Chapter Text
Darcy realizes far too late that she should have stayed at her hotel, or taken a cab, or even had Erik come to her. Carefully, she skirts around a group of teenage girls. She’s not quite careful enough. As they pass, Darcy catches the ugly flare of jealousy, the giddiness of first love, the jangle of anxiety, the blazing heat of anger, the glacial certainty of superiority. It’s only a shadow of emotion, but it’s enough to throw off her equilibrium. There’s a slight gap in the crowd and Darcy darts toward it. She sighs with relief when the tendrils of emotion pass her by.
It’s always this way when her emotional walls are down. She’s gotten better at controlling it, choosing when and with whom she lets herself run hot, but when she’s particularly emotional—like now—she’s open to everybody. Minimizing contact mutes it, but even just being within twelve inches of a person is enough that she gets glimpses of what they’re feeling. It’s exhausting. She’s learned to keep herself carefully contained, carefully controlled. She tries not to let herself feel anything strongly, because that’s the easiest way for emotions seep in. Most people think she doesn’t care, that she doesn’t take life seriously enough. Lord knows she hears that enough from her family, she’s heard it from ex-friends and ex-boyfriends, but they don’t know—they can’t understand—that she’s just trying to protect herself. If she doesn’t feel anything herself, it’s easier to keep her walls up.
Right now, though, her future is stressing her out and she’s worried about Jane and Erik, and her mom had called before she left. That always ends in disaster because it seems that her mom excels in projecting emotion over the phone, and today was no different. The subject was Darcy’s lack of direction and lack of drive, and it left Darcy angry and frustrated and upset. Her mom doesn’t really understand Darcy’s hang-up with emotion and Darcy can’t explain it, or that it leaves her unable to find a career where she isn’t battered by other peoples’ feelings. It leaves them at something of a tense impasse, and it’s usually easier to just avoid taking her mom’s calls.
It’s also easier to stay away from huge ass cities, but she’s here because Jane asked her to come and in a way, she feels like she owes her. Before Puente Antiguo, in her desperation for acceptance, she’d shown “friends” the other thing that she could do with her gift: she take on another person’s negative emotions and replace them with something good. After a while, she realized they treated her more like a drug than a friend, and she’d had to get out. Jane’s internship was perfect. The town was isolated, the scientists relatively self-contained, and she could find peace. Instead she’d found an adventure of a lifetime, and thank God Norse gods were harder to read than people, because with the issues Thor was facing, that would have led to an utter meltdown.
As it was, dealing with Jane in the aftermath was a little tough. She didn’t get sad, she got obsessive, and some days Darcy would funnel some positive emotions into her to keep Jane from burning out. At least Erik stayed steady. In any case, random shots of happy aside, Jane gave Darcy a refuge. It didn’t matter that Darcy was the only internship applicant. What mattered was that she was somewhere safe, where people didn’t know about what she did. She never thought that Jane knew what Darcy was doing until she’d gotten the call last week.
Jane, in tears, asking Darcy to come to New York City and “Help fix Erik like you fixed me.”
Jane and Erik didn’t always understand her, and half the time, they probably didn’t even like her, but she was grateful and she felt bonded to them in some way so here she is, brushing past two men in gray suits laughing merrily, shaking off the hunger of unrequited love from one and the sting of rejection. She doesn’t know these men. She doesn’t need to know their stories. When the men step around a happily strolling couple (they’re blissfully in love, thank God, and hopefully with each other—she can’t parse out specifics…she can tell that someone is in love but she can’t know who they’re in love with), she leaps towards the bookstore on her left to avoid them. It probably looks crazy, but she doesn’t care. There are all kinds of crazy in this city.
She stumbles and her shoulder jostles a man exiting the bookstore. “Oh no,” she whispers, then gasps everything he’s feeling hits her at once.
She’s bombarded with heavy spikes of fury, the overwhelming darkness of grief, the teeth of fear, the gray mist of loneliness, and the obscure haze of the lost. That, more than the impact, is what sends her reeling back. It hurts. God, it hurts. She puts pressure on her temples, but it doesn’t work. She can’t breathe; her knees buckle. The crash of her knees on the pavement is enough to pull her back to reality, and she concentrates on trying beat back the worst of it—the anger and the grief—so that she can breathe again. The man is kneeling in front of her, cupping her face and asking her questions. She doesn’t pull away; it doesn’t matter if he touches her anymore. The doorway is open and only distance will close it. She concentrates on breathing. In, out, in out, and finally she can think and tamp his feelings down.
His voice finally penetrates the haze of her mind, and she looks up into worried blue eyes. He looks so handsome, so clean cut, the lines of his face so smooth and settled. He doesn’t look like the kind of man holding all of that inside of him. “Miss, are you hurt?”
“No,” she says. She frowns, because her voice is much weaker than she wants it to be. Clearing her throat, she tries again. “No. Sorry.” She starts to get to her feet, but this bout with his feelings is more intense than any other she’s had and she has to sit back down.
“Do you need a hospital?” She feels concern, the most immediate and pressing emotion, edging out the harshest of his emotions, and the ache in her head eases.
“No. Silly me, I forgot to eat breakfast this morning.” The lie slips easily off her tongue. It’s one she’s told before, even if she hasn’t had to use it often. “Guess I had a little dizzy spell.”
He’s handsome. She notices that now, when before all she noticed was the flood of feelings, and she wonders what’s happened to him to make him feel so much. Much anger I sense in him, she thinks, and she feels like Yoda. Maybe he’s evil. Maybe he’ll become evil. Another Yoda-ism flits into her mind. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force. She shakes her head, trying to clear it, because she’s never had a trip to a galaxy far, far away before. Although if Yoda had sensed all of this guy’s anger and fear, he probably would have closed up shop if this guy asked to be trained as a Jedi, and seriously, where was all of this coming from?
The man’s lips are moving, and she realizes he’s speaking again. “There’s a deli next door. I can grab you a sandwich.”
She appreciates the gesture, but all she wants to do is get away from this guy so that she can think her own thoughts again. “I’ll be okay. You don’t have to stay.”
If he doesn’t go, she’ll have to because as soon as the concern ebbs, she’ll probably be back on her knees. She’s ready to scramble to her feet and bolt, because she’s never met anyone with so much inside of him or felt so intensely. Her fight or flight instincts are kicking in, and they’re screaming for her to run as far and fast as she can. But she stops, because he doesn’t look like an evil genius in the making, Yoda probably would like him, and that snafu in college aside, she’d like to think this ability of hers has made her a pretty good judge of character. And something about him seems inherently good.
She’ll regret this later, she knows, because she’s meeting with Erik and dealing with his issues is going to be exhausting. But she can’t leave this guy like this. “Actually,” she says, “can you help me to my feet?”
She still feels his worry, which is sweet. He asks, “Are you okay to stand?”
When she nods, he holds his hands out to her. It’s easier with skin to skin contact, and she takes a deep breath and places her hands in his. He pulls her up, but she doesn’t let go of him. She closes her eyes and slowly draws some of the negative emotions out of him, storing them inside her, shuddering as the anger, the sadness, the pain, the fear, and she finds something else to replace it with. Hope, peace, wonder, contentment. She tries for happy, but happy hasn’t been in her stores for a long time. Emotion isn’t just something she can manufacture, and this is all she can manage right now. She doesn’t give him all of it, she needs to save some for Erik. When she pulls away, staggers under the weight of what she’s taken on, but she can see that his features are a little brighter, his shoulders less tense, and she smiles.
Then she hurries away, careful not to brush against anyone. She can hear him shouting behind her, “Hey, what did you do?” Of course he noticed. It would be ludicrous to think anyone wouldn’t notice that drastic of a shift in emotion. Still, beneath the confusion she feels his new contentment, and it doubles back on her because she’s glad that she was able to give him some measure of peace. It’s almost enough to dissipate the dark cloud she’s taken on inside of her. She’ll consider it her good deed for the day.
And if he was on his way to Super Villain-Ville, she hopes that at least for today, he’ll reconsider.