Darcy paused in the home's doorway, her eyes skyward; hoping. But all she saw was vivid blue, the sky burned clear of clouds by a weakened, but still energetic fall sun.

He'd be back, right? But in the meantime, she had to do something to shorten the distance between the two siblings.

She plunged into the house and toward Loki's room. He still slept peacefully, but that only fueled her sense of foreboding. Bedsprings squeaked as she pounced on him. She grabbed his shoulders and shook. "Wake-up-wakeup-wakeup-wakeup-WAKE-UP!"

Already a little panicked, she forgot that a startled Loki was a vicious Loki, the reminder coming as two emerald eyes beaming rage, and hands around her neck.

"No...strangling...adorable messenger," she rasped, now pinned underneath him. Realizing his mistake, he immediately released her.

"What--?"

"How far can you teleport?"

"Tele--?" He cocked his head, quizzical. "Ah," he said, understanding, then bitterness moving over his lean face. "Not far."

Hands on his shoulders, she shoved, squirming out from under him and scrambling off the bed. "Let's go!"

He sat up, feet on the floor, rubbing the back of his head and smirking at her. "What crisis looms now? Has Thor attempted more home repairs?"

Not even bothering to be gentle -- because, hello, immortal -- Darcy got his arm in a two-handed death grip and yanked mercilessly. "Please! For once in your long, stubborn life, just cooperate."

His demeanor followed the usual course of haughty arrogance shifting to dark humor, but he rose and started to follow her. A step beyond the bedroom door, he stopped, his expression turning inward, eyes slightly crossed. "Thor?" he asked.

Oh, shit. "I'll take you to him, but we have to hurry."

"Take me...?" Beneath Darcy's fingers, his flesh undulated, a deep shift in the current of magic and blood. His green eyes grew wide and he stretched his other arm out, hand on the wall. "Where?"

"Just down the road." Struggling to hold back bubbling, blathering panic, she braced her heels into the carpet and pulled, the effect like trying to uproot a tree. In her hand, the skin, muscle and bones of his hand rippled. Glacial waves of fear raced up her spine.

"Thor left me," he said tonelessly, but his face held open surprise at being abandoned by his normally devoted sibling.

"Not intentionally. Move!" Something strange was going on with him, energy pulsing from his hand into hers, his touch making her stomach churn. Going with another tactic, she said, "Thor needs your help."

Scorn where Thor was concerned was such a habit, that he went there first, lip curling derisively before he shivered, the clicking of his chattering teeth loud and clear. He relented, allowing Darcy to pull him down the hall, one hand still on the wall. "What has happened?"

"I'll tell you in the car." She let go of his hand and looped her arm around his waist as they reached the end of the hall. Even through layers of heavy embroidered cloth and swaths of leather, the effects of his separation from Thor were growing in strength, spikes of electric energy shocking the length of her arm and up her side where they touched. The closer they got to the front door, the stronger the power, the hotter the sparks burning her skin.

When they reached the door, his weight began to press down on her. She fumbled with the handle, hands already slippery with nervous sweat. After several tries, the latch clicked. She yanked the door open only to have it stop when it hit her foot. She moved her foot, which was difficult because of the tall and rapidly weakening man who leaned on her side. Together they shuffled out the doorway.

Darcy stopped, patting the pockets in her shorts. "Oh, shit," she wheezed, already winded from holding up his weight. "Can you lean, here?" She gestured at the side of the house. Without a word, his face white as a sheet, even in the sunlight, he slumped against the home's aluminum siding.

Her car keys were hanging where they belonged on the hook by the door. Taking that as a good sign, she grabbed them and raced back outside.Please be back, she prayed to a certain thunderous deity, but all she found outside was a raven-haired trickster who panted in pain, his long legs quaking even though he still leaned against the house. She wriggled an arm between him and the wall and urged him toward the steps.

"Only have to get to my car." She didn't know if she reassured him or herself. Hope lifted her spirits as he took a small step. Without much support, he took two more solid steps forward.

And hope crashed, along with him as he fell in a bone-crunching series of thuds, knees first, then the rest of him, onto the porch's wooden planks.

Dragged partially by him, she dropped as fast as Loki had. He lay on his side, and she crouched by him, one hand on his face. The skin beneath her palm was icy. "Loki, get up, please."

His eyes locked with hers and then rolled back, flashing dreadful white. Under her hand, the muscles in his jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth, a low, animal groan coming from deep in his chest. A little flicker of gray caught her eye and Darcy darted a brief glance, finding Bic running in a tiny frantic circle nearby.

Loki's shoulders twitched in a spastic shrug, the motion pushing him onto his back. "Loki," she cried, but he was obviously beyond hearing. The spasms began to move up his long body in herky-jerky waves. His head and heels hit wood with horrific, angry thuds. Under the assault of the seizure, the decking creaked and cracks appeared in the flaking painted surface.

"No," she murmured, weak and mournful. She fell back onto her ass, just inches from the edge of the stairs. Get it together, a brave Darcy demanded, but the sight of her dream coming to life robbed her of reason. She was a mindless doll made of fear. "No, no, no, no, no." Cutting off her chant, she shoved a fist to her mouth, teeth biting knuckles, the iron taste of her own blood proving this wasn't a dream.

The angry, irregular drum of his body impacting the porch vibrated through her body and she slapped her hands over her ears. His head whipped back and forth, tendons on his neck visible and tight like cords. "Thor," she whispered, "help." Resisting the urge to search the sky again, because she couldn't handle the disappointment, she gulped in mouthfuls of air, drowning in a sense of helplessness.

The agonized wrenching of muscles across his body went on interminably and Darcy watched, desperate to look away from the horrific undoing of her friend, and locked on the sight by a conviction that she had no choice but to bear witness. Digging her heels into the wood that shook under the assault of the seizure, she pressed her back against the porch's upright rail. A sharp corner of the rail jabbed her spine in time with quaking of the porch, but she was oblivious to the new bruises, the horror of what was happening enveloped her. Without the surreal buffer of nightmare, Loki's misery took on a life of its own, turning her feelings for him into barbed wire that bound her to his suffering.

The seizure's bone breaking movements slowed and Darcy held her breath, hoping. When he finally stilled, his eyes cleared and he turned, meeting her eyes. Darcy's heart almost stopped as she waited, expecting the dead, glazed expression to come next. She stared at him in the blessed, still silence, feeling as wrung out as he looked.

"Darcy?"

Shake it off. Finally responding to the better part of herself, she rocked forward onto her feet and crawled over to him. "Oh, hell no. You are not leaving me like this." His lips were bloody where he'd bitten them, but she kissed him anyway. "This is how it plays out: You break the mojo handcuffs between you and Thor, pack up glorious purposes and whisk off to some other universe to make mischief. That's how you leave me."

"I am not--"

"Get up!" Once again wrapping her hands about his arm, she tugged. She almost sobbed with relief when he sat up and struggled to his feet, his hands rough and bruising on her shoulders and arms, but he was moving, alive.

With her arm around his waist, she felt the wrongness about him, his essence coming apart like a sugar cube in hot coffee. But he was walking down the stairs, leaning on her and the rails - more on the rails, because they were creaking under the force of immortal weight and muscle.

Aesir strength. Or frost giant. Whatever. He's still strong. He'll be okay.

Just a few steps away, her little blue Honda shone dully under a thin veneer of dust. At the bottom of the steps, Loki paused and she pushed him on, thinking another seizure was about to happen. The reason for the hesitation, the shifting of his weight from the stairs to her, fell on her, and her calf and thigh muscles ached in protest. This so wasn't a job for a mortal, particularly a mortal woman. Where the hell was Thor? He should have realized his mistake by now.

She assumed that even in his current state Loki wasn't dropping the full extent of his weight on her, because if he did, she'd collapse. But as it were, those few steps felt like miles, her muscles sobbed in pain, threatening mutiny under the dying demi-god.

Not dying. Strong. Invulnerable. Hulk's squeaky toy. He'll be fine.

Her hand shaking from exertion, she tugged at the passenger door handle and it opened -- car theft was virtually unknown in Puente Antiguo and she often forgot to lock the doors. "Get in, Miss Daisy."

He collapsed in messy sprawl on the seat, head leaned back on the headrest, hands in white-knuckled fists. His eyes were clenched shut and a network of lines etched by pain radiated from them and over his pale skin. "Legs too," she said, push-pulling at his right leg that hadn't made it into the car. He shivered, teeth chittering again and went rigid. Darcy despaired, thinking another seizure was on the way. A petty and small voice wailed in her head, I can't do this, can't handle this. Why Me? She shook it off with dark humor. When Thor gets back, he will pay. I don't know how -- hot peppers in his Pop-Tarts -- but there will be pain.

The tension eased from Loki's thin, embattled frame. With a moan, he pulled his leg into the car. She eyed the seatbelt, but blew it off; a car wreck was the least of his problems. She shut the door and ran to the driver's side.

The reliable Japanese engine started right up. She blew out a sigh of gratitude that the vehicle hadn't decided to be a trope, the car that wouldn't start in the face of a crisis. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Loki squirm in agony, and then slump against the door, face against the glass. Turning, she saw his bloodied mouth stain the glass crimson. He gasped like a fish out of water.

Her hand on the gear shifter twitched. She wanted to touch him, free him from the pain. She also wanted to do something unspeakably bloody to Odin. Instead, she shoved the knob right and down into reverse and worked the gas and clutch, sending the little car ripping backward in a spray of gravel. The vehicle shimmied a bit when she turned the wheel and hit the brake. With several quick movements of the gear shift, she had the car accelerating down the narrow road.

"We'll be there soon." Where ever there was. What if Thor had gone somewhere else? Maybe that explained why he hadn't returned yet.

"Well," he said, between rasping breaths, "you've always wanted a d-dem-demonstration of the spell's effects."

Risking a glance at him, a bright shard of guilt stabbed her in the gut. "That was before I got attached to...certain parts of you."

For a moment, he seemed to smile. "Darcy, you should know--" His words were cut off by an long, undulating moan of pain and he folded in on himself, forehead hitting the dash so hard Darcy was surprised the air bag didn't emerge.

"Loki." She spoke his name like a promise. "We'll be there soon." Her right foot drove the gas pedal down. The car's little engine roared and hurled them down the road at several times the speed limit.

Around them familiar scenery whizzed by in a blur. The car's body vibrated from the exertions of the engine's overtaxed pistons as they churned in four cylinders. It was a sturdy little car, but not made for an autobahn or ripping up a narrow country road at nearly 90 mph.

She gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline, turning all her focus on the road. The posted speed limit was thirty and even that was probably too fast for a road where kids sometimes played (and science assistants jogged or rode a bike), but Loki's torment encompassed the little car. Gasps of pain that grew to moans, then tortuous cries; the smell of charred cinnamon and something metallic--oh, fuck, blood--swelled in air. His misery came in waves, with short reprieves between where his breathing, wet and asthmatic, rose over the struggle of the car's engine.

The wheels hit a small pothole and he cried out, the sound sending a fiery empathetic pain through her. They whizzed past one intersection, then another. Fortunately, at this hour everyone was at work or school and the road was clear. She hoped that this wouldn't be the one day a bored Sheriff's deputy decided to cruise down the road, because she wasn't about to stop until she got to her destination. And then, what would she say to a pissed-off cop? "Sorry. My immortal boyfriend -- you might recognize him; Loki? The pretty boy who rearranged Manhattan? -- is being ripped apart by his father's spell."

Only one car was on the road, a blue and white truck heading the opposite direction. The driver blew his horn angrily at her. The sound barely registered on Darcy and she drilled harder on the gas pedal, begging for more speed. Beside her, she heard three hard thunks, like something hitting the window glass, and then a distinct crack.

Ignoring that noise too, she concentrated on driving at the insane speed. Ahead the dark smear of burned sagebrush and blackened buildings stood out on the desert landscape, stark against the green beginnings of opportunistic weeds and wildflowers that were popping up at the recent rains.

She saw no cars in the vicinity, not on the road or around the barn. Easing back on the gas, she grasped the gear shifter and prepared to slow down and turn off the road. The car was moving too fast when it zipped onto the rutted remains of a gravel driveway and it fishtailed when she hit the brakes too hard.

Her stomach lurching as if she were on a out-of-control carnival ride, Darcy wrenched the steering wheel, making the slide worse. For a second, it felt like they were going to smash sideways into the building, the blackened side looming huge in her sight. But then the tires found purchase and the vehicle straightened.

Braking, easier this time, she turned to Loki. He sat upright in the seat, staring ahead, swaying slightly with the car's motion. The bright, manic energy from her nightmares shone in his eyes.

"Loki." She hit the brake and threw the car into neutral. The gears ground angrily as in her panic, she got the clutch timing wrong. A second later, the engine stopped abruptly, when her foot left the gas pedal. "Loki, stay with me." She popped her seatbelt and scrambled across the front seat. Her legs hit the gear shift and car's center consol, but she bit back an "Ow" and put her hands on his face, staring into his eyes.

He hadn't looked this bad when he first arrived in Puente Antiguo. Of course, when SHIELD dumped him and Thor on Jane and Darcy's doorstep, the not-brothers had been on Midgard for a few weeks. SHIELD hadn't provided Loki any medical care, but Thor had washed some of the blood off his face.

Blood ran in red rivers from several cuts on his face, most on his right. Darcy shifted her hands, feeling the gritty bite of something in one wound on his cheek. A breeze, thick with the scent of charcoal and freshly cut wood, moved over her face and she turned, finding the reason.

In his torment, he had cracked the window. Little shards of glass twinkled diamond-like on the bottom of the window, along the armrest and on the seat. More blood splattered the seat, door and dashboard like a Jackson Pollack painting. With a cool detachment that amazed her, she neatly plucked the small shard of glass from his cheek and flicked it away.

"Loki, look at me." His injuries made no sense. Though it felt soft and human, his skin was tougher than elephant hide; a little glass shouldn't do this; a few bumps shouldn't leave vivid purpling bruises.

Her shoulders sagged, burdened by the immense dread that bored down on her. His body, though incredibly strong, was still just flesh. It was the fusion of spirit and magic that made him Loki, immortal, unknowable, powerful, and that was coming apart before her eyes.

"Loki, don't do this." Shifting her weight, she twisted, pulled open the little storage bin in the center console, and yanked out a tissue. Ineffectually, she dabbed at the worst gash - one that sliced across his right eyebrow and up his forehead - mopping blood out of his eye. That not working, she grabbed another, balled it up, and pressed it against the wound. Glancing at the discarded tissue on the driver's seat, she saw that the blood had a sort of purple, nearly blue tinge to it. So did the splatters and spots on the car and now, on her hands.

Loki, however, still looked like the Aesir version of himself. Beneath her thighs, where she straddled him, his leg muscles rippled and twitched. His eyes, wide open, stared at some distant place, beyond where she could ever go. Someone sobbed and she realized it was her. "Come back to me," she said, "please."

The crazy light in his eyes dimmed and lucidity flooded his expression. He blinked, and met her eyes. "Thor," he said, his voice rough as gravel, all traces of the usual elegant smoothness gone. "He meant Thor. 'They think it's him. They are wrong.' Not me. Thor."

"Thor? I don't understand."

"I was," he lifted a trembling hand to her face, "wrong."

"You?" She tried to snort, but all that came out was a sobbing sniffle. "Never wrong. 'Misguided.'"

He flinched, muscles jerking along his jaw and neck. His mouth opened and he began breathing in rapid, shallow, gasps. On her face, his thumb rubbed at a tear under her eye. "Still unnerving," he said weakly.

His gaze traveled up over her face and toward her hair. A strange expression -- grief, maybe -- flickered on his face, and then he shivered, his hurried breaths slowing. His eyelids dropped till there was just a strip of green to be seen.

The stillness stunned her into temporary shock. "Loki," she whispered. She said his name several more times, but he didn't respond.

The terror that gripped her wasn't like anything she'd felt before. It was nothing like the fear she felt on the night when the sky came alive with a brilliant vortex that dumped a thunder god in front of the vehicle she was driving. This feeling was composed of layers and layers of denial, that just barely held back the truth that what was happening was completely and utterly real.

"Loki, come on, this isn't funny." She dropped the blood-soaked tissue and wrapped her fingers around the thick cloth at his shoulders. "Open your eyes, dammit!" When she shook him, the man in the Asgard-lite clothing moved from her actions, not his, and that was all wrong. Because Loki was made of might and magic and it took more than Darcy to shift him.

"Loki, don't do this to me. You can't do this to me!" The pitch of her voice rose. "Come back. You have to. I'll call you...'Your Majesty' or 'Prince Loki' or 'King Loki.' I'll bow and curtsy. Whatever." She shook him angrily, hating the way his body moved limply. "Mad Science, please. Don't go." With the last plea, her voice cracked and squeaked and she slumped forward, her face buried in the hollow where his neck met his body. Warm skin touched hers, and under the reek of blood and fried magic, he still smelled like Loki.

The breeze toyed with her hair, sending a little strand dancing over her ear. "No, no, no, no," she muttered, trying to find power in the stupid litany.

Thor. Find Thor. She yanked the door handle, climbed quickly but carefully off him and started toward the barn. Something stung on her knees. Glancing down, she saw bits of glass embedded in her skin. She brushed them off, wincing at the pain and ran to the small doorway on the side of the barn.

Pale, unpainted, new wood framed the doorway, but there was no actual door. The darkness beyond was complete, too dark for a building that outwardly was made of cracks and gaps. "Thor!" she yelled, her voice thin and cracking with grief. "Thor, it's Loki. The spell, it's..." Killed him. No."Killing him. Where are you?"

She stepped forward with her right foot and the impossible darkness swept over her face, flowing past the tip of her nose and over her cheeks, chin and forehead like icy black water. For a split second it felt as though the dark nothingness would reject her and then it relaxed and sucked her forward.

Before she could stop, her left foot followed the right and she froze, gasping in the watery darkness. Air rushed into her lungs easily despite the weird liquid sensation on her skin.

At that moment, Loki, Thor and Jane slipped from her mind, chased away by the suffocating terror of the complete darkness. Her eyes blinked and squinted, baffled by the total absence of color, because what lay in front of her eyes was beyond black, the emptiness of blindness.

And the darkness blotted out all sense of logic, leaving nothing but panic. Nothing mattered more than getting away from the appalling blackness. Darcy scrambled backward, colliding with solid wall. Somehow, she had gotten turned around. Yeah. That was all. The entrance was just here, behind her, right?

Hands out, searching, she stumble forward in the clotted more-than-darkness, bouncing off the walls like an insect in a bottle. One step, two, three. Left, right, right, left again. Where was the door? Blinded, mindless with terror, she fumbled along what felt like an endless corridor. Her heart pounded so hard it seemed like every drop of blood was being forced into her head.

Then the space before her cleared and she rushed forward, only to smash into another wall. Her hands took the impact, fingers twisting back painfully; she staggered backward.

It didn't seem possible to be more afraid, but panic rose to a mind-numbing level and she turned and ran left, all sense of herself gone. All her thoughts became: Get away, get away, get away, get away, get away--

And she burst into the light. Her heart leapt with the relief of escape. She squinted in the blazing light, disoriented. Where? Then her relief began to evaporate in the searing whiteness. Her eyes ached, still dilated from the dark, baffled by the light that wasn't. The blackness has been replaced by its opposite, a brilliance so intense it felt like her eyes had been burned from her skull. She stood, confuse, wondering if she was alive, if this was the white light seen by the dying. The sound of her labored breathing and rush-rush-rush of blood through her veins, however, felt like a very "alive" thing to do.

Was it a weird dream? Maybe she hadn't actually woken up this morning? On her right hand, the index finger throbbed, broken maybe. Her knees still stung where glass shards had cut skin. Can you feel pain in a dream? In death?

Her mind was lost in the current of terror, but the word "death" snagged something in the flood, a name. Loki. Then another: Jane. Then, a third. "Thor," she said aloud.

Fear still owned her, but she took a wobbling step and then another. "Thor." Her voice stronger this time, she called, "Thor, where are you? I need your help. Loki needs you." A tingle, the frisson of a nearby lightning strike - magic - scurried along her skin and she felt the weird tickle of it lifting her hair. She shivered, and something inside her shrugged and somehow shook the sensation off.

And then the light dimmed. Darcy's heart lurched at the thought of the congealed darkness. Her brain-to-eyes connection flailed for several seconds, bewildered by the return of ordinary light.

Ordinary? Not exactly. She stood in a darkened alcove, newly constructed and unfinished, judging by the smell of fresh-cut lumber and the rough, mottled texture of plywood sheathing on the walls. Another doorway opened about five feet before her, highlighted by the distinctive glow of magical light, blue-white and similar to an LED.

"Darcy?"

The voice came from the beyond that doorway. Deep, familiar. The sound of a hero. The key to saving Loki. Though still shaking with the tremors of fear and adrenaline, happiness blaze through her and she darted out the doorway.

Too late she realized her mistake.

She should have called SHIELD right when Thor flew away on Air Mjölnir, but she was too focused on getting Loki back in his brother's proximity. If hauling a crumbling Loki through the house and to the car wasn't a job for a mortal woman, then facing a murderous elf, unarmed and stupid, definitely wasn't. Especially, if he had been able to hold off the Mighty Thor. In retrospect, she realized that she and Thor had made the same mistake--the kind of blunder that Loki sneered at. Plunging into a situation without thinking about the consequences.

With theatrical slowness, the scene revealed itself to her eyes: a small room, fey light that glowed from walls and ceiling; Thor in the center of the room; furious, but held at bay by Jane's horrible situation; the throbbing, writhing, living power that emanated from everywhere in the room.

Her attention, however, flitted over the scene and fell as though weighted in lead, on the person who stood on the far left side of the room. She shook her head in childlike disbelief, wondering once more if this was a bad dream. Because although the face was changed by alien proportions, eyes a little too big, cheekbones too high, but it remained completely, heartbreakingly familiar.

Numb from shock, she managed to speak one word. "You."