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Of Love and Loss and Saying Goodbye
Thunder ripped through the evening as though the sky itself was tearing open. Darcy Lewis jumped at the sound, slopping cocoa and marshmallows onto her pajama pants.
Typical. She'd just done her laundry for the week.
Immediately after the thunder came the rain, pouring straight and heavy down out of a blackened sky that Darcy was sure had just been cloudless a few minutes ago. She pulled out her phone with an unsteady hand, checking the weather app.
Yup, sunny and fair, all week.
Her hands were really shaking now, heart hammering against her ribs in sudden, sickening foreboding.
No, no, no…
She was already halfway to the door when she heard the knock.
Cool damp air rushed in as she opened the door, whipping straight through her sticky, wet pants. But Darcy didn't really notice, because there, practically filling her doorway, was Thor.
His mighty shoulders sagged. His face was wet, but not just with rain.
Darcy's heart plummeted straight to the floor.
"Jane?" she whispered, hanging onto the doorknob as if it would somehow save her from the news she really, really didn't want to hear. "Did she…?"
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then his whole face twisted and he bowed his head. Another roll of thunder shook the earth and split the sky, and Darcy felt her heart tear in two right along with it.
Stupid doorknob.
She stood in her doorway in her wet, sticky pajama pants and cried, right there—the ugly kind of crying, sobs wrenching her open from the inside out as rain spattered her bare feet.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.
She hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye.
A hand touched her shoulder, huge and heavy. She toppled forward into a hug, clonking her forehead against his breastplate before burying her face in his draggled wet red cape and wailing disconsolately.
It took a long, long time for her to realize he was crying too, that all the shaking and snuffling wasn't just hers, that the massive arm around her shoulders was clutching at her just as desperately as she was clutching at him.
And something about the fact that Thor—Thor—was crying knocked a little bit of common sense back into Darcy. She gulped, wiped her snot and tears on his cape (she'd cried all over it anyway), and then stepped back, sniffing.
"I guess you'd better come in," she croaked unsteadily.
Her apartment felt like it shrank the second he stepped inside, his head almost brushing the ceiling.
His eyes were red, she noticed distractedly.
And for the first time, she realized why he had only hugged her with one arm.
A little girl clung to Thor's other hand. Tears and dirt streaked her face, and she looked more than half asleep on her feet.
Darcy blinked. "Oh," she said. And then, "Let me find some cups."
They sat in a row on her couch, drinking the hot chocolate she'd wordlessly made and distributed. Well, Darcy and the little girl drank—Thor held his with both hands, staring off into the middle distance. Tears streamed silently down his face, getting lost in his beard, plonking into his mug.
Outside thunder muttered ceaselessly and the rain continued to pour down, heavy and sorrowful.
It occurred to Darcy that the local drought might actually turn into a flood.
The little girl eventually fell asleep on the couch between them, empty mug slipping from her hand to the floor. Darcy put down her own mug and got up.
"I got her," she said.
Because she might not have Thor's physique, but she could probably carry a kid to bed.
Barely.
She ended up gracelessly plopping the girl into her own bed, tugging up the covers and shutting the window. A pool of rainwater had already formed on the sill. Grabbing a pair of clean leggings as an afterthought, she slipped into the bathroom and changed out of her sticky pajama pants. Then she hunted in the cupboard until she found an empty soap dish, which she centered under the skylight in the ceiling.
It tended to leak during heavy rainstorms. And somehow she felt that this one wouldn't let up anytime soon.
The thought reminded her of Jane all over again, and Darcy found herself leaning against the sink, crying hard, both hands pressed tightly over her mouth as though it would somehow help.
It wasn't fair. Jane deserved better. She deserved better.
A headache from all the crying was pounding solidly in her temples by the time she pushed the door open and dragged herself out of the bathroom. Thor was still on the couch where she had left him. Darcy wasn't even sure he'd noticed she was gone.
"Do Thunder Gods get headaches?" she asked, rummaging in the cupboard for the aspirin bottle and pouring some into her palm. She had to ask him twice before he blinked and looked up at her.
"What?"
"I said do Thunder Gods get headaches? Because I have aspirin."
He held out a hand and she dropped a couple pills into it, watching as he knocked them back with a swig from the mug in his hand. The hot chocolate was doubtless far saltier than when she'd given it to him.
Then, of course, she turned to put the pills away and tripped.
"Ow," she said, grabbing her toes and hopping. "Oh, it’s Mew-Mew. I like it better than that axe-thing you had."
He took a long, shuddering breath and nodded. "It was broken. Jane fixed it."
Limping back to her side of the couch, Darcy sat down, hugging the nearest throw pillow. Her voice sounded small in her own ears as she asked, "Were you with her?"
His forehead furrowed deeply as if in pain, and thunder rolled louder in the sky above. "Yes," he said very quietly, and looked down into his mug as though he could see her face among the melting mini marshmallows. "I was with her."
"Good." Darcy gulped around the lump in her throat. "She loved you, you know."
"And I loved her. I told her, before—before she died."
Darcy looked out the window and blinked hard, hugging her pillow and watching the world awash in water until she felt she could keep her voice steady. "So you gonna tell me the whole story or what?"
He told her, in brief sentences, sipping slowly at his drink. When it was done, he turned the mug almost meditatively in his hand before carefully setting it on her coffee table. The saddest of smiles tugged at his lips.
Darcy knew. She'd been there in that diner in New Mexico. "Another?" she ventured.
He didn't answer, turning his face away and bringing up a hand to cover his eyes for a moment.
Darcy gave him a minute and then tried again. "So who's the kid?" He hadn't quite gotten to that part.
Thor wiped his hands across his face. "Gorr's daughter," he said unsteadily. "My daughter now. I have adopted her."
"Adoption doesn't really work well in your family," Darcy blurted out, and then wished she could take it back. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of Loki.
But Thor actually smiled, just a little. "It was Jane's idea," he said softly. "Before she died in my arms and went to Valhalla."
Wait.
"Went to where now?"
"Valhalla. Where the greatest of our warriors go once they have died in battle." He reached out, adjusting the mug where it sat on her tabletop as though he needed something to do with his hands. "She died in battle with the greatest enemy of all."
Darcy sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Pretty sure Thanos was worse than this Gorr guy."
"I meant her cancer." Thor's voice cracked, his fist clenched around a handful of her sofa cushions. He was shaking. "She fought it as fiercely as any warrior I have ever known, and died as bravely."
Darcy thought she had cried all her tears. Apparently not. She gulped and sniffed again and scooted closer on the couch, wrapping her arms as far as she could around Thor's shoulders.
"It's okay," she said. "You can cry on me."
So he did, wrapping two mountainous arms around her and roaring his grief into her shoulder with a sudden ferocity that shook the couch. And Darcy hung onto him as hard as she knew how and shed her own tears into his hair.
It wasn't fair for Jane to die, so young, with so much of her life ahead of her. It wasn't fair that Thor had lost a future with her, that Darcy hadn't even been able to say goodbye.
But it was something to know that Jane would be remembered. And that she wasn't entirely gone, just in a new place.
"I'll have to make sure I die arguing with somebody," she said finally once Thor's grief was spent and they'd drawn apart to sit side by side on the couch.
"Why?" Thor looked absolutely exhausted. Even the rain outside was beginning to thin out a little, as though it had worn itself out.
"So I can die fighting and go say hey to Jane."
He blinked at her. "It—doesn't really work that way."
Darcy shrugged. "Worth a try." She bet the Asgardians had never tried to argue a point with a stubborn poli-sci major turned PhD.
Then she stood up with a jerk. "Get up," she ordered. "Move the coffee table."
Tired, bewildered, Thor stood and lifted the table to where she pointed. Then he watched as she flung the couch cushions out of the way and yanked at the metal handle beneath.
"It's a hide-a-bed," she explained, unfolding it as she spoke. There were already sheets on it—she groped around for an afghan and threw it across too. "You're too tired to go wherever you were planning on going tonight. Just stay here for now."
He stood for a moment, looking at her as though he'd forgotten how English worked. Then he stretched out his arms, shaking his armor to the floor where it disappeared in a series of flashing light.
"You're sure?" he asked.
"Of course." Darcy tried to smile, discovered she couldn't, and shrugged. "Jane would never forgive me if I let you leave. Besides, your kid is asleep and she'll want to stay for breakfast."
Thor sat on the edge of the hide-a-bed. It creaked heavily.
"Darcy?"
"Huh?"
"Will you stay?" He sounded almost like a child.
"Well, duh." He'd just lost the love of his life. She'd just lost the best friend she'd ever had. There was no way either of them would want to be alone.
She switched off the light and they lay on their backs with a box of tissues between them and listened to the sound of the rain hitting the roof. Every now and then Thor's breath hitched, and thunder rumbled across the sky.
"What's her name?" Darcy asked eventually. "Your little girl, I mean."
Thor shifted, and the whole bed shook under the strain. "I don't think she has one," he confessed at last. "Some species don't name their young until they're grown."
"Well mine does," said Darcy. "And so does yours. You could name her after somebody you love."
They both thought for a minute about all the people Thor had loved and lost.
"I have loved too many," he said at last. She heard him take a tissue from the box; she had at least six already balled up damply inside her fist.
"Okay, so then maybe a virtue? Like something you admire? Or somebody from a book. My mom was on an Austen kick when she named me." Darcy hiccuped wetly and dabbed at her face with her tissues.
Thor was silent for a long time, so long that she thought he'd fallen asleep.
"'And the greatest of these is love,'" he finally startled her by saying.
Darcy frowned, trying to decide whether he was quoting Shakespeare or the Bible. It was one of Jane's screensavers, she remembered, a quote from somewhere that Jane's mom had liked. "Okay?"
"Jane loved. Fiercely. She gave of herself until there was nothing left."
That was true. Darcy thought of the man beside her, heart battered and broken from so much loss, and yet still willing to take in the child of his enemy. She wondered if he realized just how much love he himself was expressing. "So you're gonna call her Love?"
Thor took another tissue. "Until she chooses a name of her own."
Well, it was better than some names.
"I think Jane would like that," she whispered.
The rain beat down on the roof. In the morning, Darcy thought, she would get up and find the box of pancake mix in the cupboard. Kids liked pancakes, right?
And then they would face a new day—a day full of love and loss and pain and hope for the future.
Because after all, wasn't that what being mortal was all about?
Darcy didn't remember falling asleep. But she dreamed of Jane free from cancer, of finally getting to say goodbye, and when she woke there were tears on her cheeks and a sort of peace in her heart. The rain had eased into a soft drizzle during the night; there was a rainbow in the east.
She breathed, looking at the rainbow through her window, at the sleeping, tearstained giant beside her, at the balled-up tissues between them.
It wasn't going to be easy.
But it was going to be okay.
"Goodbye, Jane," Darcy whispered to the rainbow. "Be seeing you."
Then she got up, wiped her eyes, tripped over Mew-Mew, and went to find the pancake mix.