Darcy opened her eyes, finding herself lying in her bed. She waited for Loki to move her, but nothing happened. She was afraid to try anything herself, afraid to give herself any hope. After a long moment of hesitation, she tried wiggling her big toe.
It wiggled.
Amazed, she sat up, hugging her legs to her chest, relief making her feel dizzy and light-headed. She jumped out of bed, running to the living room to tell Thor. He had to know what was going on, he had to punish Loki. Her feet barely made a sound on the carpet as she sped down the hall.
It took her a few seconds for her to realize what exactly was wrong. Outside the windows, instead of the dusty town she was expecting, there was a vast expanse of black ocean, unfamiliar stars shining down upon it. Disappointment and anger and hopelessness hit her like a gale-force wind, knocking her down onto her bare knees.
She bit her lip to keep herself from screaming in anguish. Not that it mattered. It was a dream, after all. But she didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
"It's not my fault your subconscious conjured up fantasies of freedom as soon as I let it take over the dream-state," said Loki from behind her. She didn't look at him.
"Can't you just let me dream, then? Do you really have to invade even that?"
"I didn't do this to watch your dreadfully boring dreams, Miss Lewis. I'm simply doing some more studying. If my performance didn't even fool my idiot brother, then I clearly have to try harder."
"How about you just give up? How about you get the hell out of my body and leave me the hell alone?" Her eyes were cruel as she shouted at him, getting up from the floor and turning to face him, getting closer with each word. She bared her teeth and pushed him back, her arms shooting forward charged with all her rage and hatred. He stumbled back, but only just. His smirk was unchanged.
"And you would what? Continue to pine for an idiot who doesn't even notice you? How quaint," he replied, his lip twitching.
"What? Are you envious or something? How pathetic," she said, spitting the words out even as she realized how much she actually pitied him. But her pity was drowning in her hate and anger, and she could not, would not bring herself to reach for it and truly feel it.
He smirked and turned away from her, walking down the hall. "I don't want anything of his. I want him to have nothing."
He began to disappear into the darkness of the hall, which seemed to stretch on much longer than it did in reality. He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder.
"Come with me," he said, though his tone was not one of authority. Figuring he couldn't do anything worse to her after taking her body, she silently followed him into the dark.
~o~
"What are we doing in my old high-school?" asked Darcy as they emerged into the muted brown halls of Clyde Tombaugh University. "Christ, this place is even more depressing in my head."
"I'm going to be taking a stroll through your memories, Miss Lewis," said Loki, walking down the hall just as the bell rang. Darcy had an uncanny moment of déja vu, which she figured would be happening a lot that night.
"Why didn't you just, like, freeze me in ice and shapeshift to look like me? It'd spare me the flashback sequence," she said, rolling her eyes as the bell rang and students spilled out. "Or better yet, get a life and stop being a dick. But I guess that'll never happen."
"Are you completely oblivious to the fact that even Thor, who is about as bright as a thumbtack, noticed the change? Even though I studied you? Miss Lewis, your stupidity astounds me," he said, his words venomous. "Besides, you were about to get hit by one of my brother's thunder bolts. If I'd encased you in ice, you would still have sustained terrible injuries.
"Wait," she said, staring at him with a confused expression, "So you saved me? I don't – you better not have a crush on me, creep."
"It's almost. . . cute, how you think you are at all important to me. I simply did not want to lose a game piece on the board," he said, shrugging and following the younger Darcy down the school hall. She had shorter hair back then, decorated with silly streaks of neon pink. Darcy cringed at her younger self.
"Interesting use of pink," said Loki, and Darcy wanted to defend herself but knew there was no defense. She brushed past him, already knowing where young Darcy was headed. The cafeteria.
A gigantic banner claiming pride for the Puente Antiguo Vikings was the only colorful thing in a modest square of gray walls and brown, circular tables. She headed straight for the corner table that she sat in for four years every school day. Except the days she skipped. She wondered if her younger self would be up to any shenanigans that day. She caught herself hoping that she did so that she'd impress Loki, and promptly kicked herself mentally.
She watched Loki follow the teenage Darcy to the line for lunch, watched as her younger self picked up spaghetti and tater-tots, and sneaked two brownies instead of one. They walked together right to the table she was sitting at, following suit silently. Curiously she watched Loki looking around expectantly.
"No one sits with me, creepster. I was about as popular as math homework," she said, looking sadly at her younger self, who ate with an expressionless empty look in her eyes. She looked back at Loki, whose eyes had a sudden, incomprehensible warmth to them that Darcy had no idea how to interpret.
Compassion? No, of course not. He was incapable of that. Right?
With a wave of Loki's hand, the lunchroom seemed to spin – perhaps spinning was the wrong word, as things did not change direction. It was an unknowable movement, too momentous to truly perceive but drastic enough to feel. And with that movement, the students in the lunchroom flitted in and out, remembered and forgotten in seconds as high-school friendships grew and died.
But the teenage Darcy remained alone at the table, blurring in and out with every day that passed.
"Stop it!" exclaimed Darcy, grabbing Loki's arm. Seeing a year of her life spread out like that, overlaid on itself was just too raw. She didn't want to see her loneliness resumed in a paragraph of moments.
Loki didn't look at her, only at the memory of her. His eyes were blank, masked of emotion, yet his parted lips and the set of his jaw showed something like worry, or anger.
"Let's just go," said Darcy, her voice faint with sudden exhaustion.
"As you wish," he said, his voice restrained. "Come with me."
And with much more poise and elegance than should even be possible, he ducked under the table. Darcy did the same, much less gracefully. The darkness under the table swallowed them up, and with a wrenching feeling of sudden momentum, they left the cafeteria.
~o~
They emerged into the back of a moving car. Outside, the desert stretched out into the darkness, the road speeding away from under them. In the front passenger seat sat eighteen-year-old Darcy, her hair in a ponytail and dressed in a gray sweater and a black skirt with patterned leggings under it. Darcy winced at the leggings.
And the guy driving was a tall, long-haired future law student in a polo and bermudas. Scott. Anger flared up in Darcy's chest as she automatically picked out everything about him that made her want to punch him. Seeing younger Darcy looking at Scott with mushy-sweet eyes made her feel sick.
He was talking about how he'd be moving away, to the East, because he had a better chance at his career over there. Oh. Darcy knew this conversation. She knew it quite well. They were headed to Darcy's house, and he was already lighting a cigarette even though he knew she hated cigarettes.
Her younger self opened her mouth to complain about the cigarettes and how her mom hated when she saw him smoking, but the words died in her mouth as she heard him speak.
Loki observed impassively, as if expecting something to annoy him.
"Listen, Darcy. We've had great times, haven't we?" he asked, smoke spilling from his mouth with every word.
"Enough for a lifetime," she said, echoing a phrase he repeated often. Back then she thought it was romantic. Now, the older Darcy just thought it was douchey and probably bullshit.
"I don't want to ruin that by stretching things out until they break," he said, reaching her neighborhood. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning, and I can't take you with me. Not physically and not mentally."
"Are you breaking up with me, dude?" she asked, already forming arguments in her head for why they shouldn't break up. Older Darcy just rolled her eyes. Loki had something close to sympathy faintly painting his expression. The car turned the corner and stopped in front of the house Darcy used to live in. Scott turned the key and the engine rumbled down to silence.
"Don't think of it as breaking up. Think of it as moving on. I mean, I know we can both do better," he said, a douchey grin showing how little he really cared.
Loki's eyes narrowed.
Scott leaned in for a kiss, as if after those words he could still get 'one last kiss' from her. Darcy's left hand went to her seat-belt buckle, while her right went to her purse.
Click. Crackle. Scream.
She never thought she'd ever actually use her taser.
Scott's face twitched and jerked as he fell forwards onto the steering wheel, setting off an endless hooooonnnnnnnkkkk from the car. Darcy grabbed the lit cigarette from his hand and, getting out of her seat, she dropped it onto the leather upholstery. Feeling that wasn't nearly enough, she frantically grabbed the cigarette box from his dashboard, spilling them on top of the lit one, leaving the box on top of the small pile and lighting them with the matches from one of the matchbooks he kept on the side-pocket of the door and then dropping the matchbook on the little pile.
Not wanting to attract too much attention or kill him from smoke inhalation, she walked around the car and, opening his door, she pulled him back from the steering wheel, ending the long honk.
Feeling an intense yet hollow pleasure from this, she walked briskly down the path to the house, wiping tears from her cheeks. Her hands were shaking.
"You should have let him choke on the smoke and die," said Loki, who was nonetheless smirking at Darcy's vindictiveness.
"I couldn't. In fact I didn't even leave the fire on," she said, nodding at her younger self, who came back and stomped the fire on the seat out. The seat was completely ruined either way, but she had been scared that the entire car would catch fire.
"Pity," said Loki, though he couldn't hide his smile. "Come."
He opened the car door and stepped out, and Darcy did the same, seeing the dim light of the car interior suddenly blaze as she opened her door and left the car, and the neighborhood, far behind.
~o~
"Jesus, that dress was not right for my boobs," said Darcy as they emerged from a rented limo with her younger self, who was wearing a low-cut blue dress that was about half a size too small for her chest. She looked as uncomfortable as older Darcy felt.
"Prom night, eh?" said Loki, his green tunic re-stitching itself into a black tuxedo, with an emerald green vest and a golden cravat. Darcy felt her own T-Shirt and boxers flow out into a backless, green silk dress with a golden brooch in the shape of a snake. Golden pumps appeared around her feet, raising her up to Loki's height. She resisted the urge to gasp at the beauty of her clothes, not wanting to show appreciation for Loki's shenanigans.
"A little exposition is in order," said Darcy as they followed her younger self down the oddly empty sidewalk, "I'm really early to the prom because. . . well, that guy Scott that you saw in that memory was going to be my prom date. He dumped me and left before prom, and I didn't know that there was like, an actual rule against going to prom without a date. Which is total bullshit, right?"
"Anyway, I already had the rented limo and my dress, so I decided to go anyway, screw the rules. And also to pull off a tiny prank, because I hated my senior class and stuff. So I came early, to be able to pull it off."
Loki raised a single eyebrow at her, and Darcy hated that she felt proud of the fact that he'd be impressed with her soon enough. She pushed the feeling down, feeling suddenly even more uncomfortable.
They followed younger Darcy to the mostly deserted gymnasium, which was decorated with rocket-ships and planets, as that year's theme was Space Exploration. Near the entrance was a ballot box and a table, where the class president was supposed to sit and take votes but since it was way too early, she was elsewhere. Older Darcy figured she was in the locker room making out with her boyfriend.
Teenage Darcy approached the table nonchalantly, taking a ballot and writing a scribble on it before dumping it in. She dropped the pen, and when she bent down to pick it up she switched it for a pen she had in her other hand, in one fluid and falsely clumsy motion. The only three other pens on the table were swiftly replaced with her own identical pens in a second, and she walked away with a bored expression on her face.
Loki's eyes swept the large gym, seeing many members of the community that he recognized from Darcy's daily life. He was surprised to find Jane Foster and Selvig chatting by the bleachers. They did not seem to notice Darcy at all.
"The prom is usually organized by people in town. Mostly ex-students. I didn't even realize they were here," said older Darcy, smiling at the sight of Jane and Selvig.
The gym slowly began to fill with students who arrived with their dates, each writing up their vote with Darcy's mysterious pens. No one seemed to notice her at the punch table or near the photo booth, until a teacher passed by her and remembered that he had told her that she couldn't come to prom without a date.
"So you found a new date?" he asked with a smile.
"Sure, he's, um, getting me punch over there," she said, chuckling awkwardly. "He signed the guest list."
The teacher looked at her somewhat sadly, and started to say something but thought better of it and merely nodded at her before heading to the DJ to tell him to start the music. She slumped down into a chair, puffing through her lips in boredom.
And then something curious happened. Seconds after the teacher reached his own group of faculty members, a wave of buzzing radiated from his spot, as all the students whispered to each other and began looking around. Darcy looked around as well, until she realized that the stares began to settle on her and more and more people looked at her, sitting alone and date-less.
She was out of the gym in seconds, exiting into the dark halls of the school. Part of her hoped that someone would follow her out and try to talk to her, while the rest of her simply wanted to get the hell away from everything. She leaned against the wall, sliding down to a sitting position.
Older Darcy and Loki stood at either side of her, both looking around awkwardly. Selfishly, Loki hoped that no one would talk to her. Selfishly he wanted to be the only one – but of course that was impossible. It was the past. Now, in the present, she had Jane, Thor, and Erik at her side.
"You know, the memories you've picked to visit aren't exactly great examples of my life, man. For the most part I was a perfectly ordinary teenager, like, with online friends and lots of TV. Sitting at dinner with my mom, visiting family in Texas and in Florida. It wasn't all drama and loneliness."
"I've merely been stopping at the memories that held the most weight in your mind, Miss Lewis," replied Loki, not looking at her. "I don't think you're perfectly ordinary. If you were, I would not have to put any effort into playing you."
Darcy winced at the sudden drop of remembering why exactly they were there. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she turned to peek into the gym. Her favorite part was coming up. The class president came up onstage to announce that voting was over and ballot counting would commence.
Wouldn't last much.
Figuring that she probably didn't want to get beat up, teenage Darcy walked over to her locker down the hall, popping it open to get a change of clothes. She already had pictures of herself in the dress. Pictures of her in the limo as well. She'd gotten what she wanted.
Minutes later, she slipped into the gym in plain clothes, just a band tee and jeans. The students were slow-dancing, holding each other with sappy looks in their eyes. Older Darcy watched them, wondering how many of those couples were still together. Probably only the ones that had gotten pregnant. And even then, it could go either way –
"You didn't dance at your prom," remarked Loki, though there was no bite to his tone.
"Neither did you," she said, wanting to stay away from what his words were implying.
"I didn't have prom. But I did have a ceremony with similar importance. And I danced. Though it was definitely not this kind of dancing. Much faster and requiring a lot more finesse."
"I bet you danced with your mom," she replied, though there was little enthusiasm in the quip.
"Well, yes, among others. Come," he said, and it wasn't quite clear to him why he wanted to give her that dance. He told himself it was pity, before deciding that he was simply charming her into being cooperative. But why, then, did his smile feel so genuine? Adding a faint haughty twist to his smile, he extended his hand to her.
She took it suspiciously, letting him put his hand at her hip and sway her into the dance floor. In a detached sort of way she noted how his hands were cold, almost achingly so. His entire body was hard and unyielding yet at the same time it flowed and coiled in perfect sync to hers, perhaps the way a panther would feel at her touch. Or a snake.
He was leading, moving her side to side, sweeping her and pulling her. It was impossible to resist his guiding hands, and she found herself seeking his direction, falling into and away from him. Shivering from cold or perhaps something else, she let him control her and manipulate her, feeling her skin heat up where he touched her and relishing the paradox of it, how her blood vessels would dilate at his icy-cold touch.
He spun her, and for a moment she lost herself in the act, drifting further from him than she had to, and she stumbled a few steps back. She was breathing harder than the slow dance called for, lips parted and eyes half-lidded as she stepped towards him again.
But the music died down.
"Students, I'm very sorry to inform you that there has been a problem with the counting of the votes. We cannot choose a Prom King or Queen," said the class president onstage, her stress and frustration clear in her eyes.
"What did you do?" asked Loki as he laughed at the groans and whines of the student body. He looked at Darcy, who smiled awkwardly back.
"I, um – I replaced the pens with identical ones I'd outfitted with disappearing ink. I got the idea from one of the cases my ex talked about constantly. Figured it was damn clever of me."
"Yes, it was rather clever," said Loki, pleased by the blush that erupted in Darcy's cheeks. "Come with me."
She followed him out of the gym, neglecting to mention how no one could prove it was her, or how she'd gone down in high-school lore as That Girl Who Ruined Prom. Because no one knew her name.
~o~
"I'm sorry, Miss Lewis, but there aren't really a lot of options for you if you want an internship program,"said a boring voice, as Loki and Darcy emerged into an administrative office in her university. It was dusty and looked like it hadn't been redecorated in ten years. It was almost a time capsule. The too-yellow sunlight that floated lazily in only gave the outdated details a sort of nostalgic patina.
"I needed the extra credit, 'cause I'm really bad at math," said older Darcy as she looked behind her at a slightly younger version of herself.
"Well – what about this one?" asked younger Darcy, pointing to one of the available spots with an insistent glare. They'd been staring and struggling over that piece of paper for about an hour by then, the fat old Placement Administrator growing ever more impatient.
His face suddenly filled with relief when he saw someone peeking in through the door. "Foster!"
"Hey Alan," said Jane Foster awkwardly, pulling a face, "Sorry, I didn't know you were in a meeting. I'll just, um, wait outside."
"No, it's fine! In fact I could use a little help. Y'see, I've been trying to place Miss Lewis here for an internship, but obviously all the available options sound unappealing. You know a few of the center supervisors, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah – yeah," said Jane, tucking her hair behind her ear and approaching Alan's desk. She looked at the paper and then at Darcy, with a look of recognition dawning on her face slowly. "Lewis as in Darcy Lewis?"
"Um, yeah?" replied Darcy timidly.
"If you're interested in anything involving astronomy research, I'd take you in as an intern," she said with a warm smile, causing Alan to look at her in shock.
"Actually, yeah, I am interested," replied Darcy. "Mr. Veidt had told me I wasn't eligible for it"
"Well, she's in Humanities! Her major is Political Science, Foster," explained Alan.
"Oh it's fine," said Jane, smiling and scrunching up her nose to indicate it didn't matter, "It's not like I need an expert, just a lab assistant. Someone to transfer data and organize files."
"Well – I mean I've never seen that done but, ah, I guess it'll work," replied Alan, shifting some papers on his desk to keep his hands busy. "I guess that's about done then. I'll handle the paperwork with Foster, Miss Lewis. Have a nice day."
Young Darcy got up to leave silently, stopping at the door to see Jane sitting down with Alan to talk about what she had actually come for. She wanted to say thanks, but they looked busy. Smiling at her luck, she walked away, with older Darcy and Loki following.
"I sense there was a reason Jane took you in as an intern," remarked Loki indifferently.
"Yeah, I guess. She has a thing for strays, so to speak. I guess she knew about my high-school history and wanted to help out," replied Darcy thoughtfully, having considered it before.
"Like a pet?" His tone wasn't exactly abrasive, but there was something under it that made Darcy prickle.
"Like family," she replied, glaring at him. But then it hit her that maybe Loki was just envious, and her gaze softened. "She'd do the same with you, you know. If you let her. You could . . . be with us."
"'If I let her', of course. Because I am so open to change my behavior just for the affection of a few mortals," he said indignantly.
"Jeez, man," she exclaimed frustratedly, "do you really prefer being disliked and rejected? What sort of messed up satisfaction do you get from that? I'm telling you that we would take you in if you stopped being such a dick for a bit, because, you know, it's clear as hell that you have rejection issues – and you throw it back because you think you're too good for it?"
"Yes," said Loki, looking away. It was too much to explain, and he doubted that she would understand. "I think we're done here."
She didn't say anything, because she felt they weren't done. For the first time she felt there was something more to him, but she had no idea how to find it. She'd seen him shine for brief seconds, seen his yearning for affection. The way he'd let his guard down, the way a few flickering glimmers of compassion showed through the mask he put up. As much as she had thought she hated him, she suddenly had hope for him, she actually wanted to get through to him. But she didn't say anything.
Loki waved a hand to dissolve the memory, and everything faded to black.