Chapter Text
Darcy didn’t look not Jewish…except for her eerily ice-blue eyes. As a young child, she loved them. She thought they made her unique. Interesting. Her parents always complimented her eyes and told her that being different was a good thing. A beautiful thing.
But as an older child, she started to understand the whispers. Some would doubt her mother’s faithfulness. Others would assume what Darcy now knew to be true—that she was adopted. When Darcy asked her parents about all the talk she overheard around school or Synagogue, they told her not to worry. They said her eyes were a gift; a sign that she was blessed and destined for something great.
Her parents always seemed uncomfortable when she brought it up, though, so she did her best to ignore the gossip. For a while, it worked, as no one ever tried to approach her directly about it. Then in fourth grade, when she was cornered by a group of boys after school. They pulled her braids, threw her books in the mud, classic bully stuff. She was used to it, being notably smaller than most of the kids in the community. But that day, one of the bullies struck a chord.
“You know what I heard?” he sneered to his pals as he towered over her menacingly, “I heard your mom and dad aren’t even yours. You act like one of us, but there’s not a drop of Jewish blood in you, is there?” He pressed a thumb painfully beneath her right eye, “I mean, just look at your eyes. What a freak.”
Darcy punched him in the face. He looked shocked at first, but then he punched her right back. She fell to the ground, unconscious, and woke up in the nurse’s office with her parents hovering worriedly over her.
She never told them what exactly had happened, but a few days later she asked if she could start wearing glasses, although she didn’t actually need them. Eventually, they gave in, assuming it must be some sort of trend, and she had worn them ever since. Her glasses made her feel safe. They were a shield that allowed her to imagine her eyes were a deep brown like those of her parents, or even just a darker, more normal shade of blue. People noticed her eyes less, and eventually, the whispers faded into the shadows.
Darcy had all but forgotten about them until the day her biology-major roommate asked her to do an ancestry test as part of a Genetics project. An ancestry test that, while not successfully connecting her to anyone else in the database, irrefutably proved that her parents were not her parents—which resulted in a very tense Hanukkah that year.
So. She was adopted. It had been several months since that traumatic revelation and Darcy was gradually coming to terms with it. What she was completely unprepared to consider was the fact that she may not even be human to begin with. That piece of information definitely didn’t show up on the ancestry test.
“Am I positive that I’m human ?” Darcy parroted dumbly, in shock that Loki would even ask such an absurd question, “Yeah, last I checked I’m definitely human! I age, I bleed, I went through puberty—”
“Many other species do those very same things, Darcy,” Loki interrupted calmly, “But only a select few possess the power that Asgardians call seidr. Only the few that the people of your planet consider…gods.”
“ Loki , I’m not a god! You’re not a god either, for that matter! There’s only one God and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t run around flirting with mortal girls and blasting green magic at people.”
Loki smiled gently at her retort, “I do not mean ‘god’ in the way you do, Minn Ijós . I simply mean beings of greater ability, longer life, higher intelligence—”
“Did you just call me stupid?”
“No, I called humans stupid. You, Darcy, are not—”
“BUT I AM HUMAN, DANG IT!” Darcy screamed, closing her eyes and backing away from Loki rapidly, hands pressed tightly against her skull, “Maybe I’ve just been around you too much and your power is rubbing off on me. Maybe it was the Tesseract. Maybe I’m just a new kind of human, but I’m human !”
She collapsed to her knees, weeping as the fight left her. “I’m human,” she kept whispering over and over again, believing it less every time she said it.
It made sense, and not just because of the eyes. She had always been a bit faster than others her age. A bit smarter. She made a point of not flaunting it, but she tended to excel at anything she did. That’s what made it so easy to take on an internship in a field of study she’d never even touched before. It’s why she chose to major in Political Science—she’d always had a way with words, and a knack for crafting compelling arguments on the fly. Born to be a lawyer , her father always joked.
“Is the idea of not being human truly so hideous to you?” Loki whispered numbly, his back turned so she could not see his face.
Darcy sighed and withdrew her hands from the tangled mess of her hair. “No, Loki. It’s not hideous. It’s terrifying.”
The tension leaked out of Loki’s shoulders at this, and he approached her like one did a skittish beast before sinking down on the grass beside her so their thighs and shoulders touched. “The unknown often is,” he reached out and took her hand in his, “But you need not be afraid. Knowing does not make you any less Darcy Lewis. You are still the same person who grew up on Midgard, and your parents—” Loki choked off abruptly, and Darcy suddenly realized he may not be talking entirely about her anymore, “Your parents loved you when they knew you were not theirs. I do not believe this knowledge would change a love so strong as to cultivate a woman like you.”
Darcy rested her head on Loki’s shoulder as he intertwined his fingers with hers. “You’re right. Even if it is true, it doesn’t change me unless I let it. Heck, you’re not human and we don’t look all that different.” This last part was intended to lighten the mood, but Darcy regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. A vision of Loki’s blood-red eyes and blue skin flashed through her mind as she realized her mistake and felt him pull away from her.
“Loki, I didn’t mean—it doesn’t change—”
“Darcy…” Even as he withdrew from her with pain marring his features, his voice remained tender, “It is not the same. You are not human, but it is likely you are Aesir or something similar. My heritage is not so…becoming.”
“Loki, I’ve already seen that part of you—”
“You saw the briefest glimpse in a moment of weakness,” Loki interjected, cold seeping into his tone, “But if we are to be…” Darcy’s heart raced as Loki struggled to put words to their unconventional relationship. “...if you truly desire to be with me, then I would have you understand who it is you are bonding yourself to. I do not wish there to be any lies or deception between us.”
Loki turned to Darcy as if needing reassurance, so she rose to her feet and held out a hand to help him do the same, relieved at the change of subject from her peculiar heritage to his. “As far as asking a girl out, that’s a pretty weird approach,” she flirted, infusing her words with a casual tone that she hoped proved how little the color of his skin mattered to her, “But okay, Boyfriend. Show me.”
Even though Darcy had insisted her reaction to discovering she wasn’t human was not one of disgust, Loki had to be sure. He had to be certain that his inhuman heritage wouldn’t frighten her away. It was one thing to love an alien who looked like a man. It was only natural to loathe a man who looked like a monster.
Loki had only shifted into his true form twice—once after the change was triggered by another Jotun, and once when traumatically reliving that very same memory—and he wasn’t sure if he could do it on demand. Of course, the moment he allowed himself to believe that, he knew it was a lie. He could still feel the ice in his center just as clearly as he did his seidr. No longer chained, it sat huddled in a corner deep within him, like a tamed beast that longed to run wild again but feared the wrath of its master.
Loki only hoped that he was the master it feared, and would not become a feast for the starved creature within him.
Loki coaxed at the ice at his core, inviting it to grow, to shift, to seep across his chest. Through his veins. Across his arms and legs and, finally, up his throat and over his features, painting him a grotesque blue. He looked at Darcy with the full force of his menacing red eyes. “This is who I truly am, Darcy. Not Agent Cooper. Not Loki, Prince of Asgard. But a halfling frost giant—a hrimpursar— of Jotunheim. A beast bred for war and destruction. This is what the lies I weave exist to hide, for any who look upon a face such as this could never trust…could never love…”
He closed his eyes then, fighting against the lump in his throat. This was why he depended so heavily on his lies—his deceptions. Truth only ever brought him pain. It was the truth that got him punished as a child, whereas a lie would soothe and cover his mistakes. It was the truth that ultimately led to his banishment when Odin learned of his treachery. And now, the truth would cause him to lose the most important person to him in all the nine realms.
But he loved her, and he could not lie now. Even if the truth cost him everything.
Resigned to this, Loki forced himself to open his eyes and take in the sorrow, the terror, and the disgust that would surely be plain on her features. And yet, when he opened his eyes, he found none of these reactions from Darcy. She had stepped closer to him, her face now only separated from him by their notable height difference as she pressed her hands gently to his chest.
“Loki…as I already told you. I know you’re not human, or Asgardian, or anything other than this. And I don’t care . You can be blue or pink or all the colors of the rainbow—it doesn’t change who you are.”
She reached a hand up to his cheek before Loki could react, and he jerked away from the touch in panic as he recalled what the touch of a Jotun could do, “You cannot touch me, Darcy, I’ll burn you!”
She quirked a brow at him, an amused smile on her face, “Well, I just did, and my hand is fine.” She held up her uninjured palm as evidence, and he reluctantly allowed her to approach him again. “You would never hurt me, Loki. Even your frosty side knows it. And you’re wrong about something else, by the way. You are Loki, Prince of Asgard. And Agent Cooper. And a frost giant. And so much more than any name or title, because those don’t makeup who you are. You are Just Loki, and that’s more than enough.”
At these words, Loki dismissed the Jotun back to its cell and felt the familiar Aesir warmth flood him once again. Tears were pouring unbidden down his cheeks, months of pain and sorrow pouring out of him. He was never enough for Asgard. He was never enough for Jotunheim. But with Darcy, he was enough. She believed in him. She saw him as worthy in a way he had never been able to see himself.
Loki drew Darcy into a tight embrace, burying his face in the soft tresses of her hair and inhaling her scent. She smelled like sweat and desert sands and the metallic tang of weaponry, and it was the most beautiful air he had ever breathed. “This is why I call you Minn Ijós ,” he whispered, pulling back to place a hand against her cheek, “You see the light in me where others have only ever seen darkness. You show me that I can be better—that I am better. But you are so much more than just my light. You shine too brightly for only me to possess. Your light is a guiding force for everyone you meet, bolstering their strength and inspiring happiness in the most dismal of times. You are a wonder, Minn Ijós .”
Wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her up to him, Loki bent his face down to hers and kissed her deeply, pouring his very soul into the act as he laid bare the very essence of who he was before the only person who had ever truly recognized it.
After a moment that was much too short while somehow holding all of eternity within it, Darcy pulled back, gasping for breath as she pressed her forehead against Loki’s. “Okay, so now that we’ve got your emotional damage sorted out, should we get back to mine?”
Loki chuckled at this, gently lowering Darcy until her feet were once again planted firmly on the ground. “And what emotional damage might that be, Darcy? That you’re adopted, or that you are likely not human?”
Darcy shrugged, “I mean the two sort of go hand-in-hand, don’t they? Geez, this is nuts. Just a few months ago I was a normal girl who found out she was adopted. Now I’m probably an alien who is also dating an alien who has also recently discovered he’s adopted. This is either fate or some sort of freaky collection of coincidences.”
“Personally, I do not believe in coincidences,” Loki countered, “There are far too many in this universe for it to be merely circumstantial.”
“Hm, you’re probably right,” Darcy mumbled, “Hey, speaking of circumstances…do you mind filling me in on where we are now?”
Loki looked around with disinterest, “I haven’t the faintest clue, but it does appear to be Midgard.”
“I’m sorry, you don’t know?? You just teleported us to some random location? What if we ended up appearing in the middle of the ocean? Or in the middle of a brick wall? ”
Loki laughed uproariously at this. “The Tesseract is powerful enough to ensure safe passage, no matter the distance we travel, Darcy. I entreated it to remove us to a more private and secure location, and it guided us here.”
“You talk as if it’s alive or something.”
“Alive? No. Sentient? Perhaps. Aware? Certainly.”
Darcy shivered visibly at this but didn’t inquire further. “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“Well that all depends, Minn Ijós ,” Loki held open a palm between them, catching the Tesseract as it dropped from his pocket dimension and quirking his brow mischievously, “Where would you like to go?”
“He calls for war and yet does nothing! How long shall you stand idly by while your father continues to sink our realm into ruin?”
Helblindi glared at his second who spoke so boldly of their king and his own father, but he knew his kinsman to be right. Many of the Jotun people were inspired by Laufey’s declaration in the face of the Allfather himself, and yet the most that had come of it was one brief and fruitless meeting with the king-regent.
Having accompanied his father on this “diplomatic mission,” Helblindi had walked away even more confident in their need to prepare for war. Now was the time to strike, while Odin was compromised and an ignorant buffoon sat in his place
Prince Thor had decimated Jotunheim’s forces once before, but that was merely the palace guard, and they had been caught unawares. He had yet to face Helblindi’s own command: the Svell Val-Tivar . Their might would put the God of Thunder’s mettle to the test if given the chance, along with his trickster of a brother.
Helblindi wrinkled his nose in disgust at the thought of his long-lost older brother growing up under the guise of an Asgardian prince. He should have died in that temple, then Father would not hesitate now.
Just as Helblindi looked up to support his second’s frustrations, a sharp pain pierced the side of his head, sending the Jotun prince sprawling to his knees.
“Helblindi! What is it? What has happened?” He felt the strong hands of his svellbrodira grip his forearms and pull him to standing, but his vision had gone dark. Then, in the dizzying darkness, a strange figure took shape. It was shrouded in a black cloak with only a mouth full of sharp, blood-soaked teeth visible beneath the hood. The mouth smiled maliciously as it opened to greet Jotnar’s crowned prince.
“Congratulations, Jotun. My Master has chosen you for a glorious purpose.”