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Chapter Text

Nothing was impossible for Darcy Lewis. Dropping out of grad school to help corral a tiny, obsessive astrophysicist and her hunky alien-deity bae? Check. Writing a stellar thesis proposal, pre-drop-out and pun-intended, on the correlation between interpersonal relationships on the International Space Station and international conflict resolution? Check. Power-budgeting through a three-year unpaid internship without defaulting on a shit-ton of student loans? Check.

In retrospect, all this professional-grade mental stamina was due to impeccable timing, a brain always two steps ahead of her mouth (or maybe the other way around), and an obscene amount of caffeine.

Then there was the ability to ditch SHEILD with zero repercussions, but this was less Darcy and more the fact that the Triskelion wasn’t built to serve as a helicarrier landing pad. Or a HYDRA hive, for that matter. In the end, or at least in 2014, unpaid internship meant zero-paper-trail which also meant as-of-yet-unknown-by-evil-Nazi-scum. “Darce, things are only going to get worse,” Jane had said. “Get back to the States, lay low for a while, send me a Christmas card. And a text every single day, but, really, if you want to see Lynn anytime soon, you need to go now.” They’d argued about it for about a week, because Darcy was not about to leave her best friend alone in London in the middle of a government agency coup d’état, even if Thor’s presence did seem more permanent than usual. Mjölnir was nothing to having your best friend down the hall.

She knew Jane was right, though—Darcy was long-overdue for a visit to her mom’s, and ever since Ian had ditched her for a blonde Scottish lass, optimism levels were not at their highest. So she packed her checked bags, booked a one-way flight from London to Roanoke, and left a massive stash of imported Pop-Tarts in Jane’s flat, hoping to be back by the time Thor had snacked his way down to the disgusting unfrosted blueberry ones hidden under the guest-room bed.

But it turned out that there were some things that even Darcy Lewis couldn’t power through. Not with timing, not with a brilliant brain or smart-ass mouth, not even with a second quad-shot latte.

Sometimes, the world gets so, so much worse—nine fucking years of darker-than-Dark-Elves, harder-than-vibranium worse—before it can ever get better.

Chapter Text

At first, it was nice. Nice to be back in the valley, tucked up between the mountains, nice to wake up with the sound of the river out one window and the hum of I-81 out the other. Nice to have a pot of coffee warm on the counter, mom already gone to the hospital. Nice to unpack the suitcases and fill the cedar dresser and go on long hikes up into the Alleghenies. Nice to catch up with high school friends still in Roanoke, friends who were married and had babies and nine-to-fives. Nice and safe and absolutely, perfectly normal.

“Have you thought about a job, Darcy?” her mom asked one night over mac ’n’ cheese and chicken sausage. “Or going back to Culver?” Something you can finish, that was the unspoken concern at the edge of her voice. Some kind of forward momentum. “You can’t spend all your time on the internet, you know. It can’t be good for you.”

Darcy tapped her fork on the edge of her plate—ding for no resume to speak of, at least not one that made sense to any civilian, ding for coursework but no program, ding for friends but no boyfriend, ding for trying to be sneaky about all that HYDRA VPN-and-incognito-mode googling. She cleared her throat.

“I’m thinking about VT.”

“Really?”

“No need to sound shocked, Mom. I like school.”

“VT, though—”

“There’s an institute there, international policy. I have...” Darcy paused. “I might have an in. A research fellowship to apply for, forms to fill out... I doubt I’ll be accepted, but I thought I’d try.”

“You’d transfer? Down here? You always hated—”

Darcy sighed. “I didn’t hate it, Mom. I just didn’t fit. Everything seemed slow. Too slow for a dumb seventeen year old who thought she needed something faster.” Super dumb seventeen year old.  “I think I want to stay, at least for now. VT’s thirty minutes up the road. I’m a millennial. What else is there but to move back home and get a master’s degree?” She tried to hide the bitterness, but it seeped in a little anyway. A brittleness she didn't used to hold.

After cleaning up dinner, Darcy pulled up the website for the Global Issues Initiative. She emailed the registrar at Culver, requested transcripts, tried to maneuver her CV into some semblance of understandable language. Served as an intern aide a research assistant alongside Dr. Jane Foster and Dr. Erik Selvig, focusing on astrophysics and intergalactic alignments. National and international lab work in New Mexico, Norway, and England…

Darcy doesn’t get the fellowship. While your application was highly admired, we’ve ultimately decided to… Blah, blah, blah. Another rejection is just another rejection.

She is, however, admitted into the international affairs program, most of her grad credits transfer and the GII program director is willing to serve as her thesis advisor. With online classes, she doesn’t have to go to campus all that often, except for library runs, so she’s able to pick up a part-time admin job at law office in Roanoke. Between research and work, she’s busy—not London-busy, not lab-busy, but the kind of busy that makes her tired enough to sleep and hungry enough to eat.

“Is this what it’s like?” she asks her mom one morning at breakfast. “Is this the rest of my life?”

Lynn shakes her head. “Maybe not the rest of your life, but it is life. Right now, Darcy. It’s life right now.”

It’s hard to keep up with Jane, because Jane is busy too. A text here and there, not really talking about Thor, who seems to have disappeared again. Not talking about Thor means not talking about a lot of other things, which means not talking as much as they should. It isn’t Jane’s fault, Darcy knows that, but Jane is in London and on the Nobel short-list and Darcy… Darcy has paper cuts on her thumbs and is avoiding emailing her advisor because she hasn’t looked at her thesis in three weeks.

Months go by, then a year. The trees turn over. She'd forgotten how beautiful the mountains are in the fall. She writes and reads and schedules meetings and sends emails and goes to the farmers market on Saturdays. It's life right now, she tells herself. It's life right now.

But one morning, Darcy sees something about Johannesburg on her Twitter feed. Like the rest of the world, she can’t look away.

Soon after, she watches Novi Grad fall into the sea.

Chapter Text

“My god, Darcy, how can you listen—”

“Mom, now is not the time for commentary. Either sit down and watch the news, or wait until later, when I still won’t know anything more than you.”

Her mother sat down on the opposite end of the couch, pushing aside notebooks and print-outs strewn across the cushions. On the TV, a Czech journalist was interviewing their prime minister about relief efforts, but the conversation kept turning towards upcoming elections and whether or not an election was prudent when the closest neighbor didn’t have a capitol. A day later and politicians were doing shit. Typical.

The screen rotated through images of the gaping crater torn into the valley, the bombed-out city hovering in the air. Shaky cell phone footage flashed faces that Darcy recognized—Captain America in his torn, dust-coated uniform. The bright flash of Iron Man’s repulsors. She didn’t see Thor, but she knew his lightning.

Darcy felt her mom’s hand on her ankle, and tore her gaze away from the screen.

“Did you hear from Jane?”

“I caught her this morning, for about five seconds. Pretty good for Jane and international communication. Not good for… everything else.”

“You girls and the kinds of men you go for. Tell Jane if she needs a place, we’re here. And this?” Her mom gestured to the papers and post-its and half-full mugs of coffee. “Is this for Dr. Owens?”

Darcy sighed and pulled at the corner of a page. “No, Mom. This disaster of a policy plan is for me.”

“Please tell me you called off work.”

“They offered it before I could ask. Told me to take my vacation time and either finish my thesis or get some rest.”

“Neither of which you’re going to do.”

“Mom. Look, actually look at the world we live in.” Darcy could feel the pressure building behind her eyes as she pointed at the television. They were showing pictures of body bags. “There is absolutely no way I’m going to be doing school when people I know are going to end up facing either the Strasbourg Court or the UN Security Council. For rescuing a fucking country.” She wiped at her eyes, but she started shaking. Lynn pushed the rest of the papers to the floor and pulled Darcy into a hug.

“You left, and for good reason, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“How can I forget, Mom? Some days I love it here, but other days I hate myself. Like I’m a coward for leaving. Jane doesn’t even—”

“Honey, you did the right thing, coming home. It’s the safest place.”

“Nowhere is safe, Mom. Not anymore.”

Darcy spent the next three weeks, the whole extent of her time off, pouring over legal briefs and tracking news updates. I should really change my thesis topic, she told herself more than once, checking the clock only to find that it was three in the morning and another country had filed an application with the ECHR.

She called Jane every day.

“I’d come, Darcy, you know I would, but—it’s the end of the semester and I can’t just leave.”

Darcy loved Jane, but having a best friend who’d rather hide in lab reports and wormholes than the hills of Virginia was… disheartening. So after putting down the phone, Darcy would return to the living room, where she'd lined stacks of case files against one wall. Triskelion, D.C. Manhattan. Seoul. Johannesburg. They were a mix of her own notes and published documentation and screenshots and write-ups and op-eds. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was afraid. This wasn’t going to be as simple as a recognition that with great power comes great responsibility or some other placating bullshit.

Put fear and opinion together and what you end up with is war.

Chapter Text

The case files kept growing, even as Darcy returned to the office and the newscasters moved on to more recent events. You didn’t see the Avengers—you saw their absence. ISIL attacks in Syria and Tunisia and Kuwait, the Tianjin explosions… Global tragedy seemed to revert to the humane. No ancient armies descending from the sky, no omniscient cybernetic creature intent on destruction. Just the un-extraordinary grief of the every-day, no superheroes needed.

Oh, there were plenty of theories—that they were holed up in Stark Tower, hiding under the name-change. That Hulk was buried in an undisclosed supermax, that Thor was in witness protection à la Sister Mary Clarence, and the good Captain vacationing off-planet. Darcy knew better than to cast her vote for the last option—everything she knew about other worlds spoke to the relative serenity of this one. Prison, self-imposed or otherwise, didn’t suit either. Tony Stark was doing a college lecture circuit, for god's sake.

She caught glimpses of them in the field. Oh, they were careful, keeping just out of frame, nothing too daring or otherworldly. Darcy figured they’d been in Paris in November, and Brussels the following March. But even then, even in the corners, she only saw Captain America’s shield and Iron Man’s suit. No Hulk, no Thor.

Jane was still cagey and had started dating some London banker who sounded like an absolute douchebag, which meant all of Darcy’s intel was coming from late-night scrolling on r/avengerssightings and every declassified document she could find on the GII server. Her mom gave her major side-eye, but she did work on her thesis, too—wrote it, revised it, defended it, and became a bona fide Master of Arts in Political Science. Art and science. Take that, interdisciplinarity deniers.

Owens asked if Darcy wanted to stay on at the GII, but she was majorly burned out on academia-speak and grant writing. She asked for more hours at the law firm and got them, along with freaking dental insurance and a 401(k). Turning thirty wasn’t all that bad. It was… placid. Stable. Maybe not completely safe, but definitely not dangerous.

No wonder she kept at the Avengers files. A girl needed at least a little excitement in her life.

“Jane. Who are you and why are you calling me at seven in the morning when you know I’m not cognizant at this hour?” Darcy kicked off the covers. If it was a call from Jane, actually from Jane, something was going on. Something most likely not good, unless it was that douchebag Damian had proposed, which would still be not good.

“Darce, if you can use the word cognizant, you’re fine. Are you—are you still keeping up with them?”

“Them as in… wait. Them? Your ex’s besties?” She sat up. Definitely not good, if Jane was talking about the one group of people she actively avoided talking about. Spring light filtered in through the blinds, and the birds were singing.

“You need to turn on the TV. Like, right now.” Jane's voice was distant, but Darcy could still hear an edge of frenzy. She grabbed for her glasses, slid into her slippers, and found her mom already on the couch, CNN turned up just a little too loud for pre-coffee-o’clock.

“Okay, okay. Mom’s got it on. What am I looking at?” A fireball flying through a building, people running through the streets—

“Nigeria. Some kind of bomb threat, but it’s worse than that. Darcy, they’re saying it’s the Avengers’ fault, Ross said—”

“Mom, can you flip to CSPAN?” She scrambled for a piece of paper and a pen, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table so she had a writing surface. “Anything specific I need to know, Jane, that I won’t find online?”

“Darce, international affairs isn’t really my thing but I know it’s yours and I don’t—”

“Jane, I am fucking sick of watching everything through a screen. Tell me.”

“It sounds like sanctions. From the U.N. I mean, I know you’ve been working on it since last year, and you’ll be able to find more than me, but—”

“Sanctions.” Darcy felt her stomach drop out. “On the goddamn Avengers.”

“It was only a matter of time. You and I both know that—that this was coming. Ever since Sokovia, and before then, too.”

“Jane. Jane. Can you hear yourself? You really think these are the people we need to be punishing?” God, she could fucking punch something. She settled for a cushion.

“It’s not punishment, Darcy. It’s just… Safety. No one wants innocent people—”

“Innocent? You mean people who can’t protect themselves from Dark Elves and Chitauri and Ultron—people who need help? Just because you’re in London with perfect Damian in your perfect—” Darcy felt her mom’s hand on her shoulder and took a breath. “Jane, I can’t. I can’t talk right now. I need—”

“Darcy, it’s not—”

“No, no. I need to figure this out. I can’t—I’ll call you back, okay?”

She hit end call without waiting to hear a dial tone from the other end.

Chapter Text

Darcy knew that it was even worse than the media shitshow made it appear. The casualty count hadn’t been finalized, as rescue crews were still digging through debris, but at least fifteen people were dead. The Avengers had flown coop and reporters were reading vague statements that sounded an awful lot like they had come from the desk of Maria Hill but been chopped up to fit the angle of whatever outlet was presenting it. Goddamn political rhetoric.

“Tell me I can help,” she texted Erik. “Sooner rather than later.”

She didn’t text Jane, didn’t call her back either. Jane would have to wait. All of that intelligence, all of that astronomical adventure, yet Jane was still queen of the self-sabotage called “playing it safe.” Darcy couldn’t fathom it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how someone could reach a conclusion like “maybe we should contain the uncontainable good.” There wouldn’t even be a world without the fucking Avengers.

But it seemed like that very world agreed with Jane. NPR posted an interactive map that tracked which countries had submitted official statements calling on UN intervention, and Darcy kept it pulled up as she sorted file folders into boxes. By dinnertime, fifty-three countries were tagged red. More were coming.

“Mom, make sure you throw a blazer into the suitcase. And a pair of running shoes.” Wherever I’m going, I’m going to be stressed and in need of endorphins, and not the sexy kind. She’d called into work and taken all the PTO she could, told Judy to find a temp just in case she needed longer.

She didn’t even know where Erik was, but she and her files were going to get to wherever he told her to get to and offer any and all services, because Captain America himself wouldn’t be able to sweet-talk his way out of whatever hell-storm was about come their way.

“Lewis. Darcy Lewis. Dr. Selvig is expecting me.”

Darcy flashed one of her patented I hate you grins at the security guard stationed in the gatehouse as she handed over the ream of papers. Erik had given her an exhaustive list: passport, copy of passport, social security card, copy of social security card, letter of recommendation from Jane, letter of recommendation from Erik, CV, cover letter. As if this was a job application and she was fresh out of undergrad.

“Ms. Lewis. Here’s a tag for your… vehicle.” The man eyed her car. “And your own ID. Please keep it visible on your person at all times. Turn right at the end of the drive, and park in lot B. You can enter at J. Someone will meet you there.”

As if her 2001 Civic was trash, and she not about to be the most glaringly out-of-place civilian on site. “Great. Thanks.” Darcy grabbed the lanyard and sticker and tried not to flip off the dude in the glass box in the process. She was cranky and sleep-deprived and was probably about to lose her job and hospitality at the New Avengers Facility was apparently shit. But Erik had told her to come ASAP, so that’s what she’d done.

The road curved through the trees, and she took it slowly. There had been plenty of time on the highway to think about this latest impulse life decision. It had been a nine hour drive to the Finger Lakes, and she’d done it overnight while subsisting on coffee and granola bars, both of which were well-suited to existential dread and global conflict mediation. She’d almost turned around at the Maryland border, because the clock had hit one a.m. and she’d had an intense wave of homesickness. It was her first time out of Virginia in two years, and she almost had a panic attack, right there on I-81, speeding on cruise control past the overnight semis.

She wasn’t Jane. Her mind didn’t span lightyears. She was Darcy, who'd struggled through an unfunded master’s program, who could never remember how to spell resilience. She’d gotten used to mornings drinking coffee at the counter with her mother, listening to NPR and arguing over crossword puzzle clues.

But the files in her backseat mattered. She knew that, too. She didn’t know what kinds of political advisors Stark had pulled in, or what kinds of favors Nick Fury could call. But she knew how the international policy system worked, and she knew the Avengers. She knew one Avenger, specifically. The rest couldn’t be all that different.

A glimpse of glass shone as she took the last bend. Okay, so Stark doesn't spend his money on nice guys out front. He spends it on that. It was beautiful—the woods giving way to a pristine lawn and sloping chrome. No wonder Erik had stayed up here for so long. The gleam of the complex matched the lake she could see just beyond.

And as she pulled into the guest lot, Darcy noticed the quiet. With the windows rolled down, she could hear birds in the trees, but no noise from the buildings. No hum of city life or bustle of a military base. Even the lake seemed free of ripples.

One ritzy hideout, she thought as she checked her under-eye circles in the rear-view mirror. Darcy Lynn Lewis, you best make sure it doesn’t become someone’s prison.

Chapter Text

Even the hallways were empty and echoing. As she trailed another somber-faced security dude—seriously, where did Stark find these guys?—past unmarked door after unmarked door, Darcy tried to sort through what she knew—or thought she knew—about the Avengers. Thor wasn’t really one for dishing dirt on his colleagues. In fact, Darcy couldn’t remember him ever mentioning the Battle of New York. Maybe because when she’d most recently been in his proximity, he was either kicking some serious alien ass or had his hands in the general proximity of Jane’s ass. Not a whole lot of time for sidekick heart-to-hearts or in-depth psych evals.

Jane had said something, once, about how the team looked like a team but didn’t act like one. In compiling files, Darcy could see the pattern: Thor had more than one world to worry about and obviously had difficulty sorting through priorities; Dr. Banner appeared to have a lot going on; Captain America had been stuck in an iceberg for seventy years; Tony Stark had more money than was good for any human. Hawkeye looked to be the most grounded of the set, but Darcy hadn’t seen a trace of him since Novi Grad. That was a lot of testosterone for just the Black Widow to balance out, but Natasha Romanov could hold her own and hold her own secrets. And the newer additions—

“What was I thinking?” Darcy mumbled to herself, hoping the security guy was far enough ahead to not overhear her verbal processing. His head didn’t turn, so at the very least he was ignoring the sleep-deprived crazy woman behind him. “As if I’m going to be able to sort out whatever legal fiasco is going to be slung at the world’s fucking superheroes—”

“Ms. Lewis.” She almost ran into the guard, who’d stopped in front of a sliding glass door. “Dr. Selvig’s lab. Please remain in open-access areas, and sign out at 202 before you leave the premises. Dr. Selvig will have information about your accommodation; he can field any questions you might have.” The guard swiped at a biometric scanner, and the door swung open. “Have a good day.”

God, she really, really wanted to flip off each and every one of those freakishly cold dudes. But she held back and went into the lab instead. It had been a while since she’d been in the astrophysics realm, but Erik was easy to locate, even in a room filled with mass spectrometers and chromatographs.

“Congrats on the new digs,” said Darcy as she came up behind him. “And I’m glad to see you’re fully clothed.”

“Today at least,” Erik turned with a smile, wrapping her in a hug. “No guarantees. I’m glad to see you here. We’re going to need—they’re going to need you. But that’s—that’s all you brought?” He was looking with concern at her backpack.

“Erik, you know I’m not capable of traveling that light. My stuff’s in the car: suitcase, files...” She glanced around the lab. The electronics were humming, but there weren’t any other scientists. “Don’t tell me you’re the only person here. I’m already creeped out by the general lack of human warmth at this place.”

Erik shook his head and gestured for her to follow him into an office tucked into the back corner of the room. “It’s the weekend. It might come as a surprise to you, but I actually have to follow HR protocol. Five-day weeks.”

“What? No twenty-four-seven lackeys?” Darcy set down her bag and stretched a bit before sitting down across from Erik’s disaster of a desk.

“Not when you’re on Tony’s payroll. On the weekends it’s usually just pared-back tech support and the live-ins. And right now—well, everyone’s on edge. I think a lot of folks were sent home until they hear otherwise.”

Darcy nodded. It made sense, keeping as many people—people with ears and mouths and smart phones and social media accounts—out of the way as possible. “So what’s the plan? I’m assuming someone has a plan.”

Erik shifted in his chair. “I don’t know. I’m very much on the periphery, Darcy—which I appreciate. Tony is very aware of my… idiosyncrasies. He lets me do what I do down here, minimal intervention, full funding. I can’t complain.

“But from the little I’ve heard, just since yesterday… They don’t know what to do, and it’s scaring the shit out of them.”

Well, fuck, thought Darcy. Lack of direction is going to tear them apart.

She met Erik’s gaze as levelly as she could. “Give me a desk and point me towards the coffee, Dr. Selvig. I’m ready to get to work.”

Erik gave her a tour of the guest wing, a lovely set of suites on the fifth floor overlooking the lake. “We don’t often have long-term visitors, so you won’t run into too many people up here—not that you would anyway, I guess. You can call when you need me, but I’ll email you directions to the lab so you can wander down at will. I’m afraid it’s going to be fairly quiet, but Tony knows you’re here and he’ll be in touch soon. I should warn you about Vision—”

“Dude’s got mad Jesus-skills, that walking through walls shit. You know how trigger-happy I can be, so thanks for the reminder.”

“Do you need help carrying things up from the car?”

Darcy shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll run into one of those super pleasant security guards and avail myself of his muscles. Or I’ll just run back and forth myself. I could use the fresh air.”

Resting a hand on her shoulder, Erik smiled. “Glad you’re here, Darcy. I wish Jane could be too.”

She sighed. “Yeah, well, Jane isn’t all that pleased with the situation, or the Avengers in general. But we’ll be okay.” We have to be okay.

The guards had made themselves scarce, go figure, and Darcy didn’t see anyone else while unloading. Her guest badge worked on the outside doors, at least, and it got her into the elevator and up to the third floor. She’d test out its other capabilities once she talked to Stark—no use getting kicked out before learning anything useful.

There was a fully-stocked kitchen down the hall from her room, coffeepot included, along with a sunny dining area and couches nearby. “Think of it like a sabbatical, Darce,” she told herself as she appraised the contents of the fridge. “You’ve got yourself a view and an all-inclusive resort and an international crisis. Just the way you like your vacation time.”

“You’re welcome on every point, Ms. Lewis.” Darcy spun to find Tony Stark standing near the elevator. The man looked as exhausted as she felt. “Welcome to the New Avengers Facility. Erik tells me you’re here to wow us with your political prowess.”

She straightened her spine and her glasses, reaching out her hand to shake his. “I’m here to do whatever I can, Mr. Stark.”

“Good. We’ll need you—probably needed you goddamn yesterday, but que sera, sera.”

There was no ignoring the fact that Tony Stark’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Chapter Text

Over the next few days, Darcy spent a lot of time by herself. Like, a lot of time. Erik was right—Stark had essentially shuttered operations, which made the glass-and-mirror hallways seem like part of an abandoned hospital, rather than what was probably one of the most advanced tech research facilities on the planet. The security guards were silent and stoic and altogether not Darcy’s speed, and she felt bad bothering Erik, who was deep into applying magnetohydrodynamics to the interstellar medium.

Star-stuff was cool but not the kind of multi-syllabic words within Darcy’s subset. Her own files had taken over the guest floor common space. She’d put in a request for mounting tape and window markers, and Stark had brought them up himself, nodding at her file folders she’d spread out along one wall.

“Old school paper-and-pen stuff, huh? Selvig give you a printer code?”

“I need to see it all at once,” Darcy shrugged as she put the boxes on a side table she’d pushed against a window. “And this place is like a hotel—spiral-bound amenities guides in the desk drawers. No security concerns if you make it this far, I guess."

Tony leaned against the kitchen island. “Amenities. Sounds like something Vision would come up with.” He poked at a piece of paper she’d left on the counter. “Ban Ki-Moon? You’re emailing the Secretariat?”

“No, I’m emailing an intern at the OLA—honestly, the best part of grad school is the networking.” She handed over a stack of loose-leaf pages covered in highlighter. “Sam was at VT with me, keeps me up-to-date on the legal opinions they’re prepping. The UN’s going hard.”

“Good.”

There it was again, a harsh edge in Tony’s voice, and one of his hands was fiddling with the corner of the papers he held. Darcy felt like if she stood too close, she’d drown under a massive amount of nervous energy.

It hadn’t taken long to figure out that Stark didn’t want any help in pushing back against whatever was coming—he wanted assistance making everything clear. He hadn’t said anything specific, just sent her an email at 10 AM each morning. The email usually contained a handful of encrypted PDFs—some media-related, some federal, some international—and requested a summary report by late afternoon. It wasn’t difficult work, and it was nearly identical to what Darcy had been doing at home since Sokovia, but it still seemed detached, almost rote, from Stark’s end. That’s why she was also sending emails back and forth with Sam in New York and Jessie in The Hague. Nothing like having a few UN underling friends to call in the middle of the night.

“Mr. Stark—”

“I sign my emails as Tony, Ms. Lewis. You can call me Tony.”

“Tony, you’re aware that sanctions are coming. Supervision, or oversight, or whatever you want to call it.” She tried to temper any frustration about to inadvertently inch into her words. “Do the others know?”

He carefully set the papers on the counter and turned his face toward the window. “They’re as aware as they’d like to be.”

“You know that’s not the same. If the UN—”

“It’s not if at this point, Ms. Lewis. It’s when, and how long, and to what extent.” She was almost glad he was looking away, because she didn’t want to see what was in his eyes. “It’s going to happen.”

Fuck it, she had to know. “And I’m here to, what, translate legalese? That’s it?”

Tony sighed and turned toward her. She could see his face again, and it was grief-stricken. “You’re here because you offered, because you needed something to do as much as the rest of us.”

“You can’t blame me for wanting to help—”

“It’s a coping mechanism.”

“Tony, I don’t know you at all—”

“You know me well enough, Lewis—you and the rest of the world.” She didn’t miss the fact that he’d dropped the Ms. “You know this life well enough, that it won’t leave you alone even if you try to leave it be. You wanted back in—”

“The hell I wanted back in.” She did not need Tony Stark’s billion-dollar condescension shoved in her face. “But just because the rest of the world wants to lock you down doesn’t mean it’s the only option.”

“And what about what I want, Lewis? You think they’re going to give me a chance to explain myself? Explain Ultron?”

“That chance is going to be on their terms, but you won’t be able to sidestep a defense. You—all of you—are either going to show up in Vienna with your own legal team, or you’ll be assigned one.”

“And that’s why you’re here, Lewis. Not to defend me to myself, but to make sure that my people know what they need to know.”

“Your people—your lawyers, but not your team members? I can’t imagine—”

“No.” His face, his voice, the way his shoulders curved inward: complete and utter resignation. “No, I don’t think you can.”

After that pleasant little interlude, she was thankful for the solitude. Darcy didn’t want to see anyone else for a good long while. Not Tony, who still sent distantly polite emails each morning, to which she replied with equally detached responses each afternoon. He was paying her, after all, and she wasn’t about to slack off on what was turning out to be just another round of goddamn rhetorical awareness. Not Erik, who sometimes forgot that they were back to sharing the same time zone, not to mention the same building. Not Jane, who hadn’t texted since the media storm about Lagos.

She fell into a routine. Up at 7 to start the coffeemaker, 9-to-5 in the common room surrounded by printouts and UN peacekeeping case studies, one tablet screen turned to the ICC Legal Tools Database, her laptop pinging emails and social media feeds, and a TV in the corner with CSPAN on mute. As long as she emailed Tony by 5, she closed down the screens then, maybe took a walk along the lake before trying to figure out what to pull together in the kitchen for dinner, which usually also turned into the next day’s lunch. Some nights she drove thirty minutes for French fries, just to break the routine. Erik had said something about the cafeteria still being open, but Darcy didn’t feel like accidentally wandering into Tony Stark’s vicinity without any advance notice, which would probably happen if she ventured much farther beyond her floor.

She understood where Tony was coming from, she really did. And she could also recognize that she didn’t know what it was like to have all that power, that invincibility, that responsibility. Who the fuck could be responsible for an entire world? No one should have to think that way—so of course he’d cracked. She would have too. Except—

Except this wasn’t about Iron Man. That shiny suit was only a piece of something larger, and Darcy wasn’t sure she even knew what that something was. She had the files, she had statement after statement from every country that had signed onto a growing set of accords. There was something else there, nagging at the corner of her mind. Something out of balance, tilted the wrong way.

Four weeks into her stay, she still hadn’t quite figured out what was off-key. But when the secretary of state arrived with a three-hundred-page document subtitled “Framework for the Registration and Deployment of Enhanced Individuals,” Darcy was ready for him.

It was just a pity no one else seemed remotely prepared.

Chapter Text

Thaddeus Ross was a diplomat, plain and simple. Darcy had seen plenty of would-be-Rosses at Culver and VT—chipper undergrads with summer internships in DC, grad students with fathers who were either CEOs or CFOs, friend groups based on social clout and schmoozing and not much else. Diplomats were rhetoricians, not counselors. From her seat against the back wall, Darcy watched Wanda Maximoff’s face as the screen played the same footage she herself had poured over for hours. Sensitive, appropriate exposure therapy this was not.

Ambush. The government had planned an ambush.

Darcy was well aware of the arrival of the other Avengers, though she was still skirting the caf. She’d seen Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers running circles around the lake early in the morning for the past few days, and though no one else had made an appearance on her floor, she’d heard acoustic guitar music floating down from an upstairs window the evening before. Tony sent an email about Ross precisely twenty-four hours in advance of his arrival, and she’d replied with the information he requested: the UN’s weekly schedule, the daily news report, and a list of contact information for certain higher-ups in DC and New York.

She also texted Jess, who confirmed that UN reps had been called to Vienna. UNOV was a strange location, Darcy thought. NYC, with its General Assembly Hall, seemed the obvious choice, and the ICJ’s Peace Palace a close second. Vienna… didn’t fit. Or maybe it did—the more obscure agencies were there, one of which was the Office for Disarmament. So it was pretty apparent, the kind of bullshit about to hit Tony and the others. Tony knew, more or less. But the others—she didn’t know what they knew, or if they even knew anything at all.

She watched each face as Ross scrolled the map, battle after battle, until Steve Rogers, who she’d never seen so grim, not even in the heat of battle, told him to stop. Tony appeared disinterested, Natasha Romanov a consummate professional, Wanda and Sam Wilson and James Rhodes all silent. There was no room for confusion. She saw Steve’s quick turn toward Tony when Ross said that the Vienna meeting was in three days. So Tony’s still playing close to the chest, the bastard, Darcy thought, and no one else knows. Vision might have, must have—his face was impassible. Steve Rogers was intriguingly, bafflingly the opposite—she could see disbelief and disappointment flicker back and forth in his eyes. It was so different from Tony’s grief-bound resignation. Captain America was steeling himself for a fight.

Ross made a quick exit after dropping the Accords on the table, and for a moment no one moved. Tony stood first, without looking at anyone else, and made his way over to the couches on the far end of the room. Everyone else just kind of followed, though Darcy just migrated into the spot at the table that Wanda had just vacated. She knew better than to insert herself into whatever superhero throw-down, verbal or otherwise, was about to take place, but she wanted to remain within earshot. So she busied herself with her tablet and computer, pulling up the UNOV office schedule and checking plane flight prices from Syracuse to Vienna. At the moment, she didn’t trust Tony enough to pay for her ticket, so she put a two-stop red-eye on her credit card just in case.

When Tony started slamming things around the kitchenette, she jumped, but didn’t turn. It was okay to be in the background, listening to Tony sort out his frustration while the others went back and forth between the pros and cons of containment. The only faces she could see were those in profile—Wanda, Vision, Natasha. Tony's whenever he swung around in anger. But the others, Sam and Steve and Rhodes, had their backs to her. Back and forth, back and forth they went. And then all of a sudden, Steve was gone.

“Fuck this,” she said under her breath, closing her laptop. She stretched her legs, stood, and forced herself to go stand just behind Tony. She saw Natasha’s eyebrows fly up, but cleared her throat anyway. “If any of you would like any write-ups before you leave for Austria, I’m your person. Tony can give you my email, or you can come to the guest lounge and I’ll get you what you need.”

Tony sighed, rubbing at his forehead. “Lewis, meet the team. Team, Darcy Lewis.” His gesture toward the room was less than introductory. 

“What could you give us?” Natasha asked. “Tony, you didn’t—”

“I could guess.” He sank into the chair Steve’s departure had left empty. “It wasn’t too hard to figure out, Natasha. When Erik told me Darcy wanted to help, I figured I could use a resident analyst. She’s been here a month.”

“A month? Damn it, Tony—”

He held up his hands in appeal. “Sam, you know how I make decisions.”

Sam shook his head and turned towards Darcy. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

After the tete-a-tete disbanded, she jotted a quick list of what she needed to print and pack, gathered up her things, and made her way to the stairs up to her room. She didn’t anticipate stumbling over Steve, who was sitting halfway up the stairwell. Darcy grabbed for the railing as she regained her footing.

“Oh, my god. Gosh, I mean. Sorry—” How did one talk to Captain America? “Did I kick you? Are you—”

He was standing, brushing off his jeans, and she realized just how much of a person Steve Rogers was. And, once again, how very bad he was at hiding his feelings. This wasn’t a superhero who’d recently gotten some really bad news. His eyes were a little unfocused, and his hands were tightly clenched. It felt like he was looking through her, like he couldn’t see her at all.

“Steve?” She figured casual was the best approach here. God, what if he was going into one of those trance-like states that Thor had sometimes, which never ended well. She knew better than to touch Thor when he got like this, so she wasn’t about to touch Captain America either. She kept one hand loose on the railing and the other around the straps of her tote. “Steve? I’m Darcy. Darcy Lewis. I don’t think we’ve met, but I have papers for you, I think. Or I will, once I get them printed. Sam said you’d want copies of everything I’m giving him…” He blinked, and she trailed off, readjusting her grip on her bag. He was kinda intimidating, up close. Different from Thor. “If you want them, I mean. I won’t force you.”

He blinked again, as if he didn’t know where he was. “Papers?”

She nodded. “For Vienna. Sam said—”

“No. I’m not… I’m not going to Vienna.” His voice cracked a little, and he wiped a hand down his shirt. She noticed his face was—wet? Had he been—

His face folded again, back into that gaze of disbelief she’d seen earlier. “I have to go—" His voice broke again. "I have to go to New York.”

Chapter Text

“New York?” Darcy was confused. She’d read what files she could access, and as far as she knew, Captain Steven Grant Rogers, formerly of Brooklyn, was listed under a D.C. address. He appeared to keep a pretty wide berth around NYC, history notwithstanding.

Steve’s expression tightened into a kind of blankness. “My best suit’s there, and my place is midway—” Gaze flickering toward the exit, he made to move past her. “Really, ma’am, I need to get on the road.”

“Steve—Captain.” Formality was a fast turn from the casual lightness she’d tried a few moments before. “Do you need me to tell anyone where you’re going? I can forward you legal briefs and all, but Austria…”

He paused at the bottom of the stairs, with his back to her. She saw his shoulders do a slow rise-and-fall, a steadying breath.

“I’ll text Sam once I get to the city, but you can tell him that… That the funeral’s in London.” His voice dropped low on the last word, and he didn’t turn as he pushed open the door, leaving Darcy to watch it click closed.

The whole frenzied pack-up and ship-out, coupled with a bumpy flight from New York to Vienna, put Darcy on-edge. Wading through hundreds of pages of legalese related to the regulation of superheroes didn’t help. She needed to hear the voice of someone she knew, not just someone she recognized from tabloids and news clips, which meant she needed Jane. On Facetime, she thought, because text-tone fucking sucked. Plus Tony’s private plane had a solid wi-fi connection, and based on past experience, European hotel rooms for sub-level volunteer employees did not.

Thankfully, Jane picked up and had seemingly forgotten about their most recent argument, or at least didn’t mention it, though her tone was terse.

“Erik told me you’re headed to Vienna. Darcy, I know politics are your thing, but—”

“Jane, the plane’s already over Greenland, Tony Stark is expecting me to give him a minute-by-minute play-by-play, and this whole thing is way, way beyond politics.”

Jane’s sigh crinkled through the headphones, and Darcy crumpled the tinfoil wrapper from lunch into a tiny ball in the center of her palm.

“You know this is beyond us. Again. New Mexico was beyond us, London was beyond us, but that was then. And now…”

And now Thor is beyond us. Darcy knew that’s what Jane was thinking but couldn’t bring herself to say.

“Maybe… But it’s also words on paper, Jane. It’s a three-hundred page binder full of rules and regulations and hyper-surveillance and massive, inordinate oversight. And I can speak that language, or translate it, at least. This is about people, Jane, real people. That’s why I’m going. Will you be there?”

Jane shook her head. “I saw Fury’s email—Peggy Carter’s funeral is on Wednesday. I want to be there, Darce. Closure is…”

“Closure is good when you can get it,” Darcy finished for her. “Maybe I can see you on the way back. We can catch up, avoid Greenwich. I want to meet Damian.”

Jane went quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I know it’s my—”

Darcy cut her off. They’d had this conversation a hundred times before. “It’s not your fault, Jane. None of it is your fault. I don’t know what I’d be doing, if it wasn’t this.”

She’d been wrong about the hotel wi-fi. Apparently Tony felt guilty about the flights she’d purchased (which were cancelled well within the policy window), so he upgraded her to a suite in the Meliá. The windows looked out over the Danube, but the city was so cold, even in June, all stone palaces and cement-block streets. At least the coffee was divine—Darcy had snuck out the first morning for a Salon Einspänner and apfelstrudel at Café Central, and brought an extra strudel back as a peace offering for Tony.

“Lewis, focus.” Darcy was sprawled out across the carpet, Tony sitting on the couch. He pointed at the print-outs she’d spread across the suite’s coffee table, then at the binders open in front of them. “We have twenty-four hours. Is there anything I’m missing?”

“The language about protheses is odd to me, so I’ve bookmarked that. Orange tab. And the AI section… I’m not sure what that means about Vision. Blue tab.”

Tony was clicking his pen, frowning. “At this point, it’s signature or no-signature. They’ve been working on this for years. There won’t be any wiggle room in a single day.”

“But you’re okay with that.” She didn’t even try to hide her sarcasm.

He shrugged. “No other way, Lewis.”

“Bullshit.”

“Probably, but so is the damage we’ve done. There’s no going back.”

Darcy leaned back against the glass of the window, cool against her back. “What do you think Peggy Carter would say, Tony? If she knew?”

His face turned from somber to thoughtful. “Carter had a vision for SHEILD, but she also knew its capacity. And there were different lines back then. Good, evil—everyone shared a single definition. We don’t live that way anymore. We can’t.”

“How very progressive of you.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “I like you, you know. But I don’t like your millennial attitude.”

“I know you want peace, Tony. But that doesn’t mean all of this—” she gestured to the papers surrounding them— “is right. This is… this is tracking bracelets and immediate arrest if you so much as look in a direction that Ross doesn't approve.”

“Then we go the right direction, and only the right direction.”

Darcy sighed. “I’m giving you the contact information Jessie sent me—she knows a few people in Susanne Frueh’s office over at the OSCE. Oversight services, investigations. She’d be a good one to have on-call, just in case.”

“See? We need you on our side, Lewis.”

“Lucky for you, I’m not on a side, Tony, because if I were, it wouldn’t be yours.”

Darcy didn’t go to the International Centre on Wednesday morning. Tony had taken one look at her face in the hallway and said, “Take a nap, Lewis. I'll see you after lunch. The intros would put you to sleep, anyway,” before pulling the stacks of annotated documents out of her hands and pushing her back into the room. A glance in the mirror showed her just how dark the circles under her eyes had become, and how unruly her hair. But she couldn’t sleep, not when the proceedings were being broadcast live, so she turned the TV on low as diplomats began to gather, ordered up some breakfast, and started the in-room coffee maker.

She’d been jotting a note down about King T’Chaka’s speech when the screen went blank and the building shuddered around her. By the time she made it down the closest stairwell to the lobby, the street was full of sirens and smoke.

Chapter Text

Five years ago, she’d have been running away from a bomb site rather than towards it. Five years ago, Darcy had yet to witness a god fall from the sky. Back then, Tony Stark’s headlines stayed on the business page, and Steve Rogers had been dead for seventy years, and the world was self-contained, self-regulating—or at least kept up appearances of being so.

With clouds of dust in her eyes, fighting against the panicked crowds running in the opposite direction, Darcy couldn’t help but wonder if this—one catastrophe after another—was punishment, some kind of divine Armageddon. You don’t grow up in Virginia and not know Revelation, and the Lewises were about as Baptist as everybody else on the outskirts of Roanoke. Was this the rest of the twenty-first century, firestorm after firestorm, until an inevitable cataclysm?

She wasn’t particularly religious, had read too much theory to give space to the Bible stories from her childhood, but Darcy felt that the adrenaline rush of disaster had a hint of spirituality in it. There was fervor, there was sacrifice. There were men and women and gods and demons. How could anyone—

“Frau! Frau, Sie können nicht eintreten! Miss, no entrance!”

She nearly tripped over the curb as she turned towards the police officer frantically waving her back. A block ahead, there was a gaping hole in the side of the International Centre, jagged window glass like a hundred sharp teeth ringing the collapsed interior.

“Tony Stark, Herr Stark?” She pointed towards the bright orange medical tents already lining the street, digging into her pocket for the badge she’d gotten along with her room key. “Where is the media…” Damn her lousy German. “Avengers?” she tried, watching the officer’s face tighten. “I’m—”

“Miss Lewis.” Natasha Romanoff sat on a bench a few feet away, her black jacket covered in splinters and shards, her face grim.

The officer gave a dismissive wave, and Darcy squeezed past the checkpoint fence to settle next to Natasha.

She took a breath. “Tony—”

“Is fine. He wasn’t even in the conference room. On the phone with Ross now, I’m guessing. Containment, my ass. Like anything about this could have gone smoothly.”

Darcy felt her shoulders let go of an inch of tension. She looked out across the street, filled with fire squads and military police and stretchers and people, so many people. People sitting on the curbs, people just beyond the barriers with their phones outstretched, people milling about the street.

“Casualties?”

“I’m not sure, but…” Natasha went quieter still. “King T’Chaka is gone.”

Darcy closed her eyes. Men and women, gods and demons. “How is it ever a step forward?”

“As if we asked for any of this?” Natasha reminded her a bit of Tony, just for a second, the argument a few weeks ago about the inevitability of the rescue mission.

“I mean…” Darcy thought for a moment. “I mean, how could you ever say no?”

“When you see that it could be you, tearing the building apart with two hands. When you can no longer look someone, anyone, in the face. That’s when, Miss Lewis.”

Natasha had been right—Tony had been on the phone with Ross, then another Ross. “We’ve got a plane to catch, Lewis,” was all he said when she met him in the lobby of the hotel after throwing her luggage and files together.

The flight from Vienna to Berlin was barely an hour, but an hour was enough time for the on-board TV to flicker from disaster footage to blurred images of the Winter Soldier. Tony didn’t even look at the screen once, kept his face turned toward the window, but Darcy couldn’t keep from listening to the newscasters’ speculation. Natasha was sitting a bit apart, phone spinning between her fingers.

Nothing about it made sense—the disintegration, the silence, Bucky Barnes. The Accords hadn’t even been ratified, not officially, and it was already the end.

After they landed, Darcy was shepherded into a glass-walled office in the middle of the JCTC. She wasn’t quite sure what her newest task was, but she had a great view of the surveillance footage streaming along one wall. Nudging her suitcase below the desk, she stacked the Accords files to the side, and pulled out her laptop. If anything, she could get back to her old habits of social media tracking. She opened Twitter and started to scroll. Post after post—mourning in Wakanda, replay after replay, then, after refreshing the feed, something about Romania—

“Bucharest, Lewis.” Tony was standing in the doorway, loosening his tie. “And Cap hasn’t done us any favors, so I need you to figure out where in that rule book it talks about disciplinary action against an out-of-bounds asshole carrying a snow saucer on his back.”

Damn it, Captain America, Darcy thought, back to your old habits of forcing me to do the worst kind of homework. At least Uncle Sam kept to his recruitment lane.

The voices were muffled by the glass, but whatever Tony’s method, it wasn’t going to break the deepening furrow on Steve Roger’s brow. Darcy could see that from her desk just as clearly as she could see the screen that switched over to footage of Barnes’ cell. Steve started pacing, Tony started yelling, and a pen clattered onto the table. Men, Darcy thought, un-fucking-believable, these men. When she saw Steve leave the conference room, she grabbed a stack of photocopied clause-and-condition statements and followed him down the hallway.

“Ste—Captain?” She was never going to figure that one out, not now. He paused at the elevator bay, one finger on the down arrow as he turned toward her. “I know it’s less than an ideal time…” She caught a grimace on his face. “But you’re going to want these now, not later.” She pushed the paperwork into his hands.

“What—” Confusion, now. Still intimidating, though, maybe even more so in the leather jacket. How could a man look that put-together hours after fighting off a cadre of German special forces?

“There isn’t really time, but my email’s on the sticky note. It’s the sanctions, the ones that’ll matter most to you.”

His face cleared a little, though she caught the pain on the edges. Peggy Carter’s funeral yesterday, his best friend taken into custody today, and now these regulations coming down like a vise.

“You work for Tony.” Steve’s exhaustion, and disdain, was more evident as he leaned against the wall, tucking the papers under his arm.

Darcy kept herself from rolling her eyes. “I volunteered to read through three hundred pages of bullshit. No one is paying me anything.”

His eyebrows went up. “You don’t—”

“In what universe would locking you down do any sort of good?” She gave up on moderating her tone. If Tony heard, Tony heard. “I studied international affairs, Captain. I also stared down monsters from Svartalfheim. Nothing about this world, or any other, is safe. I know you have your own goddamn agenda; everybody does. But if you’re going to do whatever it is you’ve already decided to do, you need to be at least moderately aware of the consequences.”

She paused for a breath and realized that Steve’s face had moved from disbelief into something she couldn’t quite read. Not the blank grief of four days past, but a little more clear-eyed.

“You know—” he started, but was cut off by the elevator opening and Sam Wilson putting his hand on the frame to stop the doors from closing.

“Steve, Sharon wants to tell you—” Sam stopped when he saw Darcy, and looked back and forth between them. “Downstairs,” he continued after a moment. “She wants us to meet downstairs.”

A fairly transparent dismissal, but Darcy could feel Steve’s eyes follow her as she turned back down the hallway. She could also hear Sam’s voice as the doors slid shut.

“Lewis writes a damn good email, Steve, which you'd know if you ever bothered to read yours…”

She smirked. At least someone recognized her talents.

Chapter Text

After grabbing her tablet and slinging her backpack over one shoulder, Darcy took the stairs down to the in-building café. Sunlight filtered in through the atrium windows, and while the drip coffee wasn’t quite up to Vienna standards, she didn’t really mind when it came to fighting off jet lag. She watched steam rise out of the to-go cup as she tapped one finger against her knee.

Steve Rogers was a conundrum. Of course superheroes had lives beyond the more visible parts of their career, but usually the less-visible moments still lined up with the newspaper exploits. Or at least that’s what she’d seen with Thor, all thunder and lightning and reckless protection. Tony, too, was probably just as stubbornly clever inside his titanium suit as he was outside of it. But there was something different about Captain America. Something about Steve Rogers that didn’t quite fit. And it was more than just “drop a WWII super soldier into the 21^st century,” because everyone else was just as out of place—arc reactors, gamma radiation, Soviet brainwashing… Everyone had a past to reckon with. If anything, Captain America’s history was the easiest for her to understand. So what was it about him that threw her off-balance?

Darcy took a sip of her coffee. “Snap to it, Darce,” she chastised herself under her breath. “It is not your job to worry about Captain America’s psyche. You have emails to send.” Piping some Lemonade through her headphones, she flipped through PDFs on the tablet screen. Identity, legal name got earmarked for mass-distribution, innate powers and technology use went to separate export queues. I need to make a country-of-origin list, she thought. Do superheroes even have citizenship documentation? And NGOs… This was a logistical nightmare. Executive summaries could jump off a cliff.

She was deep in .gov webpages when the buzz of the emergency alert cut through her Beyoncé jam. She hadn’t noticed the lights flickering out, since the atrium was naturally lit, but the steady pulse of the alarm system and the crowd rushing past was enough to jolt Darcy to her feet, pull off her headphones, grab her backpack, and make for the closest exit. Maybe it’s just a fire alarm, she thought, as if I could ever be that lucky. Before she could reach the doors, gunshots started echoing off the walls. Nope, never that lucky.

Diving behind a pillar, Darcy closed her eyes. Breathe, breathe, breathe. The gunshots were interspersed with thud after thud of bodies hitting the ground. She thought she caught the whirr of an Iron Man repulsor. Fuck you, Tony, for needing someone to handle your paperwork. She reached into the side pocket of her backpack and curled her fingers around the grip of her SIG Sauer pistol, easing it out of its holster and unlocking the safety.

She hated, hated carrying a gun. Guns were different from tasers. Tasers meant something about lack of security, and distrust, and an inability to walk out into the world without looking over one shoulder at all times. But a gun meant that a taser was not enough. “Trust yourself enough to protect yourself,” her Roanoke therapist had told her. “Darcy, carrying a gun isn’t a weakness.”

But it still screamed weakness, as much as the micro-compact pistol felt more like a heavy-duty squirt gun than something that carried very real 9mm bullets. She’d gotten it after a long conversation with her mom, a long phone call with Jane, two afternoons at a shooting range, and seven therapy sessions. Then more afternoons at the range, pinging at steel targets out in the woods, and she wasn’t a great shot, but the goal wasn’t to be great. The goal was that, if she ever found herself behind a pillar in the middle of a firefight, she’d be able to pull a trigger without flinching. Taser, no problem. But this tiny little gun...

Breathe.

She slid her hand out of the backpack, bringing her other hand up and tightening her hold on the gun. Tables and chairs were crashing to the ground. Someone was throwing a fuck-ton of punches. Or maybe more than one someone. Keeping her back to the pillar, she focused on the atrium’s reflection in the glass doors. There was a flicker of a red shirt, red hair, blonde hair. Bodies strewn along the walls. Hand-to-hand combat was so not her thing. Not trusting her legs to quite hold her up, she used the pillar as leverage to push herself to standing and then inched her way around to the opposite side, still just out of sight of whoever the fuck—

A flash of silver, then a man running up a set of stairs, another man in pursuit. Darcy scanned the debris-strewn floor and saw Tony lying against the far wall. Natasha was kneeling nearby, next to a blonde woman who must be Sharon Carter. Since it felt like her legs were working again, she made her way across the room, Natasha’s eyes going round when she saw what Darcy had in-hand.

“A woman of many talents.” Natasha shook her head, helping pull Tony upright. “Don’t tell me how you got that into the building.”

“I didn’t even shoot…” Darcy trailed off when she saw the growing bruise on Tony’s face.

“Be thankful you didn’t have to,” Sharon groaned as she sat up. “If you’re that close to the Winter Soldier, you’re as good as down.”

Tony lifted one hand to his eye and grimaced. “Lewis, when I gave you that backpack, I didn’t think you’d be packing firearms. I thought it’d be highlighters. Or snacks. Damn it, that man's elbow can throw a punch.”

“Where did the Soldier go?” The Wakandan voice was out of breath, but T’Challa didn’t look winded. He was standing a few feet away, turning a sharp gaze around the room. “He fell—”

Natasha shook her head again. “Not here.”

Darcy felt the air in the room grow heavy. Sharon and Tony exchanged a glance as T’Challa leapt up to the floor above.

“I’m thinking the elevator, Carter. Lewis, put the gun away, but not too far away.”

As Sharon and Tony moved away, Natasha touched Darcy’s arm. “It’s a good choice, the p365.”

Darcy looked down at the gun in her hands, locking the thumb safety back into place. “I did a lot of research.”

Natasha gave the smallest hint of a smile. “I’m sure you did.”

By the time they made it back up to the command center, the lights had come back on and Thaddeus Ross was pacing in the conference room. Darcy didn’t need to witness another Ross meltdown, so she ducked towards her desk and opened her laptop. What next? Working on the Accords seemed futile, with the Winter Soldier back in action, Ross yelling about Rogers and Wilson twenty feet away, and the imprint of a gun grip on her palms.

“Miss Lewis?” Sharon Carter stepped into the cubicle and closed the door. She was limping a little, Darcy noticed, and when she sat down in a chair across the desk, she pulled out a roll of athletic tape and started wrapping her ankle.

“Agent Carter.” Darcy wasn’t sure what this was—wasn’t sure where Sharon Carter fit into the Avengers equation beyond a brief sentence or two—SHIELD-turned-CIA—from Tony when they’d first arrived at the JCTC.

“Please, it’s Sharon. And no need to look at me like that—I know you’re less than thrilled about being pulled back in, but you’re already here.”

God, the last thing she needed was another series of sermons about being a peripheral civilian. But even if her voice was hard, Sharon’s eyes were tired, and Darcy recognized the grief there. She’d seen the same in Steve more than once in the past week. “I’m sorry about your aunt.”

Sharon’s face shifted a little, and she nodded. “Thanks.”

“So…” Darcy trailed off. Beyond the glass, Ross was storming out of the command center, and Tony and Natasha were talking in low voices on the opposite side of the room.

“I need your help.” Darcy looked back at Sharon, who had finished taping her ankle and pulled out her phone.

Darcy didn't have a response. Her heart rate hadn't slowed yet, and she could feel the sweat drying on her back.

“You’ve done plenty of work for Tony, Miss Lewis. How about helping balance out the other side of the equation?” Sharon’s voice was quiet but firm. There really wasn’t much of a question involved.

Darcy felt her eyebrows go up. “You want my help going against the Accords?” Her hands itched for her gun, just a little. Not to shoot at Sharon, just to shoot at something. These people and their goddamn presumption.

“I read your emails, Lewis. They’re good—diplomatic and clear… and dripping with how much you disagree with the legislation.”

Okay, so make that her own goddamn transparency. “People are idiots.”

Sharon grinned. “You’re not.”

“Damn straight I’m not.”

Sharon tossed a set of keys onto the desk. “My car’s parked in the garage, as long as Barnes hasn’t blown it up. The license number’s on the tag. Can you meet me at exit bay six? I can’t drive with my ankle banged up.” Sharon caught Darcy’s glance towards Tony and Natasha. “Lewis, you can’t convince me that you think Stark’s right about any of this.”

There’s no right about any of this, Darcy thought. But aloud she said, “Exit bay six. How much time do you need?”

“Twenty minutes, max. We've got to do this now, and fast. Bring that backpack of yours.”

Darcy felt as though Sharon could see right through her, down to her hands clenched beneath the desk. She nodded. “Twenty minutes.”

Chapter Text

 “You didn’t ask if I could drive stick…” Darcy leveled a glance at Sharon as the agent slid carefully into the passenger seat, propping her ankle up on the dash. The JCTC’s loading dock area was cavernous, but also strangely empty of security, so it hadn’t been difficult to locate the right garage. It also helped that Sharon had been standing there next to a pile of superhero armor.

“Lewis, you grew up in Roanoke and drive a 2001 Civic. Try convincing me you can’t drive stick.”

These people and the shade they throw at my cheapo car. “Just because it’s not a shiny Audi…” Darcy muttered.

Sharon rolled her eyes. “Inconspicuous, Lewis. This car is inconspicuous.” She pointed at the exit as she pulled a phone out of her jacket pocket. “We’re heading that way.”

“And then?”

“The A9.” Sharon tapped a few times at her phone screen, and the in-car navigation system lit up with a map. “Leipzig.”

“Because?” Darcy pulled the car out onto the side street, then turned right onto the B2, crossing west over the River Spree towards the Brandenburg Gate. The crowds had thinned out a little, but people were still standing on the sidewalks, watching the smoke rise from the rubble on the other side of the river.

“Do you need to know?”

“You tell me.” God, Carter was frozen in ice like the rest of them. Maybe it was a CIA thing. Suppressed emotions.

Sharon flipped down the sunglasses that had been perched on her hair and readjusted the backrest. “You work with these guys long enough, you start to see the fissures. Tony’s are easy because they’re public, and personal—the shit-show in Afghanistan, Pepper, his parents… He doesn’t bury them. Uses it all as leverage, or motivation, or guilt. But Steve’s broken pieces are buried. He has these… these ideals the world will never measure up to. Ideals he’ll keep on fighting for anyway. Maybe it’s a generational thing, all those things they say about our grandparents, or maybe it’s just him. But as much as Steve and Tony have the same task, live in the same world, they see it so fundamentally differently.”

“So… all existential crises lead to Leipzig?” They were past the half-ring of the A100, the car-lined streets of the B2 giving way to the thick trees of the Grunewald. It looked the tiniest bit like Virginia, Darcy thought. She tapped out an uneven rhythm with her fingers on the steering wheel.

“The borders are closed, so we have to stay in the country.”

“By we, you mean Steve, Sam…” She didn’t know what to call Bucky Barnes.

Sharon reached down and adjusted the wrap on her ankle. “By we, I mean us. You’re in the thick of it now, Darcy Lewis. The firestorm. Except this time, we have a good read on both sides. We know what to expect.”

Sure, thought Darcy. Always ahead of the game, until you weren’t.

Sharon’s directions took them to a little hotel in Landsberg, a white-washed house with a red-tiled roof, a glass-walled breakfast room, and a pristine lawn. Darcy pulled into a garage around the corner, and tugged her backpack over her shoulder and her suitcase behind as she followed Sharon into the foyer. Sharon spoke in quick, quiet German to the receptionist, who passed two room keys across the desk. The keys unlocked a small, sunny bedroom on the third floor. Darcy threw her bags on the bed closest to the window as Sharon unplugged the TV and ducked into the bathroom.

At least I have a change of clothes this time. And no goddamn SHIELD agents rifling through my luggage. Allowing herself ten whole seconds of relaxed breathing, Darcy opened her eyes to see Sharon leaning in the bathroom doorway.

“Doing okay?” It was probably about as much concern as Sharon Carter could allow into her voice.

“Fine. Tell me what kind of recon you need. I have,” Darcy gestured toward her bags she’d sprawled around, “my entire life on this bed.”

“Not your entire life, but I’ll take what you’ve got on HYDRA in Siberia.”

“Evil in the tundra. Got it.”

Sharon huffed a laugh. “Whatever you want to make it, Darcy. But they want to leave from the airport tomorrow afternoon, and Steve and Sam will need info sooner rather than later.”

What she dug up on Siberia wasn’t much, but three hours of deep-in-the-dark-web research was enough time to ping coordinates for a mountain range and a blurry satellite image of a barely-there road through a valley. Darcy sent the readouts to Sharon, who’d set up a mini command center in the corner of the room, in between a short call with Steve arranging a discrete morning meet-up, and a longer one with a colleague at the JCTC.

“You can fake a sick day like the best of them, Carter,” Darcy told her, and Sharon cracked a grin.

“I have enough PTO stacked up for two months work of sick days.”

“I need a real job. I daydream about PTO.”

“No such thing as a real job. Not even in espionage.”

Darcy powered down her computer and stretched out her wrists in little circles. The sky had gone dark outside the window, and yellow street lamps flickered on. “Espionage does leave room for dinner, though, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll go to the Bauernschänke. Best food in town.”

They opted to leave the car in the rented garage, and walked—walked very slowly, for the sake of Sharon’s ankle—down the road to the restaurant. Along the way, Darcy wondered about Sharon’s familiarity with the town—the smaller-than-a-town, really. But Sharon seemed lost in thought and Darcy didn’t really need to know the intricacies of whatever puzzle pieces she was putting together at the moment.

The restaurant was attached to a ceramic shop, and for a brief moment Darcy let herself forget about the violence from earlier in the day, the adrenaline that always came with putting together a much-needed report, the jet lag exhaustion that still lingered. She wandered the long row of cream colored bowls and vases and pitchers while Sharon found them a table in the back corner of the dining room and ordered a bottle of wine. Mom would love a bowl, and Jane would want to browse the tea cups, Darcy thought, and then realized that she hadn’t been in contact with her mother, or Jane, since the plane ride across the Atlantic three days before.

But there wasn’t time the next morning for any civilian communication, because Sharon was packing the tech away at five a.m., and Darcy was bleary-eyed in the driver’s seat on the way to the Leipzig-Halle Airport.

“No, Luke, I need an NH90, not a crappy Eurocopter. And no, you can’t ask why. I needed wings on the ground at LEJ two hours ago. I also need LEJ’s quinjet serials.” Sharon was intense on the phone, too intense for pre-coffee o’clock, and Darcy felt a little bad for the Luke who was getting an earful. But the call was abbreviated by the fact that the drive was so short—less than fifteen minutes after leaving the hotel, Sharon pointed to a pull-off tucked below an overpass. “Park it, Darcy.” She checked her smartwatch. “They’ll be here in 30.”

Darcy stared straight ahead, down the long line of train tracks stretching into the early-morning haze. “And then?”

Sharon shrugged. “You get to choose.”

“I thought I already had.”

“There’s always another choice, Darcy.”

Darcy reached back to rub at the tightness she felt forming just behind her shoulder blades. “It’s why Tony wanted out.”

“One of the reasons.”

“I don’t…” The tightness eased a little. “It can't be upstate.”

There was a smile at the edge of Sharon’s eyes. “I figured as much. And I’ll be skirting Berlin for a bit, too… How do you feel about New York, but the city version?”

Darcy thought about it. She hadn’t spent much time in NYC, only up for a spring break trip during undergrad and one visit to Sam after he’d started at the UN. “I do have a friend in Tudor City… Not sure the city life is my thing, but Sam always said I’d like it there.”

“See? Choices don’t have to be impossible.”

There was a spot of movement in the review mirror, and a rickety-looking Volkswagen pulled up behind them. Darcy choked on a laugh. “Sharon, you can’t give me crap if that’s what Captain America drives.”

Sharon rolled her eyes as she opened the car door. “Some people just can’t give up the past.”

Sharon’s cheeks were a little blotchy when she got back into the car, as if the woman was trying to keep a tight rein on blushing.

“Wait, are you guys…” Darcy didn’t want to be too blunt, but she’d just witnessed whatever that was and she needed to know. She switched to a stage whisper. “Like, together-together?”

Sharon didn’t say anything, but she was definitely blushing.

“Like, do you have to fill out some kind of paperwork just to hold hands with an Avenger?”

Sharon’s color rose even more, and she pointed at the car’s dashboard map. “No, and no.”

“Because I’m pretty sure the Winter Soldier winked at me in the side mirror and while he’s nice to look at, I don’t know if I can commit to a long-term—”

“Darcy, I don't think James Buchanan Barnes is going to ask to hold your hand any time soon.” Sharon let her head fall against the window. “And I shouldn’t have done it.”

Boy-oh-boy, could Darcy relate to that one. Ian filled a whole “shouldn’t have done it” chapter in her as-of-yet unwritten autobiography. But she couldn’t help giving the unflappable Sharon a hard time. “Kissed the Captain? Filled out the paperwork? Committed to a lifetime of—”

“Just drive, Darcy.”