Chapter Two: Advice Taking

When Thor visited for the second time, Darcy found herself dreading the sight of the two brothers. She didn't know what had come over her, why she had practically given him tips on perfecting his world domination technique. Darcy liked the world just the way it was, thank you very much. Sure, it had poverty and bad people in it, and it could definitely use improvement, but that was just it—Loki wouldn't improve it. Would he? From the speeches he had given in Germany, she had gotten the impression he was kind of a fascist pig, in the casual sense of the term. But it had been hard to get her talk with Loki out of her head since he had last been in her living room, with her wondering if he even read the book that she had given him. He looked like he had been interested in what she had to say, but she had no idea if he was just humoring her. She had to admit, the one thing that she had missed about college was that she could have those sorts of conversations with her friends, like who was the better dictator and stuff, and Loki had fulfilled those desires marvelously. She couldn't really have those conversations with Erik or Jane, and she REALLY didn't understand the stuff that they talked about for fun. It usually made her go back to her own books so that she could keep herself entertained.

Jane and Darcy had been baking when they heard the loud boom on the roof that meant Thor was arriving. Luckily, after the first visit, they could actually set up times that he could come. They had just finished a batch of cookies, and Darcy turned the oven off as Jane rushed up to the roof. She figured that she could stay here, put the cookies on a cooling rack, and get things cleaned up while Thor and Jane said their hellos.

By the time that she heard Thor's big stomping, she had done just that, wiping down any crumbs that had gotten on the counter and making the place look almost as good as all of those kitchens in cooking shows that never get dirty no matter how much had been done in them. When they walked through the door, Darcy was a little nervous to see a not so sour looking Loki over Jane and Thor's shoulders as well. It was nice that she would have someone to talk to while Thor and Jane...went off and had their private time, but she would have preferred a conversation with someone besides the evil Norse god she had instructed in the finer points of PR. It wasn't like she needed a reminder of how badly she gabbed last week

It didn't take long for Thor and Jane to sneak off. They were already sharing those looks with one another, and, once Jane had given them a plate of cookies and two glasses of milk, they were off to Jane's bedroom. When they were gone, Darcy looked toward Loki and stuck her finger down her throat, making a gagging noise. "Ugh, I thought they were going to start making out right here," she remarked. Might as well act normal, right?

"They do seem to be terribly enamored with one another, don't they?" he asked, sending her a devastating smile. And then, for a reason she couldn't put a name to, she smiled back. Looking into his eyes, she felt peacefulness pour over her, like a gentle stream, such as she hadn't experienced since her childhood.

With a start, she remembered that he had said something, and must reply. Focusing on Loki's eyes again, she felt a sharp return of clarity, normalcy.

"Yeah, no kidding. After you guys left last time she wouldn't stop talking about him." Was there a hint of jealousy there that she didn't have her own Asgardian god wanting to love all over her? Maybe. She didn't even have an Earth boyfriend to go and see. It was kind of depressing sometimes. At least when Thor was away, she and Jane could bond over being sexually frustrated. Not so much anymore! "He had promised her that he would return for her, and she's been pining away like a schoolgirl ever since. I think she was really starting to worry that he had forgotten about her or something."

She watched Loki take a small sip of the glass of milk that she had made for him. "He won't stop talking about her at Asgard, either," he said with a small roll of his eyes. "I believe he thinks of her as a maiden to be rescued still, at least sometimes. He's...rather old fashioned in some of his ideals. Nauseatingly so, I might add."

"No real shock there," Darcy said, finishing her milk and heading over to the sink to rinse out the glass before sticking it in the dish washer. "He definitely seems like the type to be a little medieval in some of his ways." Apparently, not in the 'wait until marriage' part, if the grins and happy sighs that came from Jane last time after they left were any indication. Thank GOD she'd had Loki to talk to or she would have been run out of her home, more than likely. "So, did you get to read the book that I lent you?" she asked, not able to hold back a hopeful grin.

He pulled the book out of his coat, smiling a smile that was a little less devious than one she would expect for someone known as the God of Mischief, passing it back to her. "I did. I found the notes you had written in the margins to be especially enlightening."

She blushed slightly, thankful that she could turn away and put her book back up on the shelf so that he wouldn't see her looking like a damn kid. As she was sliding the book into place on her bookshelf (despite looking disorganized, she actually had an intricate shelving system that she didn't like others messing with), she suddenly felt him standing behind her. "I was wondering if you had any books on the 'Napoleon' that you mentioned before," he said, and she could swear that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

"Oh sure," she said, pretending like it was nothing to have a god standing so close to her like that. She ended up plucking out two books from her shelf, one on Napoleon himself and one on the French Revolution before he took over. "Read this one first," she said, turning toward him and handing him the French Revolution book. "You get to see the situation that everyone in France had just gone through and how unstable everything was. That's another thing about good dictators. They seem to know exactly when to come in and put everything back together. I mean, it was how Julius Caesar got away with taking his army over the Rubicon even though that was kind of an act of war. The people absolutely loved him for it." And there she went again. What was wrong with her? She pressed her lips together, turning to the bookshelf, swearing to be good. But he ran a finger over her shoulder—so delicate, she nearly didn't feel it—and she turned to him with almost mechanically, feeling that sharp, warm clarity again.

Smiling benevolently, he tilted his head at that last bit of information. "So, if, hypothetically, I were to try taking over the world again, I should wait until there was some sort of disaster?" he asked.

Darcy returned his smile. "If we're talking in totally hypothetical terms, then yeah. You should wait for a huge natural disaster or even one that humans create for themselves. We're kind of good at that." As if he didn't know. From what she had been able to find out from his last attempt (after his last visit, she had looked up everything she could find on him, including blurry videos on YouTube of his stunt in Germany), he seemed to have watched the human race enough to know they were quite capable of taking themselves out. "You have to be the one to help them out, though, not simply automatically say 'let me take over' again. They have to want you to take over, beg for your assistance."

"I understand that now," Loki said to her with a nod. "It was your Machiavelli who said 'men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.'"

She grinned at him. "Exactly. If you do it right, the public will have no issue with loving you," she told him, side stepping him and heading back into the kitchen. It was early, but talking with Loki made her feel nervous, especially with the subject matter of blueprints on how to take over humanity. She needed a drink. Pulling out a bottle of wine (good wine, because she had company), and, offering some to Loki, poured two glasses, and handed him one as she sat down on the sofa. "I mean, utterly gorgeous man with that lovely accent AND throwing in some good deeds while the world possibly falls apart? Oh yeah, people will be all over you." She hadn't even taken a sip of her wine yet and her tongue was too loose for her own good. She took a big gulp of it.

She watched him as he smiled at her in that toe curling way, taking a sip of his own glass. He didn't spit it out, so she assumed that it was good enough. She wasn't knowledgeable in wine, but the guy at the liquor store said that it was a good one, and it was expensive, so she could only assume that it was. "Utterly gorgeous, am I?" he asked, his voice coming out in a purr.

"Dude, you own a mirror, right?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at him as she took another sip of her wine, smaller this time. She didn't want to be tanked, after all. "Come on. You know you're hot." Many people online had thought the same thing. Even if he had been an egomaniacal homicidal type person, he had fans online.

Thinking along those lines reminded her of who she was dealing with. Damn she needed to keep her head on straight! "Well, yes I own a mirror," he told her, taking another small sip of his glass. "Do you think my looks would help with that, theoretically, of course."

She gulped down the rest of her glass, and, before she had the chance to put the glass down, Loki was giving her a refill. "Well sure," she said, taking a sip of the wine before she even thought about it. "People trust people that are attractive more, and you don't have facial hair, which is even better. For some reason, the public doesn't trust a person with a beard. I guess because it's harder to read a facial expression." She shrugged, not really sure on that one, but she had definitely read that in some study.

"You know quite a bit about these subjects," he said to her, watching her closely as she took another sip of her wine. "I should have found you when I first arrived on this realm. Things might have gone quite differently."

"Hm...maybe, but I'm sure that you would have just looked over me like everyone else does around here," Darcy told him, trying really hard to not sound bitter about that. "Just because I'm not a physics god doesn't mean that I'm not intelligent." She wasn't even sure how much she liked working for a shadowy group like SHIELD, anyway. She couldn't talk to her family about her work, and had to take her last classes by correspondence because they had demanded that she stay and work with Jane, since she already knew everything. She assumed that they didn't want someone running around out there that knew about everything that happened in New Mexico without them being under their thumb in some way.

A look of empathy crossed his face for a second. "Trust me. I know what it's like to be looked over in favor of another," he said to her. She wondered if that was one of the reasons that he had tried to take over the Earth, so that others would properly notice him. If only he realized just how much some people had noticed him.

She scooted closer to him, raising her glass up to him. "How about a toast?" He stared at her a second before raising his glass as well. "To getting the attention that we both deserve." She grinned at him and, as the clinked their glasses together, he returned her smile.

She tilted her glass back and downed the rest of it in an entirely unladylike manner, not even noticing Thor's thundering footsteps coming down the hall. She hadn't realized that they were no longer alone until she heard Jane ask, "What on earth are you two doing?"

Darcy flailed, jumping with a squeak and trying to turn around at the same time, causing herself to fall off the sofa, and she would have slammed her head back against the coffee table if Loki hadn't caught her and pulled her back, pulling them dangerously close for a moment before she managed to settle back onto the couch.

"We're drinking and talking," Darcy finally told her, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Who wanted to say that they were possibly plotting a takeover of the planet?

God she was so screwed.

OoOoOoOo

When Thor and Loki had finally left a while later, Darcy knew that she was getting a 'talk.' She always got one of these talks when Jane thought that she was developing a crush on another guy that wasn't any good for her. There had only been two of those while she was working with Jane, but two was more than enough to know the looks that she would get when the third one came around, and apparently, it had.

"Did I really just walk in on you drinking with Loki earlier?" Jane asked, her face looking like she was desperately trying to hide a smile.

"If I said no, does that mean you would forget this conversation?" Darcy asked in a faux-hopeful voice. When Jane shook her head, she just sighed. "OK, you totally did, but I was just being hospitable! I mean, I bought that wine with the intention of sharing it with someone at SOME point, so why not your totally future brother-in-law?"

Jane rolled her eyes. "God, you and dark guys," she said. "Look, I have eyes, so I can see the appeal. I really can. I even asked Thor, and apparently he's gone through his punishment on Asgard, other than the whole collar thing that he mentioned."

"Yeah, and he can't get it off, and if he gets so far from Thor, it sends like, a billion volts of electricity through him. Probably not enough to kill him or anything, but enough to make him think twice about doing it," Darcy recited to her.

"Yeah, well, just don't get yourself hurt or anything, OK? You really mourn for men when breakups happen," Jane told her. "It's just...just because he's got a collar on doesn't mean that he's totally safe."

"Trust me, I know that." Oh did Darcy already realize that. She wondered if she was making things even more unsafe right now by talking to him about all the things that they had been discussing. It was just a small, slightly demented part of her that didn't really care. Maybe that part of her liked him, or maybe she just liked the idea of being a king maker and putting all of her old college ideas into practice, if such a thing ever came up. She wasn't really sure. "Besides, even if I DID develop a tremendous crush on him, nothing would come of it. Just plain old Darcy here, Jane. Not all of us can pull in old Norse gods."

OoOoOoOo

While Jane and Darcy were talking, Loki was actually watching them, scrying from Asgard, because his teleportation ability was hampered by the dreadful collar that he was still wearing. He couldn't do anything about it himself and Thor had the actual key, but he was already planning to convince Darcy to take a try at getting it off.

That Darcy certainly was a curious creature. She was pretty, for a Midgardian, and at least she wasn't a stick figure like so many women there seemed to think was attractive. She was quite the opposite. Still, he never would have cast her a second glance if she hadn't opened her mouth to him. She was brave to suggest that he could have improved his earlier attempt on her realm, and he was realizing more and more that her ideas were clever. It was her intelligence and boldness that caught his interest. He did wish that she didn't use so much Midgardian slang that made her sound less intelligent than she really was, but that was something that could easily be corrected if he saw fit.

It was one of her suggestions today that had piqued his interest especially. She had said that the next disaster that happened on her realm, he should find a way to help out, and be seen doing it. That wouldn't be a hard thing to do at all. Just mention the idea of helping humans to Thor and his brother would jump at the first chance.

Now he just had to wait for something to happen. He hoped that his patience wouldn't run out before something did.

OoOoOoOo

A few days later, Darcy had been idly flipping through the channels in the break room of the SHIELD offices that she worked in. She was still working as Jane's assistant, but she refused to eat her lunch in the lab. She had picked up a lunch at a nearby falafel joint, and was watching the TV with a mostly blank look when the news interrupted with the story that there had been flash floods in India, with thousands dead and even more displaced from their homes. It was sad, and Darcy felt terrible for the people who had been affected, but it didn't stop her from finishing her lunch. That was the cost of being connected with the world twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You quickly were desensitized to all the tragedy in the world.

A day or two later, Jane was waiting for Darcy when, bleary eyed, she showed up for her start of the day in the lab work. Jane almost always got there before her, since Darcy was so much not a morning person. Today, though, Jane wasn't doing work. She had her laptop open and had some news site pulled up.

"Figured you'd already be working now," Darcy said, rubbing her eyes a little as she conveyed a drink carrier full of coffees in with her. She set the drink carrier down and grabbed one, handing it to Jane before grabbing one for herself.

"Apparently the Avengers went off to help out with clean up and stuff with that flood in India," Jane said, absently sipping at the coffee, which was odd for her because she usually doctored it to hell before drinking it.

"Really?" Darcy asked. She didn't think that was usually their shtick. "Did Fury tell them that they need good PR or something?"

Jane shrugged. "No clue, honestly." She then started picked at the bag of creamer and sugar that Darcy had brought as well. "But they apparently brought Loki with them."

Darcy would have dropped her coffee if she wasn't such an addict and would NEVER drop anything as precious as coffee. "They LET him come along? I mean, Thor likes him because they're brothers, but I thought the rest of those guys hated him."

Jane didn't answer, just turning the laptop Darcy's way and hitting play on a video, which turned out to be a news story detailing how the 'American Avengers' had all went and volunteered their services in India. Dr. Banner had already been there (he seemed to like India), and the rest had come in. The news had even done a quick interview with Loki, who had explained the collar that kept him from causing trouble said and that he wanted to start to try and make up for what he had done in Manhattan.

So, he had actually followed some of her advice. Wow, Darcy was pretty sure that no one had ever followed her advice before. She didn't know if she should feel pleased that someone took her advice or freaked out because of what it might mean. It really freaked her out that figuring that out was a tougher decision than it should be.

"So, think Thor will stop by after they spend a while there?" Darcy asked. Obviously, they couldn't fix everything there or stay until it was, but it seemed that people there, at least according to the news, loved that they were all there to help. Right now Darcy was trying to distract herself from her own thoughts.

Jane shrugged. "Not really sure. This is kind of out of left field," she said. "I wonder if I could call him."

"Thor would just scream at the phone and think you were trapped inside," Darcy teased.