Unexpected

Lost Letters and Broken Hearts

"So, basically, if I find that I'm missing anything when I get home, I can just blame Darcy right?" I joked as I finished zipping up my suitcase.

"Pretty much." Jane agreed, laughing as she started folding up the blankets that had made up my makeshift bed.

Darcy folded her arms, rolling her eyes dramatically, "They always blame the intern!"

"It's because you make it so easy for us to blame you!" Jane quipped back.

"Why me?" Darcy exclaimed, "Why not blame Ian?"

I raised an eyebrow, moving to help Jane fold up the blankets as I looked over my shoulder at Darcy who was standing by the bedroom's dresser, holding her phone between her hands instead of being useful, "Wouldn't that be blaming the intern's intern? Isn't that a bit low to be blaming him?"

Darcy opened her mouth to protest before clacking it shut, "Damn, no you're right." She assented.

Our laughter was cut off by Selvig coming to the open doorway. He knocked on the wood of the opened door, "Penny, your taxi's outside."

A twinge of sadness fell over me. I'd miss this crazy group of people. They were such an odd mismatch of personalities, but I'd gotten so used to them over the last week. I hated to leave them. I said my goodbyes at the door, hugging each of my new friends and insisting that they keep in touch.

"May your travels be safe, Penelope." Thor said, engulfing me in a hug before pulling away and wrapping one arm around Jane as I took up my suitcase again, "I shall be seeing you again soon in the land of Wash-a-ton!"

"Washington." Jane corrected.

"Bye guys. See you back in America." I giggled, leaving the apartment behind as I strode down the apartment building's hallways. When I reached the taxi, I heard them calling me from up on their balcony! Looking up I saw them all leaning over the railings, waving me goodbye!

The cabbie looked up at them too as I crawled into the backseat, "Them's your friends?"

"Yeah." I grinned at him, though I knew my eyes held a look of sadness in them as I rolled the window down, waving back up at Jane, Thor, Darcy, Ian, and Erik as the taxi pulled away.

I listened to music and watched in-flight movies the entire seven hour flight from London to D.C., though even with this entertainment I was feeling more than a little stir-crazy by the time we landed. Once I was out of the plane, my stir-craziness was replaced with stiffness. You would think with all my flying about over the last year that I would be used to airplanes, but I'm not. I've just grown to hate flying economy class with a dull, persistent dread.

As I neared my own apartment building once again, I seemed to me that the world grew greyer. Not to mean that the sky darkened or anything, no, it was actually rather nice weather today in D.C. It was still cold, the warmth of spring not quite setting in yet, but the sky shown blue with a smattering of fluffy white clouds like someone had painted them there with watercolors. It grew greyer in that my heart slowly sank.

Had it truly already been a week since I'd dashed from my apartment to rush to England? Had is really been a week since my rude alarm of Rumlow calling me to call me away had woken me up, showing me that I was alone in my apartment? That Loki was gone... that he'd disappeared in the night as if he'd never truly been there...

I'd felt my heart cracking as I'd run through my apartment, looking for a flash of green, a lock of black hair, but he'd disappeared. Since I answered that infernal phone call, I'd been too busy to really brood over it. I'd had flights to catch, paperwork, interviews, and a fight with a frost beast. There was too much going on in that British apartment that was built for two people when six of us had been crammed inside over the last week for me to ponder it all alone.