Chapter Text
Darcy knew this internship was going to be interesting.
To be fair, most things involving Darcy Lewis ended up interesting.
She was technically a political science major.
Technically.
It was her current area of study, at least.
In practice, Darcy also had accidentally completed degrees in engineering, geology, and psychology.
Engineering because she once walked into the wrong lecture hall and refused to admit she was lost.
Geology because of the Wardrobe Incident and one suspicious rock.
Psychology because she had spent eighteen years trying to figure out if her parents were narcissists, incapable of love, or just deeply committed to being terrible.
The jury was still out on that.
So a summer physics internship?
Honestly, not that weird.
Sure, she didn’t understand half of what Dr. Jane Foster and Dr. Erik Selvig were talking about, but she liked learning things. And hanging out in the desert in the middle of nowhere waiting for mysterious space weather was objectively more interesting than watching politicians be corrupt in increasingly obvious ways.
Darcy had expected:
Boredom
Sunburn
Sand in absolutely everything
She had not expected this.
The storm came out of nowhere.
One second the desert was quiet.
The next, the sky cracked open.
Lightning flashed.
The radio blared with static.
Jane screamed, “GO GO GO!” in her ear.
Darcy, because she had already learned that questioning Jane in moments like this was useless, stepped on the gas.
The van rattled down the dark road through wind and sand and rain.
Visibility: Terrible.
Atmosphere: Terrible.
Decision-making: Questionable.
Then there was a man in the road.
Darcy hit him.
There was a horrible thump.
Jane screamed.
Erik screamed.
Darcy screamed.
The radio screamed before cutting out completely.
Then, for one long second, there was silence.
Then Darcy said, very calmly:
“Okay. In my defense, he was in the road.”
Jane was already out of the van and running toward the body.
Darcy followed, mostly because she was pretty sure “vehicular manslaughter in New Mexico” would look terrible on a résumé.
The man sat up.
Darcy stopped.
Because the man was:
Huge
Blond
Unfairly attractive
Built like a refrigerator with abs
And somehow still conscious after being hit by a van going ninety miles per hour.
He got to his feet.
Actually got to his feet.
Then he pointed dramatically at the sky and shouted:
“HEIMDALL! HEIMDALL!?”
Darcy stared.
Then slowly looked at Jane.
Then Erik.
Then back at the man.
Hot.
Definitely crazy.
Maybe on drugs.
Very, very hot.
The man turned to them.
“WHERE IS MY HAMMER?!”
Darcy looked at the storm.
Looked at the strange, terrifying giant of a man.
Looked at the dent in the van.
And thought, with perfect clarity:
This is a mistake.
A terrible mistake.
She really should have run him over properly.
Uncle Vinnie— not her actual uncle, but a successful businessman who happens to know a lot about legal stuff, or illegal stuff, depending on your perspective— often told her:
“If you’re going to commit a crime, kid, commit. Leaving loose ends is sloppy, Darcy Lou. Very sloppy.”
Darcy was beginning to think he had a point.
And she was very thankful that her not-Aunt Petrov had taught her never to go anywhere unarmed.
The man was staggering around in the rain at this point, huge and furious and somehow still standing after being hit by a speeding van.
His hair swung around his shoulders in shining golden waves.
Honestly, it was offensive.
Darcy was immediately jealous.
What did he use? Some absurdly expensive conditioner? The tears of angels? The blood of unicorns?
She must have made a noise.
Because suddenly the giant blond lunatic rounded on her.
“WHAT REALM IS THIS?”
He bellowed it like he was trying to challenge the sky itself.
Darcy did not flinch.
Aunt Petrov had a way scarier voice, and she had taught Darcy never to let men twice her size know they were intimidating.
Her fingers closed around the mini taser she had made out of a flashlight, a disposable camera, and a deeply concerning amount of free time.
“Mmm...” Darcy said. “Earth?”
The giant glared.
“WHAT?”
“You know. Earth. Terra. Gaia. Tellus. Erda? The mortal realm? The blue marble? Dirtball? The universe’s worst decision?”
Darcy frowned and dug deeper into the increasingly bizarre collection of mythology trivia she had acquired from not-actually-Uncle Henry Johns— the retired archaeologist and professor that would sleep in ancient ruins if he could— since he seemed to know at least one myth from every culture on Earth, and even a few that weren't.
Also, one extremely concerning summer phase involving ancient pre-Christian cultures and the surprisingly extensive pros-and-cons list she had made about ritual sacrifice.
“Uh... Jörð? Mannheim? Midgard?”
The giant froze.
For a second, he looked startled.
“Midgard,” he repeated, like the word would bite him.
“Oh!” Darcy said, brightening. “Cool. I got there eventually.”
Unfortunately, this was also the exact moment he noticed the taser in her hand.
“YOU DARE THREATEN THOR, GOD OF LIGHTNING AND PRINCE OF ASGARD WITH SUCH A PUNY WEAPON!?”
Darcy considered this.
Then:
"You know what? Yes.”
And she tased him.
There was a crackle.
A yelp.
And Thor—or whoever he was—dropped like a rock.
A very large, very blond, very ridiculously hot rock.
Jane and Erik stared.
“Darcy,” Jane said slowly. “Did you just tase the crazy guy you hit with the van?”
Darcy looked down at the unconscious maybe-god.
“In my defense,” she said, “he was freaking me out.”
She paused briefly—
“Also, your van, your fault.”
“That’s not how liability actually works—” Jane started.
But Darcy knew better than to let someone else establish the narrative— thanks to Uncle Vinnie’s lawyer, Cousin Jimmy.
“No,” Darcy said patiently as she carefully crouched by the unconscious man. “You stomped on the accelerator, and visibility was nonexistent.” She gave Jane and Erik the wide-eyed, innocent look that she called her Sparkly Anime eyes. It could beat puppy eyes ten to one, easy. “There was nothing I could do.”
Jane blinked. “No, I didn’t—” She stopped.
“Did I?”
“That’s what I’ll tell the lawyers,” Darcy said cheerfully.
While Erik was still recovering from the fact that they had, apparently, run over either a Norse god or a crazy person, and Jane was staring blankly ahead trying to recall whether she had hit the accelerator in her excitement about the storm…
Darcy did the sensible thing.
She searched him.
“Darcy!” Jane yelled. “What are you doing?”
Darcy looked up briefly but kept one eye on the giant blond maybe-god lying in the mud.
Just in case.
“Uh... looking for an ID? Weapons? Drugs?” Darcy said. “You know. Normal things.”
She patted down his pockets.
Nothing.
No wallet. No knife. No phone.
Not even ChapStick.
Which, honestly, was suspicious.
“But I’m not finding anything,” Darcy murmured. “Though I guess there’s only so much you can hide in leather armor.”
She frowned.
“Actually, maybe there’s a lot. I have no idea how armor works.”
Mental note: ask her Uncle Henry about leather armor. He probably knows a thing or two, or who else to ask, at least.
And wow, Darcy really did have a not-relative for everything, thanks to her actual Aunt Dee and the weird but awesome people who drifted through her Not-Actual Uncle Sebastian Vale’s garage dojo— where the retired stuntman, her actual Aunt Dee’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, taught martial arts to the neighborhood kids.
Looking back, Darcy was beginning to suspect she may not have had a normal childhood.
Erik blinked at her.
“Well,” he said in the tone of a man trying very hard to remain the only rational person present, “we should probably take him to the hospital.”
Darcy looked down at the man.
Thor.
If that was actually his name.
He looked ridiculous.
And hot.
And maybe insane.
But Not-Really-Her-Aunt Lillian— the sweet old lady that lived next door to her when she was growing up, who knew a suspicious amount about the occult— had taught her one very important thing:
Sometimes people were crazy.
Sometimes people were divine.
And those two things weren’t always mutually exclusive.
Quickly, before Jane could notice, Darcy poked the man just hard enough to draw a tiny bit of blood.
You never knew when a safety pin would come in handy.
Squinting at the blood, Darcy blinked.
Oh.
It kind of... shimmered.
Oh, no.
Possibly divine, then.
Crazy still pending.
She stuffed the pin in her pocket.
“Nah,” Darcy said casually, standing up. “He might just be drunk or something. And we hit him with the van. We should probably let him sleep it off.”
Jane made a frustrated noise that Darcy was intimately acquainted with from her brothers, all her high school teachers, and that one postman.
“Darcy,” Jane said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “I’m pretty sure I did not stomp on the accelerator while you were driving!”
“Pretty sure isn’t defensible in court,” Darcy chirped, wondering how the hell they were going to maneuver Hunky McMuscles into the van.
“Court!? Darcy—”
Jane stopped.
Because she had just noticed the markings in the dirt.
The strange symbols burned into the mud where the lightning had struck.
Her entire expression changed.
Darcy knew that look.
Jane Foster had been taken over by Science!
Again.
“Jane?” Erik said carefully.
Jane dropped to her knees in the mud.
“These markings…I’ve never seen anything like it,” she trailed off in a whisper.
“Oh, good,” Darcy mumbled. “That means we’re keeping him.”
Louder, Darcy looked at Erik and said “Help me drag him into the van before your brain gets too possessed by physics to remember we have a giant unconscious maybe-god in the road.”
Erik rolled his eyes. “He’s not a god. Gods don’t exist.”
Wow. Darcy had not known this man was such an eye-rolling champion. Apparently, Dr. Selvig contained multitudes.
Unfortunately for him, Darcy was a sass champion, and Erik was wildly out of his league.
“Don’t tell him that!” Darcy stage-whispered as she grabbed Thor under the arm and tried to maneuver him into a better position. “He might stop existing. Like Tinker Bell. Or Santa Claus.”
“As if that’s how mythology works,” Erik muttered.
Darcy gasped. “Oh my God. Have you been telling Santa he isn’t real? That explains so much.”
Erik made a strangled noise somewhere between exasperation and despair.
Then he blinked in surprise when Darcy somehow managed to maneuver the Hunka-Hunka-Burning-God into a sitting position.
As her not-her-literal Uncle and retired wrestling champion Terry “The Titan” always told her: “Brother, don’t panic if you’re face'n someone bigger than you in the ring! It's all about leverage, brother!”
“Now that that’s settled,” Darcy said with the same smile she used to wear when she stole all of her Not-Really Aunt Alex’s candy out of her pockets while she wasn’t looking, “get his legs. JANE! Finish taking pictures and get in the van, young lady!”