CHAPTER 10

/+/+/+/+/+/

The bright midday sun pulled Darcy awake from the depths of her dreams with a violent start. She wasn't sure how long she'd been sleeping, but her migraine was all but forgotten.

She'd dreamed about Loki being a prisoner, except this time somehow he wasn't sealed in a glass cage but chained to the ground. He looked like he'd been through hell and back, his wrists rubbed raw from his shackles and his eyes more hopeless than she'd ever seen them.

She'd tried to reach him but there'd been some sort of invisible wall that kept her away. And just before she'd woken up, she'd heard someone whisper his name, a voice she'd never heard before, that called to all of her darkest nightmares.

Shaking off the cold fear from her dream, she forced herself out of bed. After her little episode no doubt Jane was even more worried about her. The sooner she got herself back to normal, and back to her own apartment, the better.

She quickly dressed and readied for the morning, surprised not to see Lars lurking in the kitchen. Opening the door to her room, she nearly bumped into Jane.

"Oh, hey, I was coming to check on you. How're you feeling?"

"Much better. Perfect. So perfect I think I'm ready to head home now."

"Nice try. Fury wants to talk to you."

"Director Fury?" Darcy's voice was startled. Sure, she worked for the man, but he was so busy with so many things at once that face-to-face time with him was a rare thing, and usually ominous.

"Yea come on. I brought us the coffees this time."

Darcy was helpless to protest as Jane pushed a fresh latte into her hands and pulled her along down the corridor to the elevators. Unable to resist the delicious smell, she took a sip on the way down toward the center of operations.

She'd met him multiple times and he'd been a shrewd, intelligent man that made everyone feel slightly uneasy around him. Determined to prove she was perfectly fine and ready to leave, Darcy downed the rest of the coffee to steady her nerves.

If she showed the slightest hesitance, Fury would know it.

They rounded the corner and Jane led her into their usual lab. Grateful for the quainter, familiar setting, Darcy stepped inside and met Fury's one-eyed gaze as she moved to sit in the desk chair across from him.

Straight to business, he began. "Darcy. Your phone has been disabled and wiped, and thanks to our tracker we picked it up in a dumpster just this morning."

"Great, so… everything's all taken care of."

His brows lowered, his eye flashing with thoughts she didn't dare guess at. "Not quite. We haven't located the thieves."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "So? Nothing else was stolen. They had no idea who I was."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"You really think if they knew who I was, and that I worked here," she gestured around her, "that they'd just bide their time until I went to the local grocery store to steal my cell phone?"

"You might be surprised. Spies can come from anywhere."

Darcy rolled her eyes, exasperated. "So does this mean I am not getting out of here anytime soon?"

"It does. And while you're here, I want to get something else taken care of. Lars has been moved to the room across from yours, and for the next month, you'll be working on self-defense with him."

"Month?! Are you kidding?"

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" His deadly serious expression shut her up. She wanted to protest but the iron-hard resolve in his expression stopped her. She knew it would be useless to fight against it.

And it wasn't that she didn't appreciate the effort. He wanted to keep everyone safe. She respected that. And she definitely did not want to become a liability that put anyone else here at risk.

Still…

"Lars is accompanying you to your place today to pick up whatever you need, and then you're to remain on the premises for the time being, until he or I determine otherwise. When you aren't training, you'll be working with Jane as usual. Once we locate the thieves, we will determine the threat to SHIELD, and from there decide what to do."

"I don't get a say in this at all?"

"Can you say with absolute certainty that what happened did not put anyone here at risk?"

Darcy sighed. "No."

"You may not realize this quite yet, but there is a war coming. We don't know for sure from where, or when, but if the last year has taught us anything, it's that we need to be prepared at all times. Are you prepared to leave and accept the consequences if you are wrong? Not to mention the cost of manpower to look after you on top of everything else we have on our plates?"

Darcy glanced over at Jane who shared a sheepish glance with her. She was almost positive this was absolutely nothing to worry about, but since she didn't have only her safety to worry about any more, now that she was a part of SHIELD….. with the stern look in his eye that reminded her of everyone who depended on him at this base, and the weight he carried on his shoulders every single day…. he'd worn her down.

"I'll stay."

The guilt washed away all her protests. Damn, but the man was good at getting his point across, and there was no arguing with his logic. She didn't envy anyone who crossed this man.

Though, wasn't that exactly what Loki was doing?

"Good. Lars will head out with you in half an hour. Your training starts this afternoon."

With a final, stoic glance at both her and Jane, he was gone.

Darcy let out the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

"Y'know Darcy it's really not as bad as you think here."

"We'll see about that."

Jane accompanied her back to her room and kept her company before Lars finally knocked on her door and the two headed out.

/+/+/+/+/+/

She didn't greet him the way she usually did when she came to see him that afternoon.

How tragic was it that this was the highlight of his life, locked away in prison staring at the walls surrounding him, waiting for her to come visit? Waiting for Darcy's lively presence to fill up the room and pull his thoughts away from the darkness that tried so hard to consume him?

Fury hadn't visited him in several days, and since their last conversation, Thor had stayed away too. The deafening silence was broken up by the sound of her footsteps on the concrete walkway as she moved to her typical seat and rested her back against the wall with a large sigh.

The wound at her temple was healing, but he still did not like the look of it. Her energy seemed dimmed somehow. Lacking. The realization somehow kindled the fire inside of him, teasing the flames the tiniest bit higher. He fought to keep everything tightly controlled under his façade.

When she finally spoke, the topic took him by surprise.

"It's already been over one week."

He didn't have to ask what she was referring to. Thor's pronouncement that he would plead his case to Fury had come only 8 days earlier, bringing the deadline ever closer. The topic was sealed. He would not give in to them, to the pathetic demands of SHIELD and open himself up to the torture of Thanos by revealing anything to them.

Still, every day that went by his nerves felt more and more on edge.

Something dark was coming, and it would bring so much loss and agony.

She looked over at him then, her gaze determined, her blue eyes fiery with resolve.

"The deadline is irrelevant. I haven't changed my mind."

She pursed her lips but did not reply. Inevitably, his attention was drawn to them. He clenched his fists and forced himself to look away.

Captivity was truly starting to drive him mad.

"What do you think about, in here, when you're alone?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

The closeness from the last evening they'd spoken seemed to have faded away, and he couldn't bring himself to open up again. Told himself it would serve no purpose.

She let out a small laugh. His cold fury began burning hotter once again. Somehow, she always turned everything he felt up higher. He was nearly growing accustomed to it.

"Y'know, you keep talking like that and I'm going to end up figuring you out."

"You're not making any sense."

"You are easier to read than you think you are, sometimes."

"Oh? Do tell." He couldn't stop the acid frustration from entering his tone, but she appeared unaffected by it.

"Hmm… I just mean, the times you talk, and the times you don't…. they can be more revealing than you think."

"And what, exactly, have you discovered about me?"

She tilted her head in contemplation, a smile playing across her face as though this were a game. An odd amusement warred with the anger inside him. Did he actually like the challenge she was presenting him with?

"You care more about your brother than you want to admit. And I think… you never really wanted to die. You wanted everything to end, you wanted to punish him, like you told me. But you didn't want to die."

How was it that Thor had never been able to understand that, that everyone around him had assumed the worst or seen what they'd wanted to see about him, yet in less than a month this little human he'd snapped at more often than not had been able to understand that? Had noticed a distinction that he himself overlooked at times?

It didn't sit well with him. He'd been about to snap at her again, lash out as he always had and deny the truths she'd laid out in front of him, but she clutched the railing and folded over, cutting off his words.

Her hiss of pain was audible in the echoing room. She clenched her forehead and sunk down onto the floor, closing her eyes and breathing heavily for several long minutes.

The wound was still bothering her. A flash of concern flooded him, followed on its heels by impotent rage and frustration at the reminder of how helpless he was. Locked away and no good to anyone.

She needed help. He could offer her nothing.

"Ugh… sorry. I'll be fine. Just… give me a minute."

She fell quiet, breathing deeply and slowly for several breaths before lifting her face back up to meet his.

"Stupid concussion…" She tapped the side of her head in a chastising gesture.

"You need assistance." The words were painfully obvious, but he still felt the need to say them. To taste the bitterness on his tongue in the reminder that he was nothing but a prisoner.

"No, I just need some peace and quiet. Just please let me stay here for a bit…"

She let her eyes fall closed, allowing him to study her fine features as she rested.

Yet again, she'd surprised him and managed to deflate the anger that had been building inside him.

She didn't treat him as a prisoner. She'd asked to stay, as though he could have protested and denied her or forced her to leave. She saw too much and her emotions tore at him, but she was the only one who looked at him and saw only him, without the cage that locked him there. She respected his space, regardless of whether he'd voluntarily chosen it or not.

He allowed himself to selfishly enjoy her company as he watched the sunlight play over the dark curls at the edge of her cheeks. There was no denying that for a human, she was quite beautiful. Though without her large, bright eyes looking down at him, some of her energy was gone, weakened somehow.

She rested for so long he paced across his cage. He thought she might have fallen asleep, when she sat up and looked down at him, crossing her arms and placing them on the balcony ledge as though to get a better look at him.

"They're making me stay here."

He held back the sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue, feeling uncharacteristically reluctant to utter it in the face of her fatigue. "And you don't want to?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's not as though I hate it here, I mean, I like my work, and I believe in what they do, but…. I like my space."

"You miss your home."

"Yes. It might not be the best or the nicest place in the world, but it's mine." The words were full of so much honesty it made his chest ache. How he'd longed to belong, once.

She grinned sheepishly. "You must miss your home too."

He turned away, angry at the mere thought of what he'd lost. "I have no home."

Her hopeful expression turned to confusion. "Of course you do. Thor would take you back if you would just—"

"—Asgard is not my home." He turned on her, the icy anger again lighting up the depths of his green eyes. She studied him but did not comment on it.

"Then where is your home?"

"Nowhere."

She didn't seem to know how to respond to that, looking away from his eyes.

"Someday, you will need to let someone in. And when you do, you'll choose a home for yourself."

"Needing is weakness."

"No. It's strength." This time, it was he who rolled his eyes, but she seemed unfazed and continued.

"People always seem to think you're stronger when you're alone, and that sharing pain or asking for help is weakness. But isn't it easier to keep everything inside yourself, bottled up and locked away, than to gather the courage to ask for help? And I think it takes more guts to trust someone, to put your life in their hands, than it does to lock yourself away."

He refused to acknowledge her words, though they hit him harder than he'd expected them to.

"It's safer to keep everything locked away inside you. Easier. Until it all becomes too much, and you lose control over all of it."

Her expression had taken on that same rare, wise air that always took him by surprise. All of a sudden, it no longer felt as though they were talking about him. She was speaking from personal experience, he would swear it. The thought fired up an intense curiosity about her that nearly washed all other thoughts away.

He wanted to know what it was that made her turn wistful the way she did, what it was darkening her rich blue eyes. He couldn't imagine her locking her emotions away. They were simply too strong to be contained. What had she been like, before he'd known her?

Her eyes were shadowed when they met his.

"I know I'm only a human to you, and you don't trust me. But I know you did what you did for a reason. You're not an idiot."

"How kind of you to notice."

"You won't share that reason. That's perfectly fine, it's your right. But I'm beginning to think you're more afraid of what I will think about you if you tell me the answer, than about me using that answer against you, or to turn you to our side."

"That implies I care about what you think of me."

"Don't you?"

"Why in all the realms should I?" He put all the bravado he could into the words, trying to convince himself it was true. How pathetic he was, being rattled by this slip of a girl, no matter how clever she was.

She didn't answer, and her shoulders sagged as she looked even more exhausted.

Against his will, a burning desire to find the home she'd spoken of rose up. The pain from that crushed hope was so great, he felt as though he inhaled his next breath through shards of broken glass.

'No one is hopeless Loki. You just need to ask for help."

"How simple you make everything sound. Your naïve way of thinking is truly remarkable."

There was more bitterness in his tone than he'd wanted, but she didn't rise to it. She simply shrugged, a mysterious grin lifting the corner of her lips.

He couldn't say which was the stronger emotion inside him: intense anger at how she so effortlessly provoked him yet never rose to his bait, or an inappropriate attraction. He had spent his life learning how to unravel the secrets of others, finding new ways of unsettling them, frightening them and making them bow to whatever he demanded of them.

He couldn't do that with her. Somehow, she saw through it, or she simply ignored it, and she continued to feel, so strongly the same suffocating warmth came over him once again.

It felt as though slowly, she was trying to rob him of his hatred, rob him of his loneliness and pain. It was ridiculous. It was untenable.

She was reminding him why he wanted to live.

"I had better go. Fury is making me train starting today."

Every day when she said goodbye a sense of loss seemed to grow. The humanity she seemed to restore in him was sucked away when she left, leaving him with a sense of disappointment and solitude. It grew worse by day. He would not ask her to stay. He would not stoop that low.

"Train?"

She looked dismayed. "Self defense. I think it's useless, I was never good at that sort of thing, and besides, who needs self defense when you have a tazer? I think he's just making an excuse to keep me here…"

"He wants you to learn to fight?"

She was too soft for that, too easy to read. Any opponent would spot her weaknesses in a heartbeat. Why did the thought cause discomfort to stir within him?

"Who knows… I might need it sometime. At least to make sure this doesn't happen again." She motioned to her forehead. The bruise was nearly healed, having already turned the pale yellow that signaled her body's recovery.

"Loki."

He wanted to know what she was thinking. He read a curiosity in her eyes, and a hesitance, but he could not see the thoughts running through her head and it was maddening. "Yes?"

"Can anyone learn magic? Or is that something you have to be born with?"

"It can be taught…to those willing to learn it."

"Is it safe?"

She was cautious, her voice soft and her expression as gentle as possible. Perhaps afraid she would anger him again.

He knew then what she wanted to ask. Would it turn her into him, make her do the things he'd done to her world? The thought stirred up the bitterness inside of him, but he forced himself to swallow it.

In her position, he would have asked the very same question. He forced the answer out, ashamed to relish the hope that lit up her eyes at his answer. "You will not be taken over by it, if that is your question. It is always under your control."

"Oh.. I didn't mean… I mean.. I'm sorry."

"Ask it Darcy."

Her head tilted in confusion as she peered at him. He forced himself to look away.

"Ask what?"

"The real question you are hiding. The answer you really want to know."

She didn't play dumb or deny it. Taking a deep breath, perhaps for courage, she asked the question that had been on the tip of her tongue.

"Why did you do what you did to New York city? What made you do it?"

"Does the answer really matter?" Surely she already hated him for it, and it would not matter what he said. Yet she did not act as though she hated him. He couldn't stand it.

"Yes, it matters! Why did you do it Loki? Can you really not tell me? Is the truth really so terrible?"

"For more power, to tear apart what Thor loves, to destroy those who dare to oppose me—"

"—No! It's something else, there's something else!"

They were shouting at each other, both their emotions burning hotter with anger, confusion, rage. Was that searing resentment his, or hers? He could not tell, told himself he did not care.

"The reason does not matter! It is done. You must accept that."

"No! Not when I know there is more to it."

"If you wish to throw away your time trying to pull an answer from me you will never get, you are welcome to it. But do not say I didn't warn you."

She frowned at him, her eyes sparkling with tears of rage that she wouldn't let fall. He had done this to her, he had provoked her to this. The satisfaction he normally felt would not come to him as he looked up at her.

He felt only emptiness.

"I don't know why I keep trying to save you, when you won't even be honest with me." She rose to leave, feet stomping across the metal floor as she made her way out. He had provoked her too far today. He couldn't bring himself to take the words back.

She was nearly out of his field of vision when she muttered to herself: "I should have just left you chained up."

"Chained?"

She did not appear to hear him, stomping away and slamming the door behind her. A deafening silence swallowed the room in her absence.

He glanced around his glass cage, gazing down at his wrists, unbound and free. There were no chains. A memory of his dreams assaulted him, chained to the Earth at Thanos' mercy, and a cold feeling ran down his spine at the vision.

He had only been in chains in his dreams, where he'd heard her voice.

Had Thanos somehow found him? Did he know about her?

He let out a cold laugh as the emptiness and pain flooded through him like a wave breaking on the surf. He was alone, and he would soon be destroyed by Thanos, and it was all his own fault. His reckoning was only a matter of time.