How Darcy became a witch
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a bored Darcy was a menace.
That was how the majority of her hobbies had started. If she hadn’t found one herself in a short period of time, you could be sure another of the compound residents would have given her one out of sheer fear of her chaotic capabilities. She needed those new challenges regularly each time se mastered a skill. So of course, that’s the prime reason she started magic. It began with the basic card tricks, finding a deck easy to keep on herself to practice each time she would find herself unoccupied. She had been at it for two months, and then had gotten into the harder stuff and had upgraded to bigger stuff involving smoke, or daggers, or even rabbits, when her favorite carni could and would agree to climb off the vents and help her. The others knew to stay clear off darcy’s part of the lab on those days.
The release of an allegedly reformed loki happened during those months. At first it was not really of consequence to her. After all the prick was mostly keeping to himself, sometime glaring or downright ignoring those who were brave enough to approach. She could understand why, Thor had explained a lot one tipsy night, everyone had their own ways of grieving. And oh boy, did loki had things to grieve, and life choices to reconsider.
So when he came to the lab and had been given his own space there, adding to the already potent science trio potential of hazzard, she had set straight everyone with new lab rules, ignoring his “ better than thou” look and getting back to work immediately after that.
He had kept glaring at her retreating back, not really appreciating the idea of getting schooled by one of the puny humans and more so to be accountable in his eventual work, to her. He had been raised as a prince after all, and with the information he had, she was not even a “science” earthly scholar herself, how could she be responsible of the wannabe geniuses here?
The first few days she had been hyper focused on all of them, trying to see if the new addition was putting gasoline to the fire of her workload or not. But she gradually started to relax, seeing that Loki not only was pretty apt at keeping healthy habits, but also seemed to belie his reputation of mischief around here and sometime had even hadded something constructive to one of the other’s experiments ( even though most of the time he did it begrudgingly, after, god forbid! being caught looking interested by what they were doing.).
He mostly sat in the comfy chair he made appear one day and read…. and read… and read some more.
Darcy was intrigued. what was he reading? and why? …. and why here??? They were not the most noisy people of the compound, yes, but they were certainly not the quieter. There were often music playing on the downlow ( one of her workspace friendly playlists, organised to complement her protegees moods). The other were often talking about equations and experiments… on the good days. On the bad ones, their were shouting matches between jane and tony about her machines or whatever,having bruce try to mediate before retreating to meditate,and there were thoses days…. fires and explosions…..
Through all of it he kept reading… only occasionally raising his eyes and sometimes rolling them if they addressed him.
So she started thinking about him as a kind of semi-feral cat, just lounging here and hissing each time you make a move too close, and treated him as such. she gave him plenty space while keeping an open attitude towards him ( she was a people person and if Thor said he was okay to stay near his jane, darcy was okay with a potential new friend). She even left a plate and a drink for him when she fed the others. She had fun with that, trying to decipher what his facial expression towards the plates meant, but kept it to herself. She tried to not let herself be touched when he had a partically assholy day.
It was a shame really because the guy hit all her buttons, but it was wasted with his attitude. She tried to not stare too much and was succeeding most of the days, keeping in check what was a tiny little bit crush on the wannabe emo space prince. She was a grown capable girl and over her brooding bad boy phase DAMMIT!
Globally she regained the control of her daily routine fairly quickly and re-started her sessions of magic tricks.
_______
She didn’t know but that tickled him in all the wrong places… She was a menace…
He had came to the labs at first because the place reminded him of the rooms he used to study with his mother and other magic wielders at home… no asgaard… it was not his home anymore. Anyway, the atmosphere appeased him somehow, even with the obnoxious humans there. He could concentrate on whatever he was studying, or leave his double and practice to expand his powers, without being too much plagued by his past from his own mind or by seeing the others flee a room when he was in.
His b… Thor’s woman was okay. She was focused, fairly smart, and unobtrusive. The beast…. was too , in his human form. He still had to meet the giant green monster since his return to earth and was not particularly in a haste to. Stark was another matter, he was a nuisance but a minor one. He kept addressing him with increasingly ridiculous nicknames trying to test him. He showed a potential wicked mind, and a kind of darkness due to his past that loki could relate to. Though, Stark also sometimes asked his input to, he thinks, try to integrate him to the team but loki was not interested. Even with his flippant and rude attitude the iron-man was still trying to built a kind of family around him and was showing a true goldness of the heart. What a waste of talent, they could have been a great team causing mayhem.
But Darcy… Darcy was the heart of his problem, the only real pebble in his shoe here. From what he gathered she had no reason at first to work here and the first few days it annoyed him to no end to see that she was bossing everyone around while she was clearly the less educated one of the lot. She imposed to the whole lab her questionable music choices, had rules that she was rudely enforcing with various threats( and he wondered why the others complied with it), and she was globally chaotic. Loki loved chaos but… this one had no logic.
What truly started to push him past annoyed to downright resentful was when he started to notice the patterns…. and find the logic in her chaos. How could this unassuming girl could manipulate those brillant ( yes he thought it but will never admit it out loud okay??!) minds without them noticing, and how could HE have not noticed right away? he was the god of mischief and lies for Odin’s sake!
He saw now how she could defuse a building argument in the room with an obnoxious question or a pseudo accident. He saw how she undermined Bruce’s self deprecating tendencies with a few well chosen gestures. He saw how she made Stark reconsider his attitude. How she deterred Jane from falling too deep in her own head. How she forced them to interact. Forced them to feed, bathe and sleep. How she kept in check their moods with the musics he had thought random at first. How she saved documents and datas they were misplacing. How she administratively shepherd all of them. How she prevented some of the accidents…. And all of this while appearing like the annoying and unhelpful little sister that they were keeping out of the goodness of their heart. Oh they seemed to know she was helpful in the somewhat dangerous equilibrium they had but they had no idea how. He knew now.
She was maybe not science smart like the others but she was downright brilliant otherwise. And she had started to work on him. He had noticed from the beginning that she was not afraid of him,but she had also regularly approached his desk and left him sustenance… He notices her look after each time. At first he made a show of not having any reaction to this actions and not even taste it. She didn’t stop and he started to relent, nibbling on it sometimes. She kept looking and he new what she was doing, fishing some informations on what he liked without coming to ask him. He would have blown her off he she had , right, but she hadn’t even tried and had started directly with the cunning way, disguised behind kindness. That kind of perception unnerved him… it was too close from his… mother’s.
He also noticed the way she was concealing herself, behind those earthly plain clothes and glasses and often untamed hairs. She had no sense of class, was often really crass in her vocabulary, keeping even Stark on is toes, and that should have repelled him. He was never attracted to the pretty flowers of Asgaard’s court but neither had the baser classes been it for him either. So why was he compelled to try and guess what was hidden behind all that facade and got thrilled whenever he had a small glimpse? It had to be on purpose from her part.
When he started to get used to all of this ridiculousness, she threw him off guard again. He noticed she had started fiddling with what he guessed was a deck of cards. What on earth was she trying to accomplish, he had no idea. But that got his eyes focused on her hands more often than on his books. It seemed like a routine of basic hand trickery that he had mastered around the same time he started eating by himself as a child… how dense were these humans?
He refrained from commenting.. and sometimes caught himself just when he was going to get up and frustratingly show how it should be done. He couldn’t let her get to him.
Her practices with the archer were worse. The man kept glaring at him between actions and the ridiculousness of their attempt was hurting his eyes and brain. He usually chose those sessions to leave a double and practice by himself in his secret dimension. It was really good for dissociating his double’s stimuliis more from his owns.
So he stayed a lot here in those labs, equally fascinated and deeply irritated by the strange creature and her habits.
___
She had started to get to him. She noticed the first times she got a frown from a particular kind of food or music, or his rolling eyes when she got frustrated with her hands and cards. He seemed to hate her but at least it was progress. And he had never acted on his negative feelings towards her, so really, it was a win.
She was on the downhill curb of her interest for magic and was already trying to figure out what she was going to try and learn next when the THING happened.
She chose to call it that way because she did not want to dwell too much on it and have her brain torture her for days on end for the meaning of his actions.
Loki had saved her. And instead of focusing on why, she focused on how.
She had failed in derailing an argument between tony and jane about her machines again, and trying making a point, Stark had started hitting with the flat of his hand one of her friend’s contraption held by duct tape and sheer stubbornness. Knowing what would almost certainly happen, Darcy had run to the machine since jane would be too busy screaming on the man at first to try and save anything. She had seen in the corner of her eyes the trickster tense and get up from his chair, and that distracted her for a split second from the machine, making her notice too late the bright light and the hissing sound emanating from it. Stark had his armor on in a second and had the presence of mind to cover Jane from the danger. But Darcy, her, was to slow, the other way and in a running momentum.
One second she was plunging head first to the machine who was falling apart and starting to blow, the next she was seeing a blanked face Loki materialise in front of her to catch her and with a hand gesture making the machine disappear into thin air or what she guessed from Thor’s oversharing, another dimension where it probably harmlessly blew away.
An eerie silence had reigned for a few seconds. Then jane’s rant had gotten louder and higher about how Stark didn’t respect anything and had her friend almost die because of his stupid engineer pride.
Darcy tuned out the chewing of a mildly repentant Tony to focus on Loki who seemed to be caught between regretting to save all of them from blowing up, and checking if she was alright. After a few tense seconds between them he had released her and mumbled something about her stupidity for running toward blowing objects and not intervening next time she does it. He then materialised again in his chair, is book in his hand and refusing to raise his eyes from it.
THAT was real magic. And she wanted in on it.
She knew he was capable of it, but she never really witnessed it in person and it blew her mind. She stayed there for a few more minutes watching him, dissecting him, wondering if he would accept teaching her…. She knew he wouldn’t but she allowed herself to hope for a good five minutes before searching for plans B and C.
___
The rest of the day went on with relative calm afterwards and loki’s brain had no other distraction than asking why he did this and feeling her eyes burn his skin regularly. He couldn’t let her know she had picked enough of his interest to push him into actions. She had to think it was for his redeeming act.
The next day she had brought him a cupcake. Has a thanking gesture he guessed. She had also found a way to guess his favorite earth taste, or she had asked Thor. He would have to talk to him. He threw it in the trash just for the sake of it. His eyes automatically searched for her for a reaction and found her deeply absorbed in an ancient looking book.
He frowned with a feeling of dread. He had to know what had her so engrossed, it couldn’t be good. With the intention of fixing himself a cup of tea, he walked next to her desk, instead of materialising there as he used to do to avoid the others. He saw her tense, the telltale sign that she was aware of his passing by, but didn’t bulge, and he was able to take a sneak peak of her book. It was a weak pagan grimoire of some sort that had him stop and have a chortled laugh.
She raised her head at this, looking him with wide innocent eyes. He wasn’t fooled. He rolled his, and continued on his way, studying her back while fixing his Tea.
___
She had seen him throw her cupcake in the trash but she wasn’t deterred. He had been prickly in the beginning too. What she wasn’t prepared for was that he succumbed to his curiosity almost immediately, walking next to her to catch a glimpse. Darcy had hoped he would at one point but that was quick... She was definitely not prepared for the small sound nearing a laugh that escaped him though, and it was sheer surprise and a bit of instinctual annoyance at the condescension she could ear in him that had her lift her gaze to him. He quickly left after this, leaving her with the ridiculous book instructing her how she should roll naked in fresh grass on full moons to have a better chance at conceiving. She was not judgmental, maybe it worked but it was clearly not what she was after. Out of sheer stubbornness though she kept rummaging through the book every time she had a few minutes to herself. And of course, everytime she could hear his sigh from the other side of the room.
__
Everyday few day she came with a new absurd book about ancient or new magic rites and practices. Some more accurate than others. The lab was the theatre of her new hobby again, smelling of different kind of herbs or the doors adorned with more or less elaborate wraiths. Loki would never let her do something really harmful, but her attempts had him more and more smiling ironically. So she was interested in magic. He should have not been surprised, after all she had a mind for trickery and when she had the choice she always chose the more sinuous path to lead her, unseen, were she wanted to with people. More proof of this : she was trying to having him help her, he was not blind, but he was curious how far she was willing to go for it, if she would finally ask one day. It was a game they were both playing and aware of it, and it was bringing him back to a more carefree time of his life, harmlessly playing with his old friend’s minds and wishes. He sometime let slip a bit of his own playfulness and showed from his desk bits of magic that were bound to have her frustrated with her feeble attempts… having his mug float in the air to him, making appear a new book in his hands, changing clothes on a whim. Those times had her flushing scarlet and frowning so deeply he was worried she might end the game and quit.
One day the scarlet witch had come to the lab and had a chat with darcy while she was waiting for Stark. They talked some of the rites Darcy had doomed the lab with this week, having the young redhead show a small smile. When Darcy asked her for help, Wanda had simply said that it was not really her help she wanted, not really her kind of “magic”, and left with a small glance his way. She could have helped. Both Darcy and Loki knew it, but they also knew she could read minds and hearts, and they both wondered what she had read from the room.
He knew she had asked Strange too. He didn’t know the guy’s answer. He didn’t like the guy’s look on her either so didn’t pry further. How this moron of a human could be handed so much power was beyond him. And how darcy could be so… impressed by him either. The guy was not often around and Darcy mostly kept to the lab so any kind of help Strange had accepted to lend was limited anyway.
After this, he had to start spending less time in those walls, he was letting too much things get to him. everyone was getting more comfortable around him too so it was time he try and make something of this new life. He started training with Thor more often, and the others gradually joined. He was not making any particular effort but they seemed to accept him as he was, just like Darcy had at first. If she was not that much annoying she would have been a fun friend. All of them loved her.
She acknowledged is lacking presence by putting more and more effort into her researches. Small crafts started to appear outside of the labs. She started to practice strange stances on the training grounds. She tried brewing potions in the communal kitchen. He recognize some of them as true forms of knowledge, even when she was doing them wrong, and he knew she was going to push the game the further she could.
He was not the only one to notice and one day Thor and the team casually asked about it during a team bonding training. It seemed the other were all invested in the conversation in varying degrees too. The global concern was for her to accidentally stumble on something that could be dangerous for her or someone in the compound. He kept non-committal during the whole ordeal, not showing any intention on doing something about it.
___
It was after this that new books she hadn’t brought started to appear on her desk every now and then. Those were very old notebooks with elegant handwriting. They treated of basic real magic, from what she understood. She was hesitant. Was it from Loki or from the collection Strange talked about from Karlar..kamar.. something?
She concentrated very hard on those, knowing they had to come from a reliable source in the Art. She really hoped they came from Loki. The sidelines were hilarious, and she could see those pages had been loved...It was doing something to her that someone had been willing to share them. She sometime tried to get Loki’s attention to try and have a read of his gaze on her with the books in hand, but nothing had change. The annoyance and coldness were still there.
The ridiculous contraptions and rites started to disappear throughout the weeks, but the potions and weird stances continued. She started meditating too, and sometime she thought she could feel a presence beside her in those moments but it was elusive. She also dreamed of him, but those were very frustrating, each time she woke with a deep need to hit him and no memory of why.
She had started to eat healthier stuff, having learned that she needed her body at it’s best. Natasha and sometime Bruce accepted her in their yoga rituals. Loki stumbled on them one day doing the Grand Angle and the downward dog, having him flee in a strangely undignified manner that had Natasha smirk knowingly the rest of the seance and Darcy baffled.
Darcy was basically making good progress. She was not even close to be on an Avenging level of awesomeness but she was now understanding basic things that she had never imagined possible. She was capable of seeing potential disastrous events (at her level, not end of the world disastrous level) in another way and was now hopeful she could help smooth things a bit. The problem was that she was not really steady in her capabilities yet. She was confident she would get there. If the moron who was occupying more and more of her thoughts was willing to help, it would have been quicker though.