Darcy’s lingering silence unnerved him slightly. She was not usually the quiet one - rather, when something was on her mind she generally seemed to prefer to speak - right? He was almost certain he remembered that correctly, but, then, how could he be sure? He couldn’t be sure. Not about this, not about anything he couldn’t explicitly remember. If he felt doubt, he had to believe he had forgotten, that his memory was compromised. That this disease was already taking his memories of Darcy sent a fresh wave of helpless anger through him, magic sparking at the back of his mind, ready should he choose to lash out - but there was nothing to lash out against, only Darcy, moving closer, so he merely clenched his hands in his lap, grit his teeth in the imitation smile as she spoke.
The smile didn’t hold up for much longer, faltering out - “Loki, you scared the hell out of me earlier...” - and he looked away, down at the empty space on the table his book had been moments ago, fixated on the scraps of old paper scattered across the table, on the black scratches that spelled out words he could still remember.
>“…you know I’m here, right? You don’t have to figure out or face this all alone…”
“There is nothing to figure out,” he responded quietly, but no less intense for the lack of volume, voice laden with too many things to be classified as one particular emotion - but the mesh of it all sounded more like frustration than anything else. This was not some unknown enemy, some mystery to solve. He wished it were, wished there was still some doubt, something that could be done, even if it was useless, because as it was now, there was nothing to do but wait. And, apparently, to tell Darcy. He found the words sticking in his throat; how was he supposed to say something like this? It wasn’t even entirely about worrying her - clearly she was already worried, and she would remain worried no matter what he told her - part of it was his own pride; part of it was fear. Saying it made it real, far more real than it needed to be.
Compromise, then. Reflexively, he reached for his magic to bring the computer to him, only to find an apple drop into the place where the laptop was supposed to land. It took a great deal of restraint not to throw the fruit against a far wall, to simply set it aside with a scowl (he could feel his skin heating with embarrassment, and he kept his jaw clenched tight to avoid snapping, to keep from demanding she stop watching him fail like this, kept his eyes down, so he wouldn’t have to see the laughter he imagined on her face, in her eyes) and even more focus for him to actually successfully obtain the computer. (And that was another issue, wasn’t it? He was going to have to stop leaving things in the spaces in-between, if his magic was going to be this unsteady. Being unable to retrieve something important would not do at all.)
He’d ‘book-marked’ the page on Alzheimer’s disease, earlier - because he’d kept forgetting the ‘url’, and each search for it brought him more and more frustration; this had made things slightly easier - and he remained silent as he brought the page up, and then shifted the small device on the table, angling it so that she could see. Then he was on his feet and pacing, letting her read, not wanting to watch her while she learned exactly what was happening here.