"The pigs mock you, my brother." Thor laughed and clapped Loki on the back.

Loki, seated on the couch and hunched over Jane's iPad, responded angrily, "I was robbed," although most of his ire was directed at Angry Birds.

Jane sat on the loveseat, studying research notes on a second iPad and watching Legend of Korra on the TV.

Darcy lurked in the shadows of the hallway, surreptitiously watching her roommates. Seeing them all sufficiently distracted, she snuck back down the hallway to the combination utility room and laundry. She stopped long enough to grab a few dog treats from the cabinet and then slipped out the trailer's side door.

Leaves made a papery crunch under her running shoes as she stepped onto the small landing outside the door. She blinked in the bright, late morning sunlight, eyes moving across the landscape to Loki's lair and the old cottonwood that stood hunched over the structure. The first hard freeze had borne down on the region a couple weeks ago, and the tree now stood gnarled, its limbs bare of leaves.

Starting down the three stairs, destination, Loki's lair, she stopped. A stick insect was walking slowly down one of the stairs' hand rails, wobbling on skinny legs, and Darcy did a double-take, surprised that it was still alive this late in November. She put a hand before the bug so that could it climb awkwardly onto the back of her hand. Lifting it to eye level, she turned her hand, but saw nothing to indicated the insect was anything out of the ordinary or magical. She carried the insect to a clump of sagebrush and left it there, where its pale gray green color provided perfect camouflage.

A hulking engine, at least four feet tall and just as wide, its dark metal poxed with orangey rust, sat a few feet from Loki's lair. A recent addition to Stark's collection of junk. Darcy eyed it as she passed, wondering if a string of Christmas lights might improve it. The shaded interior of the old plane cabin was chilly and Darcy shivered, knowing that soon running would be a better option than biking for keeping her thighs fabulous.

Out of reflex, she put a hand to her lower right side, wondering if she was up to biking, or running. For more than two months, she'd skipped her morning workout, because she was still healing, and also because everyone fluttered around her, discouraging her from exercise, treating her like a china doll that belonged in a locked curio cabinet.

One way to find out. She retrieved her bike, glad to see the tire pressure was still high-- the air pump was back in the house, with The Worry-Worts Three--and walked it to the road. A cool breeze slid over her, bringing the smell of burning piñon wood, probably from Mrs. Tapia's house. The old lady's only source of heat in her ancient trailer was a wood-burning stove, the wood trucked in once a month by her grandson.

Darcy swung her leg over the bike and paused, one foot on the lowest pedal. In the distance, the stucco walls around the Richards's property were golden in the sun. Going too far down the road in that direction meant passing that place. She hadn't had an attack of PTSD in a week, but just the thought of the destroyed barn made her hands slippery on the handlebars, and the creeping sensation of hands tightening around her neck...

Where am I? she thought, repeating a variation on the question Loki always asked whenever she had a flashback--"Where are you, Darcy?" She pulled in a mouthful of air and said softly, "Don Tenorio Road. On my bike. There's Loki's lair, but his royal heinous is in the house. And there's Carlos Martinez-Yazzie's butt ugly tire wall. I'm going to see Meteor and Rocket."

Though her heart still raced, the thickening of blood in her head and the tight sensation of air blocked from her lungs eased. Using the small surge of adrenaline, she began to ride down the road.

Nothing loves you like a dog that hasn't seen you, or at least, the treats you carry, in a while. She slowed before the Richards's big iron gate. The two pit bulls set up a horrible yowling racket, canine grins splitting their broad, white faces from ear to ear.

"A lady never begs," Darcy advised. In response, Meteor put her front feet on Rocket's back, and tried to shove her blunt snout through the metal bars. "Yeah. You're right. Being a lady is totally overrated." Taking this to heart, the dogs inhaled each treat without any girly chewing. Once the jerky treats were gone, Darcy took a few minutes to give her furry fan club neck scratches. Her thoughts wandered to her "friends with benefits" relationship with her supervillain roommate. Specifically, the unhappy lack of benefits, lately.

She knew Loki's big romantic declaration in her hospital room was just a means of perking up the half-dead science assistant. Sort of like "Soft Kitty" for Sheldon Cooper, but with more sexy. What bothered her wasn't the insincerity of his words, but the possibility that he'd lost interest in her altogether.

"He's got it all wrong, doesn't he, ladies?" she said to the dogs. "Guys say, 'I love you,' to get more sex, not less."

Then again, Loki had been acting weird lately, period. He'd swapped his sullen teen aspect for puckish arrogance. Instead of ignoring the insignificant mortals, he now met their hostility with cocky condescension and snarky commentary.

The result was somewhere between adorable and horrifying. Of course, to Darcy, this Loki, with his ready sly smile and youthful enthusiasm for mischief was the kind of guy worth dropping all her I.Q. points for and falling stupid in love.

To all other mortals, this chipper Loki was the alien terrorist responsible for death and destruction on this little blue planet. But the guards and personnel at SHIELD were used to the old, grumpy Loki. They glared at him; he ignored them; which gave them a false sense of triumph. Now he met their angry stares with smug grins. Faced with the incomprehensible gaze of a being who'd been around for millennia, even the biggest, most bad-ass-ist soldiers found themselves squirming and turning away.

Not that Loki's new smirky charm had that effect on Darcy. Not that he even tried that crap with her, anyway. To be fair, she was still the only person he treated with any kind of respect. For Loki, he'd been downright helpful where she was concerned. No, he still didn't do housework, but throughout her recovery, he shadowed her steps, helping her get from place to place and sometimes lowering himself to fetch things for her--iPod, glasses, breakfast/dinner in bed.

He still slept in her bed--chastely, sigh, atop the covers--and when he crept back to his room at 2 AM, he took her with him, tucking her into Thor's old bed while he fiddled with his favorite project.

Darcy gave each dog one last scratch behind the ears, climbed on her bicycle and rode back toward home. Picking up speed as she approached the house, she zipped by as fast as possible, in case one of her minders noticed her absence and came out to stop her. About a half mile down the road, she slowed to a comfortable pace and pictured the round, metal contours of Loki's latest piece of mad science. Yes, she had figured out what that thing was. Naturally, when she'd asked him, he had smirked and told her it was, "A better mousetrap." But she knew the lie wasn't for her, but instead for whoever else might be listening. Because if he was building a way to break the bonds of brotherly love, he wasn't about to advertise it to SHIELD, or Papa Odin.

Another mile passed and she was nearly at the junction between paved road and the unpaved shortcut into Puente Antiguo. A black SUV loomed out of the road dust and slowed as it approached her. In her head, Darcy grimaced. Without the immediate threat of a murderer on the loose, she wasn't required to call for an escort. But she wondered if Jane and company had noticed her missing and called SHIELD. The vehicle stopped and so did she.

"Morning," said the driver, the same skinny, blond man who often was assigned the patrol down their road.

His partner, a generic white guy in his forties, nodded politely and said, "Getting back in shape?"

Borrowing a little of Loki's arrogance, she grinned. "This much awesome takes work."

"Good day for a ride," the guard replied, a genuine smile on his face. "Soon as we finish this shift, I'm going for a long run." The two guards and Darcy exchanged small talk for another minute, and then they said goodbye and drove off. Watching them go, she mused on the fact that while her relationship with Loki hadn't won her any friends, a few of SHIELD's personnel were a little friendlier lately.

***

The first sign of change happened while she was still in the hospital. In just a few short days, her room smelled and looked like a florist's shop, colorful, and sweet. Darcy read the card from the latest arrival, a pot of cheerful daisies from Cherise in Human Resources. Cherise was a moon-faced redhead who usually had a smile on her face for everyone except Darcy and Jane.

In addition to her immortal babysitter, Jane was keeping her company this day. Thor was down the hall having some kind of Avengers-related confab with Director Fury, Natasha, and several other SHIELD agents. The topic, Loki told her, was probably "What to Do about Loki?" because that was always the topic. Darcy rolled her eyes and noted that not everything was about him. He had given her a faux wounded expression for that.

Darcy's gaze swept the array of flowers. "I don't get it." A lump grew in her throat. She held up Cherise's card. "These are the same people who called me Loki's whore behind my back." And sometimes to her front.

Loki, who'd been snooping through the flower forest, gave her a sharp glance and then glared at the unfortunate foliage as if it were responsible for besmirching her honor. Dark plans roiled in his green eyes, but any vengeful mischief was interrupted by the two fat tears that rolled down Darcy's cheeks.

He came right over and sat on the edge of the bed. His hands were warm on her skin as he lifted her face toward his, meeting her eyes, enveloping her in his infinitely ancient gaze. What freaked other people out, felt like home to her.

His silence was a comfort, but it was Jane, however, who went the Silvertongue route and said the right thing. She approached the bed, halting, her brown eyes thoughtful. "It's because Sean betrayed them too. They're as confused and hurt as you are." Jane's gaze shifted slightly to Loki. "I think they realize that you can't always tell who is good or bad, or understand what's going on in someone else's head."

***

Darcy stood on the bicycle pedals for extra oomph as she started through the slippery sand on the road. A thin cloud of dust still hung in the air and she wondered if sand caused lung cancer. That would be pretty pathetic. Survive being impaled by a metal spear, only to die on account of eeny-wheensy particles of silica.

With a last glance back at the black SUV receding into the distance, she continued up the road. A significant contingent of SHIELD employees still thought she was the devil's handmaiden (and ignored the fact that she was also Thor's, an Avenger's, friend), but she'd picked up a new friend--Pam, the guard.

Pam, like Natasha, was one of the few who didn't quail under Loki's smirking stare. She didn't like him, but she didn't waste energy on stupid posturing. Instead, she acknowledged him with a disinterest nod, which surprisingly, he'd sometimes return.

Last week, Pam, Darcy and Jane had made the trek to Albuquerque where they loaded up on supplies and had lunch with Pam's girlfriend, Eileen. And now Darcy no longer had to face the angry glares of Sarah and Cammie alone when she went up to the break room.

It was great to have another girl buddy, but she shared a unique and sad truth with Pam--they both carried death with them. Pam's on the battlefield; Darcy's in a charred barn in the New Mexico desert.

So far, Pam had not asked her about the events of that day. Probably she knew it was too soon. But it was a comfort knowing that she understood the weight Darcy held in her heart.

Darcy was certain of one thing, however. Despite the guilt she carried, she would do it again. Only with any do-over, she'd have the smarts not to stand in front of the exploding portal.

The first day back at work was the worst. Darcy had gone from simply being Loki's booty call to the central figure in the story of the well-liked accountant who was actually a bloodthirsty elf. Whispers of speculation followed where ever she went, reactions ranging from awe to suspicion, and she almost missed the days when everyone hated her with a uniform loathing.

But when she stepped into the break room, a strange sense of confidence fell upon her. After all that had happened, the dirty looks from Sarah and Cammie didn't matter. Well, they did, a little. The Darcy who walked across that room, however, felt transformed, made privy to some secret information and stronger for it. She'd been to murky borderlands where knives of betrayal had tried to slice away her faith in everything, and she parried their sharp blades and emerged into new country, fractured but not shattered.

Panning a long, bold look around the room, she felt her irreverent armor starting to morph into something braver, more authentically Darcy. She picked a table in the center of the room, the spot everyone else instinctively avoided and waited for Pam.

On their second lunch, Pam had asked her, "Are you and Loki...dating?"

Darcy smiled faintly as Pam fumbled over the word "dating." "What do you think?" she replied with a touch of bitterness in her tone.

"Before the day you got hurt, I had never seen you two together. I'm a firm believer in coming to my own conclusion based on what my eyes see, so I didn't pay much attention to the rumors."

"Yeah," said Darcy, "like the one that says SHIELD knew in advance that Thor would come crawling back to Earth with Loki." Sean had told her about this rumor and she had filled it away, far from her conscious thoughts, along with every other negative thing in her life. "And that SHIELD kept me around to be Loki's easy lay. Because, hey, Darcy doesn't know shit about science or anything else, but she's got a great rack. What else is she good for?" Hurt and anger rose in her chest and for the first time she didn't see any reason to hide it.

Pam nodded. "I heard that one. If it helps, I didn't buy it."

"But?" prodded Darcy.

"No buts, not really." She smiled reassuringly at Darcy. "After Thor brought you in, he hurried off to try to save his brother from the magic that ties them together. He came back about a half hour later, with Loki and Jane. They were worried about you, but once Loki woke up, he started demanding to see you. When he didn't get his way, he got belligerent, started throwing around all kinds of nasty threats."

"My prince charming." Darcy lifted her straw from the tea and stabbed at the ice with the tip. "Sorry." His rotten behavior wasn't her responsibility, but she felt a need to apologize.

The guard chuckled. "Actually, none of us took him too seriously. He couldn't stand without Thor's help. He looked like Dracula and was coughing up blood and shaking like a junkie." She grimaced. "Later, he switched tactics and started playing nice. That was worse than shithead Loki."

Remembering the charm he'd heaped on Ruth King, Darcy nodded. "Something must have worked. He ended up in my room, eventually."

"Director Fury let him see you pretty soon after you got out of surgery. Even before the doctors okayed it. After that, he wouldn't leave your side." Pam gave Darcy a meaningful look. "That's when I figured something was going on between you two."

"We slept together for the first time about a week before..." before I killed Sean, "before I got hurt." She met Pam's blue eyes. "But at first, when he moved into the trailer, all we did was fight. Even then, we kind of liked each other, but we weren't friends. Even when we moved into the friend zone, there weren't any benefits, not right away.

"Loki and I used to bicker so much that Agent Romanoff thought he was going to kill me. So if there was some big conspiracy on SHIELD's part to hook me up with Loki, no one told her." She said this last part a little louder for the benefit of the haters in the vicinity.

Pam nodded, accepting. "What do you see in him? Is there something that the rest of us don't see?"

Darcy shook her head. "Not really," she admitted. "I like him, even when he's being a shithead." He had shown her another side, the kinder, goofier version, but that belonged to her and her alone. Besides, she knew it was futile to try and justify what she felt for Loki. Ultimately, Loki's redemption, if there was to be one, would be between him and the people he wronged.

"You think there's good in him?"

Her grasp tightened on the straw, and thin plastic gave way under her fingers. "I believe there's good in everybody." She caught Pam's eyes and held her gaze. "I also believe there's evil in everybody, and that," she jabbed at the ice with the straw again, "is the part most people don't want to admit about themselves."

The ex-soldier's mouth thinned in contradiction before reluctant agreement softened her expression. "Yeah, I guess you've got that right."

***

It wasn't like Loki had blown her off. If anything, they were even closer after the incident at the barn. Their banter was still witty and sharp as knives, but he was falling into the habit of telling her more about his past in Asgard, even though the topic still could make him go from cheerful to furious in under five seconds.

He never turned that anger on her, though. The only time he'd ever been particularly harsh was when she recently tried to get into his pants. He'd snarled a "No!" at her. Darcy, being a firm believer in the idea that "no" meant "no," had sighed and let the matter go.

Or at least her grabby fingers let it go. Her imagination, aided and abetted by her reawakened libido, however, had started stripping him naked and happily molesting him on a daily basis. His shift in demeanor wasn't helping, either. Every time he tossed a wry rejoinder at someone, cracking with impish humor, her hormones went into overdrive and she could hardly keep from pouncing like a lion on a hapless gazelle.

Her desire for him was totally at odds with what had happened to her. Sean's attack had dredged up her old issues with body autonomy, and sometimes even casual touch from Jane made her flinch.

Loki, with his terrible strength should have been the last person whose touch she could tolerate. Her body, though, remembered how even when he took her with unrelenting ferocity, all that fearsome power was utterly within her control. And after everything she'd been through, she craved the life-affirming rhythm of two bodies moving together.

The bicycle's tires shimmied in a puddle of deep sand and Darcy returned to the present to put her thighs to use and dig herself out of the road hazard. Her legs were still strong after the exercise hiatus, but she felt a faint pull along her side, in the place where new muscle and skin were just a little thinner than the rest.

She slowed and turned for home. If she hurt herself, Jane and the rest would never let her out of the house again. Although, being trapped in the house wouldn't be a bad deal if Loki was willing play naughty jailer to her prisoner.

Once she returned to paved road, she pressed a hand against the healed hole in her side, feeling no pain. Her injury couldn't have been the only reason Loki avoided getting conjugal with her. Aside from some inadvertent groping as he played the part of gorgeous body servant, he hadn't touched her in anything other than a platonic manner since she'd been incapacitated by her injury, not even after she had healed.

And with a couple of exceptions, they hadn't talked about their relationship, or anything romantic.

First, there was her embarrassing joke about his last name.

It was a Thursday and Jane had dragged Darcy (literally--there had been kicking and screaming) to her monthly meeting with the other laboratories' head honchos. Returning to the lab, Darcy flopped in her chair and scooted it across the room to Loki, who was scrolling through a website for stock market day traders.

She waved a yellow notepad in his face, the top page filled with a mixture of notes from the meeting and little hearts impaled with knives. "Which is it? Odinson or Laufeyson? What should I doodle when I'm suppose to be paying attention to Jane. 'Darcy Odinson or Laufeyson'?"

Instantly, her eyes grew wide at her mistake and she wanted to snatch the words out of the air. To most guys, that kind of comment, even in jest, was like verbal mace. She started to tell him that Lewis was a perfectly good last name and that she had no interest in being anyone's bride, but he spoke first.

"Perhaps...Darcy Lokisfriend?" His tone was amused, both eyebrows lifted slightly.

Then and now, the response filled her with an immediate warmth. Unlike "I love you," which, along with that dazzling smile, no doubt won him all-access passes to the beds of Asgard's finest ladies, "friend" probably wasn't a word the trickster used much, and definitely not without an ulterior motive. Except, as everyone knew, friendship with a barely respected science assistant didn't offer him any advantage.

But, the cool factor of being Loki's buddy was diminished by the possibility that his comment was a polite way of stating that she was now trapped in the friend zone, with no chance for sex on the horizon.

As for love? Well, the word had been banished from both their vocabularies. Darcy avoided applying it to even mundane stuff. "I lu-really, really,like chocolate."

The l-word made one appearance, uttered by him, a couple weeks ago. Loki and Darcy were sitting on the porch steps, soaking up the late afternoon sun along with Bic, who was perched on a nearby railing.

Thor, who might better be known as the god of lost causes, was once again trying to teach Jane how to throw and catch a football. Actually, Jane was making some progress, and had caught the ball about five times out of ten. Darcy slid a look at Loki, Thor's favorite lost cause. She went through the habitual process of reminding herself that he was Loki--unstable, inhuman, and inclined to destroy small towns and large cities--but got distracted by the way the sun honed the sharp angles of his cheekbones, and the blue-black glints in his hair. She sighed and thought, Wading pools are less shallow than me.

"Any reason you stare?" he said, watching Jane and Thor.

"You're pretty. Like a butterfly." She offered him a big smile with lots of teeth.

He gave her a look that would have melted rock, but Darcy was better than asbestos where his glares were concerned. His gaze settled on her mouth and she hoped he was about to kiss her. Instead, he said, "She does not love him, you know."

"Huh?"

"Yes!" said Jane as she caught another pass. Darcy studied her and Thor.

"Bullshit," said Darcy. "She totally loves him."

Loki cocked his head at her, his expression saying that she was missing something in his words. "Does she?"

"She, uh..." Her voice faded as she noticed something in his eyes, a deeper question, maybe. It spread from his eyes outward across the stark lines of his face and then, abruptly, was replace with the usual devilish smirk.

Turning, she studied Jane's face, but not really seeing it. She ran her tongue over her teeth and gave him the only answer she could. "I don't know."

***

The black SUV passed her again, heading back to headquarters, she assumed. What's the point? Did SHIELD think they'd catch Loki sitting on the front porch, wearing that crazy, gold, goat helmet, cackling gleefully while building an army out of duct tape, chewing gum, and spare junk from Stark's collection?

The two guards again waved cheerfully. As she returned the wave, a dense knot of melancholy formed in her stomach. Had they known Sean? Did they think she was some kind of hero for what she did in the barn?

Was that their definition of a hero? Someone who kills someone else? By that definition, Loki should have been heroic in their eyes. Not for the horror he unleashed recently, but for the centuries of bloodshed he aided and abetted with Thor in the service of Asgard's great and noble causes.

One man's noble cause is another's travesty, she thought, unhappily, Sean's face vivid in her memory. If she had known what he was, could she have stopped him? Sucking in a gulp of air, she accelerated for one last sprint, her legs driven by the powerful conviction that she would have tried.

If she could live with what Loki was, believe that the trickster could be more than a dangerous maniac, then she would have thought the same of Sean. Except he had never given her a chance.

Then again, neither had Loki. Not exactly. Fate had dumped him in her living room and her weakness for tall, dark and sinister had compelled her to poke at him when she should have packed her things and moved to New York.

Her fascination, however, went beyond his looks. She liked him, the complexity and challenge of a mind that operated outside the constraints of mortality and old age. From the first time she set eyes on him, she'd been drawn to him, and when she approached, she'd felt a comfortable click of two people fitting together.

Was it magic? Had he put a spell on her, as Erik believed? If so, there wasn't much un-magical Darcy could do about it. She gave a little shrug and a smirk. Fine. I can deal. If Loki had gone to the trouble of magicking her into his sidekick, then she'd be that and waaay more.

She couldn't keep Sean from his darker impulses, could not push him to be more than a creature of hate and vengeance, because she didn't know what Sean was. But she knew Loki.

The God of Mischief could never be a saint, a hero in the Thor-ish sense, because the focal point of any epic is a man (or occasionally, a woman) who dispenses justice with muscle and easy violence. In her head, Darcy shrugged miserably. It was horribly easy, taking a life. She'd done it without even trying.

A trickster's job was much harder, relying on back room deals, fluid slight of hand, and extraordinary cunning to remake the world. This, she knew, was why his recent, big bombastic schemes failed. Overt violence just wasn't his thing.

But acclaim was. If Darcy was going to keep him on track, turn his powers of persuasion and magic to a neutral orientation (outright "good" being relative), she'd have to find a way to get him the recognition he craved. This was her mission.

Her legs began to throb with her fast pace, but that was eclipsed by the burn of a sense of purpose. The sun hit her glasses at the perfect angle, slicing the familiar shapes of the house and Loki's lair with bright rays. She pedaled harder, a smug smile on her face.