Chapter Text
If Darcy is completely honest, she can’t say that she is surprised that she ended up here. In prison that is.
After all, given the fact that she lives in a country designed to be every form of -ist Darcy knows of — and then some, probably — it is no real surprise that she would piss off someone in charge, sooner or later.
(she has powerful family, yes, but she isn’t entirely sure they know about her, so that’s not much help)
In conclusion: being arrested at the first convenient excuse she gives them? That definitely checks out. She is kind of proud that she lasted this long without being discovered, honestly.
The fact that it was her trying to get her wrongly confiscated iPod and her (ex-) employer’s research notes back from the People in Suits was, admittedly, a surprise. She’s done a lot of hacking that should have been more daring.
Which is what brings her here now. Here, of course, being the prison that Darcy is pretty sure is the secret behind Area 51. She hadn’t been paying enough attention when she got here, but given what kinda secrets she’s stumbled across while hacking, she’s not surprised that she’s not going in a normal prison.
(in all honesty, the adjustment is not as big as it probably should have been)
Darcy has always been a sort of social chameleon to a point she considers the possibility of a mutation. She has been and still is able to project those of her characteristics most useful to her current situation and mask the others pretty well in the process. It has always been a pretty neat skill and pretty much the only reason she got through high school mostly unharmed.
(just because they weren’t attacking her that never meant they weren’t attacking others. Other lesbian and those percieved as such, other queer kids or just other kids in general. That did not mean it did not hurt, even if it was a different kind of pain)
Prison is another place where that ability is useful. Don’t get her wrong, she is by no means a high ranking inmate, but she isn’t at the bottom at the hierarchy after a week or so either. No, she is somewhere solidly in the middle, just where she likes to be.
A month or so in — there has not once been a time in her life when she had been good at keeping track of time and this did not change that — and Darcy is fairly used to it, even if she still has no idea why she landed in this particular prison out of all places.
After all, pretty much everyone here but she herself deviates from the standard human being in some way, shape or form, although they all look humanoid.
...as far as she has seen yet at least.
(quite frankly, this is the biggest proof for her theory of being a mutant she has gotten so far. Why else would she be here even if she stumbled across things that were both highly classified and immoral)
One prime example of the non-human inhabitants is the newest addition to the lunch table that previously sat Lottie, a dark-skinned woman with a history as long and as cruel as this country’s, Hye-Jin, who gives off the impression that she has spent her entire life fighting and figured out how to not mess up her looks while doing so long ago, Katryn, whose entire being radiates a previously unseen level of ‘don’t fuck with me or you’ll regret it’, and Darcy herself. Out of which only Darcy is (thinks she is?) human. The new addition is one Bella Swan, who honest to whichever-higher-being-is-in-charge-of-this glitters in what little sunlight makes it to the table.
(Lottie would get burned and Darcy likes her way too much to be any other option but joining her in the shadows)
Now, she insists that she is a vampire, but either there are several kinds of that in this prison alone or someone has had the audacity to lie to this absolute bombshell of a woman.
Given that Bella has a juice box filled with blood as her lunch, just like Lottie has on some days, makes the first theory seem more viable, all things considered.
(...the fact that Bella is allegedly strong enough to rip Darcy in half probably shouldn’t make her more attractive, right?)
At first, this lunch seems mostly average — the average exception being the new arrival — the food has the same lack of quality as always, that much is sure.
The day seems usual, until Lottie calls to their attention.
“Is it just me or does anyone else think the guards seem oddly inattentive today?”
At this, the other three established members of their table look around and indeed, the guard’s eyes seem to glance right over their table. Not a single one of them actually focuses on their table even once.
“...Huh,” Katryn observes. “That’s new.”
“You’re welcome,” the newbie states. She takes a sip as punctuation.
Darcy immediately questions what she means by that. Because while Bella is already very beautiful, her being powerful and or competent enough to pull something like that off only makes her more attractive in Darcy’s opinion.
“I don’t know about other kinds of vampires,” Bella looks at Lottie as she states that part, “but my kind occasionally gets special abilities. And mine, essentially, happens to be a big ‘Do Not Disturb’ Sign that has only failed me once so far.” She pauses. “To be fair, there were several exonerating factors at play then.”
They all know what has just been implied, but Hye-Jin is the first to ask for more detail. “How did you get here?”
“Ex-boyfriend, essentially,” she explains. “I mean, it’s not like he turned me himself — he’s way too Mormon for that — but I was over at his place when one of his unwelcome visitors did by accident. I was at the exact middle ground between completely dead and vampire — not for the first time, somehow — and, well, yeah.” She gestures to her still moving body. “Three guesses how that ended, first two don’t count.”
“Right, but how’d you get here though?” Darcy asks. She rests her head onto her folded hands and she makes sure to project as much sapphic energy as she physically can. Because Bella Swan seems like a catch and who ever said you can’t find love in prison?
“That’s a long story involving multiple government conspiracies going back to the Civil War at least.”
“Oh, you mean the fact a not insignificant percentage of slavers were also one kind of vampires?” Lottie questions. “I know that’s the reason why I’m still here.”
(...Darcy suddenly remembers the fact that slavery is still entirely legal inside prisons and the number of uncomfortable questions she will still have to ask to learn-slash-unlearn just increased dramatically)
“...somehow, no,” Bella replies. Which holy shit, the implications of that are wild. “I’m talking about kidnapping Union soldiers, turning them, and making them believe they had been Confederate. There was mind control involved. One of my ex’s adopted brothers was one of the victims, that’s what got us started on the whole thing.”
Darcy blinks.
Then she does it again.
And after that a third time for good measure.
“Wow and here I thought the conspiracy I stumbled into when I accidentally hit an Alien Prince with a truck was wild.” She decides to return to her meal at that point.
“It is,” Bella argues. “For largely if not entirely different reasons, but it absolutely is.”
Both Lottie and Katryn nod, while Hye-Jin raises her eyebrows. “How has this not come up before, Darcy?”
“You’re the one to talk,” Katryn — who is a demigod, although Darcy has forgotten who her godly parent is and, at this point, she is too embarrassed to ask — snorted. “It took you two years to mention you’re a witch. Two. Years.”
“Okay but just because I’m terrible at sharing things, that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be,” Hye-Jin points at Katryn with a plastic fork just long enough that the guards should start looking at them before she rolls her eyes — out of habit, perhaps — and puts it back down.
“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re making a good point or not,” Katryn responds flatly.
Hye-Jin looks right at Katryn and grins. “Can’t help you there.”
“Anyway,” Lottie attempts to bring the conversation back on track. “Darcy, you were telling us about the time you hit an Alien Prince with a car?”
“Yeah, I did. I also tasered him,” she adds proudly. And wow she just realizes how much she misses her taser. “And then the Suits showed up and collected Jane’s — my employer’s — research and — for some fucking reason — my iPod. Like, seriously, why the iPod? I didn’t even have it on me. I needed to get that back and, well, here I am.” She takes another bite of… whatever the food on her plate is. “Did I mention that said Alien Prince happens to respond to the name Thor and that there was a whole Thing about a hammer?” She places a careful emphasis so that the other Beings at the table can hear the capitalization.
“Huh,” Bella comments between two sips of her blood juice box. “Prison is more exciting than I thought.”
“Putting together all the people uncovering conspiracies that they can’t get rid of for one reason or another tends to do that,” Katryn deadpans, as if this was an everyday occurrence.
(which it might be, depending on how you look at it)
“What landed you all in here?” Bella asks the other three, but Darcy very much likes the way that the other woman’s eyes linger on her, specifically, for another moment.
Lottie snorts. “I’d love to know that myself.” She scans the guards lining the room. “I like to pretend they were afraid of what I’d be able to do. Doesn’t explain why they didn’t just kill me, though.”
“Speaking of murder,” Katryn interjects, “That’s why I’m here.”
Hye-Jin facepalms, as Katryn continues, “What? It’s true.” She pauses and lays her head to the side. “I suppose it could be classified as assassination. What’s the difference anyway?”
“Press coverage,” both Darcy and Bella respond. They share a grin over it.
“Anyway, I’m here because I decided that keeping magic a secret isn’t going to work out much longer anyway — like, hello? There’s cameras everywhere these days — so we might as well leave secrecy by choice and gather what goodwill we can get from that. Also I really don’t like the Statue of Secrecy and I wasn’t gonna let something as petty as that stop me.”
“...I take that didn’t go over so well,” Bella states.
Hye-Jin snorts. “What gave you that idea? I’m still alive, I’m still talking, and you can bet your glittery ass that sooner or later I’ll get out of here again.” She shakes her head. “They think me defeated? Please, I’ve barely even started.”
“I like the way you think.” Darcy smiles at her. “I really do.”
“Thank you. You’re one of the first.” She doesn’t state that bitterly. Hye-Jin is simply pointing out facts here and everyone at the table knows it.
“This seems to be quite a group we’ve assembled here,” Bella observes. Then she leans forward and smiles conspiratorially. “Just imagine if we teamed up.”
Darcy lets her mind wander for a second. She hasn’t seen any of the others in action, but based on their tales alone…
“We’d be pretty much unstoppable.” She speaks the thought the very moment it enters her mind.
“Between not one but two amazing vampires, one of which could probably take about half the guards at once given the right motivation and the other I don’t know much about yet but seems kickass, a witch who’s going to change the world on pure stubbornness alone, a kickass hacker who also tazed an Alien Prince slash god, and, well, me?” Katryn gestures to herself. “Darling, I believe you’re right.”
The five of them exchange both glances and smiles.
Oh, this is going to be fun.