Chapter Text
Dragons, humans just love the idea of them, and Darcy loves the humans' ideas about dragons. She loves their ideas about magic too. Because humans think dragons and magic don't exist, and so dragons and magic can be whatever they want it to be. Actual magic is hard work; Darcy prefers the fantasy stuff.
Bingley, her clutch-brother, thinks her fascination with the humans' fascination with their species is strange. He doesn't understand her fascination with humans at all, actually; he doesn't understand why she would want to crush herself down into a human shape and play at living a human life.
“We are the last ones,” Bingley says to her, when he's consented to visit her tiny apartment in the city and squish his scales down into a human shape to do it.
He looks very handsome – never let it be said dragons were not vain – with the thin form, boyish face, and dark hair he's chosen, but Darcy can already tell that the condensed and limiting, white-skinned, and fleshy body is irking his patience. He could never stand to look like anything but the peak of youthful maturity, unlike the aged body his clutch-sister is wearing, and can barely stand being human anyway. She can practically feel the displeased glare of his inhumanly golden eyes, which she knows he keeps purely to freak people out.
Darcy doesn't reply to his statement. Bingley is simply working himself up into another rant about how it beneath their dignity to pretend to be a part of the species that drove their own into fleeing for the other realms. He doesn't get it, how nice it is to have company and to fit in, even if only superficially. Bingley would probably stay in his cave with his hoard if he didn't feel the need to grumble at her every few decades or add to his hoard.
“We are the last ones,” Bingley repeats, “and you would abandon your true self – your true form and birthright – for this?” He sweeps a hand, curved like a claw, around her parlor. Then he does the same with his eyes and sneers at the knick-knacks that Darcy has filled the small space with.
Darcy puts down her book, a recent story of fantasy by an English professor that she has been enjoying immensely. Smaug, with all his wickedness and cleverness, reminds her of their mother before their egg-bearer decided the filth of humanity's presence was too much to bear. This is the fourteenth time she's re-read it, and she always finds something new to appreciate about it each time.
She casts Bingley an annoyed look as he pokes a clawbent finger at the mobile of flying glass dragons hanging by the window; he pulls away – dragons respect other dragons' property or get their scales plucked – then goes to poke at her umbrella stand carved to look like a dragon instead – curious, nosy things, dragons are.
“For company,” Darcy corrects, scowling. “I would do it for the company.”
Bingley turns his neck and shifts his shoulders in such a way that Darcy knows he is trying to flutter his wings in an expression of displeasure. “And what is to be desired about their company?” her clutch-brother demands. “What is the attraction of being surrounded by such petty, murderous, selfish, self-centered creatures who have no awareness of or respect for the world they are destroying?”
“That described our species' presence on this planet once upon a time too,” Darcy counters. “Just because we knew more and could reach further into the universe did not make us any less petty or murderous or selfish or... or... what was the last one you said?”
“Self-centered,” Bingley bites out with a growl.
“Yes, that. Would you honestly try and claim we're not those things, Bing?” Darcy asks.
Bingley looks away from her intent stare and pouts openly. Darcy is reminded that he is twenty-seven minutes younger than she is; he had such trouble fighting his way out of the egg and their elder-clutch-brothers and elder-clutch-sisters never let him forget it.
“Fine,” he says, “we are petty and murderous, we are selfish and self-centered. But what is the appeal of spending your time among a race that is all those things and small and weak and lacking in knowledge about the greater universe? They are unaware of all the other realms and greater forces, and you have to lie to walk among them! They are so... simple!”
“And there's the appeal,” Darcy tells him, tapping a finger against the cover of her book. “They're so naive, Bing. They're so hopeful. They have such wonderful hopes for the greater universe, for the future and what's waiting behind every corner. Such imaginations and ambitions – so ugly and beautiful all at once.”
Bingley only scowls at the book she's pointing at, ignoring her words entirely. “Is that the human literature you chose these foolish names from? I told you, they are undignified and I dislike them. Especially when you will not even address me by the full foolish name you have given me this time. It is disrespectful.”
“Shut up, Bing,” Darcy replies.
“There! There! That is disrespectful! It is undignified to begin with to adopt human names, but you will not even give me the proper respect of the full title.”
“To be honest, I can't say Bingley Bennet without wanting to laugh.”
Bingley scowls even further. “Then why did you give it to me?”
“A recent book obsession,” Darcy sighs. “I'm looking forward to when I'll get to change mine again. Darcy Bennet seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I'm getting rather sick of the repetitive teasing whenever I introduce myself.”
Bingley finally comes away from where he was inspecting a lampshade - covered in a pattern of East-Asian dragons that Darcy found in an antique shop in Italy. He flops his long frame down across from her on her sofa, just as he would his scales on his cave nest. If he had a tail at the moment, Darcy can tell, it would be flicking back and forth.
“What happened to Carol and Lewis Kingsley?” Bingley asks. “I like those ones... they were... regal. These ones I do not like. Why must you persist in changing names? You always leave a human village when you reach the end of your cycle of pretend human life; the new human villagers would not be suspicious of you.”
“I suppose I just like the idea of starting anew,” Darcy replies tiredly, just about ready to show Bingley the door. Then she gets an idea, and offers Bingley the book. “Here, take this and have it.”
Bingley eyes the small book warily, reaching out a long arm to take it and then looking at the cover with undisguised horror. He flips the paperback around and gestures somewhat incoherently at the picture on its front, of a red dragon rising from a mountain. Darcy has to stifle a giggle at the sheer indignation on his face.
“What sort of mockery is this?” Bingley demands. “What kind of sick pleasure do you derive from these corrupt and baseless imaginings? Why would you offer me this creation of the foolish human mind?”
Dragons, unsurprisingly, are not very willing to part with the possessions they collect. They either want something or they don't, and there is very little in between, so gifts have never become a custom or tradition of their unhappy little family. If their elder-clutch-siblings or parents had ever given them anything, it was because, to them, that thing was worthless. But Darcy has spent too much time among humans and the others have been gone too long for her to care for being very dragon-like.
“Yes, it's for your hoard,” Darcy replies simply. “I'll get another one, don't worry.”
Bingley shifts in his seat and she can almost see her clutch-brother's wings flapping in discomfort and confusion. To try and disguise these vulnerable emotions, he brings another sneer to the handsome human face he does not wear well. “I collect books of true knowledge,” he informs her. “Not... not the fantasy and fiction of common human literature.”
“I think you'll like it actually.”
“Most doubtful,” Bingley insists, shaking his head. Her clutch-brother eyes the book with some curiosity now though; books have always been Bingley's weakness, he just hasn't had much luck in what samples of human creativity he's come across.
“Well, you can complain about how much you hate it on your next visit,” Darcy says, getting to her feet. “I'm kicking you out the door now, I have to get ready for a dinner date with the girls. Beth's daughter just gave her her first grandchild and she's been dying to brag about it.”
Bingley reluctantly stands and the clutch-siblings move towards the door, with Bingley grasping the book awkwardly and walking with the gait of someone who is used to being predatory but with more legs than he currently has. Darcy moves more slowly and steadily, having fallen into the habit of purporting the age her appearance suggests, admiring the carefully crafted wrinkles around her gray eyes in a dragon-framed mirror from Finland.
It's easier, she's realized, to stay in one place if she gives herself the appropriate wrinkles over the years and lets the color fade from her hair. But pretending to age requires more than a fair bit of acting as well, as it's more than a little bit odd for a lady who could be a grandmother to bound up the stairs at an inhuman speed or carry more groceries than several able-bodied men would be able to. Toddling slowly across a street can be great fun, though, especially when she knows she could still walk off with a skip in her step if a car crashed into her.
She opens the door for her clutch-brother and sees Bingley out of the apartment, just as the apartment across the way opens up and her young neighbors step out, a short blond and a taller brunet. They're Brooklyn boys, born and raised here by their immigrant parents (Irish and Romanian, respectively, Darcy thinks they told her once, and she's heard them cursing in both a time or too), and almost always joined at the hip. Today, they appear to be dressed up for some occasion, poking their usual good fun at each other as they close their door behind them. Their mouths button shut when they see her though, like she hasn't heard or used curse words before in her life and might faint dead away if that changes.
“Ms. Bennet!” Steve greets her brightly, as though trying to negate the fact he has a massive bruise on the jaw that's stronger than the rest of him combined and was just insulting his friend with enough sauce to make a sailor faint. He looks at Bingley - who is easily more than two heads taller than him; Bingley never did get normal human heights right – up and down, and Bingley returns the stare with one of faint disbelief at such a tiny and gangly person.
Great, now her clutch-brother is never going to get over his idea of humans as utterly weak creatures.
“Boys,” Darcy returns, making sure to give her voice that extra croak of age. “You look handsome tonight. Where'ya off to?” Her eyes flicker over Steve's partner, dressed in an army uniform she's never seen him wearing before, and gives a licentious grin. “Always did like a fella in uniform.”
James grins back, slinging an arm over Steve's shoulders. “Now, Ms. Bennet, y'know you're too good for the likes'o me. We're off to the Stark Expo for a double date. Could find'ya a fella if you're interested in joining us... unless -” He looks at Bingley, grinning even more widely. “- y'already got one, ya heartbreaker, you.”
Bingley looks so offended and repulsed that Darcy has to give off a cackle. “Oh, now that'll be the day when this one finds himself a dame. Boys, this is my grandson, Bingley. Bingley, these are my neighbors, Steve and James.”
“How do you do,” Bingley says stiffly, and only because Darcy drilled some manners into him and insisted he had to play nice after he gave her last neighbor a nervous breakdown.
Although the nervous breakdown could have been because Bingley, who had been known as Darcy's son in that time, once forgot to age himself after a dozen years without visiting and Darcy's neighbor had been a bit hysterical, superstitious, and extremely religious. It's all fun and games until someone tries to stake Bingley because they're convinced he's a vampire; Bingley never takes that sort of thing with any sense of humor and usually ends up setting the local church on fire.
“Well, thanks,” James replies, eyeing Bingley strangely, while Steve only nods.
Knowing that her clutch-brother is on the verge of bolting, Darcy says, “Bingley was just on his way out. He's got some business to get to.”
“Yeah?” Steve asks.
“I am a historian,” Bingley informs them, still stiffly. It's one of the lines that Darcy gave him if anyone ever asked what he did for a living; the other one is 'I study old books'. He's gotten better at applying them to the situation over time, but not to actually acting human, as he turns away from their group and strides away without another word.
“Nice fella,” Steve mutters below his breath, too low for a regular human old woman to hear.
Darcy smiles apologetically, partly to hide her amusement; Bingley is so shamelessly terrible at being human. “Sorry about him, he'll get to being a real member of civil society one day.”
“That's alright,” Steve drawls, eyeing his best friend with a grin. “Bucky's got far to go too.”
James knocks into his shorter friend with a fond smirk. “I'm not the one who can't walk down the street without runnin' into somebody's fist.”
“Yeah, ya can't even stand on tha' street with your mug.”
“Say that to my face, ya punk.”
“Didn't say anything, jerk.”
“Don't you boys have some dames to go meet?” Darcy interrupts, because these two clowns can and will go on forever like this unless somebody stops them.
James pulls a beaten-up watch from his pocket to check the time, then swears under his breath. “Dammit, Stevie, we gotta get moving.” He grabs his friend by the shoulders and pushes Steve down the hall. “Ms. Bennet, we'll see ya around!”
“Goodbye, boys!” Darcy calls, waving as they go.
“Bye, Ms. Bennet!” Steve yells back, before he's shoved into the stairwell by James and the two of them disappear out of the hall. She can still hear them thumping their way down the creaky old stairs, quips and laughter following as they go, until they go out of even her range and the sounds of them disappear entirely.
Darcy steps back into her apartment and closes the door. Once she does, she straightens from the slumped posture of the elderly that she's been wearing for the past years. James's uniform reminded her of just how long she's been in this building, since before what the humans called the Great War and through Roaring Twenties (what a terrible time that was) and the Great Depression (what an even worse time). Time's been ticking by and it'll probably be time to move again soon, especially if this war gets any worse than it already has.
But first, she's got a dinner date with the girls so Beth can brag about her new granddaughter. Maybe she'll start getting ready to go after they finish their quilting project for the little girl; if Darcy's not there, there'll be no one to add patches of blue dragons, which, she will forever maintain, are absolutely perfect for little girls.
Kittens and ducklings are far too overrated.
~
“Why must you always inflict this suffering upon me?” Bingley demands from being the boxes his clutch-sister has shoved into his arms. “I have done nothing to deserve this. Every time you change human villages, you insist upon my assistance and use me as a pack mule.”
“Shut up, Bing,” Darcy says. “This is the easy part. You didn't have to pack up all this and you're going to fly away to hide in your cave before I even try to open anything. Everyone thinks I'm eighty-seven - or seventy-eight; I can never remember anymore - I can't be carrying around boxes like they're nothing.”
“Physical labor is beneath me,” Bingley insists, his hands loosening as though he intends to just let the boxes drop. “And you insist on making me carry them one or two at a time! It is so slow!”
“If you drop those, I will pluck your scales, don't think I won't.”
“This could be so much faster if you would just let me carry more of them.”
Darcy fixes her clutch-brother with a stern look. “You couldn't balance more than two of them, Bing, you have enough trouble just walking in the human shape.”
“I do not,” Bingley insists with a pout.
“Oh just take those down to the truck, you stubborn lizard.”
“How dare you.”
“Go before I roast you.”
“Fine,” her clutch-brother says, and exits her tiny apartment with two heavy boxes almost weightless in his arms. “But you must be aware that I am humoring you,” he calls.
“Oh, definitely,” Darcy agrees, turning back to her ransacked apartment. All of her books and dragon-themed things have been carefully packed up, all her important knick-knacks and possessions are boxed away, while she leaves the larger furniture behind.
She'll miss that sofa; she hopes the next inhabitants of this tiny apartment will appreciate it.
Slowly, Darcy and Bingley remove all the boxes from her apartment down to the truck she's paying to use. Darcy has more than enough riches to do as she pleases; their egg-bearer left a large hoard of gold hidden away and neither she nor Bingley is interested in keeping or actively hoarding the shiny metal and sparkling jewels.
As Darcy is closing the door to her home for the last time, Bingley standing next to her holding the last box, her clutch-brother asks: “What became of your neighbors?”
“Hmm?”
“Steve and James,” he says. “Their scents are very faint. They have not been here in many months. Human lifespans have not shortened greatly to what they were previously, have they?”
Darcy locks her door and gives a small laugh. “Oh, not in the way of aging, no,” she replies. “But sort of, in a way. There's a war going on.”
Bingley rolls his eyes, something he probably picked up from her. “When are the humans ever not having a war?”
“True enough, but this one is... different,” Darcy says, pocketing her keys. “It's... larger. You should probably avoid Europe and the Mediterranean for awhile. There are battles happening in the air now - planes being shot from the sky.”
Bingley looks confused. “Humans are fighting in their balloons now?”
“No,” Darcy says with a sigh. “No, not balloons.”
She'll have to introduce Bingley to some of the more recent advancements humans have been making, all the technology and machinery that have been born of war and urgency. (She would hesitate to say necessity.) Maybe she can take him to some of the propaganda films.
An idea pops into her head. “Hey, Bing?”
“Yes?”
“Did you read the book I gave you? The one about the hobbit and the dwarves?”
Bingley's pale face goes slightly pink, and he shuffles from one foot to the next; if he had his tail, it would be tucked between his legs. “Yes,” he admits quietly, and then even more quietly says, “It was... interesting. Do you... do you have any more of... some less-pathetic human literature?”
Darcy gives him a knowing look, but doesn't say anything.
“I have not had the opportunity to add many new texts to my hoard,” Bingley insists, face becoming increasingly red. “I would not... balk at some distraction, of weak and fictional substance though human literature may be.”
“I'm sure I can rustle up something up to par,” Darcy says, already thinking of the dozens of texts she's been wanting to have her clutch-brother read, if only to hear his complaints on their foolishness and inaccuracy. Maybe she can take him to some actual films; she'd love to see what he'll think of the cartoon films they've been making.
Bingley nods, face still red like he's trying to swallow back a fireball, and he looks away. His eyes fall once again on the apartment door that used to belong to Steve and James, before James left for war and Steve disappeared and didn't come back very soon after.
“So what became of your neighbors?” Bingley repeats. “Did they die in the human war?”
Darcy shrugs and walks down the hall, her clutch-brother following with a box in his arms.
“I don't know,” she replies simply and honestly. “So... what are you feelings on the historical-romance genre?”
“The genre of what?”
“I'm wondering how well you'll react to the human literature I chose our most recent names from.”
~
“HOW COULD HE DO THAT?” Bingley demands loudly from Darcy's new sofa, in her new apartment in San Francisco. Then yells out to his clutch-sister in the next room: “THIS TEXT MAY BE CURSED; IT IS DOING SOMETHING UNPLEASANT TO MY HEART.”
Darcy, enjoying having smooth skin and thick brown curls again, puts the cap back on her bright-red lipstick. “It's not cursed, you dumb lizard,” she calls back to him. “You're just having feelings over book characters, it's completely normal.”
Then is a brief silence and then Bingley shouts back: “NO, THAT IS FOOLISH; IT IS MOST DEFINITELY CURSED. THIS JANE AUSTEN WAS LIKELY A WITCH. I WILL INVESTIGATE FURTHER.”
Darcy pauses in front of her vanity mirror, thinks about this for a second, and then runs out of the room. “Bingley, if you do anything to my book, I swear to God, I WILL RIP OUT YOUR SCALES! BINGLEY, GIVE ME THE BOOK RIGHT NOW.”
“BUT IT IS CURSED!”
“GIVE IT!”
“NO!”