Chapter Text
Darcy knows the moment she sees her mother crumble into dust and float off into the wind in the tiny kitchen of their New Mexico apartment that whatever Steve had gone off to fight had done something very, very terrible. And she can’t even get up off the couch to go see what had happened because her eight and a half month pregnant belly is making it nearly impossible for her to move with any semblance of speed. She sits, mouth agape, watching as the dust swirls, mingling with the breeze coming through the windows and twisting away into nothing.
The next thing she does is reach for the remote, flip on the television to see what the world’s reaction is, if this is just a pregnancy based hallucination or something far worse. It takes less than thirty seconds for the emergency broadcast signal to start, a howling screech that emanates from the screen and her cellphone. Darcy’s gut clenches, all but drops to the floor, and she begins to wish that this is just a hallucination.
Then, she feels the baby shift about inside of her, driving an elbow one way and sending a foot kicking into her ribs. That’s a sigh of a relief, a breath she didn’t even know she was holding - what if babies could get caught up in whatever was happening also? But her little fighter’s kicking up a storm in her belly, announcing his presence loudly.
Throughout the day the TV blares on, Darcy flipping back and forth between the various news stations, watching as everybody on the planet tries to figure out what the hell has happened. The newscasters that are still remaining - because any number of the usual faces have apparently disappeared into dust also - scream about the mass disappearances all around the world. The count is innumerable, immeasurable, but they’re suspecting in the billions, Darcy realizes with a breathless, shuddering gasp.
What had caused the disappearances, however, no one really knows for sure. Aliens are a popular choice, especially after the Battle of New York all those years back. The Rapture is another popular choice that the pundits on the more conservative and non-secular networks keep screaming about. And if the government knows something, they’re not speaking up about it (it did get leaked, however, that the president, vice president, and the better part of the executive branch had disappeared also, which is probably the one bright side to this whole shitstorm, Darcy thinks with a sick giggle). But Darcy, knowing what she knows about what Steve went off to fight, has the sinking suspicion that nothing about this is coming from any place of heavenly goodness. So she locks the doors and the windows, barricading herself inside because what else can she do right now? Being heavily pregnant and, no doubt in her mind, an easy target to some of the people in the world who have been taking advantage of the chaos to be as lawless as they could, she’s got to protect herself as much as she can.
The street outside her apartment building isn’t quite chaos - this town is little and sleepy compared to other places she’s lived, and after having known Thor, it’s hard to compare chaos to that - but there’s enough oddities out there that Darcy feels strange in her skin as she stares out the window. Cars are smoking and abandoned in the road, where their drivers had disappeared mid-travel and crashed to a halt on the curb. There’s a layer of fine ash over everything, coating the trees and the buildings and leaving a residual haze in the sky, leaving the sun looking like a fuzzy orb. Somewhere there’s an upturned bicycle with a wheel still spinning. On the sidewalk across the way there are a couple of people with semi-automatic guns patrolling in the twilight, and her stomach clenches again. It’s the inevitable result of chaos, isn’t it? Someone’s going to be out there attempting to restore order, no matter what the cost.
She has to believe that Steve’s okay, that he’s busy working to try and fix this, and that’s why he hasn’t been able to get in touch with her yet.
There’s a knock at her front door, immediately followed by, “Hey, Miss Lewis, are you in there?”
It’s her neighbor’s voice and, at the very least, a familiar face in the world. Darcy shuffles over to open the door, revealing a balding, bearded, heavy-set middle aged man wearing a motorcycle vest and a concerned look on his face. “Hey, Jack,” she says wearily, rubbing a hand over her belly. “What’s going on?”
“I’m just checking to see who’s still around in the building,” Jack says, glancing past Darcy at the inside of her place. “There aren’t many of us left.”
“It’s just me here now,” Darcy replies, slumping down against the door. “My mom...yeah.”
“Is Steve here?”
“He’s on a business trip.” She sighs, runs a hand over her stomach again, feeling the baby move like moths fluttering about. “How’s your daughter?”
Jack nods, a slight smile breaking out on his face. “She and the grandkid are fine, thank god. No word about the son-in-law yet, but that’s an acceptable loss.”
“Gee, tell me how you really feel.” Darcy lets out a small smile of her own, trying to muster up the energy to at least be friendly. It’s hard, though, and she’s still near petrified if she lets herself think about Steve. “I’m just going to hole up here until we know more about what’s going on.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Jack says. “If you need anything, you let me know, got it? Food, baby supplies, whatever. You hear me?”
“I do. Thank you, Jack.”
“Anytime. I’m right down the hall for whatever you need.”
Jack moves along to the next apartment and Darcy slips back inside of hers, locking the door and shoving a chair beneath the knob for good measure.
“All right, baby, it’s just you and me now,” Darcy murmurs, patting her belly again.
**********
Sleep is all but impossible. It’s hard to sleep to begin with, what with her massive stomach and a lack of Steve’s familiar presence in the bed, combined with the fact that their baby is no respecter of the clock. But the world’s ending outside, how can she sleep through that? So Darcy sets up camp on the couch instead, a mug of tea on the table and a blanket around her shoulders. She tries to watch some more of the news coverage, but it’s all speculation and reviewing events, with no new information coming in, so she switches over to some forgettable sitcom to distract her brain instead.
Maybe if it’s dull enough I’ll pass out from boredom , Darcy thinks.
She’s finally dropped off into a sort of doze when her phone chimes with an incoming message. Darcy picks it up, squinting hard to see the screen through the sleep haze, and the little alert reveals that the message is from Steve’s familiar number.
Darcy? it reads. Are you there?
She fumbles the phone in her haste, almost dropping it before typing back with shaking fingers. I’m here. I’m okay. We’re okay.
It’s only a few seconds after that the phone rings. “Steve?” she asks, leveraging herself as upright as she can on the couch.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Oh my god.” She exhales roughly, the noise sounding closer to a sob than what she’d like. “Are you okay?”
“I’m...unharmed,” Steve says, hesitantly, and there’s a wealth of knowledge in what he doesn’t say.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Unimaginably so.”
It all spills out from Steve at that point, the entirety of the whole, horrifying story that had led to that one single moment and half of the life on Earth disappearing into nothing. Darcy, more than anything else, wants to take him into her arms and hug the hell out of him, let him know that she’s there and she’ll do what she can.
“So what do we do now?” Darcy asks, chewing at her lower lip until it’s almost bloody. She scrubs her hand roughly over her face, wiping away the tear tracks that Steve’s story had left behind.
“We fight,” he replies, and Darcy can all but see the defeated shrug in his shoulders. “Somehow. I don’t even know what’s left to fight against.”
“What about coming home instead?” Darcy shifts, carefully, fearful to wake the baby even though he’s probably used to the late night movement by now. “In less than a month this baby’s going to drop, and I need you by my side for it.”
Steve’s silent for a moment, no doubt lost in thought. “What if you could come here?”
“Huh?”
“Come to Wakanda. I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave any time soon given everything, but I know I can get a plane to pick you up and bring you here.”
There’s a moment of hesitation on Darcy’s part; she doesn’t want to leave her home, especially with her nesting instincts kicking in. But then she realizes - what exactly does she have left here that makes it a home? Her mom’s gone, and as she hasn’t heard from her stepdad he’s most likely dust also. Her partner, the father of her child, is halfway across the world, in a place that’s more advanced medically and technologically than New Mexico could currently dream of, even if the world’s gone entirely to shit in the meantime.
“Yeah, I will. I want you by my side when I pop this critter out,” Darcy says, feeling entirely confident in her decision. “When do we leave?”