Chapter Text
The short time it took for the key to turn and the door to open gave Loki no chance to even consider his options, and he found himself suddenly face-to-face with the captain, his assistant, three new weapon-toting males, and the well-armored General Erland of the Guard.
Loki blinked. Erland opened his mustached mouth to speak. Several of the others reached for their swords.
Finally, after what was probably less than second but felt like much longer, Loki regained his composure.
Taking no time to gauge whether he had sufficient magic for the action – there was no time to gauge, and if he couldn't do it, he was pretty much dead anyway – Loki reached out for the Space Gem, stepped forward, and hurtled himself away from Asgard, aiming for the little house on Midgard.
His boot touched ground and he nearly fell forward with the force of his movement, but then he was free of the portal and standing shakily in the guest room, the cries of Erland and his men audible and then gone as the portal snapped shut behind him.
Afternoon sun streamed in through the shade on the window. Distant, small sounds of Jane, Thor, and Darcy in the kitchen together came from downstairs.
Loki exhaled and collapsed into the desk chair Thor had used the night before.
For a few minutes, he sat and breathed. It was quiet. The hum of Midgardian air conditioner, and a cool breeze, came from just above him. A bowl of potpourri stood on the desk, smelling faintly of flowers and science-age preservatives.
So, Loki thought. His worst fears about the Book of Rettligr had come true. His workings were dark as night, through and through, if Rettligr was to judge him.
What else had he really expected.
The voices coming from downstairs seemed far away. Had Loki imagined himself a part of that little world just last night? For a moment, he nearly had. Now the illusion was shattered.
Loki felt condemned. What would he do now, to find The Channeler and his Soul Gem? What could he do now? He could not do as the Book instructed him: Change his ways, use his magic for what the Book deemed "good." It was too late, it wasn't part of the plan, and damn the Book anyway for the narrow-minded spells of Yggdrasil that made it believe in so rigid a notion of “good” as all that.
In fact, just generally, damn Yggdrasil, and the Old Ways. Damn so many things.
Loki rested his head on the small plastic and metal desk in front of him, and considered his options, such as they were.
He could travel back across dimensions to the planet that he had visited the day before, and search for clues of The Channeler's whereabouts. But that would take a huge amount of magic and time, and he had neither. And it might not even turn anything up.
Or he could take a few days to weave a new mind-control spell, one that would be powerful enough to compel an Asgardian magic-user – Fulla, perhaps? – to do as he asked, consult Rettligr for him, and tell no one he had ever been there.
He could also ...
No. Loki, no.
Yes. You have no choice.
Loki took a deep breath. He could unlock Darcy's magic. Teach her the basics of her own abilities, and of scrying. Take her on a visit to the Book. It would be much easier to control her than to control an Asgardian magic user. Because Darcy already trusted him; the spell had held for days.
And without a doubt, the Book would open to her if she could master it. She would by no means whatsoever register as a dark sorcerer and earn the Book's ire.
But the chances of a brand new magic user mastering the Book, rather than being overwhelmed by its power, were rather low. If Loki took Darcy to use Rettligr for him, assuming he could even convince her to do it, she would in all likelihood merely lose her mind to the endeavor and end up as a gibbering madwoman. At best she would return with an answer, but damaged by the effort.
But there was a chance , if Loki asked her to review his scrying spell with Rettligr, that she would manage it, and Loki would learn how to correct the spell and finally find The Channeler. There was a chance there. It was the best chance he had. And it would only take a few days.
He listened again to the voices downstairs. They sounded happy, or at least at their ease.
Well, fantastic for them. Loki had a job to finish, and only one solid option for doing it. That he had to potentially shatter something that even he, for a little while, had found to be good – that was often the price you paid for power.
Loki stood up, and eased the door to his bedroom open before creeping down the stairs to stop just shy of the bottom, concealed from the kitchen.
“France and Switzerland apparently do not fund Shield directly,” Thor was saying, “but have hinted that they may stop funding the United Nations itself unless the UN stops funding Shield. This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I called for an inquiry.”
“You can't have known this would happen,” Jane's voice replied soothingly.
“No,” Thor agreed gravely. “But I fear Shield will be dismantled before we can even determine whether it ought to be. There has to be something I can do.”
“Call Tony, I'm sure he'll set you up a TV appearance or a public stunt of come kind,” Darcy put in dryly.
“Absolutely,” Jane said, perhaps missing some sarcasm. “What amazes me is that the President isn't doing more to make sure Shield gets a fair shake. He's always been a fan of Shield's.”
“He could not have foreseen … everything that has happened.”
“That's true,” Jane agreed.
“Bullshit,” Darcy said. “What's he got one of the highest-profile jobs in the country for if he couldn't see this clusterfuck coming?”
Loki leaned against the banister. Darcy was fully engaged in a conversation with Thor and Jane. It might take some time to get her alone, and he wanted her alone for this. His plan, as he had devised it, required that they be alone.
He wondered, briefly, who would be volunteered to go check on Loki were a loud thump and perhaps a cry to come from the guest room in which he was staying, and concluded that Darcy would very likely volunteer herself.
So it was back up the stairs, shut the bedroom door silently behind him, pull a heavy tome from his pocket dimension, hurl it at a wall, and wait.
Voices, footsteps in the hall, a knock at the door.
“Hey, Loki?” came Darcy's voice.
Loki grinned.
“What was that? Are you alright in there?”
Swiftly, Loki cast the little glamour he'd had in mind upon himself, and unlocked the door.
“Oh, christ, Loki, not again,” Darcy said, one of her hands going to his face – which appeared to be ashen and sheened with sweat. His eyes would appear even more sunken in, and rimmed in red. And he would seem to be trembling.
“What happened to you now?” Darcy was saying. “Do you need Thor to get another potion?”
“No,” Loki said, glancing nervously behind her into the hallway. Then he grabbed for her hands, and pulled her into the room with him, shutting and locking the door behind her.
He kept hold of her hands and looked down at her. “I need your help,” he said. “Your help. Not Thor's. Please. Will you help me?”
Darcy opened her mouth and then closed it, brows knitting together in concern. Then she shook her head. “What, Loki? I don’t know. Tell me what it is first.”
“I will,” Loki said, dialing up the trembling. “I ...” He seemed to waiver on his feet, and Darcy reacted predictably.
“Ok, ok now,” she said, putting an arm around his waist. “Come on, let's sit down. I'll help you. Come on.”
Loki sat down heavily on the bed with her apparent aid, and cradled his head in his hands. “Darcy, I'm so sorry,” he said. “I'm so, so sorry.”
Darcy did not answer for a moment. And, when she did, her tone was carefully neutral. “Sorry about what?” she asked.
“About … the fact that I lied. I lied to you, and to everyone.”
Darcy dropped down to squat on the floor by his legs and look up at his face. Her features weren't quite as neutral as her voice had managed to be; he could see, in the subtle creasing of her brow, a mixture of concern and fear. “What did you lie about?” she asked.
“About the … other dark sorcerer. The one who helped me to collect the Infinity Gems.”
“Did he not exist?” Darcy asked in a tone that implied she had suspected as much.
Loki laughed bitterly. “I wish that were the case,” he said.
“What, then?” Darcy asked. She sat down more fully, crossing her legs on the floor. “I'm here to listen, champ. Speak.”
“I … did not kill him,” Loki ground out.
“Aha,” Darcy said. “And now, what? He's after you?”
“Yes,” Loki said in a near whisper.
“Well that's terrifying,” Darcy said. She glanced around the room, lips pursed, as if making sure there was no “dark sorcerer” in the room with them. Then she went on, “But I'm not seeing how that's a problem you'd need my help with, instead of Thor's. I mean, I do shoot a mean taser, but I happen to know those things don't work on Asgardians who have had their powers restored, so I don't know why it would work on something that you would call a 'dark sorcerer.' You should really let me go get Thor.”
Loki shook his head. “No, no, no, no,” he said. “It's nothing that can be solved with smashing. No hammer could harm Belial.”
“... Belial?”
“Yes. That is his name.”
“On Midgard, that's the name of a demon,” Darcy said. “A mother fucking demon. Is there some reason that's not a coincidence?”
Loki paused for effect. “I do not know,” he said finally. “I know little of his origins. But I know much of his abilities, and of his plans to rule the Nine Realms. He can only be defeated in a few ways. I had a plan, but it failed today. It is my work to destroy Belial that drew me away yesterday, and today. If I could have destroyed him as I said I did, before I came to Midgard to place the Gems in safekeeping so he would not get them again, I would have. But I did not manage it. And now, time is running out.”
It was Darcy's turn to shake her head. “Holly fuck, Loki, this is some heavy shit, man,” she said. “I don't know if I want to be involved in this. I really think Thor could help--”
“Darcy,” Loki said suddenly, grabbing hold of one of Darcy's wrists and positively ravaging her with the intensity of his gaze. She shut her mouth and stared at him. “Darcy, are you aware of your magical abilities?”
Darcy swallowed. “Uh,” she said. “No?”
Loki released her wrist. “I did not think so.”
“What do you mean, my magical abilities?” Darcy asked, rubbing her reddened wrist where he had gripped it. “And never grab me that fucking hard again,” she added. “I’m not Asgardian.”
“I mean that you have magic. Some of every race do. It is dormant, but it still seems to interact with other magical forces in a way that is beneficial to your ends. I have seen it at work. Are you aware of it?”
“Like I said, no,” Darcy answered. Then she turned her head sideways to peer at him. “Are you fucking with me?”
Loki gazed at her, suffusing his features with earnestness and desperation.
Not that she needed to be pushed much further. She was staring at him not with confusion, incredulity, or annoyance – the initial reactions he would have anticipated. Instead her expression was one of what Loki was tempted to call guarded hope.
“I am not,” Loki said thoughtfully. “I speak the truth.
Darcy licked her lips. “Can it be made un-dormant?” she asked.
Loki leaned forward. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “It can.”
“Are you fucking with me?” Darcy asked again.
“I very much am not.”
Darcy's eyes were darting back and forth slightly, as if following possibilities that only she could see. “Do you know what kind of magic?” she asked. “What I can do?”
“I can't tell that yet,” Loki said. “But we'll know if I unlock it.”
Darcy continued to look far away for another second.
Then she pursed her lips and snapped her eyes back to Loki.
“This,” she said firmly, “is a trick.”
Loki waited for her eyes to turn crystalline blue. They did not.
Which probably meant she did believe him, just thought objectively that she should not.
“It's not a trick,” he said.
“No, it's a trick, because you're trying to distract me from the fact that I said you should get Thor to help you, instead of –”
Darcy cut herself off, and stared at Loki.
“Wait,” she said. “Do you want me to help you, by using magic? Is that why Thor can't help?”
Loki gave her a tired smile. “You guessed it,” he said.
“Christ, Loki,” Darcy breathed. “There's got to be someone better qualified.”
Loki shook his head. “I don't have anyone else,” he said.
Darcy narrowed her eyes at him. “You're acting weird,” she said.
Damn.
“I am desperate,” Loki tried. “I am, as they say, at the end of my rope. I have no choice but to put myself at your mercy. Trust me, I do not like it either.”
Darcy did not stop regarding him as if he were a puzzle, but she seemed to consider his words.
“Will it be … hard?” she asked finally. “The thing you want me to do?”
“It will be challenging, yes,” Loki said. He slid down the side of the bed to sit beside her on the floor. “But I would not ask you to do it if I did not believe you could.”
“How do you know that, if you don't know what kind of magic I even have?”
“The feat requires only that one be a user of magic. Besides, a magic user has only a specialty. That you do one type of magic naturally well doesn’t mean you can’t do other kinds. And specialties, depending on who you are, can even be chosen, or changed.”
“And you can't do it yourself because ...”
Loki grimaced. “Alright, so there is a second requirement to perform this task,” he said. “A certain purity or at least neutrality of spirit.”
“You've got to be shitting me.”
“I am not.”
“Does sex, tazing people, or breaking into pools count against you?”
“No,” Loki said firmly. He didn’t think so, anyway.
“Have you ever done it before, unlocked someone's magic?”
“Yes,” Loki said.
“Is that true?” Darcy asked, frowning.
Loki considered her for a moment. He was lying. But no matter. “Of course,” he said.
“Was everyone okay afterward?”
“Yes.”
“And why is my magic … what did you say? Locked? Why would it be locked?”
“All magic on Midgard is locked,” Loki replied. “It is a fact of Yggdrasil. And as I explained, no one knows how or why Yggdrasil functions anymore.”
“Well if it's locked maybe there's a reason,” she said.
“Manipulation of the spells of Yggdasil is either impossible or permissible,” Loki answered quickly. “If it can be moved, it is meant to be. Many parts of it are immovable.”
Darcy did not look convinced, but she did not respond immediately either.
“It will not hurt,” Loki prompted.
“And once it's … un-dormant-ed, you'll teach me to use it?”
“You will have to learn to exercise basic control over the forms of your magic, to do this thing I hope that you can do for me.”
“And if I do this, and help you with this thing, this Belial guy will be dead, and you won't have to do mysterious bullshit that almost kills you every day?”
“That is broadly correct.”
“What is the thing you need me to do, exactly?”
“I need you to read a book.”
Darcy's lips pulled into a frown of disbelief. “A book?”
“Right. A book that can explain any spell in the span of, in our reality, an instant--no matter how long it might have taken otherwise to understand it.” A book that will take your mind in exchange for its wisdom. “But also, a book that is only legible to those who both have magic, and have not proven themselves … as you would call me, a supervillain.”
“Recovering supervillain.”
Loki kept the wince off his face. “As you wish.”
Darcy swallowed. “And once it's done, you unlocking my magic, can it be … undone?”
Loki considered lying here, again, but decided it wasn't strictly necessary. “No,” he said. “It cannot.”
“And what will it mean, for me to have magic? What if I don't … learn to use it? Will I be like Carry at the beginning of the book, or like Harry Potter with the snakes, and like sometimes stuff will just happen?”
Loki blinked at her. “I do not understand those references, but no, things will not just happen,” he said. Probably . “You will gain sensitivity to other magics whether you want it or not, and you may sometimes feel restless if you never use your magic, but other than that, there is no downside to unlocking it.”
“Why is magic so awesome?” Darcy asked. “What's the price?”
Loki's eyebrows crept up. “The price is when you fail to use it properly,” he said. “What else would it be? What is the price of any great power?”
Darcy gave a little huff of laughter. “I guess that makes sense,” she said. She stared off into the middle-distance, seeming to try and find the words to go on.
Finally, she looked back up at Loki. “Ok, god, yes, please, do this,” she said. “Do it now. Please.”
Loki peered at her, and wondered what compelled her toward this course so strongly. She didn't seem all that terribly worried about him, if he was being perfectly honest; he had expected much more fussing.
But he was not going to argue with the results.
He reached out to her magic and, using a technique he had so far only used on artifacts, he used his own magic to discern the makeup of the spell that wove hers shut. An ancient spell, well-crafted and elegant, contained it neatly. But, encouragingly, the spell designer had clearly aimed for his working to be reversible; otherwise, it would have been much stronger, Loki reasoned.
It was like an unlocked door, keeping a room private only so long as it took for someone to come along and peek inside.
He seized the woven threads of the spell, and wrenched them free.
Immediately, Loki could not breath. This was not like the depression of the respiratory system one felt when snake venom entered the veins; nor was it like an attack was overtaking Loki. It felt more like – well, to be perfectly honest, the only analogue he could imagine would be just not having lungs anymore at all.
He blinked a few times at Darcy, who was now staring at him with something like terror, her hands flapping around and then out to Loki. He realized then that he was falling sideways, and Darcy guided him to fall more softly.
He still could not breathe. He commanded himself to do so, and … nothing whatsoever happened as a result.
Darcy continued to flap, and seemed to be speaking. Loki's vision grew dimmer. What was happening? What could be –
Ok. Loki was starting to get this. What if Darcy's magic, somehow, was responsible for? – Loki probed himself for an unknown magic, and he found it: Uncontrolled, inelegant, chaotic, the threads sloppily thrown together, but the components really quite strong.
He pulled the spell apart easily. All at once, Loki could breathe again, and he gasped gratefully.
When he, a little while later, realized what was going on around him again, Loki observed that he was panting, sprawled on the ground, with Darcy lying next to him, propped on her elbows and biting her lip in trepidation.
Loki raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, still breathing hard. “Whatever you just did, I would politely and cordially ask that you not do it again unless I ask you to. Though I can easily imagine circumstances in which I would ask.”
Darcy released her lip and nodded, either ignoring or missing the veiled innuendo. “I'm sorry,” she said. “You did say things wouldn't just happen.”
Loki laughed. “It seems I was wrong,” he said. “... What did you do?”
Darcy shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said. “Like I said, it just happened. It felt like … someone was pulling something out of my chest.”
Loki nodded in recognition. “It does feel like that sometimes,” he said.
“It felt strange.”
“You come to like it.”
Darcy gave a wry smile. “I think I almost just killed you.”
Loki laughed again. Something about this whole situation was extremely invigorating. “That you did,” he said. “It was impressive.”
Darcy's expression changed at that, her eyes focusing on Loki and seeming a bit less miserable. “Impressive?” she asked.
Loki nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“I feel … restless. Like you said.”
“That will happen sometimes, yes,” Loki agreed.
“Do you know what I might have been doing? When you stopped breathing?”
“I have a few ideas. Shall we perform a test?”
Darcy licked her lips. “Is there a chance of it murdering somebody?” she asked.
“A small one.”
“Is there any way around that?”
“I don't think so, no.”
“Why not?”
Loki hesitated. “You may have a very specific kind of magic.”
Darcy wrinkled her nose. “What kind of specific kind of magic?”
Loki looked around the room, and spied the wicker bowl of potpourri on the desk. He crossed to it, dumped out the potpourri, and sat the vessel in front of Darcy, taking a seat in the desk chair to watch her work. “Concentrate on this bowl,” he said.
Darcy glanced up at him. “Why?”
“Just do as I say. Concentrate on the bowl. Imagine it filling up with your magic. Give it no more specific direction than that, and let your magic flow. Do this, and we may get some idea what kind of magic you’re inclined toward.”
Darcy took a deep breath, glanced up at Loki one more time, and then fixed her eyes on the woven basin.
Slowly at first, and then more quickly, the bowl began to wither, the fibrous plant-material from which it was made blackening and falling to ash on the floor.
Darcy's breath began to speed as she watched the bowl fall apart before her and, when it was done, she let out a little cry and stood up, falling backward onto the bed.
“Holy Christ,” she said, scooting backward and away from the little pile of ashes. “I feel it. I feel it, and it — it was like I was channeling ...” She shut her mouth and shook her head.
“Speak your mind.”
“Destruction,” Darcy blurted. “I know that sounds melodramatic, but it was like I was channeling destruction. Like, as a concept.”
“I believe you were, or something like it,” Loki said, grinning and leaning forward from his seat in the desk chair. “I would say you have an innate control over the stages of life and death. You really did nearly kill me.” Loki paused. “That could have been much worse.”
Darcy gave him a look that was halfway between a grimace and a grin, then stopped herself and shook her head. “I don't like it.”
“You do.”
“I do.” Darcy's hands flew to her head and she looked around the room as if for answers. “Holy Christ, I do. Is that … is that okay?”
Loki smiled bitterly. “To whom?”
“To … whoever decides if I'm evil.”
Loki snorted. “And who is that?”
“I … there's not like a wizard council, or something? Or even just this Book?”
A little surprised laugh escaped from Loki. “Are you alright, Darcy?”
Darcy shook her head, hands still braced at her temples. “I don't know,” she said. “I think I am but … shouldn't I not be?”
“Why?”
“My magic just sounds evil.”
Loki frowned. “No magic is inherently good or evil,” he said. “How could it be? Is neurochemistry evil, but biochemistry good? Magic is the same. Only the actions you use to take are good or evil.”
Darcy grimaced again.
“Tell me,” Loki said then, in his best commanding voice. Darcy looked at him. “Why were you so eager for me to do this, hm? You moved much more quickly than would many in your place.”
“... If I can do something good with my magic ...”
“Yes?”
“If I can do something good with my magic, then I can do something good.”
“Ah,” Loki said, leaning back. “I see.”
“You see what?”
“I see what you are saying. You are saying that you hoped to gain some power to do greater deeds than you believed yourself capable of without it. Am I correct?”
Darcy opened her mouth, hesitated, and then spoke. “Don't be a dick,” she said. “No one would turn down magic.”
Loki raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Of course not. And I am not teasing you. I am saying, quite simply, that you seem to be a rather unlikely candidate to become a dark sorcerer. Your motives seem pure enough to me.”
Darcy laughed. “Do you think you're the best judge of that?”
Loki's breath caught, but he managed to hide it, and chuckled. “I see your point,” he said. “But it is done now, I'm afraid.”
Darcy paused, looking almost betrayed for a second. Then she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “So you should probably start teaching me to use it, so I can do this … super important reading. Although. Do you mind if I talk to Jane and Thor about it, before I actually try to learn to use it?”
Loki let his eyes widen in fear. “No,” he said. “I mean, yes. They can't know.”
Darcy lowered her head to glare up at him. “Uh, excuse me?” she said. “Now it's a secret?”
“Only until … you help me,” Loki said. “I cannot risk anyone else becoming involved.”
“Just me,” Darcy shot back. “You can only risk me becoming involved.”
“You're the only person I know who would be willing to help and would be able to, Darcy.”
“Don't 'Darcy' me,” she snapped. “I should have made you sign something before I let you do this to me.”
“Maybe,” Loki agreed.
Darcy kept glaring. “Fine,” she said finally. “This is the stupidest, most asking-for-it-est bullshit I have ever been a part of, by a factor of like 10. But let's practice some fucking death magic." She paused, then went on. "I mean, if you think you're up for it."
Loki insisted that he was.
~*~
“He did what ?” Fury’s voice boomed over Tony’s intercom system in his workshop. Jarvis hadn’t even warned him this time, and he splashed a smoothie over a piece of nanotechnology as he startled.
The answer came in the steady voice of the neuroscientist from the last time Tony had heard from Fury’s device. “I said he seems to have been aiming to release the torture victims, and to dial back the tendency of targeted SHIELD employees to engage in torture in the first place. Now, I will add that there’s some evidence that, underneath that mind control, there was previous mind control doing the opposite.”
The line went silent, and Tony almost asked Jarvis if that was all there was to hear. But then Fury said, thoughtful, “I swear to God, the more I learn about this situation, the less sense it makes. Makes a man wonder why he bothered asking questions in the first place.”
“Because when we tried making a move first and not asking questions,” Clint’s voice put in, “we ended up with Thor and Stark attacking a SHIELD facility and succeeding ?”
Fury grunted. “So the question now … is can we play Stark’s media game with this?”
“Maybe,” came a feminine voice for the first time--Natasha Fucking Rominov. “But I think I have a better idea first.”
“Go on.”
“Get Steve Rogers on the line. We get him on our side--and it hardly matters what Tony or Thor do. We can take Loki. We can keep the Stones. We can do whatever we want. And with this evidence, I think Steve--Rogers--won’t be too hard to get on our side.”
The phone call that followed proved Natasha to be, as usual, absolutely correct.