"Look at all this stuff!" Darcy cried in amazement. She and Jane were at a store that sold baby things. "This is like a whole world that's supposed to be populated by tiny children. Oh my god. Let's hope they never rise up against us, because let's face it: we don't stand a chance against the cuteness they could wield."

"It's a lot of stuff," Jane agreed, as they walked the aisles. "Wow." She picked up a tiny toy roman helmet. "Is this really necessary? I don't feel like this is necessary."

Darcy smirked. "Necessary? Of course it's necessary, Jane. Babies need to be protected when they go out to fight other like-minded gladiator babies."

"Apparently it must be quite the 'in' thing these days, because they sure are stocked up on helmets," Jane observed. It was true. There were about twenty of them, absurdly enough, sitting right next to a whole bunch of terrifying dolls.

"Well, it's probably because of that movie that just came out. You know the one- where the baby had to save his parents by wrestling the neighborhood kid," Darcy said, examining the glass eyes of one of the dolls.

"Oh yeah?" Jane asked. "Which one was that? I must have missed it at the theaters."

"Really? I'm surprised you missed it. It was out for a long time, because it was such a hit. 'The Baby Who Had it All, And Then Lost it in a Card Game'."

Jane snickered. "And where did the gladiator bit come in?"

"Well," Darcy pointed out, "I don't really want to ruin the whole thing for you. That bit was one it's many clever plot twists."

They laughed, still wandering the aisles a bit aimlessly before finding the ones filled with plush stuffed animals, and rattles, and baby clothes and such. It was a big store.

"Oh," Darcy said, sighing happily. "This is more like it."

Jane smiled at Darcy's sudden maternal side.

"Well, the baby's definitely going to need this," Darcy said, picking up a stuffed penguin. "Just look at that. So adorable an angel would beg for it's autograph. But my baby won't have to beg. No sir. And oh my goodness! Well, baby is definitely going to need a crinkly quilted book. She could use it for snuggling and learning..."

By the time they left, Darcy and Jane were loaded with baby things.

Loki and Darcy had decided that what was now Loki's office would become the nursery. So he'd been moving things around- most of the stuff ending up at the lab. As he moved things around, he came across the box of poetry and drawings he'd done of Darcy back when they'd been separated. He was glad she'd been gone when he came across it. She didn't need to see those- they were truly horrible, and he didn't like to think of when they'd been apart. Yet, he didn't really want to throw them away. So, ultimately, they ended up making the move with the rest of the stuff to the lab. He figured it was a little risky leaving them in the house with Darcy being so emotional lately- he didn't want them to set her off. Even though he knew that it was just a biological thing with her hormones going crazy, it still gutted him to see her cry.

Darcy came back from shopping with Jane a couple hours later. By then Loki had already dropped off most of the things that had been meant to go to the lab, and the room was pretty bare.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Darcy looked around it with interest. "Yeah," she said, smiling with pleasure. "I can totally see this as a nursery."

It was a smallish, rectangular room with two windows on one wall that got quite a bit of sun, and it was connected to their own room, which would be a plus when the baby was born and they'd need to keep an eye on it. The walls were currently a slightly strange green color that darkened the room a bit, but Loki was planning on painting it the next day. They'd decided on a bright, sunshiney yellow color, because they didn't know the sex of the baby yet and they agreed that yellow was cheerful anyways. It was early still, to be preparing everything- there still being about four months left- but they were both so excited to see how their baby's room would look that they'd decided to get everything ready as soon as possible.

Darcy drew a hand around Loki's waist, and his fell around her own. "I can totally picture the crib right there, in front of those windows," she pointed, "and then along that wall, the changing table. And a small bookcase in that corner, for baby books. We're going to be reading a lot to our baby."

Loki smiled at that. He'd always found baby books to be the most ridiculous things. Anyone could write one, it seemed, because they were just simple sentences basically. It amused him that now he would be buying them for his own child. His own child. It still all felt a bit imagined, that he would be a father soon, despite Darcy's growing belly. He had a feeling that raising his children was both the greatest and most terrifying thing he would ever do.

"Our baby's going to have the best room any baby has ever had," Loki said.

"Hmm," Darcy sighed happily. "It's gonna be pretty chill." She looked up at him, apologeticly. "I'm sorry that you had to move your office, though. I know it was really nice for you to be able to just have that at home."

Loki shook his head. "It's okay." And it was. He was moving into another phase of life, and things were changing. He understood that. "I'm glad that this is happening," he said, placing a hand on Darcy's belly. He couldn't believe that their child was actually growing in there. "I'm glad this baby is happening."

Darcy was about to say something when the baby kicked, and both of them jumped. "Oh my god!" Darcy cried in wonder, her eyes huge. "Did you feel that?"

Loki's own eyes were huge as well. He nodded slowly. They each put a hand back on her belly. The baby kicked once more. They grinned at each other, both awash in a glow of love for this unborn baby.

"Oh my word," Darcy said, taking a deep breath. "That smells delicious." She'd been craving mushrooms lately like crazy, and because Loki was the better cook he'd gamely offered to learn 'The prestigious art of mushrooming', as he called it. Which he was incredibly talented at, of course.

It was the beginning of December, and she was quite obviously showing. She must have gained about twenty pounds. She was aware that it was good to be gaining the weight, because she was eating for two these days, but it was still depressing the heavier and more unwieldy she got.

She'd been paying attention to doing as her midwife and all the books said, and eating frequent small meals with plenty of fruit and vegetables. It almost felt like she was getting ready to hibernate, all her eating in the cold weather.

Loki extravagantly placed a dish heaping with buttered, sauteed mushroom before her. "For you, mademoiselle."

"Thank you, Loki," she said sweetly, biting her lip and then grinning.

"Don't you use your wiles on me," he said, mock-admonishingly.

Darcy laughed, digging in. Loki watched with amusement. He knew for a fact that before her pregnancy she had hated mushrooms. Absolutely loathed them.

"Loki," she'd tried to explain to him. "They are disgusting things that shouldn't be eaten. They grow in the ground for god's sake. They touch dirt." She'd made a face when he'd pointed out the inconsistancy of her adoring all things potatoes.

Now, he just grinned at the sight of her wolfing them down. She was such a funny little thing. Such a perfect little thing. He felt his face softening the way it did when he stared at her for too long.

"Lokiii," Darcy wailed, starting to cry out of nowhere. "How can you look at me like that? Look at me- I'm so huge, and here I am stuffing myself with mushrooms. I mean I'm basically a fat hobbit compared to you. How can you look at me like that!"

Whoa. Restraining the laugh that would like to bubble up in his throat, Loki kept his face smooth and comforting. "Honey," he said, kissing her. She pulled away.

"Loki, stop! I know you're not attracted to me anymore. No one could be! I don't believe you."

"Darcy," he said firmly. "You have said many ridiculous things before, but that is the single most ridiculous thing you have ever, or ever could, say."

"No it's not!" she cried, not really knowing why she had to argue, but unable to stop herself. "I could say plenty of ridiculous things. Things about...turtles! And how, I don't know, maybe they should wear tophats and sing Frank Sinatra songs, because god knows that's all their good at. Have you ever seen a turtle do anything worthwhile-?"

"Darcy. Darling. Relax."He rubbed her shoulders slowly. "Deep breaths, yeah? In, out. In, out."

She smacked his hands off. "Stop it!" she said. "I don't want to go into labor yet."

"Honey, you've still got another three months to go."

"Exactly!" she cried in outrage. "Do you have any idea how bad it could be for the baby if I went into labor now? It's probably still looking like a dinosaur!" Her eyes got sad and she pouted. "Dinosaurs...the poor things. They really didn't deserve to die."

Loki internally sighed in relief. He loved Darcy, truly, and he was glad theat they were having a baby. But regular Darcy was enough to handle- a Darcy with hormones out of control was much harder to keep up with.

"No," he said agreeably, kissing her forehead and taking her empty plate. "They didn't deserve that."

Darcy sighed happily. "You always say the best things, Loki," she said, apparently forgetting about being angry at him only moments before.

Loki did the dishes, finding the rhythm of the chore soothing and helping him unwind a bit. It was nice to get a little time of his own. Their life these days seemed focused on the baby- dealing with the emotional minefield that was a pregnant Darcy, babyproofing the house, getting the nursery ready, reading up on baby facts, babies babies babies...and the baby wasn't even born yet! It did cause Loki some misgivings about when he would find time to be at the lab anymore, once the baby was born. Between teaching and grading papers, and then finding time to be with Darcy and still doing all the things around the house that needed to be done, there wasn't really a lot of time left over. And in the beginning, it had been his job teaching that had supplemented his true passion for research. While he'd grown to enjoy teaching more than he'd thought he would, that he hadn't been able to get to the lab lately had really hammered home the fact that it was really science that he wanted to be doing. And then with the baby coming soon, and Darcy taking a leave of absence from work to be with it at least for the first six months, he was sure to be getting less sleep than usual and be more worn out and have still less time to get to the lab.

He made a decision, as he was soaping the dishes, that by the time their baby was one year old, he would be retired from teaching and would be able to have a full time job at a research fascility- rather than the work he was doing on the side for MIT. Preferrably, he would be working at SHIELD on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge project. The concept of it had gripped him ever since he'd heard of it as a young man, and the more he learned about it and the more he studied it, the more...he had to laugh even just thinking it because the idea was so absurd, but the more familiar it felt. It was even more bizzarre, because he felt like there was a specific, proper name for the portals that he'd heard at some point, but couldn't quite remember...

He placed the last dish on the rack and dryed his hands, frowning at them in consternation. They were always quick to get wrinkly in the hot water. Darcy teased him about it, calling him Mr. Prune Hands.

He found her already asleep in bed, having retired when he'd started the dishes an hour ago. She was resting so peacefully, though she'd grumbled to him a few nights ago that since her belly had started getting quite big, she'd had to learn to sleep on her back rather than her side as she'd found more comfortable. He got in bed next to her, marveling at the heat her body generated. She was like an oven. He laughed quietly at the apt comparison.

He read for a little bit- she'd bookmarked some pages in her baby books and he flipped through them, skimming things here and there, noticing that a lot of them were really just saying the same things over and over again. By the time this baby was born, he was sure they'd be pretty knowledgable about what to do. Feeling sleep rise to claim him, and welcoming the dream state and it's hopefully baby-freeness, he drifted off.

Christmas was spent with Thor and Jane, Darcy's parents once again going on a cruise. They seemed to be making an odd habit of this.

Loki was pleased by how long his brother had been able to keep his relationship with Jane. It had been a learning experience for Thor, Jane being his first real girlfriend, and there had been some rough patches. But on the whole they seemed to be pretty solid.

Darcy had been adamant about having a Christmas tree, so Loki and Thor had picked one up and Loki and Darcy had had fun decorating it with strings of popcorn and cranberries and hanging candycanes on it. It stood in a corner of the living room, the string of colored lights between it's branches and the scent of pine really set the mood. It hadn't snowed yet, to everyone's disappointment except Jane's, who disliked the cold. But Christmas songs had been playing since Thanksgiving, and the spirit of Christmas was everywhere.

It was a light-hearted day, and everyone's spirits were high. They played Scrabble and Monopoly, and then watched the Muppet's A Christmas Carol. Food and conversation were sprinkled heavily all through the day's activities. And then, almost like a Christmas Miracle, it started snowing that night by eleven- big, fat snowflakes that blanketed the whole of the city by morning.

New Year's day was similar, the four spending it together again. It had a bit of a deja-vu feeling, because of the Christmas tree still standing in the living room in all it's glory, and it had started snowing again that day.

They'd all ended up going out in the small front yard of Loki and Darcy's apartment to make snow-men. Well, snow-people. Darcy's was a pregnant snow-woman, and Jane's was a snow-dog. Thor made the traditional snowman, with the addition of a Norse style helmet- they all applauded his ability to mold the snow into a believable helmet-shape. And Loki...they jibed him good naturedly about his. He'd decided to make, what he called, a 'monster snow-man'. It was the same size as Thor's, but he'd said to imagine it taller, and it had balls of snow molded onto it's face that he'd said to imagine as scarier.

"Why are you making a monster, though?" Darcy had asked, laughing as Loki did an impression of what he thought it should sound like.

"What's a story without a villain?" He'd asked, gesturing around at their family of snow-people. "Someone's got to be the black sheep."

Darcy had rolled her eyes as Jane had then declared her dog to be a sheep, and Thor had attacked Loki's monster by throwing snowballs at it that missed completely and instead hit Loki. It turned into a short but brutal game between the two, ending only when Darcy declared herself cold. Laughing the two men shook their hair, trying to dislodge bits of snow still slinging to them and slapping each other on the back. They went upstairs and made cocoa.

A/N: Thank you to all who read, and all who review! You guys make writing even more fun. =)

Also, just a heads up- there are about three chapters left.

I'm going to be updating my Thor/Jane fic that's set in the same world soon, and I'll be finishing that before starting this story's sequel.