Loki: The apple

[moonshadows]

((I'm sorry, this is all I've ever written of Loki and Darcy getting married.))

“Loki!” Sif gestured him urgently over.

Seeing that Darcy was the center of everyone else’s attention, he cloaked himself in the blind spot that foiled even Heimdall’s eyes and withdrew to where Sif was waiting some yards away.

“Take it,” she hissed, pressing a cloth-wrapped object the size of his fist into his startled hands. “From Idun, with gratitude for your service to Asgard in her time of need.”

Hands already secreting the precious bundle away, Loki said, “Why?”

The warrior-maiden glared at him. “You would have given everything for Thor, and Asgard has not thanked you properly for your dedication. A few decades of happiness followed by centuries of sorrow? I would not be able to forgive myself if I allowed that. Her star shines too brightly to be allowed to flicker out and die so soon. Idun agreed. The choice is hers, of course, but Asgard owed it to you to see that she had that choice.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, but even as they both stalked back to their places, his mind whirled through the possibilities.

His father had to know. Even if she’d managed to hide her activities from everyone else, the Allfather would know that someone had braved Idun’s orchard. For Odin to maintain the fiction, there had to be an ulterior motive he agreed with. Thoughtfully, he watched his bride-to-be greet Sif and imagined what centuries of Darcy Lewis would do to the social balance of Asgard. After considering the question carefully, he examined it with the Odinsight and had to bite back a laugh. Really? His brother? Well, he did need a firm will to counter his, and Sif was more than his equal there. Having a female friend around who was a warrior but also a woman…

Grinning, Loki slid one arm around Darcy’s waist as though he’d never left her side.

 

 

“There’s one more gift,” Loki said hesitantly, fingers nervously cupping the plain cloth bundle.

Darcy propped herself up on one elbow and raised an eyebrow at him. “From who, and why did you keep it a secret?”

The cloth fell away, revealing an apple whose golden skin glowed softly in the dim light. “It is what you think it is,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her, “and it does what you think it does.”

“And you kept it a secret because how do you explain to your mortal friends why your girlfriend gets one but they don’t.” She looked up at him, storm-blue eyes conflicted. “Loki…”

“It’s your choice,” he said, all silk and steel and bleeding honesty. “I know it’s not an easy one to make, to decide whether to grow old and die with your mortal friends or to watch them grow old and die without you.”

“You made the choice to marry me, knowing that you’d have to watch me fade away in a handful of decades.” She took the apple, hefting it, feeling its firm flesh, but did not bite. “Who else knows?”

“Sif. My father. Possibly my mother.”

“If I eat it now, when will other people realize?”

“Ten years, perhaps. When they’ve visibly aged but you have not.”

“D’you think it will fix my eyes?”

Loki smiled faintly. “If it does not, there’s always surgery and healing stones.”

She cupped his cheek with the hand not holding Idun’s gift and drew him closer, her lips soft and warm against his. “Jane would never forgive me if I didn’t,” she whispered, breaking the kiss.

As Loki watched, she closed her eyes and brought the fruit to her lips, sniffing it once before fearlessly biting into it.

That night, Loki held her close, the heat of her naked skin keeping the fear of death at bay. He wept into her hair, silently, each tear a torrent of love and gratitude that even he could never find words to express. When morning came she stirred, opened her beautiful blue eyes, smiled with innocent wonder at seeing his face clearly without her corrective lenses, and kissed him.

“How does it feel to be a married man?” she teased, fingers trailing over his chest.

“When I fell into the abyss,” he said slowly, “it was an eternity of fear and despair with no end in sight, not even death.” Softly, tenderly, he kissed her. “This is the exact opposite.”

The only reply Darcy could muster to that was a fierce and passionate kiss that left them both breathless.

“I thought maybe we could go visit my mom,” she said after a minute or two. “Rub it in that she was so very wrong about me. But now I kinda want to thank her.”

Loki laid a line of kisses from her shoulder to her throat. “Thank her? For what?”

“If she hadn’t been such a psychotic bitch, I wouldn’t have gone into political science. I wouldn’t have volunteered for Jane’s study thing in New Mexico, I wouldn’t have been there to tase Thor, and I wouldn’t have had anything to get your attention with.” Smugly, she pulled him down for another kiss. “That and it will piss her off so much more to be thanked and told it’s because of her that I grew up to be a word-warrior maiden and marry a prince.”

He laughed softly. “I love it when you talk like that.”