Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The caller ID listed a number with a nine-one-seven area code.  There was no name listed.  There didn’t need to be. He’d always memorized important numbers. You never knew when you might find yourself without your phone, stranded in a desert, with only a decrepit phone booth and a dozen pissed-off, alien tech-enhanced drug cartel enforcers to keep you company.  

 Besides, he’d been expecting this call.  “Hello.”

 “I am not laughing, Coulson!” She sounded irate.  

It took a lot to rile her.  Part of why he’d hired her in the first place was her ability to quietly and thoroughly assess a situation.  She seemed laid-back - downright harmless -  right until the moment she tased someone in the testicles, or verbally eviscerated someone on national television.  

 “Is there are problem, Agent?”

 There was a crackle of static, and then something that sounded like shattering glass.  She cursed.  “Yes!  Yes, there is a motherfucking problem, Phil!  You sent me a new guy with a kid!”

 He raised his eyebrows and turned away from his team.  He could feel their curious gazes on his back.  “You don’t like kids, Darce?”

 She sighed.  Phil could imagine her rubbing her forehead, trying to ward off a headache.  “I like kids fine.  You know that.  The kid’s not the problem.  What I DON’T LIKE is being sent a dude with a well-documented - NAY, VIRAL! - history of violence, and his kid.  I’ve had six calls forwarded to me from CPS, and I’m tempted to work with them!  He looks dangerous!  How am I supposed to spin this guy?”

 He smirked.  “Did you just say ‘nay’?”

 "Shut up!  Are you even listening to me?”

 “Of course.”

 “Now you’re trying to placate me.  Fine.  Whatever.  I’ll deal with this, but I want you to know that I’m not a magician.  I can’t delete things from the social consciousness.  Your new band of merry misfits needs to prevent situations like this.  That warehouse CC video never should have gotten out.  Actually, I thought that was, y’know, what you did - you and your Men In Black--”

 “I prefer ‘Persons In Black’ - it’s less gender specific,” he interrupted.

 “I’m not finished! And...okay, good point.  But anyway, I’m good at this, Phil--”

 “I know you are.”

 “--but building a PR campaign is pretty goddamned hard if the very first Super Hero - sorry, unregistered Gifted - the public sees after New York is a psychopath.”

 “He’s not a psychopath.  He was an experiment.”

 “I get that.  The American Public does not.  Please please please...all I’m asking is that your team be more careful with stuff like this.  We knew who he was, we should have had something in place to monitor video feeds at his old job.  Or, just constant scanning of video surveillance feeds linked to facial recognition software...” 

 She was brainstorming aloud.  Phil hoped she was wasn’t calling while in line at Starbucks again.  “Hey,” she continued, “Maybe the Boy Genius can come up with some kind of seek-and-destroy software...what do you think?”

 “I think Agent Fitz has a crush on you and will probably say he can do whatever you want, whether or not he actually can.”

 From behind him, something rolled off the conference table and hit the floor.  “Is that Agent Lewis?” the Scotsman inquired hopefully.

 Coulson shot a look at the entire eavesdropping group.  The look said clearly, ‘Get back to work,’ and was not a look you argued with.

 “Fitz has a crush on my mad data-collating skills,” Darcy replied lightly.  “Still, I can work with that.  Although word on the street is you’ve bagged the Mata Hari hacker.  She’s probably better for what I have in mind.”

 Now it was Phil’s turn to fight down a twinge of headache.  “I don’t know where you heard--”

 “Simmons told Garcia, who told Banner, who told me.  Nobody gossips like secret government agents.”

 “I’ll have a word with them both,” he promised, eyeballing Simmons.  The scientist smiled innocently.  “It shouldn’t be a problem. It would make the most of the assets at our disposal.”

 “Great!” she quipped.  “More assets to deal with.”  She paused, and he could hear typing.  Not at Starbucks, then.  “So...about Mata Hari,” she continued, seriously.  “Are we going to have a problem with her, Phil?”

 “Too soon to tell,” he said shortly.

 “Should I be prepping for skeletons to come popping out of closets?  You know I like to start my ‘Oh, Shit’ files early.”

“Probably.  But it’s too soon to tell,” he repeated.  

 Darcy sighed an enormous, world weary sigh.  “Got it.  God, I love government work.”

“I know.  Keep me posted.”

 “I will.  Keep me happy.”

 “No promises.”

 She may have growled, but hung up before he could tell for sure.  He smiled and slipped his phone into his pocket.

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry?” she asked, very quietly.  “Can you say that again?”

Ward cleared his throat, and repeated himself.  “Due to residual gamma radiation, it was decided that the safest course of action was to collapse the structure--”

“I know what you said!  I wanted to see if you had the balls to say it again!”  There was something squeaking on the other end of the phone.  If Grant had to guess, he’d say it was a dog toy being chewed vigorously.  Coulson got a plane after being stabbed by an alien; he wondered what injury Agent Lewis sustained in New York to rate taking her dog to work.  Unless...wait.

“Are you visually impaired?” he asked abruptly, and then winced.  Very smooth, Ward.

 “What does that have to do with...?  No, jackass, I’m not.  Are you?  Because from what I can tell you’re completely blind to property damage, cultural sensitivity, and world heritage status.  As usual.”

 “It wasn’t a World Heritage site.”

 “Not yet, but it was - and I’m quoting the Peruvian Minister of Culture - 'An exceptional example of pre-Colombian Peruvian architecture.'  It was one of the most well-preserved Sican pyramids in Peru.  Do you know how rare those are?”

 “More rare than yesterday,” he observed.

 She made a disgusted noise.  “That’s it.  I’m done talking to you.  Why am I talking to you, anyway?  I called Coulson.”

 “He left his phone on the table.”

 “And you just answered it?  Jesus, what kind of manners do they teach you in spy school?”

 “He’s busy with something - he told me to answer it,” the black ops agent said, feeling slightly miffed.  And increasingly suspicious.  

 There was a long pause.  Grant listened to three carefully measured breaths before she continued.  “That dirty fink set you up.  If he thinks I’m going to cool down about this, he’s got another think coming because I fucking love pyramids.” 

 Something popped, loudly, over the phone.  Grant jumped.  “Soooo,” she continued.  “Fine.  Please tell Agent Coulson to call Agent Lewis.  Also, please tell him that because he’s unable to take time from his busy day to explain why there are Peruvian secret police splattered from Cuzco to Chihuahua, I’m unable to prevent Directory Fury from finding out what happened to his airplane.  Also, if you could blow a raspberry at him at this point in the message, that would be great.”

 She hung up.  Grant Ward felt a cold sweat break out.  

*** 

Darcy Lewis sat in her office.  It was an ugly office, located in the dark basement of a nondescript office block in Midtown.  She didn’t mind; she could take her lunch to Bryant Park if she wanted some sunshine.  Times Square was just around the corner if she felt like watching tourists get pick-pocketed.  

Her job was stressful.  For one thing, S.H.I.E.L.D. was wall-to-wall Type-A personalities.  But Darcy had been born with a strong set of lungs, so raging agents didn’t phase her.  Even better was that this job let her tap a hitherto unrecognized vein of megalomania in herself, which she expressed by juggling one disaster after another, intimidating agents all over the globe, and keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. looking shiny.  Darcy discovered that she thrived on that shit.  

 Of course, she couldn’t exactly tell her mother any of those things, so when asked Darcy would tell her about the more generic perks of her job.  For example, the grey walled room in the basement was all hers.  She had her own microwave, and a mini-fridge.  She even had a couple of lackeys to buy her coffee and file things.  She had a 401K and great health insurance.  She had four - count ‘em, four - interactive white boards.  She also had the phone numbers of at least one high-ranking official in every legitimate government in the world, as well as the contact information for every rebel faction, most extremist groups, and home phone numbers for many of the world’s most dangerous spies.  It was pretty rad.

 Okay, that last one was also something she would never tell her mother.

 Another perk of her job was this.  She popped her chewing gum loudly and ignored the vibrating phone on her desk, letting Coulson’s fifth call in as many minutes go to voicemail.  Darcy skimmed a document and paused to highlight ‘Proposed Cover: Military Training Exercise’.  Then she added, used for 04/03/13 incident.  As lame as ‘weather balloon’.  Find more original excuse.

 Her phone started to vibrate again.  Darcy smirked and put it in a drawer.

Chapter Text

This was supposed to be a routine asset transfer, Agent Lewis thought, surveying the wreckage.  Dr. Hill underwent relocation on a regular basis, and despite Priority Red status no one expected any trouble.  But here, on this bland stretch of highway, three agents had been put out of commission and the man had been kidnapped.

Her phone chirped.  “This is Lewis.  Okay.  Oh, no.  Goddamnit...when?”  She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “What about Gross?  Alright.  Keep me posted, will you?  Thanks.”  

She turned to her clean-up crew.  “Agent Jennifer Little was D.O.A.”  She stopped and took a deep breath, trying to keep grief from her voice.  “There was nothing they could do.”

Agent Lopez swore, and hefted his sledgehammer.  He looked ready to swing at the nearest hostile target.  “What about Gross?” he ground out.  “Any news?” 

“Agent Gross just went into surgery.  The branch nicked a few vital organs, but the doctors are hopeful.”  Darcy adjusted her glasses and put her hands in her pockets.  It was pep-talk time.  She fumbled for the right words.  Her predecessor had been so much better at this.  But her predecessor had chosen Darcy for this job, and she wanted to make him proud.  She took a deep breath.

“I know you’re all upset.  Jenny was one hell of an agent.  This was a stupid, pointless way to die.  They’re sending in Coulson’s team. You know him; you know he’ll find out who did this.”  Darcy met the eyes of every one of her team.  Agent Jackson was looking a little teary, and Greene had clenched his jaw so tightly she could hear grinding teeth.  Ngyuen’s face was impassive, but a pulse beat furiously in her neck.  “We need to do our job, and do it right.”

They nodded, for once entirely in agreement.  “Good.  Now, to add to our bad luck today, we have a news van incoming.  They were out covering some podunk parade in Fort Morgan, which means we have about twenty minutes.  Lopez, Jackson - you’re on sledgehammer duty.  Make those cars look like they’ve been through the wars.”  They departed with a nod. Both demonstrated great enthusiasm in beating the crap out of the cars Darcy had brought along for staging.  The Prius’ alarm blared once, then was silenced by a well-placed blow from Jackson’s sledgehammer. 

“Greene - I want to you to borrow that guy over there--” she gestured at a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent scanning fingerprints on a backhoe, “and tackle the field.  We need a scar.  Nothing huge - we don’t want to destroy the farmer’s livelihood.  Just enough to look convincing.  Keep it close to the road.”

Greene looked unimpressed.  “I know my job, Darcy.  We went over this in the chopper.  Twice.” 

She smiled at him.  It was not a nice smile.  “Let’s call it exposition then, Adam - and you know how I love to exposit.  Especially every time I remember what you did in Miami.”

He swallowed and looked away.

“So get!” she shooed.   

He went. 

“And I will be painting the blood and bruises, then?  Because I am made of china?” Ngyuen queried sarcastically.

“Because you are made of very pregnant woman, you nincompoop,” Darcy retorted.  “And you’ve got mad makeup skills that make me jealous.” 

Clare Ngyuen looked resigned and set off to battle-scar the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents remaining on the scene.  Darcy checked her watch. “Eighteen minutes, people!  Look alive!  Shake a leg!  Get cracking!  Get the lead out!   Er...” she flailed.  “Hurry up!” 

The next eighteen minutes (actually seventeen and twenty seconds, Darcy later noted smugly), were a flurry of activity.  She briefed Agent Mack on his role, and was glad to see he was still mostly unflapped.  The man was a tank - she’d seen footage of him taking out six Russian agents with a Big Gulp, a package of mini-donuts, and head-butts.  Darcy wasn’t surprised that he’d walk away from being dropped out of the sky with nothing more than mild lacerations.  

“Your ‘dumb hick’ routine is solid gold,” Darcy told him, “Just keep that up.  Maybe throw in a couple of ‘as God is my Witness, I thought I was going to meet Saint Peter at those pearly gates!’- type stuff,” she said in a fake southern accent.  “Those make awesome sound-bytes.  And they totally distract people from the real story!  Win-win!”  She flashed him two thumbs up.

Mack lowered the icepack from his forehead and eyeballed her.  “Yeah, sure.  Play an offensive stereotype.  Do you know know I went to Harvard?”

Darcy grinned.  “That’s a goddamn shame.” 

Her next step was making sure all non-essentials were removed from the scene.  This was done by pacing the  stretch of highway, occasionally crouching to get a different point of view, or framing the scene like a director.  Waaaay more melodramatic than her old boss, but hell - she got results.  Occasionally she’d bark an order - the ambulance needed to be moved closer, or a road sign made more decrepit-looking.   Night had fallen and darkness could cover a multitude of sins, but Darcy didn’t like leaving anything to chance. 

After ten minutes she was satisfied, and made her way to the last S.H.I.E.L.D. van lingering at the scene.  Coulson’s B-Team were loading cases into the back of it. 

Man, ‘Coulson and the B-Team,‘ she thought.  That would be an awesome band name.

“Agent Lewis,” he said, stopping a conversation with Agent May to greet her.  Darcy wasn’t fooled; it had more to do with the fact they were discussing Top Secret Information A Press Liaison Should Never Hear than a desire to grant her his undivided attention.  Alas, she thought.

“Phiiiiiil!” she declared, bouncing on her toes.  “How’s it hangin’?” 

He blinked and quirked an eyebrow.  From Coulson that was the equivalent of a lighthearted chuckle.  “Somewhat oddly.”

“Oh?  Do tell.”

“It’s Level 7,” drawled Agent Ward.  Like many of black ops specialists she’d had the misfortune to meet, Ward had the ability to look both smug and impassive simultaneously.  “Above your pay grade, Lewis.”

“Thank you, Agent Ward,” Coulson said.  “Would you please help Agents Fitz and Simmons with their equipment?”

Darcy bared her teeth at the smug bastard as he departed.  “I don’t know how you put up with him.  He is the worst.”

This time Phil did smirk.  “You should give him another chance.  What happened in Kanniyakumari was a long time ago.”

She glared.  “It was not.  It two years ago.  How can I forget?  What about those kids?  Will they forget?  Jesus, Phil.  It was right on the beach...”

“Do you want me to assign him another rotation on the clean-up crew?”

“What?!” she boggled.  “Fuck no!  Never, ever again.  I know it’s supposed to teach field agents ‘outcome responsibility’, but that ship’s sailed for Ward.  Besides, I’d try to kill him.  Then he’d retaliate and I don’t want to die.”

“Seems fair.  Alright, it’s time for us to roll out.”

“Oh, pshaw,” Darcy scoffed.  “We’ve got, like, three minutes before the press van gets here.  You’re not even going to ask?” she challenged. 

He smiled.  “I’m sure you’ve got it under control.”

 “Damn straight I do.”  Darcy puffed out her chest under her University of New Mexico hoodie.  “I’ll be playing a student in tonight’s performance.  Everyone’s a Lobo!” she quipped.  She made what looked like a shadow-puppet dog with her right hand.  “Woof!  I’m on a fall break road trip.  And holy fuck, I’ve never seen a tornado before!  I didn’t know what to do!” she wiped an imaginary tear from under her black-rimmed glasses.  She hadn’t worn glasses like that in years, but they fit her role.  

 Coulson nodded in approval.  “It’s a believable cover story, Agent Lewis.”

 “Thanks, boss-man.” She beamed.  He turned to leave, but she snagged his arm.  “Phil?”

 “Yes?”

 “This is weird.  I mean, not weird on the scale of ‘alien lizards squeezing through a portal in the sky’ weird, but still weird.  I don’t like invisible things, even though they make my job a hell  of a lot easier.  Just...be careful, will you?”

 He looked down curiously at the hand she’d wrapped around his elbow, almost like he didn't know what it was.  It was peculiar. She was embarrassingly tactile for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but she’d thought him by now more or less immune to it. 

 Well, she thought.  This was awkward.  Darcy carefully removed the offending digits from his person, and stuck her hands in her pockets.  “Ooookay...I guess I’ll see you around.”

 “Darcy?”

 She turned.

 “Our jobs are always a little weird, but I’m always careful.” He gave her - her! - his goddamned buck-up-little-trooper expression.  She smiled weakly in return.

 “Sure,” she muttered to herself, walking away.  “Except when you’re not.”

***

In a hotel room in Denver, Darcy Lewis collapsed on a bed and groaned.  She had just enough energy to pick up the remote and turn on the TV before burying her face in the pillowy comforter. 

 “Welcome to News 9 at Nine,” the perky anchor announced.  “We have news out of Logan County tonight, where a tornado reportedly touched down just south of Sterling.”

 “Yeah!” Darcy cheered, muffled under a pile of bedding.  “The exposition channel!” 

 “A tornado, Dawn?” the other anchor was saying.  “Isn’t it a bit late for tornadoes?”

 “It sure is, Bob, but there’s no doubt about it.  This twister touched down just east of the I-76, and crossed the road before dissipating in a field.  We go now to Jim Colt, reporting live from the scene.  Jim?”

 “Good evening, Dawn and Bob.  That’s right.  At about six o’clock this evening, the tornado tore across the interstate, damaging vehicles and sending two to the hospital.  It’s shocking - the force of this tornado sent one SUV into a tree, and actually tore apart a semi-trailer.  The semi was carrying a load of paper, which is now scattered across the countryside.  It’s a mess.”

 The camera cut to Agent Mack in full trucker persona.  

 “Yeah, that’s right,” he said with an Oklahoman twang.  “That twister come outta nowhere...I ain’t ever seen something like that.  It picked up the rig and twisted it around.  I thought I was going to see Jesus tonight, and that’s no lie.”

 “And the cargo you were carrying?”

 Mack shook his head.  “Oh, that’s gone gone gone.  Hope they won’t hold it against me, because this surely was an act of God if I ever seen one!”

 The camera panned over the crowd: Agent Ngyuen, sitting in the back of an ambulance wrapped in a shock blanket and rubbing her belly while Agent Jackson played concerned husband at her side.  Agent Greene was having some superficial (and fake) injuries tended to by Agent Lopez, who was dressed as a paramedic.  And then...

 “The star of the show,” Darcy muttered to herself, experiencing the now familiar surreal moment of seeing herself, but not quite herself, on the television.  “Jesus, orange is not my color.”

 “I was visiting my boyfriend for fall break,” TV Darcy said.  “I’ve never even seen a tornado, except on TV.  It was, like, the scariest thing I have ever seen.  It got super dark all of a sudden like it was going to rain, and then things started flying by my window...”  She tucked a strand of neon orange hair behind her ear.  “I mean, my boyfriend just told me this morning to drive carefully, and I’m always careful.  But, like, sometimes things happen right?  And now my car’s totaled, and they had to take those people to the hospital...it was just super scary.”

 In her hotel room, Darcy rubbed her hands over her face.  Between jumping five time zones in two days, losing a colleague, and the constant low-level fear of Epically Terrible Badness she’d experienced since joining S.H.I.E.L.D., she felt exhausted. 

 She was due an early night.  Tomorrow would probably be another long one. 

Chapter Text

THUNK.

Okay, that sounded bad.  Darcy’s blood pressure skyrocketed and her vision blurred.  She knew she was in bad shape.  This was a relief, in a way.  She could finally stop wondering when they were going to come for her.  Because - hey, presto! - here they were.

Although, was that...tapping on her window?  Did HYDRA knock?  It seemed unexpectedly polite for a global terrorism organization.

Tap.  Tap, tap.  TAP TAP TAP!   

Her reflexes belatedly kicked in, and Darcy tumbled off the bed, sheets still tangled around her legs, and hair plastered to her face by a mixture of sweat and drool.  She rolled against the side of the mattress and peered around.  Her gun was ready, her hands were steady.  She’d been expecting something like this for the past three days.

Because it had been three days since SHIELD discovered it had been harboring a nest of vipers.  Three days since panicked HYDRA agents had opened fire on the New York City office.  Darcy had heard the distant commotion from her basement office. She’d had just enough time to dive under her desk before Agent LaCroix - serious, efficient Brienne - fired three rounds into the space where her head had just been. Getting out of that basement and away from LaCroix was more luck than skill - Darcy considered herself a lover, not a fighter.  She was also an excellent runner.  She kept running until she couldn’t anymore, and then jumped on a bus to Newark.    

Darcy didn’t want to boast but she had been one of a select number of people privy to certain secrets.  As head of PR for a secret (although increasingly less-so) organization; she had to know what they were trying to...er, call it ‘obfuscate’...in order to do a good job.  There was no way to know if HYDRA knew everything, but Darcy was smart enough to know there was a better-than-zero chance that one of those sons-of-bitches would come after her.  

Hence her current position of kissing the floor of the seediest motel room on the eastern seaboard.  She kept her eyes trained on the window.  It was partly training, and partly because she didn’t want look down and learn why her elbows were sticking to the carpet.  

Another, more tentative knock.  And then: CRAAAAAAAAAACK.   

Silence.  The person outside didn’t make a move, and Darcy kept the gun trained on the curtains.  Then, almost like an afterthought, the window simply fell apart.  Slivers of glass dropped from behind the heavy drapes and landed on the floor inside the room. 

“Awww, window.”

“Freeze!  Hands where I can see ‘em!” Darcy demanded.

“Should I open the curtains, so you can see ‘em?” a man’s voice asked.  “Sorry ‘bout your window.  I can pay for it.”

The voice sounded vaguely familiar.  It wasn’t a comfort - Darcy had known Agent LaCroix pretty well, and LaCroix had still tried to use her Sig to perforate Darcy’s skull.

“Um...”

“It’s Barton, Lewis. Clint Barton.  Can I come in?”

Barton.  Darcy’s shoulders sagged.  “Whatever,” she said, peeling herself off the floor.  “Sure.  Yeah.  Close the curtains behind you.” 

Hawkeye gracefully propelled himself over the window sill.  How he’d been standing outside her third floor window in the first place, Darcy had no idea.  But Barton was one of Phil’s people, and she’d learned to expect pretty much anything from Phil’s people.

Including this, she thought, backing away quickly from the armed - hello, arms! - and dangerous agent quickly entering her personal bubble.  His expression was a ridiculous mixture of bruises, betrayal and bloody-mindedness. “Lewis.  You have to tell me where he is.”

She blinked, trying to sort through possible he-s. 

“Coulson,” he clarified.  “He’s alive; I’ve seen the footage.  Where the hell is he?” 

Darcy nervously cracked the knuckles on her left hand.  “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” Barton said without rancor.  “You spent a year as Coulson’s new golden girl, and now I hear you’ve taken over the Weather Balloon division.  You totally know where he is.”

“It’s called Public Relations, you plebeian, and no, I don’t know where Phil is.  You may not have noticed, what with being distracted by starting a war with the Russian mob, but SHIELD D.C. was just turned into a smoking crater by HYDRA.  HYDRA!  It’s like no-one but me knows what goddamn decade we’re living in!”  Darcy began pacing, flailing her arms in the air for emphasis.  

Something else occurred to her.  She stopped suddenly and jabbed him in the chest.  “Also, bee-tee-dubs - the Russian mob?  Really?  What the hell is wrong with you, dude?  How is that something you do to relax?”

Hawkeye gave her that look.  It was effective.  It was the same one he’d given her after the Cirque du Soleil incident.  It was his stupid eyes in his stupid squishy face - he radiated the hurt innocence of little boy.  “Darcy...he is alive?  Right?”

She sighed.  “Yeah, he’s alive.”

“Deep cover?”

Darcy cracked the knuckles on her other hand.  “Not...really.  He had a team.”

“I know, I was on it.”

“A new one.”

“Oh.”  Barton’s face fell.  How was this man a spy?  He had the worst poker face in the world. Darcy felt compelled to say something to lessen the sting.

“I think Fury knew something was going down,” she told him. “I think Phil’s team is kind of like a basal sprout kind of thing.”

“What?”

“You know, like a poplar tree - the thing that sprouts up from the root of the original tree?”

Barton shook his head.  “No, I didn’t know that. How do you know that?  Are you saying his new team is a plant?”

Darcy groaned and slapped a hand against her forehead. “Jesus, Barton.  Try watching the Discovery channel every once in a while.  What I mean is: Phil’s team was sent out away from all this.  I don’t know where they are.  I never hear anything from them unless they’re out causing international incidents.  Or, you know, being stupid on film.  I haven’t heard anything from them in two weeks.”

“We need to track them down,” Barton insisted. 

“Why?  For what?  There’s nothing left of the D.C. office.  The New York office was a fucking blood bath.  Fury’s dead, and HYDRA agents are coming out of the goddamn woodwork like cockroaches.  And every SHIELD agent who wasn’t a low-down dirty traitor and isn’t dead has...I don’t know.  I don’t know anything!  I’m in fucking Newark - that should tell you how much I know.”

“Lewis -”

She rolled her eyes, aggravating her three-day-old headache. “Even if we could find him without alerting every HYDRA agent in the universe, what do you think he’d tell you to do?”

“To get eyes on the situation,” Barton replied without hesitation. “Determine and localize assets.”

Darcy waited expectantly, but the sniper didn’t seem to cotton-on to the fact that he’d hit upon a solution. Disappointing.  He was usually sharper.  Of course, he did look like he’d been recently pushed off a building and then punched repeatedly in the face, so maybe he was concussed.

“So...” she prompted, waving her hands in the universal ‘get on with it’ gesture.

“I should...go...see Stark?”

“Dingdingding!!”

Barton ignored her.  “He’s got resources that we can use to figure out what the hell is going on.  And we’re kind of bros, so he’ll probably let me crash on his couch.  Plus, he called this situation like, a year ago.  I think I owe him a beer.”

“I bet Tony Stark has a lot of couches...?”  She tried for coy, but even to her own ears she just sounded tired.

“Like I’d leave you here, Lewis," Barton said, smirking around a fat lip.  "Coulson would kill me.  Or I’d have to do another revenge rotation through P.R.  I hate PR.  I hate it like burning.”

Darcy nodded.  “That is the correct response.  Woo!  Cali-forn-I-A!  Let me fetch my bikini.  And by bikini, I mean my lock-box of fake credit cards and IDs.”

“Hot.”

“I know, right?”