A/N: Thank you Guest and SmiteLu for your reviews!

This story is outlined in three sections, and this chapter begins section two. (You can tell the difference if you look at the chapter titles, because arc one all has one-word titles, arc 2 has 2 words and arc 3 will have 3 words—ain't I creative?)

Merry Christmas

For an instant, Loki felt like his veins had been shredded open, and then and frozen in place, by countless shards of ice. Then panic flooded through him like fire, and he leapt forward.

"Shit!"

"Whoa, ouch!"

"Darcy! Oh my—"

"Oh, shit!"

The exclamations of the onlookers filled the night air as they all scrambled towards their friend, converging on her where she lay, so unnaturally still, eyes closed, blood dribbling through her long brown hair. Loki reached her side first, and gingerly lifted her head and shoulders, supporting her neck. She had a pulse, and her neck wasn't broken. That was a good start. But her head was bleeding badly, and she was unconscious.

"We gotta get her to the ER!" Milo shouted, and Jose tore off back to the truck to start it up. Loki picked Darcy up as gently and carefully as he could manage, and climbed with her into the cab of the truck. Everyone else piled into the back, and Jose was driving towards the closest hospital as quickly as he dared with so many exposed passengers and an injured girl. Loki held her in his lap, cradling her gently, supporting her injured head and fragile neck, and—at Milo's instruction—keeping pressure on the wound with her scarf. When they arrived at the hospital and piled out of the truck, Loki still carrying Darcy, and entered the ER door in a mob.

Hospital employees strapped Darcy—now stirring a little and moaning—to a gurney, and put her neck in a brace. The crowd wasn't allowed in past the waiting room, but Loki and Valery followed the nurses as they wheeled their patient into an operating room, V because he was explaining what had happened and showing his video clip and Loki because one look at his face would tell any observer that he wasn't leaving her side tonight.

The next hour blurred by in a tense haze of panic. Every action the doctors took seemed to small, too slow, and Loki found himself alternately cursing Midgardian medical practice to the depths of Hel and taking back his thoughts with something like prayer, hoping, wishing, begging that whatever they were doing would be enough. A little thing like this would have been a minor bruise on Sif or Fandral, but when one of the nurses had watched Valery's video, she'd chided them, saying that someone could have died.

Someone could have died. Darcy could have died, from such a petty thing. If she'd hit wrong, she could have broken her neck. She could have cracked her skull, instead of receiving a mere concussion, which itself seemed a great enough hurt for a mortal. He'd always been thinking of the Captain or Black Widow or Barton when he calculated what a human could withstand. It was only now that he realized what the difference was between "human" and "super-human."

And Darcy had spent her childhood in and out of hospitals because her father had beaten her…

Anger was easier than fear. Loki's fists clenched as he thought of the piece of trash that had the nerve to call himself Darcy's father. He wanted so badly to kill him… It took a few minutes to sort out his thoughts, remember that Doug Lewis had nothing to do with today's events, accept the fact that he was looking for someone to blame, and circle back to wondering if Darcy would be okay.

They had brought her around immediately, and asked her simple questions—her name, her age, what day it was—to test her lucidity. They'd hooked her up to an IV drip of something, and one of the nurses had kept up a constant stream of mundane chatter while they probed her injury and stitched her head shut. Every few sentences, she'd ask a simple question—did she like snow? What was she planning for Christmas? Did her family live nearby? Did she open gifts yet?—intended, Valery explained quietly, to keep her awake and aware, because apparently concussion victims weren't supposed to sleep for several hours after they were injured.

There was one moment of panic when the nurse pointed to the corner where he and V leaned against the wall, and asked Darcy what their names were.

"Valery… Pavlov?" she responded with a hint of a smile in V's direction when she said his given name, and then a questioning look with his surname. It was so rare for anyone to call him even by his hated first name that it was unsurprising that she'd take a moment to remember his last. V rolled his eyes and nodded, and then Darcy's eyes flickered to Loki's face. His heart stammered a beat. They'd lived together half a year now, and mostly saw one another at home—where she always called him Loki. Over the last week, she'd referred to him by his alias more than she had all together in the rest of the time they'd known each other.

Now came the real test of how aware she was.

"Luke," she whispered after a slight pause, and he shot her a tiny encouraging smile. "Luke…" her eyes narrowed and drifted to one side, the way they always did when she was thinking hard about something. Two seconds passed.

"Randle!" She exclaimed suddenly, snapping her fingers. Relief flooded over him like someone had turned on a hose very suddenly on top of his head. The nurses didn't appear to think anything was awry, since she was supposed to be a little loopy, and hadn't said anything about, well, an intergalactic terrorist or anything.

Once her head was stitched up and bandaged, she was moved into a regular hospital room, and Loki and V were left alone with her with strict instructions not to let her fall asleep until at least ten or eleven am. Zack and Junior turned up a few minutes later, explaining in a low voice that Jose had driven the others back to the house to sober up once they knew Darcy's life wasn't in danger, since Milo, Bobby, Tessa and CJ were all technically underage, and no one really wanted to get arrested on Christmas.

"Of all the times for this to happen," Darcy complained, leaning against her pillows in a futile attempt to get comfortable in the hospital bed. They'd raised the back up so that it was more like a chair with a footrest than a bed, and someone had turned on the TV, so that the live-action version of The Grinch was playing in the background. "Christmas freakin' day, stuck in the hospital."

"Could be worse," Junior reminded her. "Christmas day in a morgue would really suck."

"Yeah, yeah," she scoffed. "It takes more than a bump on the head to write me off."

But she was mortal, Loki thought with a pang as she said that and the others laughed and nodded. So a mere bump on the head could be enough to end her. He'd kept coming back to that all morning, and fear still thrilled through his stomach every time the thought echoed back to him. This had been such a little accident, but it could have been enough.

So this was what she meant back then, he realized suddenly, while somewhere near him Valery was uploading the wipeout video to Darcy's Facebook page. The day they'd met, when she'd said he might have a concussion, and had advised him not to sleep. She'd legitimately been trying to save his life, albeit in her own oddball Darcy way. He should have been more grateful for the gesture…

"Luke, help me find your Facebook so I can tag you!" Valery was saying, and Loki's eyes focused back on the present.

"I don't have one," he admitted with a small smile and a shrug. "Social media never really interested me—the only people I really talk to are people I see regularly, so what's the point?" He of course left out that he'd created a fake account in order to stalk Jeff the maggot, but technically it was true that he'd never had one with his name on it.

"How are we supposed to keep up with you when you go back to Colorado?" Junior demanded. "You should make one, even if it's just for us!"

"C'mon," Darcy said, beckoning him over to the bed. "I'll walk you through making one." She was smiling widely again. Those damn cheeks! He got up and followed the magnetism across the little room, and sat down next to her, scooting in close to have enough room to sit, and wrapping his arm around her shoulders out of habit. She leaned into him as he pulled out his phone.

"Awwww, how cuuuuute," Junior teased. A month ago, Loki would have protested, said something about how they weren't romantically involved, withdrawn his arm, and probably been stiff and formal and awkward for the rest of the day. But it wasn't a month ago, and he was well enough versed in Midgardian customs to flip Junior off and tell him to shut up, earning a laugh from Valery and another smile from Darcy.

"Start by downloading the app," Darcy instructed him, touching the app store icon and then removing her hand while he typed in the name.

"You'll need to update your relationship status…" Junior muttered with a wink.

"You don't have to answer all the personal questions immediately," Darcy contradicted smoothly, with a glare at Junior. "You can go back and edit your profile later. Okay, use your junk mail for your login—you'll get all kinds of useless notifications cluttering up your inbox…"

Half an hour later, Luke Randle from New York, male, age 25, single, had selected a profile picture—a crop of himself out of the group photo they'd all taken back at the house—and added a banner photo that Valery found for him online of a gigantic deluxe banana split. Poor Luke Randle, however, still hadn't gotten to kiss Darcy's cheek, despite the fact that the enticing object was within eight inches of his mouth the way they were sitting. Darcy friended him and showed him how to accept the request, and then he searched the Alpha guys, and with help from Darcy on name-spelling and profile-icon-recognition, he found and friend-requested them all. He also looked up Tessa, who was online and messaged him immediately, congratulating him on entering the 21st Century.

Although Darcy was still in the hospital and the alcohol was wearing off and he was still facing a lifetime on Midgard, the glow from last night was back, nesting inside his chest. Friends… Friends who weren't Thor's friends just putting up with him because he was Thor's brother. Certainly, they were Darcy's friends first, but Zack and Milo had met through Mitch, and that didn't make them any less close to each other.

Then Darcy's phone went off with an actual phone call.

"Jane! Merry Christmas!" she said, after swiping her finger across the "answer" button. Then she winced and held the phone away from her ear. Everyone could hear why.

"DARCY, OMYGOD ARE YOU OKAY? I JUST SAW WHAT HAPPENED ON FACEBOOK!"

"Well, that backfired slightly," V admitted quietly. Loki took the phone from Darcy's fingers while she massaged her temples.

"Jane," he said levelly into the speaker, "if you did indeed see the video, then you should know that Darcy is in the hospital with a concussion. As such, it might be prudent behavior for you to keep your voice down; I hear concussed individuals often suffer from sensory issues and migraines." He was trying extremely hard not to snarl the words. Jane's response was in a low, angry hiss.

"If you had ANYTHING to do with that, I SWEAR TO—"

"Merry damn Christmas to you too," he snapped. "I'm giving Darcy the phone—don't damage her hearing." Without waiting for Jane to say anything else, he handed Darcy her phone back.

"Who's that?" Junior stage-whispered.

"Darcy's old boss," Loki responded quietly. "And my brother's girlfriend."

"You're not very nice to your brother's girlfriend," V commented.

"She really doesn't like me," Loki said flatly. "It's sort of a mutual thing." Valery shrugged.

"No, we were just being drunk and stupid," Darcy was assuring Jane with that magnetic grin. "They took me to the ER and I just have to stay here for observation all day in case I fall asleep and stop breathing or something. Nah, they pumped me full of drugs—I'm a little achy and can't look directly at the lights, but other than that I'm cool. Yeah, but I was up all night, and now they won't let me sleep until the middle of the morning. Some Christmas… Bah humbug!"

"Luckily Santa and his elves are here to the rescue!" CJ announced, entering the room at that moment with their arms full of McDonald's bags, and followed by the rest of Alpha-Sigma-Sigma, armed with packages of cheap tinsel, Allan's stereo, and Darcy's favorite pajamas.

"The party has arrived, I gotta go," Darcy said quickly. "Tell everyone Merry Christmas!" Before Jane could protest, Darcy hung up and turned her attention to the newcomers.

"Non-hospital food, PJ's and music… you guys are angels, you know that?"

They closed the door and turned on the stereo—quietly enough not to get reprimanded, but loud enough to drown out the incessant hospital beeping noises. McDonald's breakfasts were distributed, and Darcy put on the pajamas while Zack and Loki—the tallest among them—tacked decorations haphazardly onto the walls. Kinsey turned off the TV and then emptied a bag full of board games, to general laughter. And so it was, that on Christmas morning, a group of young adults played Candyland and Monopoly in a hospital room, eating greasy contraband and listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's finest Christmas hits.

A/N: Welp, that's all for now folks!

To my great surprise looking back at the chapters I've put up since the hiatus, I just realized that I hadn't mentioned this on this fic: I'm working on publishing a fantasy novella, probably this summer, as an eBook and paperback on Amazon. (And eventually an audio book as well.)

I've got a brief story summary available in my profile (all the way at the bottom) and I'll be starting up a blog soon for more in-depth previews and info. I'll be doing everything under the same pen name (give or take a variation on the first name; might do initials, might spell out Elizabeth) so I'll be easy to find if you enjoy my work and would like to see more of it.

If you'd like to receive email updates with the important stuff (don't worry, I won't spam you—I have neither the time nor the technical skill. I mean like "my blog is now up, here's the link" and "I hit publish today so you can read my book now" and "the audio book is now available." That kind of thing.) you can PM me with your email address and I'll add you to my list.

In the meantime however, I hope you're enjoying this fic; please drop me a review and let me know that it's not forgotten after the long hiatus! I'll see you all next time!