Refusing Silverware

Chapter 7: Not What You'd Think

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Author's Note : So here's another chapter! I hope you enjoy! Please Read and Review!

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It had been a couple of months since Darcy had entered into her arraignment with Loki. Truth be told, she had expected more heckling and demeaning words said between them, but as long as Darcy delivered the goods, he kept his mouth fairly shut. Watching him with only Caroline and her cleaning up the diner while Oleg and Sophie often went out on their 'dates' and Earl meandered his way back to his apartment with whomever caught his eye, Darcy had been given lots of time to try and figure out her mysterious wannabe overlord.

So far, she just assumed that he really had no ulterior motive other than her cupcakes. She hadn't heard anything from Novak other than that the Avengers were all around the world collecting something. Manhattan was getting rebuilt slowly but surely with Loki's help, which according to Novak was what he was really doing when he got a quick look at SHIELD files when she had paid him for the check up.

Novak didn't ask questions when it came to knowing things about certain shadowy organizations. He enjoyed the information spread far more than she did back in her tech-driven days. (What she wouldn't do to actually have a phone that she didn't dumpster dive for at this point was a situation she really didn't want to imagine.)

This though...She decided, took the proverbial cake for being out of the ordinary. With her coat tucked tightly around her body, green wool scarf covering the lower half of her face, Darcy whirled around to face the man behind her. Loki, a few paces away from the Bronx waitress, only frowned.

"What are you trying to do?" Her eyes narrowed with her hand tightening on the taser in her pocket, wondering if Loki had lost his marbles today or not. He never followed her after she closed up. He vanished in the alley behind the diner as soon as he finished his cupcakes and she went the other direction on the subway to her apartment.

"I'm ensuring you get safely to your domicile." His words, though soft, were spoken with gentleness, something that Darcy didn't expect from him. Green eyes burned into her, causing her to subconciously rub her purse strap with the hand not holding the taser in her jacket pocket. He shifted slightly on his feet, looking away.

"Domicile? Who in the hell but you uses words like that?" Blushing, knowing that Loki speaking like this was a hazardous line to play on her heart, Darcy turned away from him, hiding her cheeks as she turned her nose upwards, trying to be snooty. She clutched her purse strap closer to her chest, reminding herself he didn't mean anything by being gentle. They weren't even friends!

"I dare say people that are eloquent for your species." His retort was clipped, annoyed with her turn-about. Haughtiness, she supposed, should only be for him to handle. He seemed to be rubbed the wrong way when she was trying to use it, even if it was for a good cause such as hiding her very human attraction for him.

"Look, 'Maggy', " A snort of derision with the catch of 'Magnus,' under Loki's breath interrupted her. "I'm a big tough girl. I tie my own boots and everything." She trod forward, continuing her normal walk past the hustlers and shady alleys to the subway entrance a few blocks down. Loki's soft footfalls followed without question.

"I can see that." She had no laces on her boots, to which Darcy could tell just what he was implying. She frowned as her cheeks reddened at the idea that he had likely even looked with his green eyes going down from her jacket, barely hiding her short uniform's hemline, to her boots that rested at just below her knees, taking in all of her cold pale legs in the January air. "To be quite frank, Ms. Black, you have caught the attention of a rather formidable adversary of mine."

"What? Why?" They had reached the subway entrance when she turned to look at him with confusion. She was a blip on the radar of life and now she was a skyscraper? Damn it. She just knew it had to do with Loki. The god stopped beside her on the empty stairwell down into the subway. If Darcy was really into clandestine romances, she imagined he would charm her with a well-placed smile and say something as sweet as it was due to him cherishing her and her cupcakes.

"The Avengers has noted that I prefer to come down to your place of..." He waved his hand towards the diner, at a loss for what to actually call it. It was a good thing that Loki didn't play that game with her, charming her just for his own wants. She assumed it was because if he was to be honestly himself, he would only do so with another liar. It was a fact that Darcy didn't have to hide herself around Loki and Loki never tried to seduce the uniform off her. (He could try, she reasoned often during the night. Not that she wouldn't mind some action from the extremely lithe god.) He didn't lie to her and she didn't lie to him, as much as a weird compromise of their contract together it seemed, it worked.

"Work." She deadpanned, balefully staring at him as he grunted in agreement.

"Work." He confirmed, walking past her into the subway. Quickly trailing behind the god, Darcy knew this was the longest actual talk the two had since they began this contract. She could sum up the number of words that had been said between the two of them. More often than not, he would arrive, she would greet him and set down his cupcakes and finish on closing the diner. He would stay for the hour, seeming as if he was taking his time, when it did also seem he was watching out for her, with little else to say. As soon as she finished with her cleaning, grabbing her purse, or waiting for Caroline to clean up on their shifts together, he would give her a tip and wait for her to lock the diner up and then turn to the alley nearby and disappear.

Their conversations were practically meaningless. Memories of different times she switched out the cupcakes were the most prevelant.

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"What is this?" His lip curled up in disgust at the cupcakes with grey-frosted sugar cookies sticking out of the top and oreo cookie crumbles on the top of the brown frosting. Darcy turned her head back at him before shrugging as she chewed her gum.

"It's a Graveyard Cupcake. It's got chocolate." It did have chocolate and he didn't state in their agreement on whether or not she was allowed to mix in other things, such as frosting decorations or whatnot. It was October and Caroline had practically begged her to do this for him with her irritating rich girl whine that Darcy had yet to find an immunity towards.

"I'll put your name on it, mortal." His retort was given no value as Darcy nonchalantly turned back to her cleaning.

"Classy."

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She already knew the look was on his face, the one of complete annoyance, as he stared at the abominations she had just placed in front of him. They were absolutely not chocolate and she had argued for an hour before giving up to Caroline's insistence. Her blonde friend was by far more stubborn than even Jane had been on a bad day.

"Pumpkin Spice because it's selling everywhere else." Watching him poke at the treat with walnuts ontop of the orange frosting she had gotten at half price -mostly due to the fact that it was nearly expired- only caused Darcy to smirk in amusement.

"Squash in a baked treat?" His look of disgust reminded her too much of a kid. She pushed his tray towards him with a laugh.

"I know. What will they think of next?"

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She pointed at the wintergreen lifesaver that was ontop of the green frosting, another half-off frosting she had been able to snag the other night, and smiled as cajolingly as she could, hoping he would get over the new taste with efficiency as she really wanted to go home and not deal with one of his nibbling hour-long cupcake sittings. He had done that for the entire pumpkin spice batch and had made her stay until he was finished with them. "Chocolate Mint with a free lifesavers."

"You need a life saver." He picked up the white circular candy, raising it up to her to take it. Darcy shook her long hair, smiling at his grumbling. He would at least try it, she reasoned.

"Are you gonna save me?" She didn't receive an answer so much as a raised eyebrow in her general direction before Loki returned his sights to the cupcakes. She shrugged and went back to her work. "I'm gonna take that as a no."

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Sliding her metro pass over the turnstile, having thought over her memories of the past few months, Darcy eyed the station, noting they didn't even have a homeless guy as an audience. Well, if she got killed, it was at least, hopefully on camera, she thought. She glanced to see where the camera was and saw that it had a lens covered in so much gunk it could be a grunge band. Loki had simply teleported to the other side of the turnstile, something she was envying him a little about. If he was able to teleport, then she should be able to have him port her home in moments.

"Anyway, what does the Avengers have to do with my work?" Grumbling as they waited by one of the pillars for the next train, Darcy shivered under her coat. Her coat had been a good find at the Goodwill but it was rather annoying that it wasn't a heavy coat. She never stayed super warm in it and the cool air of January was certainly making itself known to her legs. She should have grabbed her leggings on the way out from her apartment but she had been fairly late.

"They are...nosy." The sound of the subway arriving cut him off midway, causing her to only hear the last little part. She could understand if he stated that they were annoying. Everything seemed to bother Loki more often than not from what she could tell. Since she met him, she had counted four hundred and eighty-three eyebrow quirks at things she said or just general happenings around the diner while he ate.

They both got on to an almost empty car. The only other people was two of the homeless, one who was talking to himself, and another who was asleep or dead in the corner. She settled to sit down with Loki grabbing a handhold and standing in front of her, facing her. With the subway leaving the station, they brushed knees every so often with the rumbles from the tracks.

"So these are the adversaries that I gotta watch out for? I'm sure I'll notice when I see Thor. He's not the best at subtle." Darcy smirks up at him, brushing her hair unconciously behind her ear. His lip quirks upwards at the end at the mention of Thor's subtlety. The blonde Asgardian was a bull in a china shop from Darcy's memory. Not noticing Thor would be only because she was deaf and blind.

"No. He's not, but the Enchantress has heard talk of my coming there." Loki bent his face down, talking just barely above the clinking of the tracks underneath them for Darcy to hear. She knew in the back of her head that it was always inevitable that she would get noticed but she thought it would be the Avengers and not Loki and villains that disliked him. (She also thought she might be in old age when they ever did find her.)

"Enchantress? Pfft." She laughed at the name. It was sort of silly in a roundabout way. Here she was, sitting near a pissed on seat on the subway, near a dead homeless lady (or asleep but Darcy hadn't seen her breathing yet) and another homeless guy talking to himself at the other end of the tracks and Loki standing in front of her telling her she was in some sort of danger. It could be construed as choking on a jellybean when one normally had m and ms. It wasn't even a name that spoke of fear like Voldemort or Dolores Umbridge. Who would really call themselves that to try and strike fear? Code names were for people who had a strong singular skill, another reason Darcy preferred her anonymity. She had more than one skill set at her disposal. The overhead intercom called the imminent arrival to the station she usually got off at. "Still, it has nothing to do with you, Maggy-waggy."

"Magnus. It does." Hissing his fake name, Loki held his hand out for her as they came to a stop at her station. She took his hand without a thought as he pulled her to stand by him before the doors would open. His fingers lingered on hers before Darcy withdrew and headed past him, intent on keeping the full-blown panic that was growing in her heart down to nothing. Exiting the train, Darcy frowned as her station was actually half-full of people, mostly dealers. Loki was watched carefully, stepping behind her as they made their way up the steps to the outside world. She couldn't tell, but he was smirking quite smugly at everyone around them. Instead of the normal amount of harassment and cat calls she normally received, the station's vagrants were rather quiet. Loki, in all his striking features, was a tiger amongst alley cats and they knew it instinctively, taking in a collective breath and holding it as he passed by. Perhaps it could be a good thing if she had him with her the every time she needed to go home, she thought to herself.

"Aren't you going to elaborate for those of us out of the loop?" Darcy spoke again as they exited the subway station into the broken, spray-painted concrete jungle she called home. Her building was only a block away from the station, a lucky find for her when she had come to the city and Novak had helped her find someone with an apartment to sublet. With Loki's long legs easily keeping up with her shorter stride, they made it to the front of her building sooner than she thought they would.

"I have to protect you." Darcy looked at him and could see there was some undefinable emotion playing across his visage. It was a glimmer that she found herself wanting more of before he quickly shuttered it away, opening her building's broken lock door for her. Surprised at his gentlemanly manners, Darcy was ushered inside with a pointed look. Going up the stairs, two at a time to avoid the wettest of them, Darcy scampered ahead of him, calling out behind her.

"I've got my own taser and I took down a god." A laugh, one short enviable laugh was all she received on the way up the stairs, making sure not to touch the railing as whomever had a pissing fetish with the wooden railing, still until they reached her run down floor with its ratty dark green and golden flowered wallpaper that was put in during the 1930s and had been peeling since. Her door was one of the few that didn't look like it was an axe attack away from falling off the hinges, something she had been immensely happy about when she first set her sight on her place. Stopping in front of her door, Darcy took a glance behind her to see that Loki had effortlessly climbed the stairs with little effort at her pace. The brunette could only frown at the ease that he had while her legs were turning pink from the surge of heat she produced while going up the stairs. She took out her key and unlocked the deadbolt, then her regular lock before entering her home.

"She plays by a different set of rules, like I do." Loki put his hand on the door frame in the hallway, tracing it with his fingers, setting off an emerald glow of runic lettering across the wooden entryway. Darcy dropped her bag by the inside of the door, hopping as she took off each boot. The waitress heaved a sigh of short-lived happiness. For her, it was sort of the small things. Coming to her crap apartment without it being broken into was one of her favorite moments of the day. Her socks still met frigid wood flooring though and she ran over to the radiator. The radiator clanked, but had no sign of coming on. Eyeing her archfrenemy, Darcy got the tool she used most and had found rusted outside the mechanic shop three blocks over and began hitting the radiator with a curse.

"...What are you doing?" Loki, having not kept his eyes on Darcy when she went into her home, urgently went over to where she stood, beating the radiator with the strength of Hel behind her. Once the radiator banged, the sound of air hissing came to his ears, and the drop of the monkeywrench that Darcy had been using fell from her hands to the ground did she peer over her shoulder at him with a rather wide smile.

"Nothing. Just dealing with the old timey rad, Maggy." Loki glowered at her, pivoting on his heel to take in the apartment he had walked into. His glower intensified. To say, that Darcy had thought she had Caroline look at her place with immense disdain the first time she saw it was nothing compared to the way Loki was glancing around. She knew he didn't expect the Ritz, as he had pointedly mentioned she likely lived like a mouse in a wall, but she knew that he really didn't expect her to live like an actual mouse in a wall.

If there was any good to be had of this, it was that he had yet to meet Chestnut. She stepped away from the radiator and went into her bedroom, ensuring to close it behind her so that she could have privacy to change. Her coat was off a millisecond later, tossed at her small dresser, knocking one of her bracelets off. Groaning as the cold hit her, Darcy hurriedly unzipped the front of her uniform, adding it to the pile of clothing on her dresser. Looking to the floor, she spotted the cleanest looking pair of jeans. She took a sniff of them just to be sure they were yesterday's jeans and not last week's. The sniff met her requirements, putting them on with the practice of having done this for the last few years. Finding a shirt was a harder than finding the jeans.

"Why do you have a horse on your terrace?" Flinging clothing around as she tried to find a shirt and sweater that didn't look as if it had baby barf on it or baking flour and frosting bits was a task. She rolled her eyes. He met Chestnut. Darcy finally peered at the dresser, opening one of the unstuck drawers and pulling out the first shirt she saw, putting it on. Thankfully it was a long-sleeved one.

"Why did you screw one?" She shivered, kicking some more of the clothing on the floor to find a decent sweater to wear. When it seemed she had nothing, she gave a giant hurrah in her mind as she saw her warmest sweater right under the edge of her bed. Picking it up after a rough shake to check for spiders, she slipped it on and enjoyed the heavy yarn around her.

"Is that what you have to fall upon every time a horse is mentioned?" Loki's voice stopped in front of her bedroom door. Patting herself, self-concious on the fact that she probably looked like a mess anyway, Darcy heaved a breath before waiting a beat for her courage to build up. With a shaky step, she opened her bedroom door and gave him a wide sarcastic grin.

"Look around. Do you see me with more than this?" She spread her arm around the entire apartment for his eyes to follow. He gave her silence as she stepped to her kitchen, intent on making some sort of crappy tea to at least warm her cold fingers with. She didn't have gloves. Any gloves down at the Goodwill she went to usually didn't have their pair, or were already snagged before she could even put her cold mitts to them. His quiet unnerved her. She set the water she had already in the kettle on her stovetop to boil and waited as the coils warmed. Darcy could feel his eyes on her, slowly turning around to look at him. As soon as she did, she was awe-struck by the seriousness in his gaze, a determination that seeped into her bones the way ivy crawled into walls.

"Yes." His word sat heavy, resting in the quiet. She didn't know how to respond to him at all. What could he see her more with? She swallowed past the lump of uncertainty, a blush arising in her cheeks. He looked away and she found that she could breathe again. Shaking her head, Darcy took a shaky breath to get her head back in the game. Loki walked around the perimeter of her apartment, keeping his eyes never too long in one spot. He was muttering something beneath his breath as he did. Not really knowing what to do with herself, the brunette stood in the middle of her apartment, unsure.

After two or three rounds of him walking with his long-legged stride, something she was enjoying the sight of, Loki stopped and approached her. The kettle blew it's whistle causing her to attend to the noisy whistle blower. Her fingers wrapped around the handle, pouring herself hot water into a tea cup she had set aside with her guilty pleasure of jasmine tea. Putting the kettle on a different burner and turning the other off, Darcy peered over at her shoulder.

"You are warded for the most part but I must take a liberty with you to finish it." She nearly dropped her tea cup. Loki was some sort of freaky silent cat with how silent he was on his feet as he was standing right behind her, against the island. Setting her cup to the side, letting it brew, Darcy gave Loki a nervous grin, pressing herself into the back of her kitchen. She was going to put a reminder down about not letting Loki and her be in the same kitchen. All the steamy things happened in the kitchen.

"Liberty? How much of a biggie? I mean, is there a sacrifice involved? I don't have a goat and I doubt Poor Chestnut wants to be killed." She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. Her head was spinning at the thought of having to sacrifice Chestnut. She had even put in effort to build him a semi-stable on her terrace and used money to buy him large blankets with the fewest holes from the Goodwill so he wouldn't freeze in the winter. Caroline hadn't been able to get him stored at an actual stable this year as Peach had been against adopting him for the season. Loki only chuckled, making her heart stutter. It was a nice sound she decided in her mind.

"Nothing of the like, Ms. Lewis." He moved forward in a graceful step that was liquid and light. His emerald eyes were upon her, fueling fantasies that she had at night with pent up frustrations. Unconciously, Darcy licked her bottom lip as he approached. His taller form completely dwarfed her and she had to wonder in the deepest part of her mind if it could wrap around her like an infant's curled fist around their mother's finger. She looked down towards her socks in embaressment at her thoughts. Loki wouldn't deign anything of that nature with her. He would sneer, and cackle and cause her to roll her eyes and hide herself in a corner from her own stupidity if he ever knew that she entertained such ideas.

His long elegant fingers came to rest upon her cheeks, bringing her eyes from the ground to look directly into his emerald gaze. He was still muttering but the muttering was discernible as something she wasn't able to understand despite being able to hear it completely. It was wingdings to her english and despite Loki having already explained how the alltongue worked, to which her tease about tongues earned her a charismatic smirk in reply, she supposed that this was older than what he normally spoke in Asgardian. This was not to be translated for her, much like the rest of the world wasn't.

He leaned forward to her visage as if he was going to be an 80's teen heartthrob, stealing her breath away by such a gentle hold on her face with his tapered fingers, before plunging them both into a heady kiss that would take their senses and draw them into a long make out session. All of Darcy's baser instincts crowed with each inch he seemed to come nearer. Trepidation followed it though. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't ready for a kiss from Loki and doubted she ever would be. She could barely pay her own taxes! Hell, she could barely afford her own rent!

Squeezing her eyes tight, tensing in preparation for whatever Loki was going to do, Darcy could only hold her breath as he seemed too close, too much of him invading her space. He smelled amazing and her heart pounded, beating so loud and filling her ears with the fast tapping, going and going and going. She could feel herself on the edge of a panic attack as her breaths started to come in sharp and hasty.

A soft pressure on her forehead that released only moments later made her open her eyes in bewilderment. Loki stepped away soundlessly. His hands felt cool to the touch upon her burning cheeks as he left them there. His laconic smirk, full of knowing his effects on her, twitched at the edge as he watched her cautiously.

"There. The wards are fully attuned to you, Ms. Lewis and to I." She gaped at him, realizing what had just happened. It was a regret and a relief at the same time.

"What about Caroline?" Not that Caroline came over much for anything more than picking up Darcy for their shifts or to help deliver cupcakes or work on them, having needed to find herself a place after the last huge spat between the two of them. Caroline had wanted luxury now that they had an excellent amount of income, well excellent amount for Darcy while she was trying to stay a no one, since their business was booming as a start up. Darcy opted to stay in her apartment and enjoy the better kitchen and bed, the only things that she willingly spent her side of the money on, other than cupcake mixes.

"Whoever you bring with you into this place is welcome, but if there are any intruders, you will know even before you put your hand on your door knob. If you do receive an intruder, I suspect you may need help without SHIELD's attention. I have taken measures to help you with that." He reached into his black long coat, pulling out a beeper and holding it out for Darcy to take. The brunette balefully looked at the beeper in question.

"A beeper?" The amount of flat sarcasm coming from her gave him pause. He nodded.

"SHIELD would moniter a cell phone. You can...beep me?" Loki looked as uncomfortable as she felt completely letdown. Darcy pointed at the beeper in his hand.

"It works the other way. I would call the beeper." He frowned as Darcy felt a smirk on her lips. He tried, she reasoned in her mind. She picked up the device from his hand and turned it over to look at the number, memorizing it. She was always a quick study with numbers. They stayed in her head well.

"Fine. You can call this device for me." He grabbed the beeper from her fingers, brushing sparks against her hand as he took it from her. Loki shuffled the beeper into his coat, grumbling offhandedly to himself.

"Did you google this?" He blushed at her insinuation. He obviously had. Darcy couldn't help the soft laugh that escaped her, not seeing the lop-sided smirk on Loki's lips as she did. "Why not any magic doohicky?"

"Magic is not an easy thing to manage around SHIELD without them trying to discern the exact spell upon it. This," He gestures towards the area around the two of them, "is almost certain to bring some questions but I will not have you in danger due to me."

"That's uh..." Darcy tried to think of the best way to phrase it without offending the potential megalomaniac. Her voice fell as she could only come up with one word to say, flattened to a dismal monotone with the taste of sour grapes hitting her tongue as she spoke. "...sweet."

"I will not have more restrictions placed upon me because of one silly little Midgardian that got caught up in Enchantress's plans to get back at me." Darcy knew she shouldn't have thought of anything from him placing the wards upon her home, but she still felt a stab of hurt when he stated it was more for him than for her own well-being. She felt a rise of shame from her gut, sliding down her insides. Darcy looked around her apartment, cheeks reddening as she took everything in. Of course, Loki, Asgardian Prince and eternal jerk, would never think of Darcy in such a grateful manner as to even consider her worth his actual protection for herself. It was more to do with himself, as everything in their interactions tended to be. How selfish of him and how selfish of her to expect any different, she guessed.

It was Darcy who was made aware of his importance. He was a sun while she was simply an insignificant ant. The trashy chairs with one end shorter than the others and her wobbly table, covered with a stained tablecloth she had gotten from Han would never be something he would willingly come into contact with. His sneer from when he entered the apartment more than enough made up her mind that if there was any possibility of Loki thinking more of her, even to consider her an actual being worth a millisecond of his time.

Just acknowledging this simple fact made herself feel even worse, frustrated and annoyed that it was such a matter that only she knew that would never cross his mind as something that was an issue altogether. Her fingers dug into her arms as she crossed them under her chest.

"Oh." Darcy glanced towards the door, thinking on how terribly she almost missed one of her many exes instead. At least she had a chance with them, at least they had the ability to see her as more than an inconvenience. Stepping back, into her kitchen counter, the brunette tried to calm her twisted feelings of hurt, repeating a mantra of calm to herself in her mind, to keep herself from tearing into him with something he would not fully understand. When it seemed like she had become placid enough, she focused back to Loki who was glancing askance at each piece of her scrapped together furniture, the odds and ends that she had punched hipsters and hobos for from the side of the streets.

"I understand you have chosen to hide from SHIELD, but is this really the best you could do?" His derision was not needed. Her hackles risen, Darcy felt her insignificance pinpointed with a gigantic arrow. Not even Thor could ignore the lighted sign that Loki practically sneered at her with his pointed barb. One of his delicate looking fingertips, tapped on the napkins that were pinned all over the place of her kitchen.

Feeling her hostility, from the spell, something he was keeping from her, Loki turned his eyes towards her with bewilderment taking over his features. Darcy's fingers dug into her skin, daggers that she was born with stabbing her with her own resentment. There was so much of that in her that she felt as if she was turning black, roiling in hatred at herself. Blue stormy eyes met green so bold that the shiver that fell down Loki's spine reminded him that Darcy had been a force before he had ever met her, having fell his brother with ease.

"Get. Out." She spit the words, biting harshly into his skin as the spell began its work. He felt his body crumble in on itself, gut punched by his own magic as it teleported him out to a random location. Darcy glared at the spot Loki had been at. The brunette felt her world darken, biting her lower lip in frustration as she sagged against her worn wooden cabinets to rest against the cold tile of the kitchen. Waves of memories crashed against her in an onslaught of anguish and pain that Darcy had kept at bay for years.

Now, with his words, those detestable words that brought up her wasted potential, just because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time and got thrown into this messed up situation of being a no one, Darcy Lewis felt for the first time, true regret of ever running. Wrapping her arms around her legs, Darcy shed the identity of tough and sarcastic Max Black, to let it all out.