The world around Darcy is reduced to darkness, to cold, to silence.

The tunnel is small; she cannot extend her arms fully to her sides before her hands brush the earthen walls. The ceiling is barely an inch above her head. The air is thick with damp, heavy with the scent of wet earth.

The stairs beneath her feet are uneven stone, forcing her to move slowly, carefully judging the depth of each step before she can confidently move down. Some of the steps crumble beneath her weight, and she clutches at the walls to stop herself from tumbling headfirst down the incline. Each time she grasps the walls, her fingers sink deep into the earth. A few inches into the soil is a dense knotwork of roots, smooth and cold as ice to the touch.

At first, she feels as though she can judge the depth she is beneath the ground, can sense the weight of the earth above her head. She has never been particularly claustrophobic, but she finds herself gasping for breath as that weight increases, convinced that it's all going to come tumbling down on her, bury her. Entomb her.

Soon, when she glances back, she cannot see any light at all behind her. There is only the darkness before her, only the darkness behind her.

It grows colder as she descends, and when she passes her hands before her face, she can feel her breath condensing into frost. There's fear, then, swimming just beneath the surface of her mind, like currents beneath a frozen lake, but she does not acknowledge it. Cannot, because she knows that if she stops and just thinks about what she's doing, where she's going, she will turn and run back towards the surface.

She cannot turn back. She will not.

She owes Loki this. No one else will save him. Perhaps no one else can.

She keeps on walking, keeps on descending.

After what seems like forever, the stairs open up onto a small platform. A low light fills the space, something like the memory of a flickering candle's light, but drained of all warmth. There is no source for the light that she can see.

A tunnel stretches from the left side of the platform, its mouth totally dark. From behind that darkness comes a voice.

"Darcy?"

Darcy closes her eyes. The blackness there is less dense than the darkness in the tunnel. The voice is achingly familiar.

"You're not real," she says. Her voice does not echo. "You're not real, you're not real. You're dead. I watched you die."

Something brushes against her cheek. Calloused fingers, still warm from the sun. The touch as as familiar, and as impossible, as the voice.

Darcy opens her eyes. There is nothing there but the empty tunnel.

"You don't have to go down there, sweetheart. Just come to me, and I'll show you the way back. To the sunlight, to your life. You don't need to do this."

Darcy curls her hands into fists. "You're not my father. He's dead."

Laughter, low and sibilant. "You're walking into the land of the dead, sweetheart. And what do you think is going to happen to you there? You don't need to go down there. You can turn back. Forget all of this."

Forget. Those words echo around Darcy, twining around her like serpents. Whatever it is that speaks from behind the veil of darkness - be it her father's shade or something else entirely - it chose exactly the wrong words to use on her.

"Me forgetting is what caused all of this," Darcy says. She looks down at Frigga's ring on her finger. The metal glows, as though it's gathering the thin light of the platform. When she moves it against her skin, it feels warm.

The voice keeps on talking, but she ignores it, keeps on descending.

The next platform and tunnel, she is prepared for, along with the voice that comes from behind this darkness. Thin and plaintive, it is the wail of a broken woman.

"Darcy, my daughter, my only daughter, you don't know how much I always wanted you, always needed you. Just come and see me one last time. Let me see my little girl. Let me protect you."

Her mother's voice, so broken, tugs at her, for all that she steeled herself against it. She finds herself taking a step towards the tunnel. Another.

"That's it, dear. Mother will make everything okay."

Darcy stops walking. "Make everything okay? The way you made everything okay for my brothers? For me?"

"Darcy, dear, I granted them peace. They wanted to be free. I will help you free yourself of all of your burdens."

"You'll help me be free? You'll protect me?"

"Yes, my dear daughter. Just one more step."

Darcy holds out her hand to the darkness. She is so close that she can feel the darkness, a dense, viscid barrier in the air. There's an odd kind of warmth to it, almost as though it was alive. And she can feel it moving, twisting, roiling.

"My mother never protected me from anything in her life," Darcy says. She takes a step back, and the darkness twists again, writhes as if in anger. "Not once."

She is running down the stairs now, uncaring of the steps that crumble beneath her feet. She snatches at the walls only just enough to keep herself from falling flat, and soon her hands are scratched and bleeding, dirt embedded deep beneath her cracked nails. More platforms and tunnels open up, more familiar voices calling to her, but she simply hurls herself past them, doesn't give them a chance to hook into her.

When the stairs end, it is so unexpected that her velocity sends her tumbling into her hands and knees. The ground beneath her is soft and thick and dense. She rests there a moment, catching her breath, and thick, dark liquid begins to ooze up around her fingers and knees. She scrambles back to her feet, wipes her hands off as best as she can on her skirt. Even when her skin appears clean, the stench of the liquid clings to her skin. It smells something like rotting blood, like old meat thick with worms and decay.

As she straightens completely, she realises that her Asgardian gown has changed. The dark emerald has faded to a green-tinted grey, the skirt now a ragged conglomeration of silk panels and studded leather. The bodice is now supported by the same leather, matching vambraces on her arms. When she takes a step, she sees that her soft slippers have been replaced by heavy boots.

She runs her thumb over Frigga's ring, over the scars on her wrist. Both unchanged.

She closes her eyes for a moment, pressing the ring between her fingers hard enough that the metal bends hard against her skin. Takes a breath, trying to ignore the scent of rot.

It doesn't matter what she has to do. It doesn't matter what she has to sacrifice. This is for Loki.

When she opens her eyes again, she looks around herself for the first time. She stands on the short of what looks like a vast sea, though she knows somehow that it is no sea, no ocean, but merely a vastly wide river. The sky above is deep, velvet black, devoid of star or satellite. There is no source of light that she can see, and yet a pallid light suffuses everything.

Everything is cold. Everything is still.

The only sound she can hear is the tripping and skipping of her own heart.

Darcy presses her fingers to her sternum. Beneath the bone, her heart falters, but it still beats. Here, in the land of the dead, she is still alive. Just.

She doesn't know how long her body will remain alive for. It will have to be long enough.

The earth turns to mud as she approaches the river, the mud clinging in sticky strings to the soles of her boots, dampening the hem of her gown and dragging the silk down with its weight. Everything reeks of rot, of decay, of death.

The whole land is rotting. This whole place is dying.

"This whole place is dead."

The three of them speak in eerie unison. They stand at the very edge of the river, the water moving slightly around their ankles, as though small fishes are nibbling at their flesh. When Darcy takes a cautious step closer, she sees that there are no fish, only wriggling fingers that slip and slide over their skin. Seeking to escape? Seeking to claw the three of them back beneath the water? She doesn't know.

Darcy's mother stands slightly in front of her sons. She still holds the gun she used to kill herself and the two boys, but the wood and metal has fused to her flesh now, the bones of her forearm twisting smoothly into the barrel.

She raises the barrel, sights it between Darcy's eyes. "You should have been here with us. You should never have left us, Darcy."

Darcy's heart jolts in her chest. Falls still for the span of a long, breathless moment, then lurches into life again. "I had to leave. I couldn't stay there."

Her mother smiles, an echo of the smile that used to comfort Darcy when she skinned her knee as a girl. As Darcy had grown, those smiles had ebbed away, then faded completely. "I can make everything okay again," Darcy's mother says. She twists her arm, and the fused gun clicks. Behind her, Darcy's brothers raise their arms, too, as if preparing for an embrace. "Just walk towards us. My daughter. My child."

Darcy runs her fingers over her scarred wrist. "Tell me, mother, when did you find out? How long did it take you to discover what your husband was doing to your darling daughter? How long before you realised that it meant that he no longer did it to you?"

Her mother almost - almost - looks innocent, just for a moment. Her eyes drop to Darcy's chest. "Tell me, dear, how is your heart feeling? You fairly glow in this place, Darcy. But not for long. Not for long."

Glow. As though that word is a key, the magic within Darcy uncurls, vibrates. And, as though a tuning fork has been struck, a responding vibration rises in the air. A single pure note, echoing from within the three people standing before Darcy.

And Darcy knows that these three people are her mother and brothers - her memories of them, the ones she had given up, shaped by this place. And at the same time, she also knows that these people, these forms, are a part of Loki, a piece of him.

And she knows what she has to do.

She spreads her hands to her sides. Closes her eyes. "Do it."

The impact of the bullet comes first, followed by the sound of the gun firing. Her ears ring, the impact slams into her chest. She curls around it, falls to her knees. It's not physical pain, but it paralyses her nonetheless.

It spreads through her like cold lightning, forking along her veins and nerves and bones, slamming into her brain, her mind.

They explode in her mind, all the memories of her mother and her brothers that she gave up. Not only the memories that she gave to Hel, but so many others that she has suppressed over the years.

Her mother, walking in on Darcy and her father. Darcy is perhaps five years old, and her father's hand is up her skirt. Her mother looks at them blankly, then closes the door, her footsteps echoing through the house as she walks away.

Her mother bent over a basin of soapy water, scrubbing at a scrap of cloth, her face as red as the blood she is washing out of the underwear. That memory is so vivid that Darcy can see the tiny pink unicorns printed on the fabric. They had been her favourites, once.

Later on, her mother whipped her for ruining the underwear, made her work to earn the money to replace them.

The memories spiral in faster and faster, giving her only glimpses of faces, of places.

When it is done, the memories feel like a physical weight within her, dragging her down towards the boggy earth. As she pulls herself to her feet, she feels the weight of her body in a way she never has before. Is aware of her body as never before, of the echoes of aches, of scars that have faded, bruises that have yellowed and bleached to white.

She is so tired, and all she wants to do is lie down again, close her eyes. She takes a step, and her eyes close almost involuntarily. Only the erratic thudding of her heart wakes her, the shock as it skips another beat. It feels as though her blood has grown viscid as oil, her heart squeezing out every beat with an effort.

The shades of her mother and brothers have vanished, the surface of the river still again. There's a relief in that, at least.

Her boots drag heavily through the mud as she approaches the river bank. The magic twists within her as she peers down into the water, seeking, but there is nothing there but the dark, empty depths. Whatever there was of Loki to be gleaned from here, she already carries it within her.

There is no way to tell which direction she needs to go in, so she focuses on the magic, lets it guide her. There are so many memories waiting for her, so many small things that she has forgotten. A boy who ridiculed her in class once, another boy who invited her to a dance, then stood her up and arrived instead with a new girlfriend, he and his friends laughing at her. Her dress was the same shade of pink as the unicorns on the underwear she'd bled onto.

She grows heavier and heavier as she gathers memories, each step taking more effort to drag herself onwards. It grows harder and harder to stay awake, and the silence between her stuttering heartbeats stretches out longer and longer.

She is dying, in pieces and fragments.

And yet she keeps on going.

Until she reaches the last shade.

She knows, even before she sees him, that it will be her father.

He stands at the edge of the river, dressed in worn jeans and a soft plaid shirt. If she pressed her face against that shirt, she'd smell smoke, the sour tang of his sweat. He's smiling in the way he always had, the way that people in the church had commented on. Such an affectionate man, so sweet to his daughter, always.

"Darlin' girl," he says. He stretches out his arms, and she is struck by the smallness of him. In her memories, he was always so tall, so much bigger than she was. In truth, he stands a little shorter than she does. "You've come to fix what you broke."

Darcy's muscles tremble with the effort it takes to keep her too-heavy body upright. "Broke?"

"You killed me, sweetheart, and for that you gotta pay," her father says. "It's just the way of it. It's the rightness of it."

Darcy shakes her head. "You're the one who has to pay, not me. I did nothing wrong, ever. Apart from trusting you."

Her father spreads out his hands, smiling in the way he always used when someone came to collect money for bills. That smile had dug them deep into debt over the years. "But sweetheart, I only ever loved you."

"That wasn't love. You have no idea what love is."

She doesn't give him a chance to speak, doesn't give him the opportunity to give her memories back. This time, she rips them free from him, each one slicing into her heart as it settles into her mind.

This time, the memories seem to go on forever. So many of them, so many more than she'd ever imagined, going all the way back to the places where her memories are little more than fuzzy impressions, half-formed things that speak only of pain and wrongness.

When it is finally done, her father is gone, and she is so heavy that her legs cannot hold her upright any more. She sinks to her knees, then falls forward onto her hands. Her arms shake, and she falls belly-first into the mud, wallowing there.

There is movement in the water at the river's edge. The magic yearns towards it, and she knows that she needs to find some way to move, no matter the weight bearing her down. She claws her way through the mud, her armoured gown catching in the thick stuff again and again.

When she is finally at the water's edge, her head is pounding, her vision filled with black static. Her heart beats once, then stills for well over a minute. She knows that she doesn't have much longer.

She peers over the edge, down into the dark water.

Loki is there, lying still beneath the surface. He is bloodless, colourless, and his hair sways slightly around his face, like seaweed stirred by a current. His eyes are open, unseeing.

The movement that she saw is in the water around him. Images flicker around him: Thor, Frigga, Odin, even Darcy herself. Beasts that Darcy can barely imagine, few of them appearing friendly. There is a razorblade sharpness to them all, the kind of edge that fear hones Darcy's own memories on.

Drawing on her last reserves of energy, Darcy reaches out a hand towards the water.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," a voice says behind her.

Darcy manages to turn her head just enough to see Hel standing behind her. Here, she is taller, her skin pallid, her limbs preternaturally long and thin, almost insectile. Her gown seems made of living darkness, tendrils of shadows clinging to her hips, crawling up her arms and throat in delicate lacelike patterns. Her eyes are deep pools of oily black; when she turns her head, they look like tunnels leading into an abyss.

"If you touch the water of the river while you still live - even when you just barely live, as you do now - it will drain the remaining life from you." Hel speaks the words in a completely expressionless tone. There is no hunger, no desperation, just a kind of resignation. She moves closer to Darcy, her feet gliding across the boggy ground, shadows swirling around her. "It has been some time since anyone of the living realms has dared to walk in my realm. And for him?" She nods her head at Loki. "Few would do anything to save such as him."

"And they would all be wrong." The magic expands within Darcy, feeling something like an internal armour. It makes it easier for her to lift her head up, to speak. "He sacrificed himself for me. He deserves another chance."

"Once a being has entered Helheim, they do not return."

"Who says?"

Hel inclines her head. "I do."

"Then you can say otherwise."

Hel laughs, a low echoing sound. "I suppose there is truth in that." She squats down, her knees and elbows jutting up. "I will admit, there is some amusement in the audacity of a mere human who thinks she can walk into Helheim, take what she wants. Even if she is a supplicant of mine."

Hel waves a hand through the air, and Darcy feels the parts of her skin that had blackened tingle, grow cold.

"Kill me. Take me instead," Darcy says. "Do whatever you want to me, but let him live."

Hel makes a dismissive sound. "I could take you whenever I like, supplicant. Do not offer that which is not yours to give." Her eyes slide to Loki. "There is love between the two of you? What of that? Would you sacrifice that?"

Darcy's heart thuds once painfully, then is still. "No."

"Hm." Hel leans over, stirs the water of the river with a long, bony finger. The images around Loki shift so that they show only Darcy. Darcy dancing with him, Darcy curled in his arms, Darcy kissing him. "Pity."

Darcy thinks desperately. The cold Hel called has settled in her wrist, aching there beneath the scars. "You don't want my life. What about my soul?"

Hel's eyes flick back to her, something like hunger bare in their depths. "You would bargain your soul with Hel of Helheim, for him?"

Darcy looks down at Loki, at his sightless eyes. She owes him this.

She meets Hel's black eyes. "Yes. For him, yes."

Hel's lips peel back, revealing rows and rows of sharp, almost translucent teeth. "Then, my supplicant, we have a bargain. With one condition. He watches me take your soul."

"No-" Darcy begins.

Hel lifts a hand, and Darcy's words stop in her throat, as though her voice is a switch that Hel controls. "You said yes, supplicant."

The waters begin to move as Hel approaches the river. Her shadow gown parts as she walks, revealing the rotting, grey flesh of her legs. Here and there, the white gleam of bone catches the light, the sight turning Darcy's stomach. Hel's bare feet are more bone than flesh, and they do not sink into the boggy ground at all.

Hel leans down, holds a hand above the water. The river is roiling now, wavelets smacking against the banks over and over. From where she is, Darcy can catch only glimpses of the hands reaching up towards the surface. So many of them, so many and so desperate.

As Hel's hand passes through the surface of the river, the water stills. A thin spiral of frost rises from where the water touches her skin, but it appears to cause her no pain, for she continues reaching down.

She presses her palm to Loki's chest, closes her eyes.

And Loki wakes.

Darcy doesn't know what she expects. Fireworks, frost, maybe some light or steam. There is nothing but Loki, still one moment, and sitting up, waist deep in the water, blinking droplets from his eyes. He doesn't look surprised at all to find himself in Helheim, or to see Hel herself.

It is only when he sees Darcy that his eyes widen, his pupils contracting to pinpricks. He scrambles out of the water, hindered not at all by the clinging mud, and falls to his knees next to Darcy, pulls her into his arms.

"No no no no," he says. Water rises in his throat, bubbles through his words, but it seems not to bother him at all. He cradles her cheek in his palm, his skin surprisingly warm. "It was supposed to save you. You weren't supposed to die." His hand moves down, rests lightly beneath her collarbone. At the same moment, her heart gives a single, painful thud. Loki's eyes widen again. "You're not dead."

"Not feeling so hot, but not quite," Darcy manages to say. She tries to smile, but her muscles won't move.

Loki's jaw tightens. "You walked into Helheim, living? What manner of fool undertakes such a journey?"

"Love makes people do all manner of foolish things, I have found," Hel says. She sounds almost bored.

Loki looks down at Darcy. His hand presses hard against her skin; her heart lurches again beneath his touch. "Love?"

"I believe the word you are fond of is sentiment." Hel holds out a hand, her fingers hooked into a claw. "Sentiment, love, whatever you call it, it is a weakness." Her lips part, revealing the points of her teeth. "It is also a convenient fulcrum."

Hel closes her fingers into a fist, and Darcy is jerked from Loki's arms. Her body moves, automaton-like, to Hel, without conscious thought or volition. Hel's hands move through the air again, and Darcy kneels at her feet, her hands pressed together beneath her chin as if in prayer.

Hel trails a hand down Darcy's cheek, a cold mockery of the caress that Loki had bestowed only moments earlier. When she presses her fingers against Darcy's sternum, Darcy's heart does not respond, but stays cold and horribly still.

From the position Hel has arranged her in, Darcy can still see Loki. Can see how pale and still he is, his pupils blown wide now, hands curled into fists by his side.

"You bargained your life," he asks. "For me?"

Darcy starts to answer, but Hel pinches her fingers together. Darcy's lips close automatically before she can speak so much as a single syllable.

"Oh no, this foolish mortal bargained something more than that." Hel drags her fingers down Darcy's chest, curving around her breast until she comes to the place where, in the living world, Darcy's heartbeat would be the strongest. "She bargained her soul. Her sweet, innocent soul."

"No!" Loki cries. "Take whatever you want. Take my soul, my life, my magic. Flay the skin from my bones for the rest of eternity, just leave Darcy be."

"Oh, but my dear prince, the bargain has already been struck. Your pathetic life for her soul." Hel pinches her fingers together, presses forward in an almost gentle motion. Her fingers slide through Darcy's skin, a strangely painless, though utterly repellent, action. She scrapes her claws against the inside of Darcy's ribs, presses forward again until her fingers rest against the meat of Darcy's unbeating heart. "She interests me, little prince. A human who would lie with a god, who would love one. Who would walk into Helheim itself, alone, to try to save him. I find her most…intriguing."

Hel's claws whisper against the tough sheath of tissue around Darcy's heart. In turn, Darcy's heart gives another lurching beat.

Darcy wants to look away. Wants to close her eyes, pretend that none of this is happening. She is so tired, so heavy, and she just wants to sleep.

She allows herself none of these escapes.

She keeps her eyes fixed on Loki, hopes that he can see in her eyes all the things that she wishes she could say.

That he is worth this sacrifice. That he deserves this chance.

That she loves him.

Hel presses her fingers deeper into Darcy, her claws pressing into Darcy's heart. Pushes again. Does not go any further, though the ropy muscles of her arms begin to vibrate with the effort she's making. There is a deep, grinding pain within Darcy now as Hel puts all of her weight into her effort, but she cannot move further.

With a hiss, Hel rips her fingers from Darcy's chest. At the same time, her hold on Darcy snaps, and Darcy falls, boneless, to the ground. Her heart is shuddering, trying desperately to regain some kind of rhythm.

Hel stands above Darcy, her face twisted and dark. Her teeth gnash together, as though she seeks to bite through the very air.

"What's the matter?" Darcy asks in between gasps for breath. "Can't get it up?"

Hel hisses again, a feral sound that tears at the air. "You have deceived me, human. If that is what you are."

"What?" Darcy and Loki ask simultaneously.

Hel bares her teeth at Loki, then crouches next to Darcy, points a finger at Darcy's chest. The dark scent of decay rolls off her in waves. "Your soul already belongs to another. Is protected from that bond."

Darcy looks down at her chest. The wound Hel made is surprisingly small, the blood oozing forth thick and dark. It reminds me all too much of the black blood that had emanated from the claw marks on her wrist, and she swallows hard.

For a long moment they remain frozen in a tableau. Darcy lying in the thick, fetid mud, her blood mixing with the dank earth. Hel crouched by her side, features contorted with rage. And behind her, Loki, his face a mask of pure confusion.

Darcy expects death now. Hel's claws rending her head from her body, perhaps, or being flung into the river to be drowned by the dead. And she looks past Hel, looks at Loki, and finds that she's surprisingly okay with that. If Loki lives, then everything is worth it.

What she does not expect is for Hel to stand, to back away from her.

"You may have deceived me, little supplicant," Hel says, pointing a finger still dripping red with Darcy's blood, "but I keep my bargains. His life is yours, for what it is worth." She draws herself up and up, towering at least eight feet high. She smiles, and this time her teeth glint like steel. "If you want him living, then carry him out of Helheim yourself."

She comes apart in a flurry of torn shadows, leaving only the scent of rotting meat behind.

Darcy stares at the place where Hel had been. Her body is so heavy again, and it takes all of her effort to turn her head to Loki. He, too, is looking where Hel was, his eyebrows drawn together. He blinks once, twice, then his eyes flick to her.

"Hel will not release you that easily," he says. "She will seek her payment."

"I do not need a lecture right now," Darcy says. "I made my choice."

Loki drags his knuckles down the long muscles of his thighs. He's dressed in what look like black rags, the fabric still soaking with river water. "You bargained away your soul, Darcy. For me. That is no small thing."

Darcy tries to reply, but when she takes a breath, the air catches in her throat. When she begins coughing, it is to find her lungs filling with fluid, rank and stagnant. It is as though the moisture from the ground is seeping up through her flesh, drowning her slowly.

Loki is at her side immediately, seemingly not slowed at all by whatever oppressive energy suffuses Helheim. He presses a hand to her forehead, to her throat, her sternum. Her heart gives one, hard lurch, and she's coughing again.

"This place is killing you," Loki says, lifting her into his arms and standing in one smooth movement. "Living creatures are not made to walk in the realm of the dead."

Darcy wants to respond - in fact, she has several perfect comebacks in mind - but her vision is greying, the grey turning black at the edges as Loki begins to walk. Even though he keeps his steps smooth, every tiny movement jolts through her bones, makes her feel as though she is coming apart. Through tunnel vision, she sees Loki's face, set hard as stone.

Then blackness descends, and she knows nothing more.

#

When Darcy opens her eyes again, it is to find herself still cradled in Loki's arms, his hands so tight on her that her skin has gone numb beneath. They are climbing those black stairs, Loki's long legs taking three or four steps at a time, seeminly tireless. A ball of pale emerald light hovers over his head, illuminating the close space of the tunnel.

The horrible dragging weight has lessened, and Darcy is able to move her arms and legs slightly. Her heart is beating normally again, though it skips and hops every once in a while. Her lungs feel clear of fluid, though every breath scrapes against the raw flesh of her throat, and when her breath catches and sets her coughing, pain tightens around her ribs.

Loki flicks a glance down at her. She suspects that she must look much worse than she feels, for he begins to climb faster, fairly leaping up a half dozen stairs at a time.

Soon, Darcy can see the light spilling down onto the tunnel in the distance, and her heart lifts. They are almost home.

"When we get to Midgard, you have to do whatever trick it is that shields you from Heimdall," she says. Her voice is raspy, but Loki seems to understand her well enough, nodding quickly as he continues to climb.

Darcy allows herself to snuggle into his chest, screwing up her nose when she catches the rank scent of Helheim on his skin and clothes. Then again, she supposes that she hardly smells like a rose herself.

She presses her ear to his chest, listens to his heartbeat and smiles. The magic still inside her turns and spins, happy as a purring kitten. She saved Loki from Helheim. She, Darcy Lewis, walked into the land of the dead and brought a god back from life.

On the heels of that thought comes the awareness of the memories that she took back, an avalanche teetering on the edge of collapse. She pushes that awareness away, just for now. She'll deal with it later, but for now, she thinks she deserves a little happiness, at least.

It'll be okay. She just knows it. Everything is going to be okay.

The first touch of sunlight on her face is a balm, pure warmth spilling across her skin. Loki sets her down onto the grass immediately, and she feels the ground vibrate beneath her as the entrance to the tunnel closes. She presses her cheek against sun-warmed ground, breathing deeply of the clean scent of green, living things.

Home. She's home.

She looks up at Loki. Behind him, silhouetted against the clear blue of the sky, is the blackened remains of the branch of Yggdrasil. For the first time since the labyrinth, she actually feels happy to see it. It's dead, a monument to what had been conquered.

Loki, in comparison to how she feels, looks anything but happy. He's standing with his hands fisted on his hips, frowning. "Darcy, was it like this when you left?"

Darcy rolls up to a sitting position. The movement pulls at the muscles of her chest, and she looks down to the place where Hel's fingers had pierced her. The wound is healed now, a gnarled white scar in its place. It looks something like a twisted heart, smooth and cool to the touch.

She lets Loki help her to her feet. Her legs wobble at first, but with every breath of clean air she takes, they feel stronger.

"Darcy?" Loki asks. "Have things changed?"

Darcy finally registers the green grass beneath them, the blue sky above. The air is warm enough that it has to be close to the peak of summer.

"It was winter before," she says. "I guess time passes differently in Helheim?"

"So it seems." Loki begins walking a slow circle around the tree, weaving around the cairns.

More cairns have been erected, Darcy sees, several that look like polished slabs of obsidian dotted amongst the others. She doesn't look closely at them. Doesn't want to know if Beth's name is on any of them. Later, she'll look, but not right now.

She turns to the familiar silhouette of Stark Tower. "That hasn't changed, at least. And if six months have passed, I should probably go and see Jane. She'll have had me on the missing persons list within a day. Do you think it's bad taste to pretend to be a ghost?" When Loki doesn't answer, she turns to see him standing before one of the obsidian shrines. This one is surrounded by thickets of white roses. His face is the same pale shade. "Loki?"

"You should come and look at this."

Darcy walks slowly towards the memorial. "It's not Jane, is it?"

Loki shakes his head. When she approaches, he holds out his hand, and she takes it, curls her fingers into his.

Darcy's own picture has been inset into the obsidian, her name etched in gold beneath. No dates.

"They don't just think I'm missing," Darcy says. "They think I'm actually dead."

"Not just that," Loki says.

Darcy looks down to where he indicates. A newspaper has been arranged at the base of the shrine, a wreath of roses beside it. Darcy's picture is on the front page amongst dozens of others, along with dates inked in black.

"Five years?" Darcy asks. "I've been gone five years?"

A sound like thunder answers her. Loki looks up sharply, hope in his eyes. That hope fades as light erupts above him, white splintering to the colours of the rainbow. It takes Darcy a moment to realise that it is the Bifrost being opened.

She looks up at Loki. "You were supposed to hide yourself!"

"It's time for me to truly atone," he says. He drops a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Enough hiding. Enough lies."

The rainbow light comes down, and Loki is pushing Darcy away. As the Bifrost lands, Darcy realises that Loki has managed to move her out of its path, that he intends to go to Asgard alone. Leave her behind.

She glances once at Stark Tower, sends a silent apology to Jane, and throws herself into the Bifrost.