Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Darcy, what the hell is this?”

The young woman looked up from her seat at the kitchen table, squinting at the arm that had been thrust into her face. Without her glasses it looked like a long smudge of grease, but if she narrowed her eyed down to practically nothing, the mark came into focus.

 “A tattoo?” she offered. “I admire your dedication to the Thunder God and all, but there are about a million cooler tatt ideas you could have come up with. Seriously, even a little Mew-Mew would have been better.”

“It’s not a tattoo,” Jane insisted, rubbing her hand over the long looping line marring her skin. “It wasn’t there yesterday.”

“Strange rashes in unexpected places,” Darcy observed. “Perhaps you and your alien stud muffin need to have a talk about intergalactic STDs.”

“That is not funny.”

“Yeah, it is,” she grinned and hurried from the table with her coffee before Jane could find an appropriate retort. She found her way back to her room, happily chillaxing in her jim-jams for the first slow morning in ages. Despite the ass-numbing boredom involved in the majority of Jane’s work, the astrophysicist kept hours that would make an army drill sergeant cringe. The rare morning off was a luxury Darcy Lewis intended to utilize to the fullest.

She stretched and threw her arms out, falling back onto the bed and smiling lazily up at the ceiling, knowing there was nothing she needed to do. The world was safe. Jane was happy, save her weird new rash, and Darcy could just do nothing.

She rolled over, reaching for her phone so she could snap a shot of her sweet cupcake jammie pants and Cookie Monster slippers, but froze before she even touched her cell.

“JANE!” she screamed.

“What? What is it?” her boss and friend hurried into the room, cricket bat held above her head and eyes darting around the room for some intruder to attack.

“Your rash is spreading!”

She pulled her sleeve up to her elbow and thrust her arm at Jane as she had done to her not five minutes earlier. A long dark line looped across her pale skin forming words that ran the length of her forearm just as Jane’s did, though the words were far different.

“’Access code NOW’,” Jane read, dumbfounded. “That’s even worse than ‘You, what realm is this’.”

Darcy opened her mouth to speak, but never got the chance. Thor, in all his Asgardian glory, burst into her room, Mew-Mew in hand and electricity crackling around him. “I heard your cry, Darcy! Tell me who troubles you!”

“This troubles me!” she insisted, showing him her arm.

The man’s face went from thunderous to joyous in a heartbeat. “Ah, you have grown your mark.”

“My what now?”

“Your soulmark,” he said, smiling. That brilliant smile fell as he looked between the two women, noting their confusion and horror. “Do you not have them on your world?”

“No, I can’t say that we do,” Jane replied. She held her own mark out for him to see. His smile returned, brighter than before.

“You see, this is proof that you are the one and only mate to my soul,” he pulled at his sleeve, revealing the mark on his own arm. “Mine arose last night.”

“’Do me a favor, don’t be dead’,” Jane read the words dumbly. “Isn’t that…”

“The first words spoken by you to me,” he finished for her. “That is the mark all Asgardians bear; the first words spoken to them by their destined match. Your words will be the first I ever spoke to you.”

“That’s totally what he said,” Darcy agreed, pointing to her friend’s arm.

“What does your mark read, Darcy?” he questioned. “Perhaps the words have already been spoken.”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed anyone shouting ‘Access code NOW’ at me recently,” she disagreed. “And why did this thing show up now?”

“Perhaps because of my intention to remain in residence on your world,” Thor speculated. “In opening this world to my powers, I have brought with me some of Asgard’s magic.”

Jane shook her head, ever the scientist. “That makes no sense. You were here before.”

“Banished and without my powers,” he countered. “And temporarily in my pursuit of Loki. Now I am here to stay, Jane. All that I am is yours, my soul and heart and powers belong to you. Such a bond is strong on my world and has been known to result in powerful repercussions.”

“But why this?” she demanded.

“Were my mother still alive, I would ask her. It was Frigga who created the soulmark on Asgard – an elegant means of removing all doubt that she and my father were destined for one another,” he explained, sadness coloring his smile.

Jane cooed and pulled Thor from the room to comfort the man, leaving Darcy to glare at the marks on her arm. A scalding shower and overly enthusiastic exfoliating did nothing to dull the writing on her skin. She had hopes it might wash off as easily as the memos she jotted on her wrist when the sticky notes were hiding under a mountain of coffee cups and old spreadsheets, but, no, the black letters still scrawled across her arm as permanent and unwanted as the remnants of a drunken night out that ended in a seedy tattoo parlor at one in the morning.

Her only comfort lay in knowing that everyone on Earth was dealing with this same problem. Soulmate and Soulmark vied for the 2^nd most trended hashtag, after #whatthefuckisthisthingonmyarm. Darcy would have helped keep it at number one were she allowed a twitter account by SHIELD; they might be lacking in jack boots, but they still had the heavy-handed thug mentality. No social media accounts for Darcy.

“Top story this morning,” the newsreader proclaimed with thinly veiled uneasiness, “The sudden appearance of tattoo-like marks on every adult across the globe. Early reports indicated a strange new epidemic, but a statement released by America’s Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, better known as SHIELD, has claimed this phenomenon as ‘Soulmarks’. Lynn Carson has the latest.” The woman’s smile was fixed as she waited for the footage to roll, but she shifted in her chair, her fingers tugging at the sleeve of her jacket.

Lynn Carson’s piece told Darcy nothing she had not already learned from Thor, so she stabbed the power button on the remote control and threw it at the couch with a growl.

Coffee.

Coffee would make it better.

Proper, bought coffee with caramel swirls could make anything better.

Soulmark hidden beneath two layers of cotton and her denim jacket, Darcy ventured out into the streets of London. So what if everybody had tattoos now? It couldn’t have all that much effect on the daily workings of the world, right?

On the ground floor of the apartment building where they were staying, Darcy found a couple arguing. Loudly. She and Jane had been crashing at Mrs. Foster’s place for a while now, long enough to know the faces of everyone else who lived in the building if not their actual names. This couple, Darcy had dubbed The Perfect Parkers. They were sickeningly in love. Or at least they had been until that morning. Now they were shouting over one another.

“Thank god I found out about this before I proposed!” “—wasted four years of my life on you!”

Darcy skirted around them, though neither showed the least bit of embarrassment at being caught in the middle of a fight.

“What’s that about?” she muttered to the postman, who was shoving letters into their appropriate boxes.

“Them ta’oos are wrong. Means they aren’t soulmates,” he replied in a low tone.

Darcy managed to bite back the groan, but only just. “How can they even remember what they said to each other when they first met?”

He shrugged. “My wife does, and we met thir’y-eight years ago last January.”

“Are your marks right?”

“No,” he shook his head and shrugged as if it made no difference.

“Is she going to leave you?”

“After thir’y-eight years, four children and nine gran’children? What would the neighbors think?” He offered her a grin that implied the neighbors could take their opinions and shove them up their pasty white British backsides. “’Sides, she’s got me wrapped ‘round her little finger, she has. If she dumped me now, she’d have to train up a whole new bloke. Too much work, and she knows it.”

Darcy couldn’t help but return his smile as she made her way out into the streets of London. The postman was right. It was stupid to get so worked up over the Soulmarks, and she was sure everyone would agree.

Again, wrong.

Every newspaper, magazine and tabloid shouted headlines of marriages in collapse, secret lovers baring the appropriate words on their skin, controversial and experimental means of changing the words. It took months and the destruction of three massive floating fortresses before anyone was willing to talk of anything else, and even then most news stories ended in a newscaster wondering what words were written on Captain America’s arm.  Through it all, Darcy kept working and blatantly ignored the words on her own arm.

“Hey,” a guy said, and paused as if waiting for her to turn, wide eyed and hopeful.

She rolled her eyes. “Not my words, dude.”

“Well, damn. Can I buy you a drink anyway?”

Holding her beer aloft, she offered him a look. “Already got one.”

The little toad offered a sneer and a few curse words before moving down the bar. A startled cry some minutes later informed him that his sorry manipulation had found a sucker.

She hated how quickly some duchebags had taken to using the Soulmarks against people. Her words were not common, but so many others had been given greetings so ubiquitous that their destined partner might have been anyone they ever met. In the months since they had appeared, Darcy had met dozens of women who had nothing more than the word ‘Hi’ on their arm. She was grateful she couldn’t be preyed upon by these manipulative losers.

Not that she was anxiously hanging on every greeting sent her way. Nope, not Darcy Lewis. She was not going to be forced into a relationship because the rash on her arm told her to.

Nuh-uh.

“I need the access codes.”

A jolt ran through her at the words. They weren’t right. They weren’t even directed at her, but the response had been involuntary, as if the man shouting into his cell phone had physically pinched her.

She kept her eyes locked on the bar in front of her, downed the rest of the beer and ran for the door.

Chapter Text

Darcy found that keeping her arm covered, even in muggy New York summers, made dating a lot easier. No one could steal a glance at her words and use them to charm her, true. More than keeping the assholes at bay, it also kept nice and hopeful guys from turning her away when they realized that they hadn’t said the right thing. She didn’t care if Dave’s first words had been ‘Shit, I’m sorry’ when he spilled his coffee on her. She liked him. He was nice and normal and made her feel fabulous.

Five months into their relationship, however, he was starting to question her wardrobe. He hadn’t said anything yet, but she knew it would be coming soon. He kept eying her long sleeves, his fingers brushing the fabric, drawing loops along her arm as if tracing the words he hoped were there.

“Darce?” he said, pulling her attention away from his fingers dancing on her arm.

“Hm?”

“Can… can I see it?”

“You don’t want to,” she assured him, her fingers curling around the end of her sleeve, tugging it down further. Five months they had been together, and she had managed to keep her arm from ever being naked in his presence. It was exhausting and pointless since her refusal told him all he needed to know.

He nodded. “That’s okay. We... They don’t have to match if we do, right? We match, right?”

“Yes, we do,” she agreed because they did. He was wonderful, and she almost loved him.

“You know I love you, right?” he asked.

He always asked, unsure of everything about them. It should have annoyed her that he needed constant reassurance, but she liked that he took her into consideration, that he looked to her for confirmation. Running with the group she did, being looked to for guidance made her feel better about herself. She wasn’t a hero or a genius. She was one of the mere mortals that needed saving, but to Dave she was something more.

As if knowing her thoughts had turned to them, her phone rang and buzzed with simultaneous calls and texts.

“When you’re popular…” Darcy smiled apologetically and took the phone to the bedroom. “Yeah.”

“It’s Jane. We need you back at the Tower.”

“What in the name of Thor could possibly be so urgent?” she sighed but still started to collect her things for the hike across town.

“I’m not allowed to say,” the woman hedged, her voice shaking with the effort of maintaining her silence; Darcy knew that if she just waited her out, she could get her to spill all her secrets, but the woman just pleaded. “Please. As soon as you can.”

Darcy sighed again. “I’m on my way. But there had better be something fabulous and caffeinated in it for me.”

“Yes,” Jane agreed immediately. “Fabulous. Caffeinated. Chocolatey.”

“Sold to the lady with the big brain,” she cried and hung up.

She threw her phone into her bag, and met Dave back in the kitchen. “Work called. Jane needs me.”

“At eleven at night?” Dave frowned.

“Astrophysicists do not function like normal human beings.” She shrugged. “I’ll call if I can’t get away.”

He offered a half-hearted ‘yeah’ and kissed her.

“I love you, too,” she told him, and hurried out the door.

Jane almost never called her in late. She would work through the night and let Darcy tip her into bed when she arrived in the morning, sleeping until lunch while her assistant deciphered her notes into spreadsheets and typed up the reports Stark liked to have sent his way (it made him feel special and important to get official reports).

This was weird, and Darcy knew it.

Didn’t mean she had to like traversing the city at rude hours of the night. She groaned as she made her way up the stairs from the subway. The greatest city on earth really needed to install escalators for the exits to street level; these stairs were going to murder her. Seriously. She trudged down the sidewalk, dodging a creepy homeless dude and rounding the corner of 58^th. As she reached the base of Avengers Tower, she was torn from the sidewalk and shoved against a wall. The wind flew from her lungs, but her attacker still clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.

“Access code NOW!” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

Darcy’s eyes grew huge, not at the size of her attacker or the gun he had pressed into her cheek, but at the words he had used. The first words this man had ever spoken to her. The words that matched that fucking soulmark.

How was that fair?! Jane got a real life demi-god, and Darcy got a hobo? There was something wrong with this whole system.

Blinking back tears, she tried to focus on the man, but all she saw was the barrel of the gun.

“Is there a card?” he questioned.

She nodded and shook her head under his hand. The hobo’s grip tightened on her mouth as he worked to understand her answer. Darcy’s hand flew to the access panel, slapping at the cover until it dropped to reveal the shining electronics beneath the seemingly antiquated lockbox.

“Biometric scans?” He swore under his breath in at least three languages before looking at her again. “Ocular?”

“Are you seriously thinking of cutting one of my eyes out?” she questioned, slapping her own hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d done.

The man actually laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of mutilating anything so pretty.”

“Uh… thank you?”

His hand moved from her face to her arm in a grip so tight she had to fight to keep the gasp of painfrom escaping. “Let’s go. You and me are going to take a little walk.”

“Where to?”

“I was thinking the view from the 89^th floor might be nice this time of night,” he said, pointing skyward. “Have that keycard handy?”

Darcy’s brain ran through the tiny amount of information she had managed to retain from the three-day briefing she had been forced to sit through when she started working in the Tower. Nothing about the 89^th floor came to mind. She knew the top ten floors were luxury apartments, mostly for the Avengers and their cohorts. The 89^th floor was in that top ten. Was this homeless guy a fanboy? Given the gun, Darcy figured he was more likely an assassin.

“So…” Darcy said slowly as he marched her into place before the biometric scanner. She shot the security cameras a look, saw the blue lights blinking and hoped JARVIS was watching. “Uh… 89^th floor… got a friend up there or something?”

“Or something,” the man replied darkly. He shoved her toward the door. “Open it up.”

“You have like no manners at all,” she sniped. “Didn’t your mother teach you about the power of the word ‘please’?”

“Please, would you be so kind as to stop talking and open the fucking door?” he offered a condescending smile. “I can say it again in several more languages if you like. Pojal—“

Knowing full well it might get her a bullet to the face, she turned to him and said, “You are an ass.”

“I have been called much worse.”

“I believe it.”

“Door. Open. Now. Please.”

She took the card from her pocket, swiping it through the scanner before following the prompts on the screen for an ocular, fingerprint and voice scan.

The cold mechanical voice spoke, “Identity Confirmed: Darcy Lewis. Access Granted.”

The man opened the door, gesturing for her to enter. “Ladies first, Ms. Lewis.”

“Jackass,” Darcy muttered and stomped on his foot as she marched past him. He didn’t react, nor did he appear at all concerned about the number of security cameras visible in the corridor or even in the confines of the elevator. “Are you not at all worried about being caught?”

“Not anymore,” he said, sliding the gun into his pocket. “Only worried about being caught outside.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I’d explain, but I wouldn’t want to worry your pretty little head.” He meant it. He wasn't using it as a sarcastic jibe, as most people generally did. He was dead serious.

“Oh my god, did you chauvinist taunt me?”

“No?” the man said, his eyes darting around the elevator as if searching for assistance.

It came, though not in a form the man had been expecting if his drawn gun were any indication.

“Miss Lewis, are you in need of assistance?” the disembodied voice of the electronic butler questioned.

“Yes,” Darcy cried to the ceiling. “This man is an absolute asshole. I want you to zap him.”

“I’m afraid, I cannot oblige. Were I to deploy counter-terrorist measures, you would be struck as well,” JARVIS replied apologetically. “I can, however, ensure there are guards waiting upon your exit.”

“Thank you, J,” Darcy said with a smile that turned hard as she looked at the man beside her. “You’re so screwed, buddy.”

“As long as it’s by you, I think I can live with it,” he said with a smirk. In a smooth motion, he slipped the magazine from the gun and handed the now harmless weapon to her. “Here. I don’t need it anymore.”

“Wha-huh?”

“You are as eloquent as you are beautiful, doll,” he grinned and laced his fingers together on the top of his head as the elevator pulled to a stop. He was on his knees when the doors slid open, the guards stampeding in to find the man completely submissive and Darcy holding his gun.

“Well done, Miss Lewis,” the lead guard grinned approvingly, taking the gun and ushering her out of the elevator while his men zip-tied the asshole hobo’s hands behind his back.

“Yes, Miss Lewis, well done.” The asshole hobo grinned over his shoulder as the guards shoved him down the corridor.

Chapter Text

The Head of Security for Avengers Tower, Happy Hogan, did not live up to his name as he took her through the debriefing, taking down her account of the hobo and his gun. Darcy was certain he was angry with her for giving in without a fight, for compromising the safety and security of the World’s Mightiest Heroes, but, without her Taser, she had no way of fending off a man double her size who was armed with a hella big gun.

That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

“We’ll review the security footage,” the man said, his mouth pulled down into a very unhappy face.

“Can I go? Jane will freak if I’m not there soon.”

“Yeah,” the man said, displeasure clipping his usually impeccable manners.

As she moved to the door, she heard him muttering to his guards about scheduling mandatory self-defense classes for all civilian residents of the Tower. Having experienced the delight of being pressed into a wall with a gun to her face, Darcy seriously doubted a weekend course would really have made a difference, but Happy was the most single-minded man she had ever met; she knew better than to correct him.

She was escorted to the private elevator and ushered in. Left alone, Darcy studied herself in the polished metal doors as they closed; she looked like a woman who needed a day off.

“Should have just stayed home,” she muttered. “Could have been snuggled up with Dave and not being threatened by my stupid hobo soulmate.”

Soulmate. Her stomach turned at the thought.

Thor was waiting for her, Mew-Mew in hand and clearly ready for battle. His warrior face pulled up into a smile of genuine warmth and pleasure, but she didn’t let that dissuade her as she marched up to him and jabbed him in his unnaturally sculpted pectoral.

“I hate you so much right now,” Darcy said in lieu of a greeting.

“What is it that I have done to offend you, Darcy?”

“Your stupid soulmark things.”

His face reconfigured itself again, from concerned to glee. “You have encountered the one and only match to your soul. That is wonderful news.”

“No, it isn’t. I am with Dave. I like Dave. I’m about five minutes away from being in love with Dave. I do not need some gun-toting hobo laying claim to me just because your magical mystical tattoos say we’re meant to be!” she cried and stomped past him to find Jane. “Now what was so damn important it couldn’t wait until morning?”

On the rare and irritating night that Darcy was called in to help, she always found Jane in her office or her lab, face inches from her computer monitor as she scienced like a boss. Not this time. This time, Jane was cozied up on the couch in her pajamas with a muffin in her hands.

“What the hell? You aren’t even sciencing!”

“I know,” Jane said, her eyes dropping to her lap. “I’m sorry. If I told you the reason I wanted you to come, you would have played it off and told me to chillax or something.”

“Damn right, I would,” she insisted, crossing her arms over her chest and staring the woman down. “What’s the real reason?”

“The man Steven has been seeking has been observed in the vicinity of the Tower,” Thor informed her.

Darcy waited, looking between the pair. “And?”

“He’s unstable!” Jane insisted, throwing the muffin onto a plate and standing, as if the additional height might lend weight to her argument. “He shot Captain Rogers! And disappeared without a trace. He’s dangerous. I didn’t want you out in the city.”

Warmth filled her chest, but she refused to allow her feelings to show on her face. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How could he even connect me to Captain America?”

“You work here,” Jane insisted.

“Along with over a thousand other people. Did you call all of them in for a sleep over at eleven at night, too?”

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder; Thor likely meant it to be reassuring, but all it did was make her knees buckle. “Few among those thousand make their entrance and exit through the building’s private elevator,” he reasoned. “This man is well-versed in battle strategy. He will be watching this tower, observing the passage of those who are employed within.”

“Exactly!” Jane cried. “How long will it take him to see that you use the same private entrance as Rogers? A day. Then, boom, he’ll be right on top of you with a gun, forcing you to let him in and – Darcy, what’s wrong?” Her self-righteous rant faltered as the younger woman paled and fell to the couch.

The hobo. It was him. Bucky Barnes, Captain Rogers’s best friend since childhood.

“He already has,” she said, her voice thin.

“He’s inside?” Jane squeaked, turning as if the man would be right behind her.

“The guards have him.”

“This man, he was your soulmate,” Thor deduced as he wrapped a fluffy blanket around her. “Darcy, when did this occur?”

“Twenty minutes ago. I didn’t see him coming. He was just there. Boom. With a gun.”

Jane managed to swallow her ‘I told you so’, though it was clearly a struggle. “He threatened you?”

“Not verbally. He was all smirk and misogyny,” she said as she shook her head and pulled the fluffy blanket tighter. “Why do you get a god and I get an asshole hobo?”

“Is he really an asshole?”

“Yes! He said, totally unironically, ‘don’t worry your pretty little head’.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“That is a bit of an asshole move,” the woman agreed. “But, I mean, he’s your—“

“Don’t even think of saying what I know you’re thinking of saying. Just because your little mark-match turned out hunky-dory, doesn’t mean I feel obligated to listen to what this stupid thing has to say on the matter of who is getting into my pants. They are my big girl panties. I decide who gets to rummage around in them! Now give me a muffin and the remote.” She held out her hands to punctuate the demand, offering a smug smile when Thor pushed a plate into one and Jane the remote control into the other.

“He is your soulmate, though,” Jane commented quietly.

Darcy groaned. “Shut up about it already! I don’t care. He is an asshole.”

“The circumstances weren’t the best, but maybe if you met him on your terms…”

“I’m sorry, what happened to him being unstable and dangerous? Does it not matter anymore that he shot Captain America?” Darcy narrowed her eyes at her friend and boss, daring her to contradict herself and all the evidence she had gathered to justify calling the younger woman in so late at night. The scientist in her would never allow it, so she was left flapping her jaw.

“Thought so,” she said and pointed the remote at the television, settling into the couch and starting a marathon of slasher films.

Thor thought them highly entertaining. “I find their strategy of evading the enemy to be flawed,” he commented around a mouthful of popcorn. “Surely a united front would have afforded them a far better chance of victory.”

“True that. United we stand, bro,” Darcy agreed, offering a fist, which he bumped without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Why do you insist on corrupting him?” Jane muttered.

“Maybe because he’s so willing to be my dude-bro,” she grinned. “Not like I’m doing anything Clint isn’t.”

Darcy swore she could hear the woman’s eyes rolling. “As if that makes everything all right.”

“If I’m stuck with an asshole hobo, then you get a dude-bro. It’s only fair.”

“Darcy,” she began slowly, drawing the word out in the way she always did when reluctant to broach a subject. “I know you think the whole scheme is stupid—“

“Archaic,” she corrected.

“—but, even if it leads to nothing, you should meet him on your terms. If nothing else, it would help you sleep better to confront the man who held a gun to your head.”

That left her scowling into the fluffy blanket. She had no rebuttal. Nightmares of massive gun barrels with the thin spiral of riffling and a swaggering jackass on the other end were sure to haunt her that night and for some weeks to come; Jane had witnessed the aftermath of the London invasion, had heard her cries in the dark, held her when she thrashed and seen her the morning after. She knew just how much she was affected by the dangers she had found herself thrown into.

“I hate you so much,” Darcy muttered.

Jane eyed her hopefully. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

“It’s an ‘I’ll consider it’,” she corrected. “Just seeing him in lockdown will help considerably.”

“Promise me you’ll talk to him. And when I say ‘talk’, I mean converse with some level of civility. Don’t just snark at him and walk away.”

Darcy made no reply, but Jane had the smug look of a woman who had been given a signed surrender.

Chapter Text

Darcy threw herself from the bed, her body rolling to the floor just as she had tried to do in her dream. She woke when her elbow contacted the hardwood floor, gasping for breath and looking for the man who had been about to empty his gun into her.

No one.

There was no one.

She was alone.

She lay there, silently catching her breath and listening for any sound that might tell her the nightmare had some basis in reality, but the only sound that came to her was the psychiatrist-recommended white noise being pumped through the speakers cleverly hidden in the ceiling. Not for the first time that week, Darcy  sent a silent thanks to Thor and Jane for insisting she stay with them in the Tower while the worst of her nightmares ran their course; Dave was a great guy, but he wouldn’t understand what had her jerking awake at two in the morning. Nondisclosure agreements sucked like that.

“J?” she called.

“Yes, Miss Lewis?” the AI responded in an appropriately hushed tone for such an ungodly hour.

“Kill the snow machine,” she requested. The white noise ended. “Got anything calming for an early AM zombie stare session?”

“I have a catalogue of playlists for just such an occasion. Would you prefer something symphonic? Or perhaps some acoustic guitars?”

“Surprise me,” she sighed and let her head fall back to the floor as the quiet, rhythmic strains of a Spanish guitar began to strum through the speakers. “That’ll work. Thanks, J.”

“My pleasure, Miss Lewis. I have taken the liberty of scheduling an appointment with Dr. Sheffield for this afternoon. Unless,” he paused in a way that made her believe he was biting his lip and shuffling his feet. “Unless, you would care to discuss it with me?”

Darcy considered the offer before she replied, “Discuss it with you? No.”                          

“I underst—“

“Because it’s not a negotiation, J,” she continued despite his contrition. “I’ll talk to you about it, though.”

There was a smile in his voice when he replied. “Very good.”

Both remained silent for close to three minutes while Darcy lay on the floor in a tangle of sheets, collecting her thoughts. Talking to an AI ought to be easier than talking to Dr. Sheffield, with her narrowed grey eyes and thoughtful frown, but it wasn’t.

Finally, she admitted, “I had a nightmare.”

“My sensors detected your elevated heart rate and increased breaths per minute; they indicated a rather difficult dream.”

“Rather difficult,” she repeated in agreement, pausing to sigh before barreling into the contents of the dream. “So I was in the lab, working as I do, when this huge group of gunmen came crashing through the door. They had on masks like Dark Elves and their eyes were all glowing red and creepy, so even when they shot out the lights I could still see them watching me. I tried to tase them, but they had on shielded vests that took the shock.”

“Most troublesome,” JARVIS commented, his tone the exact one Dr. Sheffield used to make similar comments during their sessions.

“I know, right! Then, through the window – on like the eightieth floor – comes that asshole hobo, Barnes. Guns in each hand like Schwarzenegger or something, knives strapped to every inch of his combat gear. He totally decapitates half the gunmen – not with the knives, with the guns! He’s kicking ass and taking names, telling me that I’m his soulmate and he’d murder the world to save me and shit like that. I start shouting at him that I’m so not his soulmate and he has absolutely no claim on me and all that stuff I keep telling Jane. He looks like I kicked his puppy, puts the guns away and jumps out the window, just like that. The rest of the gunmen he didn’t kill regroup and come to get me, more pissed than ever since the hobo killed half their friends.”

JARVIS was silent, either waiting for further details or contemplating the ones he had been given.

“So, what do you think? Am I nuts?”

“Far from it, Miss Lewis,” the electronic butler assured her. She didn’t know why the opinion of an artificial being mattered so much, but she was comforted to hear his denial.

“Then what’s the diagnosis, doc?”

“Post-traumatic stress to some degree,” he began slowly, as if shifting through a catalog of mental illnesses, “an excess of Die Hard too soon before bed, and a stubborn refusal to learn the true nature of Sergeant Barnes. Were you to take a moment to get to know him, you would find that the Sergeant would never willingly abandon anyone in danger.”

Darcy groaned. “Are you shipping me and Barnes, too?”

“Now that my OTP has been established as canon, I must ship someone,” he commented dryly.

She snorted. “Connecting you to the internet was the worst idea Tony ever had,” she said. Asking, after a pause, “So who is your OTP?”

“Sir and Ms Potts, of course.”

“Of course.”

She closed her eyes and lay in silence, listening to the guitars strum soothingly, imagining herself on a small balcony with roses and geraniums potted along the base of the wrought iron rails, flower in her hair and lace shawl over her shoulders. From the roof came a man in black, mask obscuring the top half of his face, a smirk covering the lower.

“Senorita,” he offered with a bow, his voice heavily accented but still recognizable to her. “Such a lovely creature should not worry her pretty little head over such trivial dreams.”

Darcy groaned and turned away, hitting her nose on the wall and cursing.

“Is there a problem, Miss Lewis?” JARVIS questioned.

“Just the usual, J,” she muttered sleepily, groaning as she pushed away from the wall and started to untangle herself from the sheets. “Lose the Zorro music, J. I don’t need any more dreams like that.”

“As you wish,” he replied and the room went silent. “My sensors reported your heart rate had begun to elevate. Had the nightmare returned?”

Darcy shook her head even as she let it hang in embarrassment. “No, J. That was no nightmare. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.”

The way her mind had altered Barnes from an asshole hobo to something so fantastic was worrisome to say the least. Gone were the filthy, torn thrift shop clothes, replaced by polished black riding boots, fitted black trousers that spoke to the delicious thighs beneath, a loose black shirt open at the neck and revealing just enough sculpted chest to make Darcy’s mouth water. Jane’s ongoing marathon of Captain America’s old propaganda reels was having some serious side effects, which had, no doubt, been her villainous plan all along. It was becoming increasingly difficult to separate the grubby hobo from the polished man with a half-smile from those old clips.

Fuck my life, she groaned in thought and forced herself to rise, retreating to a freezing shower and a scalding cup of coffee, in that order.

Jane met her at the door to the lab, uncharacteristically bright-eyed and looking as if she had slept through the night instead of working through it as she normally did.

“What did I do?” Darcy asked, thoroughly put off by the woman’s appearance.

“Nothing,” Jane insisted, far too brightly.

“You are plotting, Foster. Don’t think for one second I’m not on to you; because I totally am,” she warned with a pair of forked fingers from her eyes to the scientist’s. “Watching you.”

“Well, watch me to the car,” she said with a smile. “I’m meeting an old colleague for brunch.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed further. If there was one thing Dr. Jane Foster hated more than unsubstantiated claims it was her old colleagues. Before the attacks on New York and London, there had not been a single colleague at Culver University (or any established university) willing to give her the time of day; her work was a joke, to the point that not even the undergrads wanted their resumes tainted with her name. After the undeniable proof that an Einstein-Rosen Bridge more than just theoretical, they had all come crawling to her, simpering and smiling. Jane loved nothing more than watching Darcy shut them down in her most brutal and heartless manner.

“Which colleague?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jane said with what looked like a practiced air of indifference. “See me to the car.”

“You know the way. I don’t need to hold your hand.”

“Darcy, I need to give you some details on the project I’m working on, and I can’t hang around here to do it or I’ll be late. We are walking, I am talking, you are writing this down,” Jane instructed, grabbing a purse off the hook by the door and shoving the younger women out of the lab.

“Ow, has Thor’s super-strength rubbed off on you or something?”

With a roll of her eyes, Jane pushed her again. “Just get moving,” she instructed and started rattling off details of the computer program she was running, pausing only to press the button for the elevator and to make sure Darcy was taking accurate notes on what she needed to do if the program ran to completion while she was at brunch.

Darcy was so occupied taking notes, she didn’t notice that Jane pressed another button in addition to the garage level; she didn’t notice Jane’s secret smile as the elevator gave a ‘ding’ and the doors slid open; she didn’t notice that Jane did not step from the elevator until the doors started to close, leaving Darcy behind. She didn’t notice, until she looked up from her tablet and saw the guard looking bemused at her presence.

“She said she’d get you here one way or another,” the man said with a shake of his head. “Barnes is that way.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder indicating a wide corridor.

Fuck my life, Darcy groaned internally, finally giving in and marching herself down to meet what, supposedly, was her destiny.

The hallway was wide and nowhere near as long as she expected. It was nothing like any part of the Tower she had yet seen, more industrial wasteland than pristine model of the future. The walls held no art and were little more than steel studs in some places. The ceiling was so high Darcy suspected it was at least twelve feet tall; lights hung from long reinforced cables. The entire place looked eerily incomplete, as if the workmen had fled, abandoning the project. It only got worse. At the end of the hallway was a clear wall of material so thick it distorted the image of the man behind it. There was no mistaking what this place was: A prison.

The man inside, however, seemed nothing but relaxed and perhaps even content. He smiled when she came into view, standing and meeting her at the wall. He offered no greeting, leaving the introduction to her, but it was all too off-putting for Darcy to find anything even close to appropriate.

When it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything, the asshole hobo finally spoke, his voice distorted through the speakers and three inches of what might possibly have been transparent aluminum, “I knew you couldn’t stay away.”

His voice might have been altered, but there was no mistaking that smug tone. She glared at him, though even with that irritating arrogance she was having rather a difficult time of it. He looked nothing like the man she last saw being led away by Happy’s guards. That man had been a bum, ragged and filthy, hair greasy and limp beneath a baseball cap, face lost beneath a few months’ worth of beard. This man was far closer to the one from Jane’s WWII news footage, with a clean, handsome face, smooth and smiling. His clothes were the sort she had seen the guards wearing on mandatory gym days – generic pants and Stark Industries t-shirts. He made them look good.

“I see you looking,” he called.

“You see me glaring,” she corrected.

“I see you’re here.”

“Not really by choice. My therapist thought I had to confront my nightmares,” she said baldly, never mind that Jane wasn’t officially her therapist, but she totally counted. “Now that I’ve seen you looking like a lame trainee, I can go and live a life free of my fear of asshole hobos.”

“Aw, that hurts,” he moaned, hand flying to his chest as if she had wounded him.

She stopped mid-turn, all thoughts of leaving arrested by the sight of his arm. It was a prosthetic, but nothing like she had ever seen. This was no forked hook like that trucker in Adventures in Babysitting or some so-obviously fake plastic monstrosity like her Uncle Paul had worn after losing his hand to diabetes. This was the stuff of Tony’s dreams, perfectly fitted plates creating a fully-articulated and functional arm.

“I see you admiring my arm,” he commented, almost hesitantly.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s some arm.”

“You should see what I can do with it.” His voice had dropped low and deep, forcing something to tighten at the pit of her stomach. That tone held promises.

She pushed images from her brain of that metal hand against her skin. He might not be a hobo, but he was still an asshole. She refused to think naughty, sexy thoughts about the man who had put a gun in her face. When she looked up from that hand on his chest, she saw his eyes studying her. She did what she always did when nervous, she made a joke. “Yeah, you’re one-handed pushup record must be unbeatable.”

The man laughed. “I was thinking more my skills at Thumb Wars.”

It took every ounce of her will power not to laugh.

Chapter Text

Jane met her at the door to the apartment, her brunch with an old colleague apparently a complete ruse. Her smile was enormous, eyes round. She gripped Darcy’s shoulders and gave her an expectant shake. “Well?”

“He’s an asshole.”

“What? No, Darcy, really?”

“No, not really,” she groaned and fell face first onto the couch, moaning her complaints into the cushions. “Amm fphsmsmm sxxmmnn vddrrgmtrss lvgdrd.”

“What?”

“Darcy says her soulmate is both physically appealing and in possession of a sharp wit, and that his arm is of …metal?” Thor frowned as he spoke, unsure he had accurately translated the cushion-speak. “I know not what this phrase means.”

“It means he has a metal arm,” Darcy said as she rolled over. “Literally, an arm of metal. It is so cool and gorgeous and shiny and I just want to lick it.”

“That was more information than anyone ever needs,” Jane informed her. “But that’s all good, though, isn’t it? He’s handsome and funny and you really like his arm.”

“Indeed, this is splendid news,” Thor agreed. “Yet you seem despondent to learn that you admire his many qualities.”

“Because,” Darcy groaned. “I don’t want to like him. I want to hate him on principle. This whole soulmark thing is stupid, no offense to your mom or anything, but I don’t want to like someone just because this tattoo told me I had to.” She sat up and pouted a bit more.

“I understand your reluctance,” the demi-god said with earnest sympathy. “Many on Asgard struggle with the soulmark and those to whom they are directed. It leads to much strife and discord.”

Darcy interrupted, “See, it’s a horrible idea. Make it go away.”

“Until,” Thor persisted, “they realize the truth: That the mark cannot force anyone to love where it is not bound to happen already. The mark is merely a guide, Darcy, much like the signs along the street. The mark shows the way. It is your choice to follow where it leads.”

She frowned and pouted and glared and finally understood. “Well, then I choose to ignore it.”

“You can try,” Thor said with a knowing smile.

And try she did. The next day, Darcy moved back into her apartment with all the usual lies mixed into her apology. Dave was understanding as always, offering her love with a side helping of questioning that immediately made her feel like an asshole. He was always so unsure of them and her retreat into the Tower had not helped in the slightest. Still, she liked him, and they fit together.

“I made plans to have lunch with a friend Saturday,” Dave said. “I didn’t know when you’d be back. You can come, if you want. I’m sure they’d love you.”

“Nah, it’s cool. I’d hate to third wheel.”

“More like fourth wheel,” he corrected. “Vin is bringing his cousin, Sal, along. First time in the city and wants to see all the sights.”

“Well, then I’m in!” she smiled. “I’ve been here for months and still haven’t seen anything remotely touristy. I want a spikey, foam Statue of Liberty hat!”

He smiled. Somehow her eagerness had settled his uncertainty a bit, and he was more relaxed. She knew it was strange that she moved out for a week, that she didn’t talk about her work or friends like other girlfriends would. Other girlfriends didn’t have thirty-two nondisclosure agreements binding their tongues and leaving them scrambling to remember the lies she’d told when they first met. It was pretty obvious why everyone she knew from work dated inside their own set; dating in the real world was too complicated for people like her.

Still, she made the best of it, and Dave was game.

“Saturday, 11:30. You won’t forget?”

“Nope, I want that foam hat,” she grinned and kissed him.

She was drawing a circle around Saturday in her calendar the next morning when a shadow fell over her.

“Someone looks happy.”

Darcy went rigid at the voice, all too familiar despite having heard it on only two occasions.

“Is this seat taken?”

“Oh, god, when did they let you out?” Darcy groaned and turned away as the asshole non-hobo dropped into a chair opposite her.

“Well, good morning to you, too, sweetheart.” He offered a winning smile, the perfect combination of boyish and suggestive.

“Seriously, there are like a thousand people working in this building,” Darcy observed. “Why are you bothering me?”

He considered the question a moment. “I sort of know you.”

“Do not.”

“You aren’t repulsed by my arm.”

“Am so.”

He smiled again. “You’re gorgeous even when you lie.”

“Am not. Wait, what?”

“You’re lying about my arm. I know you don’t mind it. In fact,” he said, leaning in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I think you quite like it.”

“You are delusional. The company shrink is on the 56^th floor. Go there now.”

“Already have a shrink,” he commented conversationally. “POW, brainwashed and shell-shocked. I have a lot to work out.”

She responded without meaning to, his easy declaration of his ills drawing from her. “PTSD.”

“Hm?”

“They call it PTSD now, not shell-shock. They haven’t called it shell-shock for like thirty years.”

“Ah, well I was on ice. I haven’t been able to keep up with some of these newfangled phrases,” he said with a shrug.

“Newfangled?” She raised an eyebrow at him in disbelief. “Did you seriously just say newfangled? Who the hell uses such an oldfangled word?”

“Geezers like me, obviously.” He offered that smile again, leaning back in his chair and waiting for her to argue some more. She had already managed to get sucked into a conversation without meaning to; she refused to continue.

“Goodbye, granddad.” She stood, collecting her coffee and walking away. Not too bad an exit, if she did say so herself. Or at least it would have been, if tall, dark and asshole hadn’t slid from his chair and started following her like a stealthy specter of annoyance.

“You’re not even going to ask my name?” he asked as the door to the elevators closed on them.

Darcy managed to hold off on her answer long enough to reach the R&D floor. Perhaps he thought she was considering giving it, but she replied, “Nope.”

“But I know yours,” he commented, again chasing her down the hall. “It’s hardly fair.”

“Never did care much about fair and square. You go right on knowing. It don’t bother me none,” she said, pushing through the door to the lab and standing in his path when he tried to enter. “No. This is work. You do not come in. There is sensitive and important science happening in here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he offered a precise and only half-mocking salute. “I’ll just wait right out here.”

“Go. Away. Asshole.”

He leaned in and grinned at her. “Maybe I would if you asked my name.”

She narrowed her eyes at him considering the two options. “Not worth it,” she decided and slammed the door.

The sound startled Jane from her spot at the computer. She turned, brows pulled together in concern. “What was that?”

“Just my sassy, sexy shadow,” Darcy groused, throwing her bag and coat onto a chair with far more force than was necessary.

“Your soulmate?” the woman squealed and hurried to the door.

“No! Do not call him that, and do not encourage him!” Darcy hissed and pulled the woman farther into the lab.

“Okay, okay, fine,” she agreed. “Does he look anything like he did in those old reels?”

Darcy refused to dignify the question with an answer, if only because the reply would have been a ‘dear, god, yes!’ and she would not allow Jane to see how hot she thought Barnes was. And he was hot. Why did he have to be so hot? She liked it better when he was a hobo, at least then she could be physically repulsed by him and call it a day, but now every inch of her just wanted to throw herself at him, lick his arm and chest and feel those delicious thighs.

“I’m taking Saturday off,” Darcy told her. “Dave’s friend is taking his cousin on a tour. We’re tagging along.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “I’m glad you found him.” She sounded sincere enough, but, given how she kept pushing Darcy toward Barnes, she found it hard to believe that her friend-boss was legitimately happy that Darcy and Dave were together. And twenty minutes later, her suspicions were confirmed when Jane asked, “What does Dave think you do?”

“This,” Darcy said, waving to her desk covered in Janes notes and spreadsheets. “Just not so fancy and not involving anything remotely Starkish or Avengery.”

“Must be hard,” she said considerately, “having to lie all the time.”

“Very,” she agreed. “But if we can hit the year mark, I’m allowed to tell him the truth if he signs about fifteen NDAs.”

“How long have you two been together?”

“Five months.”

“Quite a ways to go, then.”

“Yes, it is.”

Jane said nothing, just typed away at her computer; the keys clacking out a message that said all the things their conversation had implied – Dave is wrong for you, he’s too insecure, you deserve a partner who can share in your life, he will never understand, he will never forgive you for lying. Really, Jane had nothing to do with the messages she heard; it was all in hear head, all the fears and frustrations that filled her every time she went home to him. He was wonderful, but he wasn’t right for her. He worked for now… sort of.

But the alternative was still lurking outside the lab, all tall, dark and mandatory, and she’d be damned if she was going to have her love life dictated to her. It was hard enough being so confined by the nature of her work and the legal agreements she had signed to be able to do said work.

To hell with that, she said and forced thoughts of everything but data from her head.

Work at least made sense. There was order to it, structure and a deceptive simplicity. The maddeningly complicated equations and theories could be broken down into segments so neat and tidy that it made Darcy happy just looking at them. As she typed, calm took over and she entered a gloriously zen-like state. It took JARVIS fifteen minutes to rouse her from it.

“Miss Lewis?”

“Hm? Yeah, J?”

“Miss Lewis, Dave has twice called your phone. He is now attempting to call via the dummy line installed for your office,” the butler informed her. “Shall I put him through?”

“Yes, J. Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat and looking around to find Jane gone.

“Hey, Darcy?” Dave’s voice came through the speakers, awkward and apologetic.

“Yeah, hi.”

“Sorry to bother you at work,” he said. “Vin’s come into town early. We’re heading out for dinner tonight. Wasn’t sure if you’d want to join us.” His words hung in the air, the constant question in his voice.

Darcy checked the clock on her phone, noting the two missed calls as she did. Six o’clock. She had worked through lunch and was only just realizing how hungry she was. “Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll meet you at the apartment. I want to change out of work clothes.”

“That’s great,” he sighed. “I’ll see you soon. Love you.”

She hummed a noise of pleasure but couldn’t return the sentiment, not with the doubts she still had floating through her head. Dave hung up while she decided how best to respond.

“Shall I have a car brought around for you?” JARVIS offered.

“No, J, I’ll take the subway,” she sighed. “I don’t know how I’d explain having a private car.”

“That would be rather awkward,” he agreed.

Darcy sighed, jotted a message to Jane on a hot pink sticky note and slapped it on the woman’s computer screen before leaving the lab. As the door slide shut behind her, an irritatingly familiar voice spoke from beside her as she walked down the corridor.

“Someone is diligent.”

“Are you still here?” Darcy groaned. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Nope. Therapy session isn’t until tomorrow,” Barnes replied as he shoved his hands into his pockets and moved along the corridor with her. “And they won’t let me near the gym to train, so all I have is you.”

“Well, aren’t you just lame, then.”

“So, let’s have dinner and make it a date,” he suggested, leaning against the polished wall of the elevator. “You can tell me all about your science.”

“No.”

“I can tell you all about my assassinations.”

“No.”

“Some of them were really impressive. I’m told I shot a president,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I believe it because I’m quite good.”

“Bully for you,” she mumbled, quite eager to be rid of him.

“Also told that I killed Howard Stark,” he said, the smile falling from his face. “Hope that one isn’t true. Howard was a cocky prick, but I liked him.”

She sighed, drawn into the conversation by the melancholy slant of his shoulders. “Dude, I really don’t need your resume. I’m just trying to get home to my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah, boyfriend.”

That melancholy slant grew larger, falling into full despondence. “Oh.”

“Told you I wasn’t interested.” She shrugged, moving to exit the elevator.

His hand darted out to take hers, the cool metal of his fingers giving her a chill. “Use the main entrance. I wasn’t the only one watching this place, and I’d hate for someone much more evil than me to hold a gun to your head.”

“Aren’t you a sweetie,” she commented, the hard bite of her sarcasm seriously dulled by his concern.

He released her hand and let her leave the elevator, smiling when she moved toward the lobby and the main entrance.

Chapter Text

Darcy was more than a little surprised that she made it all the way to her apartment without Barnes popping out of a shadow. It would have fit his MO to tail her to see if she really did have a boyfriend as she claimed. If he had, he would have seen Dave, sweet Dave, meet her at the door with a kiss.

“You came,” he said, too earnest to hide his surprise. It galled her to think what all the secrets she kept were doing to him.

Forcing a smile, she replied, “Said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but you tend to get caught up.” The ever-present question that he refused to vocalize was there for her to hear. She was beginning to wonder if, like the messages sent out by Jane’s typing fingers, that unspoken question was actually a product of her guilt.

She offered an apologetic shrug. “New guy being a pain. No idea what he’s there for, but he thinks he’s hot stuff and has been following me around trying to prove it. Jackass.”

Dave nodded. This was how she always talked about work, vague and off-hand remarks, just enough detail to make him think it truth without telling him too much. It had worked for the first month, like hiding her soulmark beneath long sleeves, but after five, just as with the soulmark, he had realized just how much she was hiding.

“What’s the new guy’s name?” he asked casually, though she knew he was digging for information. “Maybe I’ve heard of him.”

“Doubtful, he’s not as good as he thinks he is,” she brushed it off, moving into the bedroom to shed her work clothes in favor of something more fitting her style. “So where are we meeting them?”

“Best Pizza. Vin wants to try each and every pizza place on a top ten list he found online,” Dave smiled and shook his head; he’d lived in NYC long enough to not care about such lists. “He’s only here for three days, so be prepared for lots of leftover pizza for breakfast and lunch.”

“You make it sound like a chore! Bring on the pizza!” Darcy cried and hurried from the bedroom. “Presentable?” She twirled around, showing off her Captain America t-shirt – a freebie cast-off from the PR department – and the chunky, oversized cardigan Thor had knit for her last Yule; it was lopsided and ill-fitting, but she loved it.

“Always,” he smiled and held the door for her.

Vin met them on the sidewalk outside the subway exit. He was a short, dark-haired man in his late twenties with a scattering of freckles across his nose and bright blue eyes behind a pair of wire-framed glasses. His cousin, Sal, to Darcy’s surprise, was a young woman of similar qualities, though on her the look was beautifully geeky and not straight-up dorky as it was on Vin. Dave smiled and offered a greeting to them both, one that made Sal blush, though Darcy had no idea why.

The pizza lived up to its name, being among the best she had yet to eat in NYC. The conversation considerably less so; she held up her end the best she could, but finally resorted to asking questions instead of answering with her standard NDA-approved responses. She was struck by the contrast between this awkward inability to speak and Barnes being able to rattle off a list of assassinations he may or may not have taken part in during his long life as a POW. The way Sal kept eyeing Dave didn’t help any either, nor did the way he kept stealing glances at his friend’s cousin.

“Oh, so is that the smooth pickup line he used on you?” Vin asked with a grin as he gestured to Darcy’s arm.

The flush of cheap beer and jealousy had caused Darcy to shed her cardigan, leaving her forearm visible to the table and to Dave for the first time in five months. She looked down at the scrawling cursive and hurriedly pulled her sweater back on. “No, not so much.”

“We, uh, we don’t match,” Dave shifted in his seat. “But that doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agreed too quickly and rather defensively; they all noticed. Even Dave noticed.

“Okay,” Vin hedged, eyes darting apologetically between them. “Uh, so what’s there to do in this town on a Thursday night?”

“Movie? There’s an arthouse place just around the corner that shows the worst films you’ve ever seen. Their in-depth look at Manos Hand of Fate was killer,” Dave offered with a smile. “The owner is being ironic as hell and playing the Captain America films.”

“Perfect!” his friend cried. “Let’s go.”

Darcy forced a smile, too guilty for leaving him for a week to voice her absolute horror at the idea. How could she explain her reasons without breaking five of the thirty-two NDAs? They couldn’t understand not wanting a reminder of work when none of them knew what her work actually was. Seeing how Dave and Sal were eyeing one another did nothing to keep her voicing her displeasure. So she just followed along. She sat between Vin and Dave, all too aware of Sal on her boyfriend’s other side, of how he leaned closer to the other girl than to her, of how he whispered to her and not to Darcy in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” Vin whispered to her. “If I’d known they were going to be like this, I would never have invited Sal along.”

“No worries,” Darcy replied and turned her attention to the movie, which did nothing to help because it was a dramatic scene with Captain America saving the life of his friend, a man too like Bucky Barnes to be a coincidence. “You know, I think I’m going to head home. It’s been a long day and I am just not up for this kind of movie right now.”

Dave barely acknowledged her departure. She considered calling him out on it, waiting in the aisle until he looked to her and gave her a proper ‘goodbye’, but it wasn’t worth disturbing others over. Besides, she had camped out at Jane’s place for a week without giving him a proper explanation; she absolutely didn’t deserve anything more.

Not everyone would agree with her, as the quiet comment informed her as she stalked up the aisle. “What an asshole,” said the hushed voice.

Darcy flinched, expecting it to be Barnes, but another stealthy specter pulled itself from the darkness, this one generally more welcome to her. His presence tonight was odd, though. She eyed the blond man with something bordering on accusation as he stood.  “Clint, why are you here?”

The archer shrugged and pulled a suspiciously shaped bag from the floor as he joined her in the aisle “Got the night off, wanted to see a movie.”

She snorted her disbelief. “Try again.”

“Maybe I was asked to keep an eye on you.”

“By whom?”

“Concerned parties,” he offered and held the door for her. “Our mutual friend was worried you might be targeted as a means of getting into the Tower again, so he or she asked me to keep an eye on you. He or she did not specify in what capacity, so I figured if you’re breaking up with Dull Dave back there I could help you get shitfaced.”

Darcy frowned her displeasure at the idea of needing a chaperone and at his presumption, however accurate it might turn out to be. Still the idea of getting plastered did have its merits. “Why not?”

“That’s my girl!” Clint cried and pulled her down the sidewalk to a bar he had likely scoped out and assessed for threats earlier.

oOo

Darcy woke up half-dressed in her bed feeling as if someone had replaced her tongue with old carpeting. The sun in her window and the clock by the bed told her it was late, like one in the afternoon late. She groaned and pushed the pillow over her head, feeling the poke of paper against her cheek as she did.

Scowling, she shoved her glasses onto her face and squinted at the note.

‘Darcy, I don’t think this is working. I’ll be back later to talk about it. –Dave.’

So Clint had been right.

She knew she ought to be furious, indignant or at least hurt at being dumped via sticky note, but her head and torso ached too much to be bothered. She managed to swallow a few pain killers and a glass of water before falling back into the bed for another hour.

When she woke again, the pain in her head had gone down. The pain in her abdomen was still there.

“Great,” she groaned as she imagined what sort of bruises she had managed to give herself while stumbling around the city drunk.

She hauled herself from the bed, taking her time in reaching the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, knowing full well that her imagination could never do the reality justice. The reflection that met her was, sadly, all too common after a night of too many drinks, but the ink on her stomach was new. Seeing the tattoo, she knew just who was to blame.

“Dammit, Clint!” she shouted.

“What?” the man’s voice came echoing from the air duct in the ceiling. Again, an all too common occurrence.

“Bow & arrow? Really?”

“You thought it was a great idea,” he justified.

“After how many shots of tequila? You know that any decision I make after more than three shots is to be shut down immediately. We had a deal, Barton!”

“Normally, yes,” he said, still refusing to descend from the ceiling. “But this was a really good idea, and I was not about to argue with it.”

“Asshole,” she muttered and shuffled into the bathroom, hoping a shower would make her feel marginally closer to human. She wanted to scrub the tattoo away, but the skin was far too tender. She had to settle for glaring her anger down at it instead. It was a poor substitute, but it was the best she could hope for in her present condition.

“Darcy,” Dave called. “Are you still home?”

“Yeah,” she answered, hurrying to finish her shower and look marginally human for the coming discussion.

“I’m in the kitchen.”

The apartment was tiny, barely six hundred square feet, so the announcement was pretty much a moot one; each room melded with the next in an awkward floor plan that could only work in New York City. Coupled with the fact that Dave had not felt the need to declare his location since the first week they lived together and Darcy knew this was going to be the end.

“I’ll be right out,” she said, throwing on a bathrobe and wrapping her hair in a towel. She knew she should probably put clothes on, but it was just too much work.

“I’m surprised you’re up,” he commented when she shuffled out into the kitchen. He had a mug in one hand and a sheet of newspaper in the other. A box sat on the counter, already labelled ‘Kitchen stuff’.

“Moving out,” she observed.

“Ah, uh, about that,” he looked away, embarrassed flush taking over his face.

“You moving in with Sal?”

He shook his head. “No,” he insisted, admitting after an agonized pause, “not yet.”

“Thought so.”

“Darcy, please…” He shoved the mug into the box, turning to her, but looking away just as quickly. “I can’t really explain it. I just… I feel comfortable with her in a way I never did with you. I’m always on edge, waiting for you to disappear for a week or for good. I love you, you know I do, but we never were right.” He sighed, deflating into a chair and daring to look at her again. “And all the secrets you keep. That guy from last night – he said he works with you, but you never mentioned him. You never mention anyone. I don’t know what you do or why it’s such a secret, but I need more.”

She nodded, waiting for the sting of rejection to hit her, but it didn’t come. It hurt more when her roommate moved out before mid-terms freshman year, taking her favorite boots with her. This barely registered.

“Please, say something,” he said, that question in his voice as omnipresent as it always was, begging to be let in. So it hadn’t been her guilty conscience making him sound that way.

“You two looked good together,” she commented. “I’m guessing your words were right, too.”

“Yeah, they were, but you know I don’t put any stock in that stuff. It’s nice to have a confirmation from on high, but even without that we clicked.”

“No big. I’ll head to work so you can pack up without me in your way making things awkward,” she paused at the door, looking back at him, thought of a parting wish for love and luck on her lips. Instead, she said, “Please don’t take any of the stuff my mom gave me. She’ll pitch a fit and hunt you down if I don’t give that tin back next time she comes to visit.”

He offered a wan smile. “Yeah, I remember her threat.”

“Cool. I’ll leave you to it.”

In her bedroom, she found a clean pair of slacks and a blouse, but abandoned them in favor of a pair of jeans and a comfy t-shirt; she only dressed like a professional to fool Dave into believing she worked in a normal office setting. No sense in keeping that ruse up any longer.

With a half-hearted hug, they parted ways. Darcy headed out the door, hoping he wouldn’t turn out to be a total jerk and break her stuff while she was gone.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Clint promised from the vent above.

“Thanks, bro.”

Chapter Text

Ten hours after leaving for work, Darcy returned to her dark, empty apartment. She had gotten used to coming home to lights and noise, the TV or stereo making up for the quiet of the lab, Dave bustling around trying to find room for things there really was no place for, but he had so desperately wanted to make her apartment his home. That really ought to have been a clue, that after three months of struggling to find room for him, she had been unwilling to even consider finding a place that was theirs. She had allowed him to squeeze into her apartment and her life as best he could, a temporary fix not worth altering her routine for.  

Now he was gone, and she was back to the old way, which was not all that dissimilar than that newer way. 

The dark was banished with the flip a switch, the quiet when she plugged her phone into the speakers. She moved her stuff back where it belonged, filling the holes she had found for his things, and wiping away dust with her sleeve. It took less than an hour to make it appear as if Dave had never existed at all. She fell into bed after a dinner of leftover pizza, sleeping soundly for the first time in three months after finally being able to relax at home; she hadn't realized how tense she had been trying to maintain the illusion of having a normal job and life, but now that she had, she never wanted to go back to that newer way of lies and constant anxiety. 

She didn't stir until her alarm sounded at the ungodly hour of five the next morning, three solid hours before it normally did.  

“Whadahell?” she groaned and slapped at the clock screeching on her bedside table.  

In the silence that followed her locating the snooze button, a voice informed her, “You snore.” 

At the quiet comment, Darcy shot up in bed, panicked hands flying to the table, fumbling as she simultaneously attempted to find the lamp, her glasses and her pepper spray. 

“I see we have a lot of work ahead of us,” the intruder said with a put upon sigh. 

It was a woman; Darcy could tell that much. 

The overhead light turned on, momentarily blinding her. She felt the glasses against her fingers and hurriedly shoved them onto her face, turning to the wall where the light switch was and where she knew the intruder ought to be. There was no one.  

“Over here,” the woman sighed again, the voice coming from directly beside her.  

Darcy squawked and lept from her bed, falling to the floor and dragging the comforter along with her. Before she was completely buried in the electric blue patchwork quilt, she managed to catch a glimpse of leather jacket and red hair. Even panicked and half awake, Darcy was able to recognize the assassin she had idolized since the Battle of New York.  

Her words came out muffled and filled with awe, “The Black Widow?” 

“Only when I'm on duty,” the woman replied, humor in her voice. 

"So you're not here to kill me?” she surmised. “Kinda disappointed.” 

“You don't rate my level yet.” 

In the time it took to untangle herself from the comforter, Darcy had managed to pull a single, seemingly-important detail from the assassin’s statement. She looked up at the woman as she stood across the bed in her tiny apartment, arms crossed and eyebrow quirked. “Yet?” 

A smile pulled at the corner of the woman's mouth. “Get dressed. Your training starts today.” 

“Training for what?” she asked even as she scrambled to find her yoga pants and only sports bra. “Are you going to teach me to strangle a man with my thighs? Because that would be kind of awesome. Terrifying, but awesome.” 

“Self-defense training,” the woman clarified. “Barton was not impressed by the team Happy hired for the job. He’s fond of you, and would rather you not be killed while learning to protect yourself.” 

Darcy nodded, remembering the man’s muttered comments the day Barnes had attacked her. Again she was disappointed, this time at the prospect of humiliating herself in front of a woman she adored for her ability to kickass while still looking as if she stepped off the page of a glossy magazine. “So what are we doing?” 

“Running. Best way to avoid danger is to be able to out run it.”  

“That is just lame,” she groaned, throwing her sleeping shirt off and hissing at the twinge the tattoo still brought her when she lifted her arm too high.  

“Barton's idea,” the woman stated as she eyed the black ink. 

Darcy snorted. “What gave it away?” 

The bow and arrow punctuating either end of the thick, three-inch ampersand made it a rhetorical question, but the woman answered anyway. “Placement. That,” she pointed at the small upper loop of the ampersand, “is one of the only places I could shoot you and not hit a vital organ. Here or here,” she pointed to the larger lower loop and the curve of the bow, “you'd drop like a stone and bleed out in five minutes.” 

“So will there be extensive anatomy lessons involved in this training? Because memorization was never my strong suite.” Terror always brought out her snark. 

The woman offered a smile. “You'll learn what you need to survive.” 

That first lesson all she learned was that she was crap at running. The run itself was excruciating. The embarrassment was somehow worse. Darcy managed to trip on every uneven crack in the sidewalk from her apartment and around three city blocks, which basically meant she tripped every five seconds. Three times she stumbled enough to fall, once into a pile of dirty laundry bags outside a rather fancy hotel; the men throwing the bags into a laundry truck gave her a snooty look, because naturally such a posh establishment would even hire elitist muscle. Darcy offered them a rude gesture and shouted even ruder words, despite being incapable of sucking in a breath.  

“You should learn to pick your battles,” her trainer advised, her voice unwavering as her lungs brought in a steady supply of oxygen. 

Darcy, meanwhile, gasped for enough air to offer a retort, but only succeeded in wheezing at the woman.  

“I think that’s enough for today. I’ve seen your starting point,” she commented, her green eyes looking the younger woman up and down as she swayed on her feet, hands braced on her knees, sweat pouring down her face and darkening her shirt. “Just as I thought, we have a long way to go.” 

“Hate. You. So. Much,” Darcy managed to wheeze.  

“Give it a week and then see how much you hate me.” She offered an enigmatic smile, one that filled Darcy with icy fear and made her want to vomit. Actually, it might be the stomach cramp that made her want to vomit, but having the Black Widow turn her sights on you definitely inspired a vomit-worthy level of terror.  

The return to her apartment was slower even than the first leg of the run, if such a thing were even possible. Darcy had never been particularly athletic, but even she knew sub-dirt speed was not going to get her away from any bad guy save an eighty-year-old mugger chasing after her via walker with an air tank in tow. She was about to say as much, but became transfixed watching the master assassin pick the locks to her apartment faster than she had ever managed to unlock them properly.  

Seeing the look of awe on her face, the woman smiled. “I’ll teach you if you can manage a nine-minute mile.” 

Darcy’s jaw fell as she did, dropping to the kitchen linoleum and basking in the chill it provided. “I think I’ll die of a heart attack before then. My dying wish will be to learn to pick locks.” 

“When you really are on your death bed, I doubt that will be your dying wish.” 

“True,” she agreed. “Mocha caramel latte with extra whipped cream fed to me by a gorgeous man with perfect abs.” 

“That’s more like it,” the woman agreed, holding a glass of water for her to take. She did not lean down to give it to her but instead made Darcy stand to retrieve it. “Stretch.” 

“Ugh.” 

With a graceless shove, Darcy found herself halfway toward Downward Dog, cringing at the pain she felt stabbing through every muscle of her body.  

“So, Miss I’m-Not-Here-To-Kill-You-But-Really-I-Am, am I allowed you call you Natasha or should I call you Coach?” Darcy asked between stretches.  

“Natasha is fine,” the assassin conceded, and Darcy had to fight to keep the squeal of glee inside. “And I will see you again tomorrow morning barring unnatural disaster.” 

“Really?” Darcy wasn’t sure if she was thrilled or terrified at the prospect.  

“Be ready at five or it’s an extra twenty minutes,” Natasha warned.  

“Yes, Coach!” Her default snark returning as the woman raised a terrifyingly perfect eyebrow. God of Thunder, how did she make so tiny a gesture so frightening? 

“Use the main entrance to the Tower from now on,” the woman said as she left. 

As soon as the door closed behind the assassin, Darcy collapsed back onto the kitchen floor. “Ow.” 

She closed her eyes and waited for the pain to subside, but, after thirty minutes of doing nothing more vigorous than breathing, she realized it wasn’t going anywhere. With a grunt, she rose and shuffled to the shower, too sore and exhausted to even lift her feet from the floor; the effort it took to step up and over the side of the bathtub was more than she thought she had in her, but she managed.  

An hour later, Darcy limped into work via the main entrance, as per Natasha’s orders. While she thrilled at the ability to address such a woman by her first name, she kind of hated the assassin right now. She hated Clint for asking the woman to train her. She hated Happy for insisting that civilians like her would need training. Most of all, she hated the man who brought about the need for training in the first place.  

Given the state of her luck as of late, she expected him to be the first thing she saw inside Avengers Tower, but the man was nowhere in sight.  

She made her way through the lobby to the fantastic café with a mile-long line. When she reached the counter, placed her order and gave her name, Tanesha’s eyebrows shot up as she eyed her as if seeing her for the first time. Darcy was on good terms with the woman, tipping well and being overly pleasant to make up for how rude the other customers generally were during the morning rush, so the way the Barista was studying her was rather disconcerting. Then she declined Darcy’s money. 

“Nope, already paid for,” Tanesha insisted with a huge smile.  

“Oookay,” Darcy said, frowning as she moved aside and waited. She watched as the crew assembled her drink, picking up a cardboard sleeve for her cup not from the stack near the lids but from beside the cash register.  

She studied the cup and the sleeve with distrust as she took it from the smiling employee, who, like Tanesha, eyed her openly and offered a waggle of his eyebrows. Her name was written in a precise cursive she didn’t think existed outside of the worksheets used to teach it in third grade. She turned the cup around, looking for more information, for a name, but found none. Sure there had to be more to it, she slid the sleeve from her cup and looked inside. Her suspicions were correct, for written on the interior, in the same careful hand, was the message: ‘Sorry I held a gun to your head.’ 

The sleeve was thrown into the trash without pause. For a moment, Darcy considered tossing the coffee in with it, but she had seen the drink being made and knew it was untainted. Besides, it wasn’t coffee’s fault Barnes was a jackass.  

Darcy stomped with as much venom as her aching muscles allows to the elevator and through the corridor to the lab, chucking her bag at a chair and growling her displeasure at life in general. 

“Barnes again?” Jane questioned. 

“What gave it away?” 

“No one else annoys you enough to make that noise. Not even Barton,” she commented. 

“Barton is awesome in comparison.” 

Jane turned away from her computer, which alone was a rare and noteworthy occurrence. The woman was insanely smart. When she bothered looking up from her equations and managed a modicum of social skill, she was dangerously and terrifyingly accurate in her observations. At that moment, the full brunt of her intelligence was focused solely on Darcy. Not good.  

“What?” Darcy demanded.  

“Nothing,” the scientist said slowly. “You look… different.” 

“Exhausted is what I look,” she replied, limping to her computer.  

“No, actually, you look the opposite. You’ve been sort of edgy for a while now – a few months, really,” Jane said. “You seem more relaxed, like you can breathe and be yourself.” She nodded to the jeans and Elmo sweater the younger woman was wearing as further proof of her claims. 

Darcy really didn’t want to get into it. She knew that the moment Jane learned that she and Dave were calling it quits, that the words ‘Barnes’ and ‘soulmate’ would be thrown at her every hour until she finally gave in just to shut her boss up. As much as she wanted to avoid that scenario, she also wanted to avoid having Jane studying her like a specimen until the truth came out. Better to get it over with. Tear off the Band-Aid, make a clean break or one of those medical metaphors.  

“Dave moved out,” she admitted. “Yesterday morning.” 

Jane nodded her understanding. “I’m sorry. He seemed nice.” 

“He was nice. Still is. He didn’t break a single one of my mugs, and he even left that fancy coffee maker he bought. And the leftover pizza.”  

None of her exes had ever been so considerate. She pouted her disappointment that she hadn’t tried a little harder to love him. She had come close, but there was always the chasm she was forbidden to bridge. maybe she could have slipped some secrets to him, nothing damaging to the security of the Tower or the Avengers, but enough to let him in a little more. 

Next time , she promised herself.  Next time, I’ll let him in.  

She had no particular ‘him’ in mind. Certainly not tall, dark, and stalkery, but it was easy for her to imagine there being another ‘him’; Darcy never had problems picking up guys. Finding the right guy was work, but generally worth it. She was willing to put in the effort again, get dolled up and go out a little more often. Maybe even venture into the world of online dating, which seemed kind of sad but meant she could flirt while still in her jim-jams. A massive bonus in her mind.   

“So, you want to go out?” Jane offered.  

“What? You aren’t going to throw Barnes at me?”  

A withering glare met her sarcasm. “I’m not blind. I know he annoys you, and the way he hung around outside the lab the other day was bordering on creepy stalker stuff,” she paused and did her best to ignore Darcy’s cry of ‘hallelujah, she’s seen the light!’, “but I do think you should try to understand his perspective and give him some thought. Until you’re ready, though, I’ll happily accompany you for a night of margaritas.” 

“I do love a good margarita,” Darcy said. “Just us? No Thor.”  

“No Thor,” the woman promised.  

Chapter Text

Darcy’s breakup ritual included three things:

1.        mainlining margaritas
2.        getting a facial
3.        splurging on a pair of expensive and totally justified boots (or possibly heels if they met her high and exacting standards).

Jane, having seen her through three previous breakups, was well acquainted with the process and made it a point of giving her the rest of the week off – one day to recuperate from the hangover, another for the facial, and three more for the redness in her face to go down enough for her to be willing to go out in public for her boots.

She was ahead of schedule. It was currently Friday, day four of the sacred newly-single routine, Darcy was over the need for alcohol, her pores were perfect and now she was off to find some shoes. Three stores into her hunt for a pair of boots worthy of her, admittedly, not-so-broken heart, she ran into a guy. Literally. She was walking past a display window, head on sideways as she admired a pair of black and brown Wellingtons and walked square into a chest that could rival Thor’s.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” she muttered and looked up into the face of a model or possibly a demi-god – strong jaw, hazel eyes, narrow nose, cheekbones that could cut glass.

“I’m not complaining,” the man with the fine pectorals said with a grin. “Best thing that’s happened to me all day.”

She was certain she was blushing. “Uh, thanks.”

She moved aside only to have him follow suit. They each sidestepped in the opposite direction, again in unison and again blocking one another’s path.

“Are we dancing?” he questioned with an embarrassed chuckle.

“Not without some dinner and music,” she offered.

“Eight o’clock sound good to you?”

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely,” he insisted offering a hand in greeting. “Michael Flint, twenty-nine, actuarial consultant for Adams Investment Management. Divorced. Non-smoker. Love dogs. Anything else you need to know?”

She eyed him a moment, a week of Natasha’s training teaching her to be wary of overly eager strangers. “Maybe why a seemingly nice and employed guy is out on the street at two in the afternoon?”

“Mid-morning consultation ran late. I’m on my lunch break,” he held up the greasy bag of take-out food in his hand.

“Okay, then how about explaining how a guy can eat that kind of crap and still have pecs like a god?” she wondered aloud.

He laughed, the kind of strong belly laugh that Thor would approve of. “How about we make it a date, and you can see for yourself?”

“What the hell, why not?” she said and finally shook his hand. “Darcy Lewis, twenty-six, assistant to genius astrophysicist and recently single. Tolerater of dogs and lover of ferrets because they don’t get nearly enough love for how adorable they are.”

Michael offered a hopeful smile. “Really?”

“Yes. How about at that little Italian place across the street? Tomorrow?”

He followed her finger to see the deep red awning covering windows hand-painted with vines and great, round grapes. It was a cozy place she often stopped into when she managed to escape Jane’s science at a decent hour of the evening. The food was good, prices reasonable and the solitary waiter was about sixty years old and liked to burst into Italian love songs.

“Looks good. I will see you tomorrow at eight, Darcy Lewis.”

He smiled and took a careful step to his left as she did the same, glancing back at her as he hailed a cab and climbed in. As he drove off, eagerly talking into his cell phone, she couldn’t help the grin that broke out on her face. So she had a potential new ‘him’. This time, she’d make it work.

Turning from the street, she marched into the store and purchased the boots that had won her a date. And damn if they weren’t as fabulous as his pecs.

Michael was wonderful. He was every bit as considerate and charming as he had seemed on first meeting. He pulled out her chair, rebuffed all attempts she made to pay for dinner and did not spend the entire night boring her with details of his work, for which she was especially grateful; she had searched online to find out what in the hell actuarial actually meant. Google informed her that it was hella boring. Boring was good. Boring was normal.

“So, this ex-wife of yours? Is she the crazy sort who slashes tires?” Darcy inquired.

“Thankfully, no,” Michael said. “Amicable parting of ways. We married young, just out of college. We drifted apart, tried to patch things together the best we could, but she had lost interest. We both did, really. No children or pets to make things messy.”

“That’s a plus, I suppose,” she said, trying to figure out where to take the conversation from there. She was saved from awkward transitions by the gravelly strains of Vorrei coming from across the restaurant.

“Didn’t I promise you a dance?” he questioned, standing before she could answer.

In the tiny space between their table and those around them, she and Michael manage to find enough room to sway in time to the slow, soulful song. With her ear to his chest, she could hear the steady metronome of his heart, never once missing a beat or changing pace as they danced. He rested his chin on her head. They fit together.

Spurred by that pleasant thought and with a tongue loosened by the house red, she was more than happy to share a little more than she might have otherwise. Over the long dinner, she talked of Jane, her internship and how they had become friends after the craziness of hitting a seemingly-homeless dude in New Mexico; her tongue wasn’t so free that she told him about the Destroyer, SHIELD and that seemingly-homeless dude being a god from another planet. It felt good to share for once.

“So you work at Avengers Tower? I tried getting in there when it first opened as Stark Tower. That place looks amazing,” Michael said, eyes wide and voice envious.

“It so is. The cafeteria is like the most amazing restaurant you’ve ever seen. Calling it a cafeteria is kind of an insult, but that’s how it’s labelled on the ‘you are here’ maps. They have benihana. I love benihana. The pool is huge; they have kayaking the last Friday of every month for fun and team-building. There’s a sauna and a masseuse. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the gym most mornings, though not really by choice. There was a break-in a few weeks back, and now we’re forced to do mandatory fitness and self-defense training. It sucks, but I’m in absolute awe of my trainer.”

She smiled and took another sip of wine.

“A break-in?” he said, face pulling down in concern. “Like a heist or something? I did the actuarial assessment of that place when they interviewed me and the chance of a successful incursion was slim, under point-five percent chance of success.”

“Impressive memory. It wasn’t a heist. That would have been cool, but no. Just a crazy dude with a gun. They let the asshole stay just because he used to know one of the residents before he went all PTSD. I do not approve.”

“I can tell,” he commented, pausing to take a sip of the single glass of wine he had managed to make last the past two hours (versus Darcy’s three). She expected him to ask more about Barnes or the Tower, for details on how the break-in had succeeded where his calculations thought it impossible, but when he spoke again, he asked, “So, is your boss Jane Foster?”

“Totally! How did you know?”

He offered a modest shrug. “I did a bit of work for, OKH, one of the companies funding a telescope array down in South America. The lead scientist there went on and on about the Foster Theory and how he wished he had snatched the scientist up before she moved to SI. As far as I know, she’s the only genius astrophysicist on the payroll there. Though, I only memorized enough to try to win a second interview.”

“The boss-lady will be so happy to hear you’ve heard of her, and that Rodriguez down in Argentina regrets his hiring choices,” Darcy crowed for her boss.

The rest of their date did not disappoint. Michael drove them to her apartment and did not press for entrance, though she would have totally let him in if he so much as hinted that he was willing. He kissed her and arranged to meet for lunch Sunday.

That date went even better than the first, Darcy managing to stay sober and fully appreciate all the ways he made her smile and how her willingness to share brought a light to his hazel eyes. It was a brightness she had never seen in Dave’s, because she had never been willing to let him in; that was a mistake she was not going to repeat.

“I wish we could make this last all afternoon,” he sighed as they walked together down the blessedly empty sidewalk. “But I have to go.”

“It’s Sunday,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, and risk doesn’t take a day off. Neither do I.” He leaned down and took her mouth in a deep and glorious kiss, one that had her lacing her fingers into his honey blond hair.

“Do you have to leave?”

He smiled, and kissed the knuckles of the hand he had managed to untangle from his hair. “Coffee. Tomorrow morning. I’m told there is a café of epic quality in the lobby of Avengers Tower, and even I’m allowed in to sample it.”

“Making you one very lucky boy,” she agreed, but frowned after a beat.

“What is it?”

“I meet with my trainer at six and any time after I’m done the line is a mile long. The coffee is absolutely worth it, but queueing is not my idea of a fun date. Just saying.”

He scrunched his face as he considered her words. “Well, then I will just have to meet you for coffee before six. When do they open?”

“Five,” she said trying to keep her mouth from giving her the appearance of a dim-witted fish.

“See you tomorrow at five, then.”

And he did. She hurried in through the main entrance and saw him leaning on one of the tall tables in shorts and a t-shirt tight enough to have his godly pectorals on display for all to see. She looked considerably less smokin’ in her own workout clothes, mainly because she had not yet bothered to buy any proper, spysassin-approved gear and was still stumbling through her training in oversized t-shirts and the yoga pants she had gotten three Christmases ago. Still, Michael had nothing but adoration in his eyes as he looked at her.

“You are adorable, like one of your ferrets,” he said. “I would have ordered, but I wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

“Anything here is worthy of my attention,” she assured him and hurried to join the short line that was already forming despite the lunatic hour. As they approached the counter, she saw the bright smile on Tanesha’s face as she waved a cardboard sleeve at her. “Oh crap.”

“What is it?”

“Okay, so remember I mentioned that jackass PTSD guy who broke in and now lives here?” At his nod, she continued, “Well, he keeps flirting with me. I told him I’m not interested and have a boyfriend, but he keeps paying for my coffee.”

There was a look on his face that she could not place. She had anticipated anger, jealous, possibly sadness at having competition, but none of those appeared. Instead there was something bordering on happiness, almost satisfaction, but it made so little sense that she was certain she was reading it wrong.

“I can understand the fascination,” he said after what seemed like too long a pause.

“Not angry?”

“No, not angry.”

“Not jealous?”

“No. I’m very competitive. I’d like to see him try to take you away from me,” he grinned devilishly.

Chapter Text

“So that’s him?” 

Darcy scowled and turned to find Barnes leaning on a column, face pulled down in disappointment. “Yes, that’s him. And he was not happy to have you buying my coffee. So stop.” 

She spun and marched to the elevators, her sassy, sexy shadow following.  

“I don’t like him.” 

She snorted. “Why am I not surprised?” 

“His posture is wrong,” Barnes continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Predatory, like he’s hunting you.” 

“And you aren’t? FYI, another word for hunting is stalking.” 

“No, I am not. I came down for a coffee and to pay for yours,” he insisted defensively, adding quickly in response to her glare, “which I will now stop doing.” 

“Damn right you will,” she muttered and boarded the elevator, shifting to one side when he joined her. “Do you seriously have nothing better to do than stalk me? Did women think this was nice back in your day? Because nowadays stalking isn’t sexy. Just another FYI.” 

“Yeah, I got that from the sign you taped to the lab door.” He sighed, lifting a single shoulder in an apologetic shrug. “I’m bored.” 

“Plenty to do in New York,” she countered. 

“I know, but I can’t leave.” 

“What?” 

“They were nearly on me when I found you that night. If I didn’t get in, I would have been taken,” he informed her, a shiver running through his frame at the prospect. “I can’t do that to Steve, not again.” 

She had no reply and just stared at him until the ‘ding’ indicated they had arrived at her floor.  

When she stepped from the elevator, Barnes didn’t follow. She looked back at him, confused. “You’re not coming?” 

“No,” he shook his head. “Even if you actually wanted me to, I can’t.” 

Frowning her lack of understanding, she turned and hurried toward the gym where Natasha was waiting to torture her. 

“You’re late,” the woman said, never one to bother with pleasantries. 

“Tell it to Barnes. Oh, wait, you can’t because he’s being a weirdo,” Darcy said, throwing her arms up. “Seriously, he stalks me at work and on my lunch and coffee breaks, but he won’t stalk me to the gym? Is it because you’re here? If that’s the case, I would like to formally invite you to be my coffee, lunch, dinner and work partner for life.” 

Natasha shook her head as she pointed to the yoga mat and without preamble moved into the first poses of Sun Salutation. “Barnes can’t come here. JARVIS won’t let him.” 

“What?” 

“He’s restricted to Steve’s quarters to sleep, your R&D floor so they can examine his arm, the cafeteria to eat and one elevator to get to each floor. And the main lobby. I suspect he’s only allowed into the lobby because Stark is hoping he’ll finally get so bored that he’ll leave.” 

From Extended Mountain, Darcy stared at her. “Since when?” 

“Since he was let out of Banner’s test cage,” she replied. “Drop your shoulders; it deepens the stretch.” 

Darcy followed her instruction, dropping her shoulders away from her ears before bending forward and wrapping her hands around her ankles.  

“Why?” 

Natasha offered a raised eyebrow at the question. “Did you not read the files I worked so diligently to spill onto the internet? He killed Stark’s father. Stark is understandably displeased to have him here, but he’s smart enough to know he can’t kick him out without serious repercussions.” 

“So he’s in limbo? Unwelcome but no place to go?” she scowled deeper into her stretch, the sad reality of Barnes’ life hitting her. “He seriously has no one else to talk to but me.” 

“No one he knows for certain isn’t out to reclaim him,” Natasha said. “You got him into the building, so he knows you aren’t HYDRA. Anyone else here, even me, is a potential threat. Constant suspicion. It’s how we were trained.” 

“That is one sucky view on life, Romanoff.” 

“Yes, it is. But those of us who took it to heart are still alive.” 

Darcy threw her arms down. “Alright, I greeted the damn sun. Now what? Treadmill again?” 

“Weight training,” she said, that tiny, terrifying smile pulling at her mouth when her protégé groaned. “Your muscle definition is virtually non-existent. You have no hope of throwing a decent punch with a marshmallow backing it up. Let’s go.” 

She walked Darcy through setting the machines up, selecting an appropriate weight for her level (apparently zero pounds wasn’t an option), and adjusted her form as she pushed and pulled and pressed her way across the gym. By the time their session ended at seven, Darcy was lying boneless on a mat pretending that Worm was a viable yoga pose.  

Natasha threw a towel at her and held the water bottle just far enough from her reach that she would have to sit up to retrieve it. The woman was a dominatrix. She really was. 

“I don’t want to see your face for a week,” Darcy moaned.  

“You’re in luck.”  

After a long pull on the water, she asked, “Why?” 

“Mission. I’m going to join Steve in locations that are classified to do things that you are never to know about.” 

Darcy flopped back onto the mat. “I’ll still be lying here when you get back.” 

“I know you will because you will keep up this routine until I get back. One rest day per week. And only one.” 

“I hate you.” 

“I know,” she smiled and left Darcy to find her own way to the locker room.  

When she first started working in the Tower, Darcy had imagined it the beginning of a new life filled with glamor and adventure. She naively thought that she would meet all the Avengers and be their best friend, make them cookies after missions and, in her own way, be part of the team. That so didn’t happen. She ran into the lab exactly on time each morning and trudged off home at rude hours of the night, never a hero in sight. Until recently, her only contact with Avengers were Thor, who, to her anyway, didn’t count because he was generally a big, snuggly teddy bear of a man, and Clint, who was pretty much an asshole most of the time. She never met anyone else until Romanoff broke into her apartment a week ago. 

Lying in her own sweat, muscles aching, she honestly wished she had never laid eyes on the woman. She certainly had no plans to bake her any cookies. The thought of meeting another Avenger was not one she hoped for given the trauma it brought with it. What she wanted played no part in the Universe’s plans for her. Typical. 

It was nineteen days since Natasha left her to her own devises, and Darcy was exactly where she ought to be – on a treadmill, slogging out the miles. Her lungs did not burn and the stitch no longer crippled her ten minutes into her run. She was not so proficient that she could move with the graceful lope that she saw on other runners; she still stumbled far too often after the first mile. That’s where she was today, tripping along mid-way through mile three. Her foot caught on the rubber belt with more determination than before, sending her off the machine and into a pair of large and welcome hands.  

“Thanks, bro,” she groaned and shook the cramp from her leg.  

She turned, expecting to find Thor, but the man who wrapped her in a hug was not her friendly neighborhood Thunder God. The hard star pressing into her cheek informed her that her rescuer and hugger was Captain America.  

“Uh, Cap,” she said as best she could with her face crushed against his chest.   

“Thank you,” he said, tightening his hold on her. “Natasha told me you brought Bucky in. I…I don’t know what else to say but thank you.”  

The boa constrictor grip loosened finally, and the man took a step back. In a single glance, she took in his helmet hair, the filthy and stained star-spangled suit and shield on his back. “Dude, did you seriously come straight off a mission to hug me?” 

He flushed slightly. “It’s not quite keeping with protocol, but I had to thank you before I got locked in a room with paperwork for the rest of the day. Thank you.” 

“Not really necessary. He kinda had a gun to my face,” Darcy said, edging away from him.  

“What? Son of a bitch. I’ll talk to him,” the man said in the stern tones of a father about to bring on the longest grounding in the history of the world. His next statement did nothing to alter her image of him as America’s stern dad, “His mother taught him better than that.” 

Before Darcy could soften his anger and assure him that Barnes had already offered repeated apologies via coffee sleeve, he was marching away, jaw set in determination and fiery righteousness in his eyes.  

“Sucks to be Barnes right about now,” she muttered, then raised her voice. “Hey, J!” 

“Yes, Miss Lewis?” 

“Give Barnes a heads-up that Cap is on his way and not happy with his life choices,” she requested.  

“I will relay your concerns, Miss Lewis,” the AI said. “I will also advise him against taking this as an indication of an alteration of your feelings toward him.” 

“Good plan,” she said, groaning into a stretch. “Is Natasha back or can I slack off?” 

“Agent Romanoff has not returned from her mission.” 

“Awesome,” she cried and collapsed onto a mat for a solid ten minutes before moving back to the locker room to luxuriate in a hot shower.  

Rogers was outside the gym when she finally emerged. He had shed the suit and replaced it with a plaid shirt tucked into a pair of old man pleated slacks, further cementing his All American Dad standing. He didn’t look up from his hands when she stepped through the door.  

“Uh, hi,” she said, watching him shift anxiously on his feet. “You waiting for me?” 

“Yes. I just had to –“ 

“Dude, you already said it,” Darcy cried and hurried around him. He followed.  

“Bucky told me he’d tried apologizing. Is that true?” 

“No. And yes,” she said, pressing the button for the elevator. “No, he didn’t say it out loud. Yes, he wrote it down. Have I forgiven him? I don’t know because I’ve never had a gun put in my face before. I’m not really sure how the healing process is supposed to work, especially when ones attacker then becomes ones stalker. Seriously, talk to him about that.” 

He nodded, his face pulling into a small, almost private, smile. “He never was very good at saying he was sorry, always preferred to show it. ‘Words are nothin’ but wind’ his ma always said,” he explained, his voice going soft with nostalgia. 

“And what did his mother have to say about stalking?” she inquired sweetly. 

“Probably much the same thing. Where we came from,” he said hesitantly as if afraid of her reaction, “fellas had to show a girl how he felt, especially after most guys shipped off during the war. Women had their pick of whoever was left, and a man better be ready to demonstrate how much he cared. I guess Bucky hasn’t lost that.” 

She tried not to roll her eyes. “Look, I know you two are kind of different, and I know Barnes is limited in his social circle. But do not fool yourself into thinking this is some grand romantic gesture and apology. He’s only into me because of this stupid thing,” she insisted, showing off the soulmark on her arm.  

Rogers looked at the long, looping words across her skin, shock on his face. “You’re his…?” 

“Yeah, I’m supposedly his soulmate. I do not approve or accept,” she insisted. “Tattoos have no effect on my life.” 

The man smiled the kind of dopey, blissful smile she would expect when being told someone loved him. “Miss Lewis, what arm is that?” 

“The left one,” she said, suddenly questioning all she had ever been told and taught about Captain America if the man couldn't tell right from left. 

He rolled up his sleeve, revealing the ghost of a mark on his own arm reading ‘Gentlemen, I’m Agent Carter’. “Which arm is mine on?” 

“Again, the left one.” 

“They’re all on the left arm, the one closest to the heart,” he observed. She thought about it and realized it was true, though it was not something she had consciously noted herself. As the look of acceptance crossed her face, he asked, “Which arm did Bucky lose?” 

“The left one… Wait, he…?” 

“He doesn’t have a mark. I had thought maybe if he did have words like everyone else, they’d belong to his old girl, Gabby, fading to nothing like Peggy’s.” He indicated his own arm at the name.  

Darcy felt for him. He clearly took some stock in the marks, having truly loved the woman who spoke his words, but he was a man out of time. His girl was nearer to 100 and death than anyone would care to admit, her words fading as she did. Soulmarks were so new to them; no one knew what it meant to have words that lead somewhere strange, to someone of the same sex when you didn’t realize you were gay, to someone too old or too young, to someone who was dying. Would Steve gain new words once Peggy died? Would he want them if they did appear?  

“She was like me, then, this Gabby,” she insisted. “That’s why he’s following me. Some physical resemblance.” 

Rogers shook his head. “No, not at all. She was a gorgeous.” 

“Gee, thanks, Cap. Way to flatter a girl.” 

“Wha—No! I didn’t mean—You’re a beautiful dame, too. A woman, a beautiful woman. Shit, I’m no good at this,” he cursed under his breath and ran an aggravated hand through his still-messy hair. “Look, Bucky is a pain in the ass. He’s too much of a stubborn jerk to let anyone tell him who to chase. If he had a soulmark, I think he’d do his damnedest to ignore it like you are.” He offered a smile, one that spoke to how happy he was to have his friend back but also how sorry he was that she was stuck with him, too. “He doesn’t have one. He’s after you because you’re a looker, your smart and you helped him. He’s been alone in a hostile place for so long – first HYDRA and now here. He wanted something good. He wanted you to be that something. I’ll tell him to back off, though.” 

She nodded, too dumbstruck to be able to form any coherent reply. When her voice returned, she couldn't bring herself to talk about soulmarks or demand further details of Barnes and his intentions. Much as when terrified, when confusion struck, Darcy relied on sass and snark to keep her safe, so she asked, “Is Captain America allowed to say ‘shit’?” 

The man offered a devious smile. “Don’t tell Stark. I’m making a small fortune off the swear jar I keep in the common room.” 

Chapter Text

“Is everything all right? You’ve been pushing that ravioli around your plate for the past thirty minutes,” Michael asked.  

Darcy glanced down at the food as if seeing it for the first time. She honestly didn’t remember it being set in front of her. “Yeah, just thinking.”  

“Work?” 

“No, actually,” she sighed, admitting defeat and pushing the plate away. “That guy I told you about, the one who used to buy my coffee.”  

“PTSD guy?”  

“Yeah. His friend came to see me, told me how appreciative he is for what I’ve done and something he said got me to thinking.”  

Michael nodded slowly, chewing on the inside of his cheek anxiously. “Are you dumping me?”  

“What? No! Of course not!” she cried.   

“Then, what is it?”  

“Just about him being a stranger in a strange land kind of a thing, grasping at one of the few things he knew wouldn’t hurt him,” she explained quickly. “I mean, if it were me all alone in a Tower full of potential threats, I’d look to the one person who let me in, too. Clearly, I’m okay if I let him in, so that clingy, stalky stuff makes a bit more sense and is considerably less creepy.”  

He frowned. “So you like him now?”  

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since that Monday you met me for coffee, and I really only talked to him three times before that  – the first time being nothing but snark and gun and the other two nothing but me ignoring him,” she admitted. “I’m just thinking I could have been nicer and more understanding.”  

“Well,” Michael said slowly, drawing out the word. “I’m not that eager to have you putting yourself in harm’s way since the guy is unstable, but, if it would help settle your nerves and mind, why not go talk to him?”  

She groaned. “You sound like Jane.”  

“The highest compliment coming from you,” he smiled. “I’m not joking. You’ve been distracted for the past three days. Go talk to this guy. Call me as soon as you’re done so I know he hasn’t kidnapped you, though.”  

She laughed. “I will.”  

And she did. Or at least she tried to.   

Given his limited access to the vast Tower, the man was surprisingly difficult to locate. She spent the better part of two days hunting him down in her off hours. JARVIS was little help since apparently Barnes had taken the harsh warning to back off to such an extreme that he made sure even the AI wouldn’t tell her how to find him. Old fashioned, boots-on-the-ground hunting was what it took. She spent two hour jogging around the lobby in lieu of her treadmill run; she got plenty of strange looks and found a ten-dollar bill but not Barnes. She stalked up and down the corridors of the R&D level where she worked, but had little hope of him being there. Knocking on Steve’s door brought her nothing but a sad smile from the primary resident.   

Finally, on her second day, after a long afternoon of Jane smugly eyeing her, she parked herself in the single, Barnes-accessible elevator, riding up and down for hours.  

“What are you doing here?”   

She looked up from her phone where she was texting Michael about the fool’s errand he had sent her on. Barnes was hesitating outside the doors, clearly unsure if he was allowed to join her.   

“Well, it’s about time!” she cried and pulled him in by the collar of his shirt. “You are way too hard to track down.”  

“You actually want  to see me?”  

“Shut up. I have a speech prepared and I don’t need you interrupting me,” she ordered and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand your situation and should have been more considerate and welcoming, though in my defense you did totally put a gun in my face and chauvinist taunt me and come on way too strong.”  

He waited, eyes darting around the tight space. “Is that it? Can I talk now?”  

“Yes.”  

“Okay. That is the worst apology speech ever.”  

She slapped his arm. “Whatever. Let’s hear what an apology speech ought to sound like, then, if you’re such an expert.”  

“Right now? I don’t get time to practice?”  

“You insult my apology, I demand to hear something better.”  

“Fine.” He frowned at her, the creases between his brows deepening to the point of looking like scars on his face. He took a breath and looked her in the eye. “Darcy – see, you start by looking at the person and saying their name to show them your whole being is focused on them.”  

“Oh my sweet baby Jesus in a manger, really?”  

“Really. Emily Post insists, as did my mother,” he smiled. It was the first smile he had offered her in weeks.   

“Get on with it.”  

“Darcy, when I put that gun in your face, I didn’t know you. I saw you as a means to an end, not a person. I was alone and desperate and took advantage of you. I’m sorry I scared you and caused you pain and nightmares. I hope you will forgive me. I’m sorry that in my attempt to get to know you, I cause you uneasiness. I came on too strong and should have taken your reaction into account, but you are so beautiful when you’re annoyed that I just couldn’t stop myself. I wanted you to know how much I cared about you, to make up for my actions and to let you know that I don’t just see you as a really gorgeous key. Please forgive me,” he said, hand on his heart and no hint of sarcasm in his hopeful smile.   

She stared at him, feeling her heart beat faster than it should considering all she was doing was standing still. “Damn. That is a good apology.”  

“See, yours was shit.”  

“And then he killed the mood,” Darcy cried, throwing her arms up in exaggerated dismay.   

“There was a mood? I missed it. Was it a forgiving sort of mood?” Barnes asked.   

Refusing to admit that the mood he set was verging on the sort that might lead  to her kissing him, she nodded. “Yes, it was the forgiving sort of mood.”  

“So, I’m forgiven?”  

“Provided you promise never to point a gun at me again,” she said. “Yes, you are forgiven.”  

“I think I can make that promise,” he smiled that boyish and suggestive smile that fit his face to perfection. “Can I stop avoiding you now? Because aside from Steve and Jane, you really are the only other person I can talk to.”  

“You have a sad, sorry life, Barnes,” she said, shaking her head until his words hit her. “You talk to Jane?”  

He nodded. “Yeah, she came to see me in my little plastic  prison. She didn’t trust me at all, which meant I could trust her. She’s nice, likes you, which means she’s smart, but when she starts talking science I just have to smile and nod.”  

“As do we all, Barnes. As do we all.”  

“Bucky,” he corrected.   

“Alright, then. Nice to officially meet you, Bucky,” she offered him a hand in greeting. “See this is normal people say hello, not with creepy gloved  hands over mouths and demands for access codes.”  

He shrugged. “I was on ice. I missed out on this strange new revolution in interpersonal communication.”   

As he took her hand, his grin shifted along with the look in his eyes. Darcy didn’t need to wonder what had happened. She felt it, too. A tingling in her palm where their skin met; a hitch in her breath; the way her heart skipped a beat and then raced in her chest to make up for it. She swallowed hard and tried to force her face to appear unaffected by his touch. God of Thunder, was this what it was supposed to feel like?  Was this what Dave had felt with Sal? Why he suddenly knew how wrong they really were? She had never felt this kind of connection, not with anyone, not with Dave or Ian or Michael.   

Oh, shit, Michael.  

“For the record,” she said weakly as she fought for control, “I still have a boyfriend. He’s the one who wanted me to make nice with you.”  

“Give him a call, then,” Bucky instructed, his voice as strained as hers.   

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” she said, though neither moved.   

The elevator made a pointed ‘ding’ to indicate their arrival.  Neither moved.   

Someone cleared their throat. The pair turned to face Steve, who bit his lip and smiled. “Should I wait for the next one?”  

“Shut it, punk,” Bucky groaned and finally released her hand; she felt his loss immediately. “Darcy,” he said and hurried to escape his friend’s knowing smile.  

That smile turned to her as he boarded.   

“What?” she demanded.  

“Nothing,” the man replied, barely containing his laughter .  

“You are shit at lying,” she informed him.   

“So I’ve been told.”  

“Spit it out.”  

He glanced down at her, that smile still on his face. “Just happy you two are making up.”  

“Just a mutual apology session,” she insisted. “He apologized for holding a gun to my head. I apologized for being rude to him. We’re even-stevens and friends now.”  

He nodded. “Friends.”  

“Yes, friends! Two consenting adults choosing to interact and communicate in a polite manner without threat of guns or sex.”  

“Friends,” he repeated again.  

“Oh, my god, you are so annoying!” she cried.   

“And Bucky was right, you are pretty when you’re angry,” he replied.   

Darcy spun to glare at him. “Do not start. It took me this long to make Barnes behave himself.”  

“No, ma’am. Wouldn’t dream of starting. I’m just being friendly.”    

“And I am just going to go call my boyfriend,” she said and stomped away. She just managed to hear his comment of ‘lucky bastard’ before she hit the noisy lobby. Shaking her head at the strangeness of her life, she pulled her phone from her bag and dialed as she started toward the door.   

“Hey,” Michael answered, his voice muffled.   

“Bad time?” she asked.   

There was a pause before he answered. “Never for you. Just finished up a meeting.”  

“I can call back later.”  

“No, no,” he said hurriedly, pausing to say something she couldn’t hear. She’d seen him hold the phone to his chest to offer her a word without letting the other party hear and knew that’s what he was doing with her now. “Sorry, just letting my boss know it was you.”  

She grinned into the phone. “You told your boss about me?”  

“Absolutely,” he replied.  

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that Operation Apology was a success.”  

More muffled speaking met her ear before he came back to her. “Hey, tell you what? I’m at an office not too far from Avengers Tower. How about we meet at that deli across the street at one, and you can tell me all about it?”   

“Sounds good.”  

“You’re the best. Love you, Darcy,” he said absently as he hung up.   

She blinked down at her phone, amazed he was able to throw the words out so casually. They had been going out less than a month, slept together only four times, though they ate lunch or dinner together nearly every day. She had never had a boyfriend so dedicated to spending time together, so she supposed it wasn’t so strange that he would grow attached rather quickly. Before her encounter with Bucky in the elevator, she could just as easily have seen herself replying in kind, but she didn’t think she could say those words to Michael now.    

Mind foggy, she checked the time on her phone. With only fifteen minutes, she didn’t have time to run home to change, so she had to make do with what she had on. It wasn’t her cutest sweater, but one she liked and wore often, with a teal fox in hot pink glasses, which she had taken the time Bedazzle with a few rhinestones just for fun. Michael had never given any indication that he thought her personal style was wanting. Whenever faced with one of her jubilant sweaters, he would comment that it was cute as a ferret before stripping it from her body and tossing it aside. She sincerely hoped the same happened tonight; her encounter with Barnes had left her hotter than she cared to admit.   

She heard her name and turned to find Michael running down the sidewalk.  

“Hey, you,” she cried and offered him a kiss when he finally reached her.   

“And you,” he smiled. “So tell me all about it.”  

“Food first, story time second.” She took his hand, feeling the warmth of it, the strength and weight of it, but nothing more. No heart-stopping tingles spread up her arm at his touch. She refused to allow disappointment to show on her face. “Pastrami?”  

“You know it.”  

“Everyone loves a carnivore,” she commented and led him into the deli to order. Michael fixed their drinks and grabbed some chips.   

Sandwiches in hand, she moved to sit in the booth they usually used, but he took her arm. “Let’s sit outside,” he said.   

“Okay,” she shrugged and followed him to a table on the sidewalk. She sat, admiring the view of the building where she worked, wondering if Jane was still in the lab, if Bucky was chilling in front of the TV, appalled by the state of modern broadcast standards and practices, if Steve was on a treadmill overlooking their table and being generally smirky and annoying.   

She tried not to think of those strange encounters in the elevator and took her time unwrapping her sandwich and arranging the chips and drink around it.  

“Well, how’d it go?” Michael asked eagerly, his own sandwich sitting untouched before him.   

“Fine,” she said and took a bite.   

“You have to give me more than ‘fine’.”  

“Swimmingly,” she offered cheekily.   

“Come on, Darcy,” he prodded. “This was important to you. It’s important to me, too. Are you and PTSD guy friends now?”  

She nodded. “Yeah, it turned into a mutual apology session. I let him know how sorry I was that I didn’t consider what things were like for him in all this. He apologized for treating me so rudely when we first met.” She took a long pull of the cola. “I made a point of letting him know I’m still attached and this was in no way a flirtation, just an honest apology for wrongs committed.”   

Michael nodded as she took another swig. Something about his face spoke to his disbelief.    

“Seriously,” she insisted, desperate to mollify him. “He doesn’t think I’m flirting.”  

He laughed and took up his lunch. "I wouldn't care if he did think he had a chance. I trust you."  

"Awww, how stupid," she teased, trying to find the same easy banter she had with Barnes, or even what she had with Rogers. It didn't come so easily with Michael; he laughed and played off what she said, but it was always stilted and slow, as if he were gauging her reaction as he spoke, trying to decide midsentence what to say to her. His actuarial training never turned off, not even for her. He was always assessing the risks – of his words, their actions, certain drivers' skills – it was constant. Natasha probably would have liked him for that, constant suspicion being her motto and all.   

"Hey, Mikey!" a man called.   

Michael groaned. "I'm sorry for this."  

"What?" Darcy asked.   

"Greg," he grunted the name like a curse word. "Works on my floor. The most arrogant man I've ever met."  

"I know a few of those," she muttered as the man drew closer, pulling a chair from a nearby table and dropped it down between them.   

"So this the sweet little thing you've been bragging about?" Greg leered at her before turning back to his co-worker. "Not bad."  

"Well a girl tries," Darcy offered with a saccharine smile that was all teeth.   

Michael recognized Darcy entering chauvinist rant mode and hurriedly started wrapping his sandwich up. "Alright, we better get moving if we want to make it to that two o'clock meeting in Queens."  

"No rush," the infuriating man insisted as his eyes drifted back toward Darcy. "Boss said to take our time."  

"What? He didn't tell me that," Michael scowled. She's heard all about his boss over dinner two weeks back, how he treated some of his employees like gold and the rest (like Michael) as if they were morons. His best guess, which she took to be fairly good given his field of expertise, was because he had only worked for Adams Investment Managements for a year, though he had brought in a lot of new clients to the firm in that time. He couldn't say how long the golden employees had been with the company.  

Curious, Darcy asked.   

"I've been with good old AIM for quite a while," Greg said, stealing a handful of chips. "Was recruited back in aught-nine after that whole Ten Rings-Stark fiasco."  

"Where did you work before that?"  

"For Stark."  

She considered his answer while she took a bite, her brows knitting together as she realized, "Stark doesn't have an actuarial team."  

The man's smile grew large. "I know."  

Darcy's reply was swallowed by the squealing of tires as a van skidded to a stop at the curb, her cry shock by the black bag thrown over her head. The last thing she saw was a bag being pushed over Michael's. Then a sharp pain hit her in the shoulder, and she fell into unconsciousness. 

Chapter Text

Her head ached worse than after going mug for mug with Erik. It hurt more than after mainlining margaritas with Jane post-break up with the really hot English instructor in Tromsø. It was more painful than after she played three rounds of Shot and Beer Checkers against Clint. 

“Wakey, wakey,” a barely familiar voice sang.

“Ow, wha’da hell?” she groaned, her words slightly less slurred than they were the morning following her last girls’ night.

“Head hurt?”

She grunted a reply.

“Side effect of the sedative,” the man informed her.

“Who are you?” she asked, squinting up at him. Her glasses were gone; all she could make of him was a tall asshole of a blur.

“Everything Mikey told you,” he replied with a smile in his voice. “Just with a few details left out.”

“You’re not in acturalils.”

“Not in the traditional sense, no,” he agreed, not bothering to draw attention to her inability to pronounce the word correctly.

“Adams Investagents?” she guessed.

“On the nose,” he said with a smile in his voice. “You are a clever one. It’s a wonder Mikey was able to string you along as long as he did. He’s one of the worst liars I know. Part of why the higher ups chose him; irritatingly honest.”

“M’not a string,” she insisted, moving to sit and regretting it immediately.

“Pain killers and water are next to you,” Greg – that was his name, Greg – said in a tone that bordered on gentle.

Darcy wasn’t sure if she could trust what he was offering, but she knew that any grand escape attempt would require a clear head, which was not something she was currently in possession of. She fumbled for the pills and water, finding them on the smooth, hard table beside her. Even as her fingers closed around them, she was debating if this might be a trick. After a moment’s debate, she downed them and sat back.

“Wha’s Adams Investigents, then?”

“Adams Investment Management,” Greg corrected patiently. “Just something the bosses made up, a front, a cover. Launders the money and gets us access to files and people who might normally be suspicious of AIM.”

The way he said the last word, in deliberate capital letters, made her think it was something she ought to have heard of. Since Jane’s research brought her to Stark Industries, Darcy had learned the depth to which some corporations and nations would go to gain admittance into the company’s secured areas. Kidnapping, though, was a new one.

“Stark won’t pay for me. I’m just an assistant,” she said, surprised by the clarity of her words and the strength of her voice.

“We don’t care about Stark,” he insisted. “Well, not this time.”

“What then?”

“Barnes.”

“Why would you need me for that?”

Even without her glasses, his smirk was obvious. “He trusts you, so Mikey says. But the kid doesn’t know what he’s dealing with, doesn’t know the Asset. I do. I know Barnes likes you. Maybe even enough to leave the safety of the Tower.”

“Hate you break it to you, but he held a gun to my head.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he declared, standing. “The original plan has been altered.”

She saw him move as if he was leaving, a blur of dark grey in an otherwise beige room. “Hey, what about Michael?”

“Oh, he’s here,” Greg said, his voice gleeful. “Right next door in fact.”

He closed the door, locking her inside and leaving her to wonder what the hell they had planned for her. Her hands moved delicately over the table, feeling the chill glass, the damp ring it had left on the wooden surface, and the slim line of her glasses. She shoved them into place on her face, studying the room with anxious curiosity. It was just as beige as the blurs had indicated. Bland walls, with a television bolted into a high corner and a shelf built into the farthest wall. Bland carpet – Berber, she noted with a small nod of approval. The bed where she woke was large and soft, covered in crisp white sheets and a beige blanket. It was a comfortable enough space, though small and lacking in windows.

The one thing she understood without being told was that Greg intended her visit to be an extended one.

The one thing she did not understand was whether Greg had acted alone. He was under orders from his superiors, this AIM she had not heard of, but was he the only one on Operation Asset? Or had Michael been in on it? Her kinder nature and the part of her that truly wished she hadn’t slept with a henchman reminded her that he had been kidnapped, too. She had seen the black bag being pushed over his head, seen the look of terror before her own world went black. He was, according to Greg, in a room beside hers. But where was she? Who was to say the next room wasn’t an operations center instead of an equally beige prison cell?

Constant suspicion. That’s what had kept Natasha alive. It wasn’t the training, the strength or the cunning. It was the suspicion, which gave Darcy hope because suspicion was the only weapon she had. Greg had seen fit to remove her SI badge and her phone, either of which were equipped with satellite markers that JARVIS could track anywhere on Earth and halfway to the moon. If she lived through this, she would have to ask Happy if being LoJacked was an option. Until then, her only hope was that a witness had reported the kidnapping to the cops.

Darcy considered the room further as time ticked on unmarked by any sort of clock. The television, so large and dominating from its perch in the corner, had no remote control that she could find, and it had been placed too high up for her to reach the buttons. The shelf held books on war crimes, serial killers and societal ills and newspapers brimming with stories of horrifying atrocities committed in neighborhoods far too close to Darcy’s apartment for comfort. Not really the sort of things to help her feel comfy and welcome in Chez Wackjob.

She really could not sort out what they were planning.

After she had run out of things to inspect, she sat on the bed and considered the ceiling. Annoyingly, the air vent could have easily accommodated her were it not too high for her to reach. Natasha could have found a way up, but Darcy’s training was woefully incomplete.

“Hey!” she cried when the lights turned off without warning.

“Goodnight, Darcy,” Greg called through the door.

“What? No bedtime story?” she shouted, scowling at the darkness.

This really made no sense. If they needed her to get to Barnes, then shouldn’t they be using her to get to Barnes? She failed to see how sitting in a beige room in the dark would bring Barnes to them. Now if they hauled her in front of a camera and made a video of her being all kidnapped and hostage-y then maybe Barnes would charge to her rescue. Darcy settled back in the bed with the image of Barnes kicking Greg in the face floating blissfully through her head, closing her eyes and sighing contentedly. Sleep came surprisingly easy.

A deafening explosion ripped Darcy from her dreams, sending her diving for safety. She covered her head and waited for the room to collapse around her, but she felt no debris or heat from fires, not even settling dust. Screams filled the room, and she looked to see the chaos was all on the television in the corner. Even without her glasses, she knew it was news footage from some war or conflict currently playing out halfway around the world. The story, one about a village being destroyed by invading forces, ended. The TV shut itself off. Darkness filled the room. Darcy’s ears rang with the silence that followed. She waited, clinging to the beige blanket, waiting for the TV to explode again, but nothing came.

Daring to hope that someone had simply sat on the remote control by accident, she returned to the bed and lay back down. Sleep did not come so easily the second time.

Just as she was drifting off, the television turned on. No explosions. There weren’t even guns. This was a slow, quiet, disturbing investigative piece on schoolgirls being sold on the streets of Japan. It set her skin to crawling. The news story ended, chilling Darcy to think how often she had wished she could have studied in Tokyo as a teenager. She hugged herself tightly and curled into an exhausted ball as the TV shut off again.

Sleep evaded her the rest of the night. The television remained silent, but she still lay awake waiting for it to turn on, to show her horrifying truths from somewhere in the world. The lights turned on with Darcy still curled in on herself.

“I see you’ve been taking our message to heart,” Greg observed as he let himself into the room. He deposited a tray on the table by the bed. “Eat.”

“Not hungry,” she muttered into the curve of her knee.

“Suit yourself.”

The lock clicked, and Darcy lay alone ignoring the pangs in her stomach that reminded her how long it had been since she ate. Turning, she eyed the plate with suspicion. The eggs looked innocent enough, the bacon and toast, too. She tried to think what Natasha would do, but was lost for an answer. Natasha would never have allowed herself to be put in this situation.

“Fine,” she huffed and took a piece of bacon from the plate, smelling it pointedly as she turned in a slow circle. There were cameras trained on her; she couldn't see them, but she knew they were there. Greg and his ilk were watching her every move, and she wanted them to see just how much she didn’t trust them.

Message sent and bacon assessed, she took a bite. As her teeth crunched through the salty pork, the television turned on. A large pig squealed in fear and pain as a farm worker pulled it through muck and filth into a too-small enclosure. Darcy turned away and spat the bacon back at the plate, ears still full of the pitiful sound. She eyed the eggs, but the noises changed to a frenzy of chirps. Darcy didn’t look. She knew what she would see if she did; footage taken clandestinely by some animal right activist showing the inhumane and squalid conditions in which chickens are raised and eggs are produced. She had seen the documentaries on Netflix.

“Why the hell are you doing this?” she demanded.

Greg’s voice answered, clear and crisp trough the speaker in the ceiling. “Just offering you a picture of the world you live in. How horrifying it really is when people are left to govern themselves.”

Darcy waited, but he said nothing more. The television went black once again. She stared dejectedly at the food, all appetite lost.

Time slipped away with Darcy slowly understanding their game. She didn’t know AIM, but she knew HYDRA. She had taken a course on fringe politics; her final term paper ‘Johann Schmidt: Mad Genius’ had earned her not only a passing grade but an invitation to join the PoliSci honor's club and a letter of praise from the head of the PoliSci department for her insight. She had read a dozen books on the man and the organization he had founded. Five years later, she still remembered HYDRA’s goal – the absolute rule of all. If AIM was anything like HYDRA, which she was beginning to suspect it was, their goal was much the same. It was the only reason she could see for them showing her nothing but the worst of humanity.

She wouldn't fall for it. The cameras trained on her must have shown the determined set of her jaw because the television was back on, volume turned to deafening heights as people shouted hatred at one another.

Darcy recognized the signs each side held and the building behind them. It was a political rally at Culver, one she had attended while in college. She had been a student volunteer, trying to win a coveted internship and the attention from the future governor. This was the moment she had given up on politics.

Darcy watched herself push through the crowd, still remembering how the frenzied mob had tore at the lanyard holding her ‘Volunteer’ badge to the point of nearly choking her. Despite the danger, she had marched on, doing her part in trying to quell the anger. A man nearly twice her age and size, one vocally supporting the candidate she herself was planning to vote for, pushed her, sending her flying into an opposing protester, who took the move as a personal attack. Things got out of hand after that, fists flew, riot police were called, and Darcy finished her semester and applied for any internship that would get her as far from politics and the maddening crowd as she could.

Her hand absently traced to the scar she still bore on her side from being thrown into a brick column that day.

“People are animals,” Greg said smoothly.

“Not all of them,” Darcy muttered too quietly for him to hear.

Silence fell. The television stayed dark so long as she stayed awake. The moment her eyes drooped for longer than a second, it was on again. Roof collapse in a sweatshop in Sri Lanka. Arson in an over-crowded school. Sex trafficking in America. Murder. Rape. Robbery. Death. It never ended. People just kept hating and hurting. 

 “—police have no suspects—“

Darcy groaned as the news clip pierced the darkness. This was no international incident or riot; just a small, local news channel covering a hit-and-run, a very particular hit-and-run, one that Darcy knew well. She knew every word of this story, had watched and re-watched as near as makes no difference to a thousand times. Hours she had sat, finger on the remote, rewinding the clip, desperate for it to tell her something different, but the words never changed.

“—encouraged to call Crime Stoppers—“

She found the only thing in the room that wasn’t securely fastened to the wall or floor and hurled it at the television with all the strength she had. The pillow hit against the screen with a dull ‘thud’ that did nothing to vent her anger.

“She was just sixteen,” Greg commented as the volume quieted and the clip replayed.

“Fifteen,” Darcy corrected. “Her birthday party was supposed to be the next day. A pool party at her Aunt Debbie’s house.”

“What would she have grown to be if that drunk hadn’t mowed her down?”

She didn’t reply, though the answer was ‘brilliant’. Whatever Annie did, she was always brilliant. They had met the first day of school when they were just four and fell into each other’s company immediately, fast friends her mother called it. Fast and firm. It took a drunk driving twice the speed limit on a rainy morning to separate them.

“Where had she been going?” Greg asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Nowhere. She was training for a race,” Darcy said, not sure why she was telling him anything but so happy to be able to talk about Annie again. It had been years since she had spoken of the girl. “She was going to run a 5K for charity.”

“Which charity?”

“Humane Society,” she said, remembering the in-depth debate they had gotten into over which charity runs the girl should consider. Annie was all for the race to benefit underprivileged children, but Darcy’s carefully crafted PowerPoint filled to capacity with abused puppies and kittens won her over. “The race was the day after her birthday. I made her do it. She wanted to run a different one in April, but I talked her into the Humane Society race in May. She wouldn’t have been running so early if I hadn’t pushed her into running a race so soon. She’d have been asleep or eating breakfast. It's my fault she was out that early.”

Greg made no reply, just left the television repeating Annie’s story while Darcy wallowed in guilt.

“—no suspects—“

Darcy looked to the television. The story had changed. The anchor’s hair was too big for this to be Annie’s story, but the words were much the same. A crime committed. No witnesses. No suspects. A dead end. A dead body. This time a woman. Wilhelmina Gardner. Aunt Mina found behind a dumpster in an alley in New York, where she had been left to bleed to death after being mugged and raped.

“You still defend these people?” The recrimination hurt more than it should. Aunt Mina died on the way to the hospital four years before Darcy was even born, but Darcy still felt guilt. Her mother had cried when she learned Darcy would be moving to New York. Her heart ached knowing she had reopened that old wound, that she made her mother worry every day that she would suffer the same fate.

“How many more have to get hurt before you realize what people are truly like?”

Even as he spoke the footage changed, showing her brother being hauled from an apartment in handcuffs. Bingley had been only 19, fallen in with a bad crowd in his first year of college. The charges were dropped from lack of evidence, but he still lost his scholarship. Bing had to sell his car, work two job and live at home just to be able to afford an education.

“How you can stand up for this system?”

Darcy stared through blurring, burning tears as the roadside where Annie had been run down, the alley where Aunt Mina had been dumped and Bing in handcuffs played again and again on the television.

“I can’t.”

Chapter Text

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?

She had been in college when she first heard that poem. Why it had stuck so persistently in her head, she didn’t know, but it was there; even now in the darkness, she heard the words just as her professor had read them in that dry, papery voice, as if his throat were crumbling even as he spoke. He had been young, too young, she thought; certainly too young to sound as old as he did. Perhaps it came of reading too many old books. Old ideas. Old words. Sucking the life from him, making him old before his time. She ought to have warned him, steered him away before the wounds grew any deeper.

Old wounds, like old words, wouldn’t die, wouldn’t heal. They fester and grow, destroying everything that follows. Like Annie’s family crumbled and broke apart after Annie died; they never blamed Darcy, though it had been her fault. She had been out jogging too early in the morning because Darcy had said she should save the puppies and not the children. How selfish she had been to think her cause was better, that the children didn’t deserve Annie’s attention and time as much as the ferrets abandoned and abused. Children were abandoned and abused all the time; she could see them now on the television. The children dressed in nothing but donated clothes and dirt, picking their way down a cliff because it was the only route that wasn’t dotted with mines; peppered with mines; salted with mines. Salt mines. Salt mines were still using child labor in Senegal and Niger.

If Annie had run the race she wanted, supported the children and not the kittens, would children still be corroding and cracking in the salt? Would she have grown to be a child advocate; stood by them; become a pillar on which their rights were written; a pillar in the salt mine? Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt now, so the Bible said. She looked back, not forward; lived in the past; cared too much for what she would lose. God smite her for it. Why punish her for caring about her friends?

Darcy looked to the television, watched the alley where Aunt Mina had been raped and wondered how often she had passed it without even realizing. She had been left behind a dumpster on 46^th just past Broadway, not too far from Time Square, not too far from Avengers Tower. This was before Guiliani cleaned the city up, before Tony built his tower, before Bucky killed Howard Stark, but long after he shot a president. Was it JFK? Had he hidden in camouflaged fatigues on the Grassy Knoll as the conspiracy theorists claim? Or was he the one in the book depository instead of Lee Harvey Oswald? She never did talk to him long enough to find out.

Would she regret it? Not having taken the chance on him? She had been so stuck on Dave when they met, determined to see it through even though the relationship was more akin to strapping herself into a dentist’s chair than settling into a comfy lounge.    

And then there was Michael. She thought their meeting had been an accident, a brilliant stroke of serendipity brought on by her distraction; she had been shopping for boots and run into him when eyeing a pair of Wellingtons. Wellingtons, named after the Duke of Wellington, who had defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, which was in 1815, 200 years before the events of today. Fighting. People were always fighting. They really should just stop. Why couldn’t they stop?

“Because we are not in charge,” Greg told her.

Such a simple answer. It made so much sense. Look what people do when they have no guidance. They kill child activists; rape someone’s sister and leave her to bleed to death; deny innocent young men scholarships; bomb schools; deforest entire nations; kill whales and seals and pandas and dodos and rhinos and all manner of animals too beautiful to be gone forever.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “They should stop fighting.”

“Will you stop fighting?”

“Tired of all the fighting,” she said. “So tired. Just want to sleep.”

“Sleep, then. We’ll talk again soon.”

“So tired.”

“She’s ready.”

Ready for what? she wanted to ask, but sleep overcame her too quickly to be able to force the words out.

Greg came again. Too soon; always too soon. His voice called her from her heavy, dreamless sleep, pulling her to her feet and holding her upright as he guided her from the beige room and into the hall. It was the same shade, a washed out log on the beach; all its color was gone, sucked from it by bleaching sun and caustic water; worn down to nothing by the elements. It must be so tired of being abused, beaten by sun and waves. The respite on the beach must be a heaven to that log. Now it could lie in peace, buried in sand like a baby in a blanket, sleeping.

Why couldn’t she sleep?

“Because we have important things to do, Darcy,” Greg insisted. “Will you help us stop the fighting?”

So much fighting. Why can’t they just rest?

She needed to rest.

“Help us,” he said. “Then you can rest.”

“Yeah,” she agreed; her head lolled back on her shoulders. It was so heavy; weight of a thousand regrets; she couldn’t keep it up. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. So tired.

“We need Barnes,” he told her. “Can you help us bring him home?”

Bucky.

He smiled. “Yes. Bucky.”

“He likes me,” she said. “I kinda like him, too. Doesn’t know it, though.” She did like him. He was so handsome. His smile was perfectly formed, just right on his face; not like Dave’s; not like Michael’s. He had killed so many people, but he still smiled for her, told her stories and made her laugh even when she tried not to.

“Let’s call him. He’ll be happy to hear from you.”

Greg led her down the hall, past a door as beige as the walls around it. Michael’s door. Behind it he sat, hand on a remote, controlling her television and showing her all the things wrong with the world.

“No,” he said, “Mikey is getting his own education.”

“Does he get to sleep?”

“Only a little.”

She grunted her disapproval, but Greg had moved on toward another room, an office. The computer on the desk had three screens; one showed Michael on his beige bed, crying and pulling at his honey blond hair. He was an ugly crier; his face contorted, spit pooling in the corners of his mouth, snot leaking from his nostrils and bubbling like soap suds. Somewhere she knew it was funny, but she didn’t laugh.

“He’s not doing as well as you,” Greg observed, offering her a kind smile. “You are so much smarter than he is.”

He turned, opening a tall cabinet and showing her a safe hidden within. The digital lock beeped shrilly one, two, three, four times as he typed in the access code; four numbers to protect such important things – bank accounts, cell phones, safes; it hardly seemed sufficient, but that was the number.

Greg handed her a phone, her phone. “Call Barnes.”

Darcy’s fingers were clumsy as she unlocked it, searching in her contact list for the only one she thought might know how to connect her with Bucky.

“Miss Lewis?” JARVIS said.

“Hello, J. I need to talk to Bucky.”

“He has been most distraught over your disappearance. I will put you through to him directly.”

“You do that, J.”

She waited, phone to her ear. It was a short wait.

“Darcy?”

“Hey, Bucky. I’m just hangin’ with your old friends. Th—“

“Where are you?” he demanded.

“I dunno. I’ll ask.” She pushed the phone into her chest and asked, “Hey, where are we? Bucky wantsta know.”

Greg smiled and held a hand out for the phone. “I’ll tell him.”

She handed over the phone and turned to look at the room. It was so beige, like the hall and her room. Her room didn’t have a safe; books and a bed, but no safe. Her hands went to the familiar purple lanyard lying on the bottom of the thick, grey metal box. It was hers; Jane had bought it for her when she passed her background check at Stark Industries. They had spent the day finding her an apartment, though Jane had said the Tower had ample room. It seemed incestuous to live in the same building where one worked, though. The commute would have been better; neighbors, too; JARVIS would never set her walls to shaking with excessive bass at four in the morning. But if she had lived in the Tower, she never would have met Bucky. He would have been taken that night he found her. Taken by HYDRA or AIM; he had shuddered at the idea of being reclaimed, terrified by the idea of losing himself again, being used again.

Being used…. She turned, too tired to form even a frown as she considered the man speaking brusquely into her phone.

“Asset, you will report to the aviation pier in precisely two hours. You know what will happen if you don’t.”

Darcy turned and reached for the phone, but he had already disconnected the call. Eyes fixed triumphantly on her; he threw the phone back into the safe and slammed the door shut. She didn’t get to say goodbye. He was the one and only mate to her soul, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye.

“Thank you, Darcy. We will change the world because of what you’ve done today,” Greg said. “Would you like to sleep now?”

“So tired.”

She fell into the bed as soon as he opened the door for her. In the quiet darkness of her beige room, she had no thoughts, no cares. She just slept.

“God, you snore like a fuckin’ freight train.”

Darcy started at the sound. “Wha? Whozzat?”

“Barton, dammit,” he hissed, his calloused hands muscling her into a sitting position. “Come on, we don’t have long. The camera feedback loop will only last a few minutes.”

“Don’t wait for me,” she muttered and fell back onto her pillow. Those hands grabbed her again, this time hauling her roughly to her feet, where she swayed and smiled. “Hi.”

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” the man grumbled and hoisted her onto a titanium chain ladder and into the air vent, where apparently he had made his ingress.  He offered her ass a shove to get her moving. “Turn left. Your other left.”

She crawled along at his instruction, until a bright light forced her to stop.

“Move it.”

“Too bright,” she complained.

“It’s called the sun, kid. I suspect it’s something you haven’t seen for the better part of two weeks,” he commented, his hands on her ass shoving her forward, sending her tumbling out onto the coarse gravel of the roof, blind and dazed, but apparently free.

“Two weeks?”

“Two weeks. Steve just about had an aneurysm watching you get kidnapped,” he said as he pulled her to her feet. “Swear that guys in love with you.”

The laugh she gave sent her swaying on her feet. “No way. Captain America wants to get with this?”

“Well, maybe not right now, but after a shower you’re not half bad,” he commented, pulled her along the roof toward curving rails of the fire escape ladder. “I hope you’ve got enough strength in you to climb down, kid, beca—“

A shot rang out. The archer fell, his blood thick and red as a ruby on the pale, jagged stones. She stood and stared at it, mesmerized by the way the small river ran along the gravel and between her toes. So warm.

A hand gripped her scalp and tore her from the fallen hero, the jarring pain of the hard tug clearing her head slightly.

“How did they find you?” Greg demanded, riffling through her pockets until he came to the badge attached to the purple lanyard. “You litt—“

A brick exploded nearby, pieces of the hard-baked clay flying out, grazing her cheek. As Greg ducked behind her, Darcy turned and looked at the damaged wall, saw the shining bullet lodged just inches from where the man’s head had been. Another brick exploded, lower and again on level with his head.

“Someone doesn’t like you very much,” she observed with a frown. “Someone with very good aim.”

“Barnes,” Greg hissed through clenched teeth. His hands dug into her hips as he maneuvered her body into position and stooped to keep from being seen; he somehow managed to make himself tiny behind her.

This would all end a lot faster if he would just stop using her as a shield, then she could finally get some sleep. The thought was slow in forming in her disoriented, sleep-starved mind, but once she managed to wrap her brain around it she scowled. He was using her as a shield.

She was a human shield.

What an asshole!

She tried to pull away, but he held her easily in place. Her nails had been cut short, too short to be of any use; still she tried to claw at the fingers bruising her hip. The sleep deprivation and malnutrition of her time in the beige room left her too weak to kick without falling, and even if she had been able, as Natasha had said, she had marshmallows backing up her attack.

Greg inched them backward while she struggled to bring together the hours spent with Natasha, the conversations and the small hints of advice and training the woman had given her. Stay alert; be vigilant and constantly suspicious. Cleary, she failed at those lessons. There had been anatomy, muscle groups weaker or more sensitive than others; places to aim punches and kicks. The vice-grip on her hip would not let her use that information, even if she could hit with any real force.

If she could just get loose, Bucky would take care of that. He knew exactly where to aim.  If only there was a way he could shoot the asshole without killing her. Darcy’s stomach dropped as she remembered her first anatomy lesson.

“Move,” Greg ordered.

Darcy planted her feet in the gravel. Her fingers stopped tugging fruitlessly at his. A cold sweat began to form on her forehead, droplets growing heavy with fear of the pain to come before falling into her eyes. Blindly, she angled her body toward Bucky, unsure why she knew exactly where he was, but suspecting it had something to do with their tattoos of destiny. It was nearly enough to make her laugh. How many times had she fought against the Soulmark, insisted tattoos had no effect on her life?  How wrong she had been.

She lifted her sweater to her ribs, revealing Clint’s tattoo, a harsh black curve on her alabaster skin; the upper curve of the ampersand a perfect target.

“Mov—“

Pain ripped through her as Greg’s words died with him. She fell to the gravel and rolled away, hands clutching at the wound, trying and failing to press with enough strength to stem the bleeding.

“That was stupid,” Natasha said, glaring down at her.

“It worked, though,” she offered a weak smile and knew no more of the world.

Chapter Text

Beige. The walls were beige.

The slow beep that had comforted her in sleep, a steady, constant beat like a metronome, began to increase with her panic, racing and shrill, until an alarm sounded and a woman in white ran through the door.

“Miss Lewis, calm down,” the woman ordered, her voice equal measures of firm and gentle. “This is the Avengers Tower.”

“Beige,” she croaked in reply. “Beige.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—“

“Room. Beige. Same,” she insisted, hands flying out, gesturing to the walls all around her. The same shade exactly as the room where Greg had brought her, where he had played on her guilt and fears, torn her down and would have happily built her up again in AIM’s image.

Her shaking hands brushed against soft strands of hair. She looked down, saw the mass of brown on her bed. Exploring delicately, she found long hair, a small nose and frowning mouth. “Jane.”

“She’s been here since you were carried in two days ago.”

Darcy looked toward the voice. It wasn’t the woman from before, a nurse she assumed. This was the familiar and welcome woman she admired beyond all reason and sense, given that the woman inevitably caused muscle aches and embarrassingly sweaty t-shirts when they met.

“Coach,” she said with a smile.

Natasha offered no greeting or condolences for her suffering. Though her vision was blurred, it was easy to see the woman cross her arms over her chest as she said, “I should have trained you harder.”

“Can’t train a marshmallow,” Darcy reminded her. “I’ll see about getting my mile down to nine minutes, though. Knowing how to pick a lock would have been mighty super. Just sayin’.” The smile she offered was dulled by medication, weariness and a painful ache in her side; she had thought the tattoo hurt the first time she woke with it, this was excruciating. “I thought you said I could get shot here without it killing me. Damn.”

The mirth was back in her voice when her red-haired idol responded. “I didn’t say it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I think I’m dying,” Darcy whined and threw her head back against the pillow. “My dying wish…”

Natasha snorted quietly. “I remember it.”

Of course she did. She probably never forgot anything.

“Oh,” the woman said, her head popping back into Darcy’s room, “and congratulations. You have successfully thrown off brainwashing. That makes three of us. According to Barnes, that’s enough to warrant a club. He’s having t-shirts made.”

“What a dork,” Darcy laughed.

“I know.”

“And not true!” Clint called from the vent across the room. “There’s four of us!”

“You needed cognitive recalibration. It doesn’t count if there was external stimulus,” Natasha shouted back, earning a hiss of annoyance from the nurse and a curse from the man.

Darcy closed her eyes and listened to the beeping of her heart monitor, wondering how she could ever have been manipulated into turning on these people, her people. She would have given them Jane, Natasha, all of them without a thought. Her Intro to Psych class had never mentioned brainwashing, but she was starting to think they should have; maybe if she had some warning about the dangers of it, she wouldn’t have been so easily turned.

“It isn’t you. You aren’t weak or stupid.”

“You sure about that?” she asked.

“They’ve had a lot of experience. Nearly a century of it.”

She looked up, eyeing the blur of a man approaching her cautiously. It was Bucky; she didn’t need her glassed to know it was him. She knew his voice and his silent footsteps and Frigga’s magical mystical tattoo made sure she knew when he was near. Seriously, her lady parts were practically tingling.

“Uh, Nat told me to bring you this,” he offered, setting a fuzzy, white cylinder down on her bedside table.

“Mocha caramel latte with extra whipped cream?”

“Iced. How did you know?”

“It was my dying wish,” she offered with a smile. “Part of it, anyway.”

The slim frames of her glasses touched against her face as he slid them into place. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept for the better part of two weeks, but he still managed a smile for her. “And the other part?”

“You will find out another time.”

Bucky nodded slowly, his smile growing as he realized that she had no intention of kicking him out of her room or her life. Still, he moved with unnecessary caution as he sat in the chair by her bed, as if any wrong gesture on his part would warrant his removal. Once he had settled in, she thought he might speak, but he just waited and watched her.

“So I have been kidnapped,” Darcy said thoughtfully after the intensity of his stare became too much. “I have been denied sleep, decent food, any and all forms of caffeine; daylight, too, but meh whatever. I have been forced to relive the absolute worst parts of my life and see the dregs of humanity and all its cruelty.” She paused and considered her predicament. “I do believe I earned some cheering up.”

The tightness around his eyes and mouth loosened. “What can I do?”

“Tell me a story.”

“Like a bedtime story?”

“No, a cool Bucky Barnes story that I won’t read in a book. Preferably something where you are heroic and dashing. Bonus points if my knowing will embarrass Captain Tightshirt.” She shifted in her bed, noting for the first time that Jane was no longer half-occupying it and wondering where the woman had gone.

“Thor took her home,” Bucky offered and handed her the coffee.

“Thank you,” she said. “Story?”

His brow knit together as he considered her request. “Okay. Once upon a time…”

“Dork.”

“You love it,” he retorted.

“Kinda do.”

He grinned that boyish grin she quite enjoyed, not that she was going to admit it to him just yet. “So it was 1944. June, nearly July. We had been sent to find a HYDRA facility in central Italy, near enough to Rome to make a Catholic boy like Steve shit himself for skipping confession too often and having too many naughty thoughts about a particular, curvy British liaison in our division. He gets it into his head that he just has to go to church and pray. Not just any church. Saint Peter’s in Rome. I tell him it’s a stupid idea. Morita tells him; Gabe, Falsworth, Dernier, we all tell him. Dum Dum thinks it’s hilarious and bets a bottle of bourbon he won’t make it back before noon next day, but Dum Dum is an idiot.”

Darcy sips the coffee that borders on sickeningly sweet and lets his voice wash over her.

“Long story short, we made it. Steve somehow manages to sneak in undetected and confess. Why no one called the OVRA on him, I’ll never know. Not as if he speaks Italian or could fake the accent to save his life. We make it back at dawn, which I maintain would have earned us that bottle if it hadn’t been taken.”

“What? By who?” she demanded, sitting up straight in her bed, nearly spilling her drink over them both.

Bucky leaned close, holding her eye as he took the straw in his mouth. Her eyes followed his tongue as it passed slowly over his lips. Her mouth absolutely did not dry out like Death Valley in July nor did her toes curl beneath the beige hospital blanket. “Some Italian nobleman-turned-general stumbled on the camp while riding his horse,” he confided, still so close she could count the dark flecks in his irises. “His guards had taken it all back to his great, fancy villa.”

“How’d you find them?” she asked, her voice a whisper with him so close.

“I tracked them.”

“Like a boss?”

“Like a boss,” he agreed. “Really, there weren’t many horses left at that point. Wasn’t hard. The house was huge. I think our entire block would have fit inside it with room for a game of stickball. Finding anything would have taken a week. Worse, there were guards all around and on the roof. No way we could have escaped even if we managed to sneak in.”

He stopped, stealing another drink from her cup, smiling when she didn’t protest and when she caught herself drawing closer.

“So?”

“So we found the laundry.”

“Is this going to be embarrassing?” she asked, hope clear in her voice.

“I was told there were bonus points for that,” he reminded her, his smile falling into contemplation. “I’m not sure what these points might be used for. Can I trade them in for some form of prize?”

Narrowed eyes had no effect on the man. “A prize can be arranged.”

“Good. I like prizes.”

“Only if you earn the points,” she insisted.

“This’ll earn me plenty.” He was so certain; she couldn’t wait to hear what came next. “If I’m being completely honest, we lucked out. The laundry was left by the water pump out of sight from the house. The maids had gone off somewhere, leaving the baskets for anybody to riffle through. Though, having looked through their laundry, I can see why they’d think it was safe to leave it alone. Steve found a butler’s uniform, insisted I put it on while he looked for one of his own. Captain’s orders, I did it.”

“I bet you looked handsome,” Darcy commented.

He scoffed. “Don’t I always?”

“Smugness not a turn on. Try again.”

His face shifted from confident to bashful instantly. “Gosh, you really think so?”

“Don’t overplay the part, Barnes.” She threw one of her many pillows at his damn fine face.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “Well, when I turn around Steve is fit to be tied. Nothin’ there was even close to his size. It takes us ten minutes, me sweating in that stinkin’ uniform, but we come to a decision. He’s got to wear a dress.”

Darcy screamed. “Shut up! Do you have pictures? Please tell me there’s a picture somewhere.”

“Sorry,” he shook his head sadly, hair falling into his eyes and smile overtaking his face again. “You’ll just have to use your imagination. Picture, if you can, a six-foot-four-inch blond Brooklyn boy, who had just run five klicks to confess to a priest in Rome, cursing a blue streak while I tied him into a girdle. While you’re at it, you might also imagine him arguing his way into a lovely blue, flower-print dress that belonged to the lady of the house, who we were very happy to find was quite a large woman, German if I’m any judge of size at all.”

He had to stop while Darcy laughed herself into a fit, the pain in her side too much to bear without another dose of drugs in her IV drip administered by a reproachful nurse, who fluffed her pillows, tucked her blankets and gave Bucky the most withering glare she had ever seen.

The man, suitably chastised, shifted back in his chair. “I’ll finish it later.”

“Maybe you’d better.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault,” she insisted, though it was a lie. He was both the reason she had been kidnapped and the one who shot her. By all known methods of tallying, he was absolutely in the red. She didn’t much care, though.

“Not about that,” he said. “I’d promised never to point a gun at you again. And I shot you.”

“Yes, you did,” she agreed. “It hurt like a motherfucker, and I formally request that you never do it again barring similar circumstances that require you to save me or someone my equal in awesomeness. Seriously, you’re in the clear. It’s all on them – AIM and Greg and Michael – they’re the assholes who did this to me, to you.”

Silence fell between them, her heart monitor beeping out her anxiousness that he accept her words as truth. It took some time and a shuddering breath before he nodded, though the composition of his face didn’t alter.

“What is it now?” she sighed.

“Michael,” he grunted the name. “He wasn’t one of them.”

“Uh, yeah, he was.”

Bucky shook his head, slowly, sadly. “He was being broken when they found him. Shrink on fifty-six has been working with him. He’s just an actuarial accountant. Not evil.”

“Why tell me?” She blinked her confusion at him. He was the hero, her sharp-shooting savior. He could sweep her off her feet and forever let her think Michael a villain.

“He’s your boyfriend.” His shoulders barely rose from their dejected slump as he offered a shrug. 

“Not since I found out he was playing me,” Darcy declared. “He might not have been AIM or HYDRA or whatever, but he was totally a plant, a corporate spy, a lying liar who lies. I’m done with lying.” She folded her arms over her chest and offered a nod of absolute finality.

When she had ended things with Dave, she had decided that her next ‘him’ would get more from her, that she would let him in. This time, the shoe was on the other foot. Actually, both shoes were on this time. It was honesty on both sides, complete openness and accountability. She wasn’t going to be lied to any more than she would be the one lying.

“If you’re after painful honesty, you’ve found your man,” someone commented from the doorway.

“Shut it, Steve,” Bucky groaned.

“What? Do you not remember Lucky Lou’s?” His smile was enormous as his friend groaned again, eyes positively exploded with delight as Bucky pleaded with him not to say anything else.

Darcy desperately wanted to know this story. It had all the makings of great blackmail material, but the way he looked to her pulled at her heartstrings as only a late night ASPCA commercial could. “Hey, Cap,” she said with a brilliant, if slightly drugged smile. “Bucky was telling me a riveting war story. I cannot believe you actually managed it. There’s something I have to ask.”

Steve cheeks turned slightly pink as he studied his shoes a moment. He was adorably bashful. “What’s that?”

“When you dressed like a woman that time, what did you do with your hair?”

The color rose in his face so fast she thought he was a thermometer about to burst. “You told her that?!”

“She wanted embarrassing!” Bucky defended and leapt from the man’s reach.

“I’ll give her embarrassing. I’ve got twenty years of embarrassing, and all of it involves you,” Steve chased after him, listing off the names of all the stories he might share, and the list was long. Darcy was particularly interested in learning what exactly The Matinee Fiasco of ’41 was, as it, more than any of the others, had Bucky threatening to go Soviet on him.

“Will you kindly stop this nonsense!” the stern nurse called, halting both men in their tracks. “This is a recovery room, gentlemen. You will either behave accordingly or leave. Do you understand?”

Their replies were muttered and directed at the floor, a mix of ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘sorry, ma’am’. It was enough to have Darcy squealing with how adorable they both were when chastised.

“I’ll go,” Steve said. “Natasha just said I should give you this.” He set a cup on the table. It was tall, white and identical to the one Bucky had carried in. She studied it and then him.

“I’d have been happy with just the one,” she commented. “I won’t argue with two, though. Random question before you leave, Cap. If you were to describe your abs, would the word ‘perfect’ come to mind?”