"Aren't you supposed to tutor me?" She sounded irritated.
Darcy Lewis didn't look up from her magazine and chewing gum, slowly inflating a pink bubble at her lips. "I'm supposed to be relaxing."
"Nu uh, you're supposed to be tutoring me." There was a pause. "What are you reading about anyway?"
A pair of eyes peered over her magazine. They were annoyingly bright eyes, the kind you'd see on celebrities who were already airbrushed before being airbrushed again and then splattered with special effects—the type of eyes you wouldn't expect to see in real life. There was something wrong with them, and her gaze, too... almost as if she wasn't really looking at her, but through her and into her at the same time. The way she watched Darcy with her way-too-perfect eyes was a bit scary; Darcy had seen that gaze on old professors who knew nothing of the classes they taught about. It was the look of someone who knew the numbers and the facts, but never saw people as people, like a professor of economics justifying why the government wasn't doing anything to help Darcy with her student loans.
They were eyes that didn't see Darcy as a real person, just a statistic, or a character in a book.
"What's it matter to you, Miss Zorelle?" Darcy sighed testily, before slamming down her distraction. The way the smaller girl stared at her always made her lose her appetite. "It's just an article about that whole thing happening up in New York."
The messy blonde sat back down at that, placated for some odd reason.
"Why? You worried?" Darcy prodded, wondering how exactly Kara Zorelle ticked. She probably had some kind of undiagnosed attention disorder or something, making her act more autistic than anything else. Not that Darcy had anything against autism inflicted people, no, but Kara freaked her the fuck out.
"Nah," Kara shook her head in an exaggerated fashion, as if she were an elementary school student with too much energy. "It's all the way up in New York. We're fine in Virginia, right?"
Darcy's eyes veered back towards the cover of the magazine, lingering on the muscular form of the Thunder God Thor standing in the middle of a wrecked New York street. He looked awful and awfully tired in that picture, covered in cuts, eyes almost droopy, and with a matching pair of large, fist-shaped bruises the size of the Hulk's fist on his left and right cheeks. Yet he was so powerful, in her memories... "Yeah, we'll be fine. Now go scamper off and play with your Instagram or something."
"Aren't you gonna—"
Darcy darted up and grabbed one of those half-dried dry-erase markers that were left around the room (many of them lost in dark corners behind tables or who-knows-where). She scribbled on the white board in a sprawling, messy hand writing of someone who wanted nothing to do with what she was doing and was only there because she was obligated to be by the school.
ASTROPHYSICS.
"Uh...?" Kara tilted her head and her eyes, very briefly, went cross-eyed.
"There, I wrote the word. Now, maybe next time we'll go further than that, but I'm done for the day," Darcy leaned back in the professor's chair, not bothering for the hundredth time to even correct the smaller girl's assumption that Darcy had anything about astrophysics to teach her. "Can't believe this is the first thing I'm saddled with after coming back. I'm so moving to London."
"That's no fair," Kara actually pouted at her and tried to look like a kicked puppy. Did she actually think that would work on Darcy? "You're an intern too... wait, you went somewhere?"
"Yeah, New Mexico. You never been out of town before?"
"Uh, yeah? I totally have!"
She actually sounded indignant. Darcy found herself smirking, at last, a reaction—something other than this stupid golden retriever impression. Though, if she hadn't had her world view shattered so thoroughly so many times over the past months, Darcy wouldn't have been this disgruntled. Well, maybe a little. "Uh huh. And where've you been?"
"Well, New York. Hong Kong. Uh... Kamar-Taj?" She shrugged.
"Kamar-Taj? Where's that?" Darcy set down her magazine completely and raised an eyebrow.
"It's in, um, Nepal?" Kara replied.
"Are you asking me?" Darcy squinted at the undergrad student before her. The way her hair flowed was just like like her eyes: too perfect. Even in its messy, frazzled, ponytail form, it was too smooth, too silky. Her eyes turned back towards the cover of her magazine, where Thor stood, his hair having been undone some time during the fighting.
Then it clicked, as if a nagging suspicion realized. But she wasn't sure... it could be just something silly. She could be wrong and the girl in front of her could just have such perfect genetics to look so pretty and cute at the same time, like some kind of super-ish girl.
"Kara, are you an alien?" Well, Darcy wasn't good with subtlety. She has had enough of that sitting around watching SHIELD take everything. Yeah, it was better to be blunt, then she could pass it off as a joke if she was wrong—
"W-What, h-how did you—no, n-no, I'm totally not an alien!" Kara denied.
For a moment, Darcy actually believed her. After all, this could just mean that Kara was really stupid. That was something Darcy already knew; other than certain aspects of her academics, her fellow intern was kinda... sorta... retarded. Like, she'd stare off into space or something and see things that weren't there, and call dudes tiny and cute until every guy avoided her like a masculinity-killing plague. But then Darcy backtracked. She still wasn't sure, but she doubted anyone even suspected Kara. Even for her appearance, Kara didn't actually do anything out of the ordinary. She even worked at a Starbucks, had student debts, and everything. So Darcy squinted and casually took out her phone, "... Are you an Asgardian?"
"W-what? No! Why would I be like, like Thor?" Kara scowled, her eyes darting about and briefly landing on the magazine, her little button nose scrunched up in disgusting cuteness. She seemed flustered.
"How did you know Thor is an Asgardian?" Darcy leaned forward. "No one said anything about that."
"... They didn't?!"
Darcy snorted. "No, it's not like he'll give an interview. So what are you? 'Cuz I have SHIELD on speed dial so you better not be like, what's his face Loki."
Actually, she didn't. Darcy only knew the name; it was a secret organization after all. But if nothing else, Darcy knew she was a better bluff than Kara was. Then again, Kara was an easy read. It wasn't like she had a dozen tells, or blurted out her secrets or something, but Kara didn't actually think far ahead despite being rather book smart. She looked at every problem as if she was a hammer and they were all nails, more so than even Thor, who had an actual hammer.
"Um... okay... I'm a Stellar Mermaid and our currency is based off of Starbucks and, uh, I like coffee," Kara fidgeted, but spoke with a straight face.
Darcy rolled her eyes. "Fine, don't tell me. You got me, I don't have SHIELD on speed dial. Are you gonna invade the Earth or something though? I mean, 'cuz we got Avengers."
"Pffft," Kara mimicked Darcy's eye roll, her eyes twinkling. But her smile didn't seem to reach all the way up to her eyes... no, the way she looked at Darcy was like how some of the secret agents of SHIELD looked at her: calculating if eliminating her would be more cost effective or if leaving her alive was better.
It almost caused Darcy to shiver, but she hid it well.
"I'm just trying to get an education. And pay off my student loans," Kara said, as if she wasn't casually thinking about killing people with... Darcy didn't know, but, like, with her eyes or something?
"Right. Well. Why don't you clean up the lab and finish the papers the professor wanted or whatever, I'm turning out for the day," Darcy replied. Yeah, she thought to herself, best start looking for how to get that transfer to London right now. Staying in Virginia, so close to aliens or what have you—it didn't matter, Darcy just wanted to get laid and get paid, not deal with this save-the-world bullshit. That was more Jane's area of expertise.
Yeah. Darcy just wanted to go home and collapse onto her bed with her pants half-taken off and with something stupid being played on her television with bad reception, so that lovely white-noise can lull her to bed. None of this... alien stuff. And with that, she absolved herself of all responsibility and care.
Eh, if Kara was going to attack New York, she'll be on the other side of the world. Win-win.
"Awww," Kara whined, but she was used to it. As Darcy strolled out of the room, she could still hear the girl's now fading voice carrying an audible pout. "But I was gonna..."
"Don't care!"