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"I don't care what else he's done! He saved my life!"

"Ms. Lewis, saving your life, one among many, is not enough to call him rehabilitated. In fact, he probably only did it to gain a measure of sympathy."

"It worked, Director Fury."

Darcy stalked down the long hallway toward Loki's prison, angry and indignant that he'd been placed back in captivity. Well, she tried to stalk; stalking was definitely where her mind was. Her body, though, just sort of lurched painfully. Loki had saved her in the attack yesterday, snatched her from being crushed to death by a falling piece of some building, and now he was back in an updated glass prison similar to the one he'd been in before. Although he was here to help, to make some amends for his actions two years ago as part of his punishment from Odin, no one really trusted him. It was made clear to everyone that he was being forced to help, so no one believed he was truly contrite. Thor was the only one among any of them to spare him a glance that wasn't filled with animosity, and even he kept a suspicious eye on his brother. Darcy had just avoided him.

What really burned Darcy now about the whole thing was how obvious it was that Fury was quietly thrilled about Loki being back; despite his distrust he got a special little gleam in his eye whenever Loki spoke, like with each word he was learning a new way to manipulate people from the master himself, which she supposed he was. Fury was a guy that knew how to read people, knew what made them tick and how to use it against them. It wasn't a wonder he admired Loki, the God of Lies and Mischief, though sometimes it appeared Fury himself was the more ruthless. When the truth had come out about Agent Coulson, that he hadn't died, that Fury had told the Avengers he was dead to give them a martyr, it had nearly destroyed them all, especially Steve Rogers. In fact, if there was one being the Avengers trusted less than Loki, it was Fury. Unfortunately for Loki, however, they were presenting a united front against him, cracked though it was. To them, Loki was still the bad guy.

But as she made her way to where he was being held, Darcy knew that without Loki's help yesterday she would have been collatoral damage, just another innocent civilian lost in the war with Thanos. She wasn't a superhero or a soldier or an assassin or a super science geek. She didn't have a lot of value to men like Nick Fury, and although Thor and the other Avengers were fond of her and considered her a friend, none of them had been there to save her. Bruce Banner had been tearing his way through the enemy and also, unfortunately, the building directly above where Darcy was standing, getting people out of harm's way, doing the only thing she really could to help. There was so much noise and destruction all around her and she'd never even seen the enormous chunk of contrete and twisted steel hurlting toward her. All she really remembered was looking around, trying to make sure everyone was out of the street, then a powerful blow lifting her off her feet and stunning her senseless. The rest had come to her in flashes, like a strobe light going off in her head. Darkness, then leather and metal. Darkness, a pale face. Darkness, black hair. She had the feeling of being set down, of intense eyes and elegant hands searching for injuries and finding them, crushing pain down the right side of her body where she'd been hit. Then mercifully, darkness again.

Darcy had woken up in a hospital bed on a new SHIELD helicarrier, certain that she was being tortured. She couldn't take a deep breath, or even a normal breath, without a vice clamping viciously down around her chest and she wondered what she'd done to warrent such brutal attention. Opening her eyes, she tried to call for someone, anyone, to tell her what was going on but her voice couldn't push its way out of her dry throat. Darcy plucked an electrode off her skin, figuring it was a heart monitor and that someone would come when it stopped. Everything remained quiet, though, so she flicked another black monitor off her finger and pulled the oxygen tube away from her nostrils and over her head. She considered the IV in her arm, deciding there was probably something important in it so she left it alone. Plus, the pole made a great walker. Bonus points. Darcy shuffled her way out of the infirmary and was surprised at how empty it was, then glad considering she would have been mooning anyone who happened to be there. She found some scrubs and wrestled her way into them, having to sit several times in the process to make the black spots dancing in front of her eyes go away. She caught a glimps of her body as she did, dark ugly bruising coloring her entire right side and wrapping around her back and chest. Big ouch.

She'd had to wander around for quite a while before she found anyone, but when she did, Darcy discovered everyone together in one room. How convenient. Now someone could tell her what the hell was going on. As she approached the room she caught her reflection in the glass wall and winced. The red scrubs she wore only emphasized the deathly pale of her face and the circles under her eyes and what appeared to be another large bruise on her forhead. Lovely. As she moved to the doorway, everyone's attention was focused on a large tv on the opposite wall, replaying satellite videos of yesterday's attack. Darcy memory flashed again, to leather and metal, and then it all came back at once and she gasped and the pain was brilliant but she remembered. Suddenly she was surrounded by people, shouting surprised questions. She looked past Jane's worried face to focus on the tv again, seeing the Avengers engaged in battle and destruction. The Hulk was hanging off the side of a building, smashing an enemy completely through the exterior wall, chunks of debris falling to the street below. A blur of movement from streetlevel, then an image that burned itself into her brain as strongly as anything she'd ever seen. It only lasted a moment, but that it was the moment her life had been saved.

By Loki.

"Wh..Wha..." Darcy couldn't get the words out, the pain and confusion arresting her voice and body. Jane handed her a bottle of water, which helped. A large tablet, pain medicine, helped more. When she could breathe again, she demanded to know what had happened, then where Loki was. Well, she meant to demand it, but it came out sounding breathless and weak. Everyone looked around uncomfortably, a few significant glances shared, but no one met her eyes.

"Where. Is. He." There. That sounded better. And it got everyone's attention, though they all looked over her shoulder rather than right at her. Annoyed, Darcy opened her mouth to let them have it when a new voice boomed from behind her. Darcy whipped around, startled and waking her pain from its slight repose, but she met Nick Fury's single eye and concentrated on staying on her feet. Good job, Darce.

The argument had been harsh, Fury not pulling any verbal punches, reminding Darcy again and again how untrustworthy Loki was, how dangerous he was. She'd thrown his hypocrisy right back in his face, refusing to let him get away with throwing the man who had saved her life in jail for his trouble. Thor had backed her up. The others stayed quiet, not agreeing with Darcy but not supporting Fury either. She'd stomped past Fury to make her way to the holding cell, the pain and the medicine forcing her to move slowly, certainly slowly enough to be stopped. Darcy was no match for anyone in that room even while well, especially without her taser, and injured as she was any one of them could have forced her back to bed. But they hadn't.

They knew she was right. Or at the very least, she wasn't completely wrong.

Finally, after an eternity, Darcy and her trusty IV pole limped into the room where Loki's glass-walled prison was kept. She had to stop, leaning heavily against the wall, trying to catch her breath and not breathe all at the same time. Her body felt weighed down and her mind felt fuzzed by the drugs.

"You should be in bed."

Darcy's eyes snapped up at the velvety sound of his beautiful voice, an unexpected ache settling in her belly, shocking. Drugs, Darce, drugs. Though she didn't think Lortab was an aphrodesiac.

He was standing in the middle of the cell, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders wide, spine straight. The sight of him standing like that, so proud and regal, with none of the menace he exuded during his own attack but instead a reserved coolness, looking tired and dirty as though he hadn't even been allowed to clean up after the battle, reignited her anger at his treatment. Straightening her own spine, she made her way across the room with all the grace she could muster, which wasn't much. He tracked her with his eyes, all the way to the door of his cell. She had to do another lean when she got there and she hated that she looked so weak in front of him, though he didn't have that condescending snear that he ususally wore around "puny mortals." Clutching her middle, slumped over the the pole and covered in cold sweat, Darcy met his gaze and tried to remember to breathe, not just from the pain but from the intensity that surrounded Loki, even imprisoned.

"You saved me." It came out rough, the drugs and the pain and the fear and the gratitude and that something that she couldn't name taking her voice past its natural huskiness and into unknown territory. Now that she'd found him, could see him and know what he'd done for her, whatever stores of strength she'd used to get here fled, leaving her so weak she trembled.

Or maybe that was just him.