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1. 2003
It is on the eighteenth of April that Darcy does something that could accurately be described as the first truly reckless act of her life (with many more to follow in the next decade and change). It's spring break and she's taking a short cut to get back to her aunt's; the woman lived only a few blocks from the library and was maybe a little liberal with the rules Darcy's parents had given to her when they'd dropped Darcy off. Like letting her 14-year-old niece go to and from the library alone in a relatively foreign city. Not that Chicago was exactly foreign to Darcy, having regularly visited her favorite aunt during the summers and other breaks, but she wasn't as familiar with its streets as, say, her aunt.
But it was still light and Darcy was taking the short cut through a construction site, empty of workers for the night. Again, not the smartest thing she had ever done, but Darcy reasoned as she replaced the chain link fencing and started moving forward, she didn't plan on playing in the place and causing any damage to property or herself. So, no biggie.
Darcy had just climbed over some big concrete tubes and was taking a drink from her water bottle when she hears it: the dull, hard thudding sound of flesh hitting flesh. Now, anyone else would have high tailed it away from the noise, especially if they were, themselves, trespassing, but not Darcy. Keeping low, she crept forward as stealthily as she could manage (which, at fourteen, was not all that stealthy) until she made it to a large concrete support column. Peering around it Darcy watched as two men absolutely went at it. The punches and kicks and vicious jabs she saw thrown made Darcy wince; the ones that landed looked and sounded like they hurt like hell. One man, who had black hair that was parted on the side, looking a bit old fashioned, threw a haymaker aimed at the other man's ribs. The other man had brown hair that was kinda lanky and dirty in appearance and looked like it was probably about chin length when clean. He blocked that haymaker and got the other man square in the chin. The black haired man staggered back several steps from that punch and the man with brown hair advanced, clearly intent on his target. This intent screwed him good and hard when he stepped on a loose piece of rebar carelessly left on the ground. He lost his balance for a moment, but only a moment was apparently needed. The black haired man was on him in a second, tackling him to the floor and he just started to wail on him.
Darcy doesn't know why she does what she does next. She's never really able to pin down the why. But Darcy takes off her backpack, picks up a solid piece of piping (Christ, did these construction workers know the meaning of 'keep things tidy'?) that's a little heavy to her mind, and steps out from behind the column. Eleven steps. That's all it takes. Eleven steps and one hell of a swing produced by ten years of little league, and being the best batter in the league the last three years (and being more than a wee bit scared), to the back of the black haired man's head.
He goes down instantly, right on top of the man he'd just been hitting. Said man is quick to throw the unconscious one to the side and get to his feet in a flash. Darcy instantly drops the pipe and holds her hands up in the air.
“Please don't kill me!” is the first thing that pops into her mind and out of her mouth.
He just... The man just stares. He stares Darcy down and it is hella uncomfortable. So, she stares back. He's wearing... a lot of black. And buckles. AND THE SHINIEST LEFT ARM SHE HAS EVER SEEN, OH MY GOD. And... oh.... there's a lot of blood. Darcy starts feeling a little bit queasy so she shifts her gaze up, taking in his dirty hair, the good two days stubble on his jaw (said jaw that looks like it could cut diamonds, god DAMN), and the eyes. The man's eyes are this wonderful, arresting shade of blue. But they're sad, too. And there's something that's familiar about him, but Darcy can't quite place it, that’s also probably because she's half convinced this was the worst idea she'd ever had and she's going to maybe probably die.
“How old are you?” The man finally says, his voice croaky.
“F-fourteen,” Darcy answers.
There's a low groan from the ground between them. The man's eyes snap to the other man, apparently beginning to come to. He takes several sharp steps forward and smashes his boot heel into the man's temple, knocking him back into unconsciousness.
“That's a mean swing for a kid –“ There's a noise from behind Darcy, back from the way she'd came, if Darcy can be any sort of judge. And she starts making all sorts of noises when the man charges toward her, dragging her to hide behind the same pillar she'd used what feels like hours ago. A heavy right hand comes up and covers Darcy's mouth and holy shit she's scared.
“Be. Quiet,” Gets hissed at her and Darcy has never obeyed an order so fast in her life. In fact, her mom would be positively green with envy that two words from this man got Darcy to shut up. Well, if Darcy were planning on telling her mom about this. Which, if she lives, hell no she is not.
The noises get a little louder, they're getting closer and Darcy's pretty sure that's her heartbeat she can hear throbbing in her ears.
“Backpack,” Darcy manages to get out, though it comes out a tad bit muffled cuz, y'know, there's a hand covering her mouth.
“What?” The man softly barks, lifting his hand a little bit off of Darcy's mouth.
“My backpack. Behind the pillar,” Darcy manages to point.
The man removes his hand fully from Darcy's space and carefully crouches down and retrieves Darcy's backpack. And then he's taking Darcy by the upper arm and they are running away from the noises, away from the voices that are starting to gain clarity by their closeness. Some kind soul was watching over them from above because Darcy and the mystery man who scares the shit out of her and intrigues her in equal measure make a clean getaway.
“Where are you living?”
“Two blocks this way,” Darcy answers. Again she gets dragged, stumbling a couple steps before getting her feet under her. They run the two blocks before stopping at the head of Darcy's aunt's street. The man shoves her backpack into her arms and points down the street.
“You'll go alone from here. Tell. No. One.”
“I won't, I won't,” Darcy promises, clutching her bag to her before turning and running. She doesn't stop until she's in her aunt's front door and has hit all the locks, sagging in relief.
“Darcy? That you?”
“Yeah, it's me, Aunt Mia,” Darcy answers, gasping for air from her sudden dash.
“Sweetheart, what's wrong?” Mia asks as she walks into the front hall. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no,” Darcy promises. “There was a – a fight that broke out near the library and it got – got really ugly and I just ran here,” She steps away from the door, double checking the locks once more for her peace of mind.
“Oh, you poor dear,” Mia says as she descends on Darcy.
Darcy feels a little bad, a little, for lying to her aunt. But the guy had said to tell no one. So, she told no one.
~*~*~*~*~*~
2. 2011
Darcy woke up and rolled out of bed, shuffling to the bathroom more asleep than awake. Later, when washing her hands, Darcy took a look at the mirror. As always, there was the impressive bedhead someone with her hair could attain. There was also the soulmark.
The ‘mark' was a heavily cracked, broken red star that occupied most of the width of her arm. Right there on her left upper arm. Right there, that had been the spot where he had first touched her. That man from that day in 2003. Darcy had woken up with it the day after that harrowing adventure that cured her from ever again taking short cuts through dubious areas.
Everyone knew about soulmarks. Everyone's skin was clear, short of freckles, scars and tattoos, until they made skin on skin contact with their soulmate. And hadn't that weirded fourteen year old Darcy Lewis out. The fact that her soulmate was some sort of very dangerous man, not to mention waaaaaay older than her (oh, if only fourteen year old Darcy had known). But he had saved her life when he could have just as easily left her to whoever had been approaching that day or killed her himself. Hell, he'd even taken her most of the way home to make sure she had made it.
Her mom had, to put it politely, lost her shit when she had seen Darcy's arm when she and Darcy's dad had come to pick her up. At first Nancy Lewis had gone off on her younger sister for allowing Darcy to get a tattoo, of all things. Mia had been insistent right back that while she didn't ascribe to as strict a style of parenting as her sister, there was no way in hell she would let a fourteen year old go and get a tattoo.
Darcy had been protesting the whole time that it was not in fact a tattoo.
Her dad was the only one who took notice of Darcy herself, both Sisters Delaney too busy going at each other to pay attention to the perceived reason for their argument.
“Hey, kiddo, that what I think it is on your arm?” Michael Lewis asked in that gentle disarming way of his. Darcy was immediately suspicious because that tone of voice had coaxed more things out of Darcy that she had done wrong (like accidentally burning the neighbor's cat trying to kill a tick when she was ten or feeding all her brussel sprouts to their family dog, etc.) than an interrogator could have hoped to accomplish.
“It's not a tattoo,” Darcy replied defensively, protectively covering the new 'mark with her hand as if hiding it from her dad would help.
“Nah, much as your mother likes to go on, because she is dramatic, I know that's not a tattoo. That's a soulmark you got there on your arm. Good for you.”
“Soulmark? Michael, are you quite mad? That is obviously a tattoo!”
“Nance, calm the hell down, for god's sake. Just because you and I don't have the 'marks doesn't make 'em not real.”
Darcy smiled at the reflection of her mark in the mirror. Her dad was such a sweet bear of a man.
Fully dressed, Darcy wanders out into the kitchen of Jane's lab and starts the coffee, grunting her “Good morning” at Eric, who is sitting at their little table looking like he is actively trying not to die after his night of drinking with Thor. He just looks at her and Darcy knows that's the best he can muster.
“Ah, Lady Darcy, how do you like your eggs?” Questioned Thor with a warm smile as he practically loomed over their tiny stove.
“Uhhh... over easy?” Darcy said as she spooned measuring cup after cup of coffee grinds into the filter and then got the ancient machine to whir to life and do its job.
“Um, how does one do that?”
“It's where you try and flip the egg without breaking the yolk while it's cooking. Here, I'll show you,” Darcy offered, heading over to Thor and quickly showing him.
Breakfast had been fun. A little surreal, perhaps. But fun. Even pleasant. Right up until the Cosplayers Four had shown up. Shit got real, and quickly, after that. Darcy, Jane, Eric, Thor and his friends (holy shit she had tazed a GOD) trying to evacuate the small town of Puente Antiguo was nuts. It was a small town, but still there was a lot of people.
And then the giant robot of destruction had shown up and started to set the town on fire. On. Fire. Darcy had just slammed the tailgate of an over-packed pick up into place and watched it take off when she noticed the local pet store was on fire.
“Shiiit,” Darcy swore, tearing off across the street without a thought. When she has her hand on the door handle, about to wrench it open, a hand grabs her left arm and drags her away.
“Are you insane?!” Yelled a male voice that was attached to the right hand that had a firm grip on her upper arm.
“Fire, animals, an all around bad combo,” Darcy yelled back at the man who had wrenched her away. “Now, you can either help me or fuck off!” She'd ripped her arm out of his hand then and run inside.
Darcy grabs the first cage she can, housing two kittens, and turns around to see said guy from the street behind her. With nary a “by your leave” Darcy shoves the cage of kittens into his arm and grabs the tank that held Harry the Turtle and follows him out. In and out, in and out they run. Getting cage after cage out and lined up a couple store fronts down until the last of the animals had been evacuated, the pet store is fully engulfed and both Darcy and the hoodie wearing Good Samaritan are bending over and bracing their hands on their knees and coughing hard from the smoke inhalation.
Darcy clears her throat, hard, and spits out a loogie that appears to almost be more soot than actual phlegm.
“Th– Thank you for helping me.”
“Ah, couldn't let a pretty dame run off into danger by herself, now could I?”
“'Dame?'” Darcy snorted, high key amused. “You been watching old Bogart movies or something?”
“Something like that,” the Samaritan says, meeting her eyes for the first time. And recognition is prompt to smack Darcy like a bolt from the blue.
“Holy. Shit. You're the guy from the construction site!”
The guy's eyes immediately narrow before almost comically widening. “Damn if it ain't a small world after all. Your hair got longer, Chicago.”
Darcy opens her mouth to let out a witty quip (she hopes) when –
“Darcy! Darcy!”
Darcy whips around at the sound of her name being called and Jane comes barreling around the corner, her face breaking into a beatific grin at finding her intern and now most definitely her friend, alive.
“Thank god! Why are you covered in soot?”
“Pet store,” Darcy says, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “This dude helped me clear the pets out.”
“Darce, there's no one behind you.”
Darcy whips around again and... Jane's right. There's nothing but smoke, flames and the empty street before her.
“But... He was right there! Damn. THANK YOU, CHICAGO GUY!” Darcy bellows to the empty street before Jane drags her away.
~*~*~*~*~*~
3. 2014
Darcy had always found Tromso pretty. Now that they were back at the lab in an actual capacity and not false pretenses a la 2012 – dammit, Son of Coul – Darcy could appreciate it more. Granted, the lab was actually a bit isolated from the city itself, but she could forgive the location because there was nothing like seeing the Aurora Borealis in its natural glory.
Watching the streaks play and dance across the night time sky had given Darcy some long hours of entertainment as she sat there with Jane, the scientist wholly absorbed in taking readings and monitoring her machines.
And SHIELD had at least seen that she and Jane had access to good wifi this time. So, Darcy couldn't be too annoyed that they had again been banished (yes, Jane, banished is an accurate descriptor for their situation) to a pretty but kinda isolated area of Norway.
Of course then the whole DC Incident happened and everyone at the lab was glued to the one television set in the building.
Jane's sitting on the couch in the lab's laughable 'lounge' and Darcy's perching on the back of it, laptop on her knees. She'd been playing around with it, configuring things the way she liked it. And cleaning out the unholy mess of monitoring bugs and malware. Clearly, SHIELD had no idea who they were messing with. And, if that were not enough, she was crafting a little program that would be a devil for the higher ups in SHIELD to deal with. Dump Darcy and her best friend/boss without asking them if they wanted to go? Yeah, no, that wasn't going down well with Darcy. So she was setting up a little surprise for Sitwell and Pierce. Sitwell, because he had been the one to tell them that they were being shipped off and Pierce, because he had signed off on it.
It was later on that night, Darcy was sitting propped up in bed with another blanket wrapped around her shoulders and watching a movie. She'd spent the better part of the day alternately watching the news reports and working on the program, finally sending it off embedded in an email disguised as a progress report on Jane's work.
Halfway through the movie, a gray box popped up on the screen.
“The hell is this?” Darcy muttered, cookie falling from her fingers and landing on the blankets to be forgotten.
A loading circle shows up and makes the circuit a few times before text pops up. It's simply an address in Oslo with a date of tomorrow and a time. Two in the afternoon. And a message: 'bring your computer.'
It coincides perfectly with the fact that Darcy has to go into Oslo to pick up supplies of the food and scientific variety and will be gone until at least the day after since it's a hell of a long drive from Oslo to Tromso (almost 24 hours, if anyone's curious). So, there Darcy is at 1:55 pm in an internet cafe near her motel, just doing internet window shopping to kill time. When the clock ticks over to 2, the gray box is immediately there. And this time she carries on a conversation with the person on the other end.
Darcy had picked her spot in the cafe specifically because it was a comfortable chair on the back wall, no one could peer over her shoulder that way. It quickly became evident Darcy had done something incredibly smart because by the time the cafe closed at four in the morning, Darcy had spent the last 14 hours balls deep in government secrets so secret she knew it was going to shake things to their foundations. She'd also imbibed enough coffee and carbs to kill an elephant. So it is a very tired but also very wired Darcy that drags her feet back to her motel. Darcy collapses face first onto her mattress once she's in her room and is probably asleep before her face even makes contact with the comforter.
And by the time she's sensible of the world again? An incredible furor has been unleashed as the direct result of the dumping of every single one of SHIELD's files onto the internet for all to see. And what many people quickly discover (as Darcy had in the moment of helping to facilitate the upload) is that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD practically at its inception seven decades prior. Some people are already using the hashtag SHIELDRA on their social media accounts (Darcy tries not to smile too much at that).
It isn't until their flight back to the States three weeks later (which is how long it had taken for the research Jane was doing to get shut down and for Georgetown University to make an offer to Jane to be a guest lecturer for a little while) that Darcy opens the one file she had flagged and set aside. Darcy thinks, as Jane snoozes on her shoulder on the long trans-Atlantic flight from the Tromso Airport, Langnes to Reagan National, that she's shown admirable restraint. She also thinks no one would fault her for not uploading this one file to the internet along with the others. She had also gone back through everything and carefully scrubbed or altered any reference to this one file from SHIELDRA's records. Going carefully, going slowly and getting more and more foaming at the mouth angry with each page, Darcy spends the flight reading the Winter Soldier's file. Because now she has a name and title to put to the face that's been popping in and out of her life for the last decade.
James Buchanan Barnes, after his fall from that train and thereafter dubbed 'the Winter Soldier' by HYDRA, was her soulmate. Darcy wanted to wrap the poor bastard up in a million thick blankets and feed him hot cocoa by the gallon. Especially after seeing that picture of him when he was in cryostasis. Once the high emotions had ebbed down to more manageable levels, Darcy did some thinking. And she comes to the conclusion that the two times she's seen him he wasn't this Barnes character, he had been the Winter Soldier. And still he had saved her life, helped her. Why?
Darcy is still wondering why by the time she tucks a usb stick containing Bucky's file down into her boot and nudging Jane awake because they'll be landing soon.
This data dump is still all that anyone is talking about, even though it is going to take literal decades to sift through and sort and process it all. No one ever comes to her to ask questions that would indicate an awareness of Darcy's involvement in the dump. Which, thank fucking god, she had been promised by the person on the other end of the connection would not happen.
And after a week of hiding in her and Jane's on-campus accommodations Darcy forces herself to go out, to get back out into the world and she figures out the underground and busses to get to the Smithsonian – specifically to check out their exhibit on World War 2, with a massive section dedicated to the Howling Commandos and their leader and his second-in-command.
The museum is crowded, but Darcy still notices him not three minutes after getting near the exhibit. She can hear a lot of people whispering about this damn data dump as they look at the panels of information on members of the Commandos before them. But Darcy barely pays them any heed. She walks by sections devoted to Morita, Gabe, Dum-Dum Dugan and Farnsworth and Captain America himself to the one devoted to one James Buchanan Barnes. There's a wonderful piece of movie footage bridging Cap's and Barnes' panels, showing him and Cap laughing at something and it breaks Darcy's heart more than a little bit to see the man Barnes used to be. She already knows most of what was on this piece of the exhibit. Darcy remembers well learning about the Howling Commandos of the 107th and their exploits during the Second World War. She's watched the History Channel specials and documentaries like anyone else. So, no one can blame her for most of her attention being absorbed by the man 3 feet to her right.
He looks tired; the bags are deep under his eyes and the stubble looks like it's threatening to become a beard. He's wearing a ball cap with his left arm shoved deep into the pocket of his jacket. And even in profile his face is a whirling maelstrom of emotions.
Darcy doesn't want to do anything to freak out someone who looks so fragile, especially if that someone has an arm made entirely of titanium, so she takes a step back and reaches into her purse for her notebook. She writes down her name and phone number and email address as neatly and precisely as possible before ripping the page out and folding the piece of paper in half. Darcy clears her throat loud enough for him to hear (and the way his back stiffens, he hears her all right) and just barely glances up to make sure Barnes is looking in her direction before she drops the piece of paper, turns and walks out of the museum.
Once outside, back in the sunshine and whatnot, Darcy feels a little better. It wasn't Bucky, necessarily, that had brought her mood down. It was just... a lot of things surrounding her apparent soulmate that had made her sad and crave somewhere that wasn't an air conditioned museum.
Darcy meanders around the Mall and she finds a food truck not too long later. She buys herself a burrito and a water and finds a shady bench to go and eat her food on. What Darcy had tried to not expect was Barnes showing up while she was eating. But one minute she turns away to open her bottle of water and when she turns back there he is, sitting on the bench a few feet away from her. He's just... looking at her. And damn if she's not having some small flashbacks to 2003 right now.
“Hey,” Darcy says when it becomes apparent he isn't going to start the conversation off. “Want some of my burrito?”
“Why'd you leave this for me?” He asks instead, holding up the paper.
Darcy shrugged. “I just thought... I'm not entirely certain I actually fully thought that out. And I don't know if you'll remember or not, but I kind of have a history of not fully thinking things out.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You know about all of SHIELD's files being dumped onto the internet?”
“I don't know what the internet is,” Barnes says after a minute.
“It's kind of like... It's a bit like the card catalogue at a library. Only a million times more insane and specialized. Like, if I wanted to go look up a recipe for blueberry pancakes, all I need to do is type in a few specific words and I have dozens of variations on the recipe at my finger tips.”
“Oh.”
“I also don't want to assume you know what I'm talking about, which is why I asked. Short version is this: every single one of SHIELD's files has been put onto this entity known as the internet. People are learning now about all the ops and how the organization that shall not be named infiltrated them, maybe even from the start.”
“Does that include my file? What I did?” It takes him a long time to ask that question.
“No. Your file is not out there for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to take a look at. But that is also why I don't assume that you will know or remember things I've mentioned. I know about the wiping,” Darcy adds in a smaller voice.
“Backpack. You're... You're Chicago,” Barnes says in response after a moment's clearly intense concentration.
“That's right!” Darcy quietly exclaims. And it's amazing how fast the feeling of relief at his remembering her swoops in.
“You... you hit a man with... something, I can't remember what.”
“A piece of rebar or pipe, I think. But if you happen to remember more, you'll want to note that I sometimes don't always think things through. Like Chicago. Or leaving that paper. Mostly, I think I was thinking of me. Like how if I were freaked out and trying to recover my memories and figure out who I was, would I want someone on the other end of a phone who would be... judgment free? And I know I would. So, I just... it's no strings attached. You don't have to call or email while you're off doing whatever it is you're going to do now, but just know if you want to talk, I'm here to listen. Now, would you like some of my burrito?”
Darcy says nothing when he eats three quarters of her burrito. She just goes and buys two more, one for her and one for Barnes.
~*~*~*~*~*~
4. 2016
It's been a busy several years for Darcy. Jane had continued her research into the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and trying to create one on her end (instead of, say, having someone else – hello, Heimdall – do it on the other end). Stark Industries had come calling and offered Jane a job and a full lab that would fit whatever scientific needs she had. So, with a lab full of minions to do her Janie's bidding, Darcy had been mulling over whether or not to pick back up the degree she had let fall by the wayside in the aftermath of Puente Antigua. She had gotten her bachelor's in political science, but had also been pursuing a minor in electrical engineering.
Darcy's never entirely sure who lets the cat out of the bag, so to speak, but somehow it ends up getting back to Tony Stark, of all people. Only, Darcy isn't aware of what he's doing until she's elbow deep in fixing one of the bots he has – Darcy feels like she should have seen through his claim that the bot needed fixing, but liked Darcy more than Tony and thusly wouldn't let Tony near it to do the fix.
“Lewis, why have you let your degree in electrical engineering lapse?”
That. That was the moment Darcy knew something was up.
“Because a lot of crap happened in the interim between now and after New Mexico. Also, not all of us are more loaded than Scrooge McDuck. College is hella expensive and I've just started paying off my student loans from Culver.”
And since Tony Stark was about as subtle as a tractor trailer crashing through a brick wall his response to Darcy's logical answer to his own query was:
“Wellll, what if you applied for a scholarship or grant? Plenty of that stuff out there for people interested in the STEM fields.”
“Maybe in a few years when taking on even more debt won't crush me to death?” Darcy sarcastically rejoindered, fixing the bot and then high-tailing it out of Stark's lab.
Darcy should have also known that he wouldn't give it up that easy. For the next two weeks pamphlets about various STEM careers (including electrical engineering) and colleges with amazing STEM programs keep showing up wherever Darcy is in the Tower. Her mailbox, her desk in the lab, Jane's desk in the lab, the common area and the library on the common floor. Darcy starts to suspect the AI in the Tower – apparently named 'Friday' – is culpable and helping Tony track her movements
It gets to the point that Darcy schedules an appointment with Pepper, hoping to get her to intervene on her behalf and make Tony stop. Said meeting ends with Darcy walking out with an appointment with some suit at the Maria Stark Foundation to ascertain what kind of a grant Darcy could get and help figuring out which school would be the best for Darcy's talents (if she didn't want to go back to Culver).
Six years fly by after Darcy chooses to go back to Culver University and pursue an upgraded degree (from a bachelor's to a master's) in electrical engineering. Darcy misses out on the unholy mess that is the Sokovian Accords and trying to be non-biased when she knows just about everyone involved and has friends on both sides of the argument is fucking hard. So, with Jane off world for an extended visit with her future in-laws plus her boyfriend the alien god, Darcy buries herself in her school work and tries to not let her friends break her heart as they tear themselves apart over what they believe is right. It gets especially hard when she realizes Barnes is right there by Cap's side at that airport fight.
Darcy had been keeping herself to checking her email account reserved strictly for Barnes to a once weekly occurrence. And the phone is only checked twice a day, in the morning and before she goes to sleep at night.
So, imagine her surprise in the weeks following most of the Avengers 'going rogue' (according to the pro-registration parts of the media) and going into hiding Darcy finds a highly encrypted email waiting in her inbox.
Breakfast completely abandoned, Darcy takes her laptop in the bedroom of her student apartment and sits down on her bed, laptop firmly in her lap and clicks the button that says 'open.' Once the encryption program does its rundown and even lets Darcy in, there's a fairly brief email awaiting.
Dear Miss Lewis, it begins:
I was given this email by a mutual friend of ours; I think you know exactly who. Where we currently are is safe and far from the clutches of those who would see us locked up, so don't worry. Or, try not to worry too much.
I'm sure you have quite a few questions ready and I would like nothing more than to be able to answer them for you. Or, rather, I think you would want to ask them of our friend, but that's not going to happen. At least not for the time being at any rate.
Before our friend went to go and receive treatment, he made me promise I would email you to tell you that he's alright and not dead. He said something about 'I'm still trying to figure this crazy card catalogue out.' I suspect that you know what that means better than I do. I wish I could promise regular updates, but I won't lie to you and say that I can when I might not be able to.
Take care of yourself, Miss Lewis.
With Regards,
Steven G. Rogers
Darcy sits back and stares at her screen with bewilderment. Then she leans in and reads the email again. And again.
“What the fuck?!”
She scrambles for her Stark phone sitting on the bedside table and hits the number for Pepper, since she's fairly certain calling Tony would be damn useless. Pepper sounds harried on the phone, which rattles Darcy since Pepper is normally unflappable. But Pepper agrees to meet Darcy at Tony's house in Malibu that Friday to discuss what happened, perhaps sensing Darcy's own current state of being rattled.
When Darcy pulls up to the gate of Tony's property in Malibu, she's feeling more than a little bit high-strung. She'd spent the week (in hindsight, this was a terrible idea) going back over every media report, from the mainstream to the little guy, that had to do with the Sokovian Accords.
Pepper is already waiting when Happy shows Darcy into the house, looking very much unlike his cheerful nickname. She takes one look at Darcy and abandons the wine she had been in the process of pouring and goes straight for a bottle of the top shelf whiskey.
“You look like you've had as good of a week as I did,” Pepper wryly remarked after slugging back her whiskey and pouring herself another few fingers.
“I went and looked back at the old media reports; I'd been so involved in my classes I kind of tuned out everything that's been happening,” Darcy admitted before taking a healthy swallow of her own drink.
“Well, the reports are both right and wrong.”
“Pepper, can I ask you something?”
“Anything. At this point, Darcy, I am too tired to have a slick quip or line ready to go.”
“How did Tony find out about what Barnes was forced to do to Tony's parents?” There had been an item on a gossip website about how 'outraged' Tony was that his friend, the good Captain, had 'betrayed his trust' and not informed him of the Winter Soldier's role in his parents deaths.
“Somehow a physical copy of Sergeant Barnes' file was slipped to Tony. Probably by that … that dickwad Zemo or one of his underlings,” Pepper said the German's name practically through her teeth complete with epic grimace. “And, honestly, I think that Tony's more upset Steve knew and didn't tell him. Tony wouldn't even let me see the file. I tried finding Barnes' file online, but there was nothing.”
Darcy tossed back her drink and refilled her glass before speaking.
“I have something to say and I want to know if it's going to affect my being able to afford attending Culver. And it cannot go beyond, you, me, wherever Happy's listening in on us from and whatever Tony's new AI system is called if it's installed in the house.”
“The AI isn't being installed in this house until next week. So it's between you, me and Happy.”
“I helped the Black Widow with the data dump of SHIELD's files two years ago,” Darcy blurts out. “And I kept Barnes' file as the Winter Soldier from being put out there for all to see.”
“I think I'm going to need another drink before you explain this to me,” Pepper said slowly and flatly.
The conversation that followed was one full of tears, shouting, refilling the others whiskey tumblers, more tears, accidental flashing, soulmark reveals and tearful hugging.
Hogan has never been more happy to accidentally on purpose trip and spill his coffee onto the footage server for the security cameras and microphones for the house.
~*~*~*~*~*~
5. 2020
It was amazing what looming finals and projects that accounted for absurdly high portions of one's grade could do for one's concentration skills. Darcy had barely been aware of the reconciliation that had taken place between the Avengers, but more specifically between Tony and Steve. That had been big enough news that it permeated the finals bubble the entire university had sunk into with the approach of said exams.
Darcy had even watched the joint interview about their reconciliation with her lab partner while they were soldering bits of their respective projects together.
“Mister Stark, you've alluded in the past several weeks that a soulmark played a small role in helping you and the Captain finally be able to see eye to eye, care to elaborate?”
“Nah,” Tony said. “But I will add that Rogers and I did take swings at each other and that helped, too.”
“Captain Rogers, do you know anything about this?”
“I am afraid that I am as much in the dark as you, ma'am,” Steve answered, laying the old timey charm on thiiiick.
Darcy snorted so hard at that she nearly dislodged her safety glasses.
“Hey, didn't you used to work there?”
“Yup. Pass me that piece of solder, would you?”
Darcy never really doubted that she would end up passing with good grades. She'd been busting her ass for the last six years and her grades had reflected that. That, combined with her thesis defense going well, saw Darcy donning a cap and gown in Culver University's colors and joining a couple hundred other kids in a cool, air conditioned auditorium cuz it was hella humid that day.
She spots Jane, Thor, Erik and – was that Coulson??? – in the audience as they do the processional down the aisle to their own seats. Darcy smiles and cocks her head at Coulson while looking at Jane and she just has time to shrug before the processional moves them out of Darcy's line of sight.
The graduation was... much like any of the other thousands of graduations that had occurred before. They sat through boring, ponderous speeches and awards being given until they finally, finally got to the good stuff that meant they were nearly out of there: the actual handing out of the diplomas. And Darcy is finally at the head of the line, standing at the top of the stairs waiting for her name to be called once the person ahead of her (“Latham, Olivia”) has advanced far enough across the stage.
“Lewis, Darcy,” Culver's president reads her name off and Darcy hasn't even taken three steps before:
“THAT'S MY LITTLE LIGHTENING SISTER!!”
“WOOOOO!”
“GO, DARCY!”
And its like (Thor and Jane, friendly exes though they are, appear to be attempting to outdo each other as they show support for Darcy) are following a blushing and laughing Darcy Lewis across the stage as she accepts her diploma and then hightails it back to her seat with her friend's cheers following her the whole way – much to the consternation of others present.
In the general aftermath of the ceremony, everyone's milling around and Darcy's standing on tip toe trying to catch a glimpse of Thor while keeping an ear out – the man had never been able to grasp the concept of 'indoor voice.'
“Miss Lewis, congratulations on getting your master's degree.”
“What the hell, Son of Coul! We thought you were dead!” Darcy exclaims, loudly, rounding on the man.
“I was dead. I got better,” Coulson says with his Shrug of Detachment (patent pending).
“Oh, you are so lucky I like you,” Darcy says, her face cracking a smile as she surged forward and threw her arms around Coulson.
“I know I am, Miss Lewis. Now, come on, Doctor Foster and I thought it might be more... prudent if one of us came to get you; it was hard enough getting Thor in and out of that auditorium. Shall we?” Coulson asks, offering his arm for Darcy.
“We shall,” Darcy agrees, taking Phil's proffered arm and they make their way through the throng of those milling about similarly trying to locate relatives.
Darcy and Coulson make it to the black SUV waiting at the curb without being stopped (though Darcy did notice the pair of them garnering more than a few odd looks). Jane and Thor practically break Darcy trying to hug her once she's barely made it into the car.
“I will deny this if Tony ever finds out I said it,” Jane starts as she settles back into her seat and adjusts her dress, “But I'm really glad he convinced you to go back to school and finish your degree.”
“The last semester was a hell of a slog, but I'm glad, too,” Darcy agrees. “So! Where are we going? Restaurant? Hotel? Bar? I'm starviiiiiiiiiing.”
“Stark's place in Malibu; it's supposed to be top secret, but a party's been arranged for you to celebrate your graduating,” Phil supplies from the driver's seat.
“You are not serious, Son of Coul,” Darcy deadpans
“I am always serious, Miss Lewis, you should know that by now.”
“Friend Tony also wanted to celebrate the Avengers fixing their differences and becoming one unit again,” Thor added.
“Ahhh, that sounds more like it,” Darcy nodded sagely. “However, I shan't say no to the opportunity to avail myself of some of Tony Stark's top shelf liquor.”
It takes them a little under an hour to make it to Tony's magnificent (thanks to Pepper's practically divine skill and taste) Malibu pad and the place is noisy.
“I see Stark wasted no time in getting the party started,”
“When has he ever not?” Jane said with a snort as they ascended the steps up toward the front door.
****** ******
“I finally found some beer!” Sam crows as he makes his way to the corner of the backyard that Steve and Bucky had been hanging out in pretty much since their arrival at the house, holding aloft three glass bottles and passing them out quickly.
“So, what's up with this whole set up?” Bucky asked, gesturing to the backyard and where the party was occurring (and the other places beyond it had spilled out onto). “No one's actually said.”
“This is a prime example of the fact that Tony Stark will use any excuse to throw a party,” Sam supplied after taking a sip of beer. “This is a celebration for the Avengers finally acting like grown ups and sorting their differences out as such and –“
“It's also a graduation party for Darcy; she graduated Culver with her doctorate today,” Natasha adds in as she seemingly materializes from nowhere, stealing Steve's beer and taking a healthy swallow before handing it back. “She and the others should in fact be here any minute, I've heard.”
“So we finally get to meet the person I sent one email to years ago? An email I still don't entirely understand, for the record.”
“It's called an 'inside joke' according to Shuri,” Bucky explained with a smile he chose to hide by taking a swallow of the beer.
“You have inside jokes now?” Natasha queried with a pointedly raised eyebrow.
Bucky answered in the affirmative as a cry went up from the direction of the house, the last of the party guests had evidently made their predicted arrival time of 'soon.'
There was a brief glimpse of Darcy being carried into the party on Thor's shoulder, laughing her head off and then a flash of her hair or hearing her laugh for the next hour, but nothing super concrete.
Shuri had wandered over on the pretext of saying hello to Wilson, but really to check on Bucky if he were any judge of such things. And seven decades as an intelligence asset agreed with him. “I'd say that it's long past time the two of you had a formal introduction,” Shuri said aloud, her eyes tracking Darcy as she danced near the pool with Jane.
“I don't wanna –“
“Captain Rogers, would you kindly go and fetch Miss Lewis and bring her over here? I think as small an audience as we could manage would be preferable,” Shuri's tone of voice brooked no argument and Sam didn't bother hiding his laugh at the way Steve's spine went rigid at the command.
Fifteen minutes later, however, Steve had managed to cover perhaps half the distance. He kept getting stopped by this person or that person and being the polite boy from Brooklyn, Steve could not tell them no or to wait.
“Oh, for Heaven's sake. Wilson, hold my beer,” Bucky sighed, pushing his beer in Sam's general direction. Taking a few steps forward, Bucky cups his hands around his mouth and to be heard above the general furor and hubbub and the music and yells:
“HEY, CHICAGO!”
The effect is damn near instantaneous.
****** ******
Darcy whips around at that familiar voice, looks around for a hot second trying to pinpoint the location of the voice and when she spots him (his smile is doing fluttery, twisty things to her insides), he waves.
Fuck decorum, fuck that everyone's watching, Darcy throws her drink up in the air, kicks her shoes off her feet and takes off running.
“OUTTA MY WAY!” Darcy bellows, darting and spinning around the party guests who haven't or couldn't get out of her way fast enough. Darcy is a woman on a mission and there is no one at this party who is going to stop her from getting to her goal. There is even one poor bastard who gets a bit of a shove and stumbles into the pool, though the noise of the splash barely registers with her.
Clearing the corner of the pool in a smooth leap, Darcy is almost there and nearly flies when she launches herself at Bucky and into his arms in a giant hug, actually giggling as he spins them to keep their balance.
“What the hell just happened?!” Tony yells into the sudden silence. “You two have not – could not have met and – and you just flew, Lewis– and – what?”
“Pffft, is that all, Tony? Bucky and I go waaaay back, I'll have you know. Way back to 2003.”
“Yeah. And then there was Puente Antigua,” Bucky chimes in along the same tone of voice, all conversational and 'I don't understand what's the big deal.'
“Oh, and let's not forget outside the Smithsonian, either. That was 2014, I do believe.”
“It was, it was.”
The faces that were made at that declaration were hysterical. Amongst the luminaries of expression were: Tony looking like he was a breath away from an apoplexy, a dripping Steve was staring at the two of them agog (and a similar expression could have been seen on Sam's face, had Darcy and Bucky been able to see him), whilst Natasha had one eyebrow deeply quirked (but kept the rest of her face her patented neutral).
“That's the dude who helped you clear the pet store?!” Jane yells, starting to push into shrilly territory.
“What can I say? Helping the small when they won't stop something that's dangerous and or really stupid appears to be an ingrained part of my personality. I wonder why,” this last bit from Bucky is dry as anything and completed with a pointed look at his best friend.
Steve refuses to look even remotely chagrined; instead he gives Bucky a smart ass smile that is definitely not allowed in public. “You did stupid stuff, too. In fact, you're doing it right now: Arguing with me when you have a woman beyond excited to see you hanging off of you.”
“Y'know, you're right, Rogers,” Bucky says as he bends forward slightly so Darcy can solidly get her feet on the ground. Bucky links his arm through with Darcy's (while Darcy has a silent happy fit that they get to actually have a non-fraught encounter) and smiles big at Steve. “If you'll excuse me, I owe this lady a burrito,” and off the pair goes.
“What the hell just happened?!”
~*~*~*~*~*~
+1 2022:
Darcy was standing at the window of Shuri's lab, looking down on the practice field below. T'Challa and Bucky had been going at it for awhile and they'd attracted quite the little audience. Even though she couldn't hear anything being said or shouted or cheered from behind the thick glass it wasn't hard to see which people were cheering on their king and which one's cheered for the White Wolf. Hearing Bucky called the White Wolf the first mind-bending time she'd been allowed (and would regard as a high honor for the rest of her life) to come to Wakanda, had really been something else. And to see his reaction was just the cherry on the cake; ducking his head so his hair would hide this little pleased smile and his cheekbones going cherry pink, it was all so sweet and so great.
A soft hiss of rustling fabric has Darcy turning her head to see Shuri heading toward her.
“Are they still going at it?” Shuri asks, pointing toward the window with a motion of her chin.
“Of course,” Darcy says, returning her gaze to the training yard as Shuri joins her at the window.
“Does he know yet?” Shuri quietly asks after a few minutes interval of silence that had been broken by the occasional “Ooh” or “Oof” as they watched Bucky and T'Challa land hits that looked like they were definitely going to bruise later.
Darcy turned her head to find a surprisingly coy expression on Shuri's face.
“How did you find out?”
“A little birdy, as that saying goes, says they heard you being ill when passing by your quarters yesterday.”
“The Dora Milaje: bodyguards, all-around badasses, and, apparently, tattletales,” Darcy says, to which Shuri laughs. “And, no, Bucky doesn't know, yet. Unless the Dora Milaje member who heard me holding a loud argument with the toilet told him.”
“She has not informed him. Me, obviously, but not him. She was concerned about you.”
“No, I haven't told him yet. I've been waiting for the right moment to tell him, but none of them have been quite right.”
“The traditional wisdom holds that no time will ever be the right one. You'll just have to pick a time and tell him.”
About an hour after her little tête-à-tête with Shuri, Darcy is standing on a balcony in the room they've been given, simply enjoying the view and the day in general when a familiar pair of arms slips around her waist.
“You better have showered,” Darcy half-threatens even as she leans back into Bucky's embrace. “I saw you and T'Challa going at it hammer and tongs.”
“All freshly showered, see?” Bucky murmurs, purposefully rubbing his still wet hair along Darcy's neck, making her yelp at the contact.”
“Jerk,” She says to him in a voice lacking any sort of rancor.
“You know you love me.”
“I do,” Darcy easily admits. “So, hey, I have a surprise for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bucky queries, his arms tightening a fraction around Darcy's middle. “Are you wearing the surprise or is it arriving later?”
“No,” Darcy laughs.
“Well? You got me on tenterhooks here, doll. Spill the beans about this surprise.”
So Darcy spills the beans. She gently grasps Bucky's wrists in her hands, forcing him to unwrap from his hug (something that gets a quietly perturbed noise out of him) and puts both his hands on her belly. And she counts.
One.
Two.
Three.
Fo–
“Seriously?” Bucky asks, removing his hands with speed if only to gently turn Darcy around so they're facing one another.
“Yup,” Darcy says, gnawing on her lower lip with sudden nervousness.
“You're really – You know – pregnant?”
“I am. I found out a little before we left for Wakanda.”
The beatific smile that lit up Bucky's face was one for the ages and it instantly wiped out any thought in Darcy's mind that Bucky was not happy about this coming child. A squeak slips out of Darcy when Bucky pulls her in for a fiercely loving hug and kisses the air out of her lungs.
“I can't believe it,” Bucky sighs when they break apart for lack of oxygen and rests his forehead against Darcy's.
“Well, believe it. The nugget is already almost as active as you.”
“I'm going to be a father. I'm going to be a father,” Bucky says, the awe total and distinct. Then he bolts back into his room, leaving Darcy on the balcony and she is confused, until –
“Hey, punk! Listen, listen! Saving your ass from all the ridiculously stupid shit you got up to is about to pay off in spades cuz Darcy's pregnant!”
A hand drifts to Darcy's arm, the one with the red star that frightened her at first, brought comfort to her later, and is now something she can show off with pride. And she caresses it for a minute, her mind wandering to the future that awaits them. Not just her and Bucky, but the life that waits ahead that will include their child. And with those thoughts in her mind, she walks back into her room to her soulmate – who is still ecstatically telling his best friend about impending fatherhood.