"Over here!"

Darcy turned to the noise and smiled, relieved: Jane was extracting herself from a heap of ice two feet away, her pink coat slowly coming into view.

Darcy shivered, holding her coat close to her for warmth. "Where's Loki?" she shouted over the howling wind.

"We were both holding hands with him, he should be somewhere nearby." Jane looked up to the sky. "Loki!"

"Jane, he's here!" Darcy yelled, guiding Jane to her line of sight. "Between us, the snow just came down so thick he was hidden."

Jane nodded and got down on her hands and knees, brushing the snow away to free the dark body that was Loki from the drift he was submerged in. She shook his shoulders. "Loki! Loki, wake up!"

"I think he passed out! We must have come out of it early; we should be right in the middle of the city."

"That would explain the rough landing." Jane looked to the horizon all around them. "We might be in the city. I can't see far enough to tell where we are." She shuddered, crossing her arms. "We need to find shelter. We can't stay out here much longer; we'll freeze to death with this blizzard."

Darcy squinted into the distance. She pointed, tapping Jane on the shoulder. "There! About a hundred feet away! It looks like an overhang or cave of some sort."

"It'll work!" Jane said. She tugged at Loki's arms fruitlessly. "He's not waking up. We'll need to drag him with us."

"Are you insane? Even if he were a normal guy, he'd be almost two hundred pounds."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Darcy sighed, her breath puffing out like smoke before her eyes. "Fine." She moved around to Loki's side. "I'll take his arms and shoulders. You pick him up by the legs."

Jane nodded and moved into position. She looked up at Darcy. "Are you ready?"

"On three!" Darcy cried over the gale. "One…two…three!"

She groaned as she staggered to her feet. God damn! Is he made of lead or something?

She stumbled backwards, laughing slightly out of sheer exhaustion. Jane met her eyes with a small smile of her own.

"I'll steer you!" she yelled. "Just keep walking backwards, and don't let go of him."

Darcy exhaled sharply through her teeth as she nodded. For being so compact, Loki really did seem to be made of lead. Either that or he was hiding an absurd amount of muscle somewhere on his relatively small frame.

Darcy tried not to give up and fall to her knees as she faltered backwards along Jane's path. Her arms were screaming at her to let go.

"Ah!" She slipped up. She almost let go of Loki.

Jane almost bumped into Darcy, forcing her to regain her hold on Loki, her hands skimming through his hair, down his back as she struggled to regain control, to hold on a moment longer.

"Sorry!" she yelled. "I tripped."

Jane seemed to be shaking from the effort. "Just keep moving. We're almost there…"

Slowly, they made their way through the snow…trudging, inches at a time…their footprints filling up with fresh slush almost as soon as they stomped it down.

Darcy shivered, wringing her damp hair out to one side of the cave. Realizing she was not going to squeeze any more ice out of her hair, she turned to Jane with a crabby scowl.

"What's taking so long with that fire?"

Jane glared at her. "The wood in my backpack got wet. The sparks are landing, but they don't want to burn."

"Ugh," Darcy groaned. "We should have brought Erik with us. He was, like, a Boy Scout."

"If we brought him," Jane said patiently, "you wouldn't be here."

Darcy grumbled. "Whatever. I'm going to curl up in a little ball now and try to sleep, because I, for one, am fucking tired." She glanced at Loki, who they had left sprawled on the ground near the mouth of the cave, unable to carry him another step. "Let me know when he gets up. Maybe he can make a fire."

"I'm waking you up in two hours regardless," Jane said. "I need to sleep too."

Darcy sighed as she stretched out on the floor, seeking a spot without stray pebbles or bumps. "We're stranded on Jotunheim, in a blizzard, miles from civilization, with no fire, no way of making food, and a comatose god on the floor." She grimaced. "Man, this is not how I imagined my first post-college road trip."

"Just shut up and go to sleep, Darcy."

She was snoring before Jane had finished telling her off.