The new school semester had started by now, and so Loki was back to his regular teaching schedule- but it was with renewed energy that he returned. He'd found the inspiration to completely rework his whole curriculum, and added in new experiments, new projects- just made everything fresh. Somehow, the fact that Darcy was in his life and he was having a baby- it had reawakened him. He was looking at the world with new eyes. Where before he'd seen simply a lecture to be delivered in a straightforward fashion, now he saw an opportunity to blow his students minds. It was invigorating.

Darcy, on the other hand, was throwing herself into this whole learning-to-be-a-mom thing. She was devouring books on pregnancy, giving birth, raising children...Loki was quite impressed by it, especially knowing that she typically avoided non-fiction like the plague. She was so cute about it, too. They would be in bed reading together, and she'd come across something really interesting and share it with him, and ask him his opinion- did he think it would be a good idea for them to do this if their child did that? And so on...

She'd become very adamant about having a home-birth, too, after reading up on it. Loki was skeptical of it, but she was steadfast. She refused to give birth in a hospital- said she didn't think the atmosphere in one would be at all right for giving birth, and she wanted someone she could have already built a relationship with helping her through it, and so on. So they found Helen, a midwife in the area, and Darcy started seeing her.

"I just don't understand how you can not call them, Loki," Darcy said tiredly. "They're your parents."

He shook his head. They'd been having this cyclical argument for almost an hour now. "They're not my parents."

Darcy sighed heavily. "Except that they love you as if you were their own flesh and blood, and I think that should count for a hell of a lot. Do they even know that you got married? Let alone are going to be having a baby?" She'd called her parents the same night she'd told Loki. It was just right.

"It's possible Thor told them," Loki said stiffly.

"But probably not," Darcy guessed.

Loki shrugged. "As far as I know, Thor doesn't keep much in contact with them either."

And that was what confused Darcy so badly. They didn't speak of their childhood as if it was some terrible thing. For the most part they seemed to have had a fine time growing up. Loki had nothing bad to say about his parents except that they had lied to him. And yet he refused to speak to them.

"If you won't do it for yourself then," Darcy said, leaning against the doorway that went into their bedroom, "do it for the baby." She saw Loki soften a little at that. "I want this baby to have as many loving, caring people around it as possible. And I don't want it to be estranged from some of it's family. That's just not okay to me."

"I-" Loki hesitated. "Maybe."

Well, Darcy supposed that was as close as she was going to be getting tonight. She was too tired to push harder, not to mention the fact that she hated fighting with Loki in the first place.

"Just, please," she said, turning away from the doorway and getting into bed, saying over her shoulder, "Think about it."

Loki didn't come to bed for a long time, and she fell asleep troubled and sad.

The next day they were flying down to her parents. Things were still a little tense from their argument the previous night, and neither of them really felt like talking much during the flight. Darcy just couldn't wrap her head around why he would be so stubborn about something that seemed like it so obviously should be done, and Loki felt pushed into making a decision that he just didn't feel right making.

They sat next to each other on the plane unspeaking. Loki had the window seat, and he spent most of the flight staring down at the world as they flew. Darcy listened to her iPod. It wasn't a long flight, but the pregnancy made her more prone to exhaustion, and after about an hour, Loki felt a slight weight on his shoulder and looked over to see that Darcy was fast asleep, his shoulder being used as a pillow. She looked so small and contained in repose- not at all like the little firecracker he knew her to be. He kissed her forehead and she murmured something he couldn't make out. He was sorry that they were disagreeing.

She jolted awake when they touched down at the airport in Virginia around five in the evening, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. It was pretty cute how she was always paranoid about drooling, and yet never once had he seen her drool.

They didn't speak much as they went to pick up their baggage and get a cab. Darcy was preoccupied by how horrible the food in the caffeteria smelled as they went by, and then got lost in thoughts of the delicious meal her mother would have no doubt been prepairing for them all day. Loki was wondering how long things would remain tense between the two of them, and trying to figure out how he could fix it.

Darcy's longing to be home grew greater with every mile closer to her parent's house. Loki, on the other hand, was a little unsure about the whole thing. He'd been greatly impressed by Maria and Harold Lewis when he'd seen them last Christmas, but wasn't really sure what kind of impression he'd made. At the time he'd been pretty preoccupied with having just found Darcy again. And now they'd heard that he'd just married their daughter and that they were going to be grandparents, and he wondered how they felt about that.

They pulled up in front of the pretty, white colonial two story house and it's vibrant green lawn. A plastic pink flamingo stood out against the green of the lawn, and Loki couldn'thelp feeling a bit of a kinship with it. Neither of them really looked like they belonged there.

They got their baggage out of the trunk and paid the cab driver. Darcy must have picked up on his apprehention, because she squeezed his hand.

"Hey," she said, setting aside her frustration to reassure him. "They'll love you. I know I do."

Loki smilied in gratitude and nodded once. He just wanted to make a good impression.

Darcy's dad opened the door, and Darcy promptly dropped her luggage to hug him.

"Daddy!" She said, wrapping her arms around him.

"KitKat," He said fondly, returning the hug.

"And this is my husband," she grinned at the word, still unaccustomed to it. "Loki. You remember him, dad."

"That I do," he said, shaking Loki's hand firmly and smiling welcomingly at him. "The man who convinced my wild daughter to settle down. She must be quite the handful," he said, winking.

Darcy rolled her eyes at this, smiling.

Loki smiled that half-smile that she loved so much. "Oh, nothing I can't handle."

Just then they heard a voice from the kitchen saying, "Come in! Come in! I'd come out to see you, but this sauce requires constant stirring."

Harold directed Loki to just put their luggage in the living room for now, and once that was done Darcy took his hand and let him to meet her mother, who he remembered as being quite the nifty woman.

"Well hellooooo there handsome," Maria said, looking Loki up and down. Turning to Darcy, she muttered, "I can see why you're carrying his child."

"Mom!" Darcy cried, laughing. She picked up an oven mitt and smacked her mom lightly with it. Loki grinned at this.

"Well, it's true," Maria said unapologetically. "Now come here and hug me, darling, I've got to keep stirring this.

"I love you," Darcy sang as she hugged her mother's shoulders. Maria turned her head so that she could kiss Darcy's cheek.

"And I love you. Come here Loki, I want a hug from my son-in-law."

Feeling a little awkward, Loki did so. Maria kissed his cheek too.

"Good," she said. "Now, do you want some water? And we've got nuts if you're hungry, because I don't want you to spoil your appetite, and the food will be done soon.

"I'll get some water," Darcy said, going to the fridge. "Loki, you want some?"

Nodding, Loki said, "Sure." He felt a little awkward just standing in the middle of the room, so he sat down at the round kitchen table, noticing the eclectic decorating of the room. There was a bird clock on the lime green wall that would chime each hour in with a different bird sound, and there were pictures of flamingos all over the wall that he didn't remember from being there last year. He wondered what had happened to inspire the invasion of the violently pink birds.

Darcy returned with two cups of water, sitting down next to him.

"Thank you," he said, looking at her and trying to convey that he meant it about more than just the water. She smiled reaching for his hand. He gave it and she rubbed a finger over his ring, tapping it and then letting his hand go.

Darcy's dad walked in and took the other chair next to Loki. For a brief moment there was only the sound of Maria stirring the sauce, the gentle clack of the wooden spoon she was using against the metal pot- and Loki wondered if this could be him and Darcy in twenty-five years time. Cooking dinner while meeting the person their child was in love with. It was both a terrifying thought, and an appealing one. But the moment was brief.

"Now when are you two moving to Virginia?" Maria asked.

Darcy spat out the water she'd been about to swallow. "Umm, what?" She asked. Loki was surprised as well.

Harold just shook his head, smiling fondly at his wife. "Oh, Maria," he said. "They're not moving to Virginia, honey."

"Well why not?" Maria asked defensively. She turned to Darcy. "Don't you want us to see our grandbaby?"

"Moooom," Darcy said in the voice of one who has faced down this kind of attempted guilt-trip. "Of course we do. But we're not going to just pack everything up and move down to Virginia. I've got a job up there. And Loki has his teaching position, and the lab...I mean, we're all set-up there."

"What, there aren't jobs down here? And we've got plenty of colleges," she said dismissively. "I don't see any problems."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "Mom. No."

She sniffed. "Fine. I just hope my granchild will recognize me on the rare occasions that we meet," she said.

Grabbing hold of the conversation, Harold turned to Loki. "So tell us, son. What do you do? You're a teacher, yes?"

Loki nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm a proffesor over at MIT."

"Ah, a man of science," Harold said approvingly. "I'm just the same."

Darcy laughed. "Daddy, what are you talking about? You're an English major." She turned to Loki. "He was a highschool English teacher for twenty years," she said.

"I may have taught English," Harold protested, "but I still believe in science. Gravity, my man," he said, slapping his knee. "Just so."

Loki grinned, liking this man more and more. Darcy's mother he still found a little intimidating.

Maria pronounced dinner ready a few minutes later, and the conversation turned toward the baby as they ate.

"I think it's wonderful that you're having a baby while you're still young enough," Maria remarked, causing Darcy to roll her eyes and Loki to smile. He had a feeling that most of Darcy's adolescence was spent rolling her eyes at her mother.

"Mom, I'm only twenty-four. It's not like I was really running out of time."

"Well, you never know. I'm just grateful that I'll have a grandbaby soon. Aren't you grateful, Howie?"

Howard nodded assent, used to being dragged into his wife's schemes. "Sure am," he said. "It'll be mighty nice to see a baby around here again."

"But they don't want us to see our grandbaby, Howie," Maria reminded him sourly. "So I wouldn't get your hopes up."

"Mom! Quit it," Darcy said warningly, getting annoyed.

Loki wasn't really sure how to handle this kind of situation, but decided to see if Maria was as easy to distract as Darcy was. "So how was this one?" he asked, nodding at his wife. "What should we be watching out for when the baby starts to walk?"

"Oh my lordy," Maria exclaimed, proving herself incredibly easy to distract. "Well you'll have to be careful where you put your keys- I'll tell you that much. Darcy was the most adventurous baby I've ever seen. One time- Howie, do you remember that time?" Howard nodded, clearly knowing what she was talking about. "Well I started keeping my keys up high, because she would always be running off with them and hiding them in our shoes or something. So then I hear a crash one day when I'm in the kitchen and I go running into the living room, and what do I see?"

"I was a brave little kid," Darcy claimed stoutly. "I was a hero."

"What you were was a little fool," Maria said, not unkindly. She turned back to Loki. "She'd somehow climbed up the shelf- about five feet up at least, and she'd just four years old at this point, mind you. And the shelf had fallen down, and there she is sitting on the ground, and I'm afraid that she's hurt so I'm making a big fuss, but what does she do? She smiles at me as if she hasn't just scared the bejeebies out of me and starts playing with the keys. A terror. She was an absolute terror.".

This led to many more stories of Darcy as a child, many of which made Loki laugh. She'd been a precocious little thing, inclined to getting into all sorts of trouble.

They stayed in Virginia for two more days before flying back. They hadn't really resolved their argument about Loki's parents, but both had dropped it and so they ignored it for the present.