![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Having a bit of a day, here
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 7,700
Spoilers: None
Fandom: Avengers | Thor
Category: Clint/Darcy, Team
Summary: Where Darcy gets a super power, kind of, sorta. Geez, she's just having a bit of a weird week, alright?
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
AO3
"There's a panic room."
"That can withstand the Hulk?"
"The door's made of... mythril."
"There's no panic room is there?"
"Okay, so maybe there's panic stairs that lead to another panic floor and lots of panic agents." Darcy sighs, knowing that nothing she says is going to make Jane like her working in Doctor Banner's labs. Nothing is going to make Jane like Darcy being separated from her which is sweet but Darcy had started to get the impression she was more underfoot than helpful with Jane and she'd asked for a move.
"Thor agrees with me, it's too dangerous-" Jane starts to say, there's scuffling and then Thor himself is on the line.
"I think what I said was that you would have weighed the risks and merits of working for Doctor Banner and would have made your decision accordingly," he says. Darcy loves that you can hear the smile in Thor's voice.
There's more scuffling noises and then Thor actually makes a pained noise and Jane's back on the line. "What did you do to make a god say ow?" Darcy demands, wondering if Jane's playing with experimental weapons and if so, why isn't she sharing?
"Apparently my elbows are very pointy," she says loftily. "I still don't like it."
"Doctor Banner's lab is in the Avenger's tower. There's Avengers in the Avenger's tower. I'm really safe, I swear," Darcy repeats and Jane makes a disgruntled noise.
*
Darcy replays that conversation in her head the very next day when she's being held hostage.
*
"We need you to get Doctor Banner out of his lab for a few minutes," Coulson says, almost making Darcy drop the coffees she's carrying on a tray balanced precariously on one hand while she uses her phone with the other by just appearing in front of her. She's got to learn not to walk and twitter at the same time, especially in a place filled with super spies.
"Why?" Darcy asks, because she knows it drives Coulson just a little bit nuts when she fails to just follow orders like he expects everyone to.
"Need to know. Can you do it?" Coulson asks.
"I'll need an- hey!" Darcy protests when Coulson lifts the two coffee cups from her grasp and passes them back to a junior agent that appeared as quietly as he did.
"Looks like he needs to go out for coffee," Coulson says. He's not smirking but Darcy just knows he wants to.
"Fine," she grumbles. "Give me a sec."
Darcy pushes through the lab doors, waves at Cooper the lab assistant on duty and finds Bruce hunched over his table, opening a case with a nasty looking syringe inside. "Is that what they brought back from the raid this morning?" Darcy asks, curious. Bruce is someone who doesn't mind answering her questions, seems particularly jazzed that she's interested most of the time in fact. "That's one nasty looking flu shot."
Bruce snorts the exasperated laugh she's grown to like, the one he lets out mostly around Tony but more and more around her. Tony and Darcy have started trading off getting Bruce out of the tower and the tension that was permanently in his shoulders seems to have eased a little over the last few months. "I wish it were that innocent," he says, setting the syringe aside and getting a few glass slides out. "Unfortunately it might be proof that the bad guys are further along recreating the Captain America serum than us."
"Wow," Darcy says, then leans into Bruce's line of sight and grins. "How about I set up and you go get us coffee."
"Wasn't that where you just went?" Bruce asks, blinking in the way that means he hasn't actually been out of the lab since the day before.
"Machine's broken in the office," Darcy says. "We'll need outside caffeine and you look like you could use a little outside."
"I don't know. The line at Starbucks could be a little too stressful for me," he says. He's joking and she likes that he's starting to do that. He sighs, eases his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I look that bad?"
"You have slid from deliciously rumpled into hobo rumpled since I last saw you."
"Okay, fine. I'll grab a shower too," he relents, squeezes her shoulder and retreats.
"I'm da bomb," Darcy chuckles to herself as Bruce disappears out the lab doors.
Maybe thirty seconds passes and suddenly the lab is filling with agents, all with guns out. Darcy swears and moves to duck behind Bruce's table, but she crashes into Cooper who'd been coming around from the other side. His hand is darted out and Darcy makes a grab for the syringe just as he snags it, something in his face warning her. She goes to dart back the other way but he snatches the end of her ponytail, wrapping her hair around his fist and dragging her back against him.
"Darcy, you were supposed to go with Doctor Banner," Coulson says, sounding exasperated. His gun is pointed just to the left of her face, probably where Cooper's is.
"I didn't know that," Darcy squeaks as something sharp touches her neck.
"There's no way we're letting you out of here," Coulson says in a completely different tone and Darcy feels the grip on her hair tighten, pulling painfully at her scalp. She's forced to look at the ceiling or lose hair so she can't see any super secret gestures Coulson would be making at her to get her out of this thing alive.
She's pretty sure she'd misinterpret them anyway. Life is rarely, if ever, like the movies.
"You will unless you want me to pump Miss Lewis here full of this stuff," Cooper threatens and Darcy isn't reassured in the least that he sounds freaked out, like a scared kid caught shoplifting. She'd prefer a cool-headed, detached, super villain type, someone less likely to jab her accidentally.
"Think about it Cooper, you're a smart guy. Is there any way at all in which this ends well for you?" Coulson's voice is calm, level as ever. Darcy kind of knew in a peripheral way that he was a totally cool cucumber under pressure but it's completely different when presented with evidence. "You either surrender to us, or you leave this tower and get scooped up by Hydra agents thirty seconds after your feet hit pavement who will see you as nothing more than a liability."
Cooper's grip slackens just the tiniest bit, enough for Darcy to be able to drop her gaze back down to see Coulson, see his eyes widen and his neutral face break right as Cooper says, "In that case-"
There's pain and gun shots. Darcy's consciousness doesn't last long enough for her to hit the floor and for that, she's extremely grateful.
*
Darcy wakes up and it's not a languid drift to consciousness but a kind of sharp turn, leaving her with a pounding head. Someone, maybe two people are shouting and she tries to tell them to shut up because her head is killing her but she's pretty sure the strangled kind of "Muh-hur," sound she makes doesn't break through the yelling.
Her right hand is being gripped and tugged around, like whoever's holding it has forgotten they are while gesturing madly. Darcy tries to tug her hand free and that's what gets attention, the voices silent so suddenly that her ears ring. Clint's face appears in her line of sight, brow furrowed and lined with concern. "Hey, hi," he says, sounding flustered and pressing the hand he was holding back to her chest, gentle.
"See what you did!" Jane's voice is somewhere to Darcy's left, her small arm and tinier fist darting across Darcy's body to punch Clint in the shoulder.
"Did we wake you?"
"I think it was the vigorous arm calisthenics," Darcy says after she clears her throat noisily for what feels like ten minutes to get it working. Clint blushes and Darcy wonders if it's weird to be struck by how adorable he is before she's even gotten her bearings properly.
"Next time I'll be more explicit in my instructions," Coulson says from the end of her bed. He looks terrible and she's pretty sure the yelling was between him and Clint.
"Where am I?" she asks, first things first.
"Medical wing," Clint says, sitting carefully on the edge of her bed. She's not even slightly jostled. He picks her hand up again like he needs to be holding something, touches a thumb to each finger and circles her palm.
"What happened?"
"I'm really sor-" Coulson starts to say and Clint overrides him with a, "It's a bit late for that now!"
"Hey, angry version of Clint. Let him answer my question," Darcy orders, watching Clint reign himself in. Coulson's head drops, cowed and Darcy doesn't like that at all.
"We really thought Cooper would surrender. I read the situation wrong. He injected you with the liquid found in the new Hydra labs before we shot him."
Darcy takes a moment to process this, watching everyone watch her. "Do we need to start making tearful farewells?" she asks, proud that her voice only shakes a little.
"Oh god, absolutely not," Coulson is quick to say, Clint shaking his head. "We think the new serum was missing the activation agent. The doctors believe your body will fight the effects off like an infection, basically break it down and absorb it."
"So..." Darcy says. "Until then it's pampering and all the apology ice cream I can eat, right?"
What she says gets the desired effect. Clint and Jane stop looking so murderous and Coulson finally cracks a smile.
*
Darcy enjoys the pampering and hovering for about three days, but by the fourth she's decided she needs a little breathing space. Jane and Clint are tag teaming her, Jane apparently having forgotten all about her initial reservations about her taking up with the arrow guy that spied on us like a creeper in solidarity of wrapping Darcy well and truly in cotton wool.
Sending Clint out for donuts and Jane being in the shower lets Darcy make her escape. She heads for the one place in the mansion she knows no one will think to look for her, Tony's workshop.
"Not that I'm complaining, but what are you doing down here?" Tony asks, flipping up his welding mask when JARVIS lets her in. She's apparently one of the few people allowed without being announced because she doesn't touch anything that might blow up.
The rest of the Avengers don't have the same kind of self preservation instincts.
"I beg sanctuary," Darcy says, waiting until Tony points her at the stuff she can touch. There's always a bench full of new gadgets that are allowed to be played with and she gets to because she's patient.
"I'm not sure you can do that here."
"Don't really big, kickass mansions have the same rules as churches?" Darcy asks and Tony snorts.
"I hope not. There are many and varied things I've done in this place that would get me in a lot of trouble if that were true." Tony eyes her for a second. "Barton and Foster driving you crazy?"
"I feel like they're monitoring me," Darcy says. "Like they don't trust what the doctors have said and are waiting for me to... hulk out or something."
"Darcy smash!" Tony yells, grinning while punching the air and Darcy rolls her eyes.
"Something like that."
"I can mock up an interactive hologram of you, make it walk through a wall, really freak them out."
"How are you not on the evil side of the genius spectrum again?" Darcy asks, but she can't help laughing.
"While you're here, you can make yourself useful," Tony says, not ever one to idly chat for long. "Hold this. I think Dummy is the only robot arm in existence with an intention tremor."
*
"I can't help that I'm Jarvis' favorite," Darcy says when Clint complains, long and bitterly later about how Jarvis kept assuring him that she was fine without divulging her whereabouts. "Try talking to him like he's a person and not a disembodied ceiling ghost. He might warm to you."
"You can't just disappear like that," Clint grumbles and she kind of likes when he's growly and protective, but Clint can get a little obsessive about things.
She sees the way he cleans his bow.
"I spent twenty three years without your supervision without dying, I might add. I was inside the mansion, nothing was going to happen to me-"
"We thought that about you working in Banner's lab," Clint points out and yes, he has her there but there were circumstances and really bad luck. It wasn't like Bruce was going to hire another evil lab assistant, at least on purpose. "Look, I don't think that's a good idea anymore."
"What's not a good idea?" Darcy asks slowly, pretty sure she knows exactly where this conversation is going but without a clue how to brake and reverse away from it. She's been enjoying Clint as her boyfriend immensely, mostly because he's avoided dickish behavior.
Until now.
"I told Coulson to transfer you," he says.
"You what?" Darcy demands, incensed. She was pretty sure Clint was about to ask her to quit, not go behind her back and do it for her.
"Still in SHIELD, just somewhere safer. His Executive Assistant is going on maternity leave next week. You can type, right?"
Darcy's mouth drops open. For one of the very few times in her life, she's been rendered completely speechless. She points a finger at Clint, who goes almost cross-eyed looking at it leveled between his eyes, before she lets out an exasperated noise and stalks away from him.
*
Darcy heads for the roof instead of Tony's lab, because while the lab has many sharp, pointy things, it might be more satisfying to push Clint off something high if he follows her. He doesn't and Darcy's not sure if that's him showing rare restraint or JARVIS once again having her back.
The trap door opens and closes after about twenty minutes but the fact that she can hear the footfalls across the pebbled roof and that they're heavy tells her it isn't Clint. She's sitting on the edge of the roof with her legs dangling off when Thor drops down beside her. "Did Jane send you?"
"I sought you out myself," Thor says. Darcy gives him the side-eye, then bites her lip on a snort when she sees what he's wearing. His t-shirt says Push it, push it real good with a picture of a lawnmower. Thor's recently discovered the internet and shortly thereafter internet shopping and every funny t-shirt site there is. Considering on Asgard he gets around in the same outfit all the time, she supposes he's allowed a few wardrobe missteps in his downtime.
"Am I being overly sensitive?" Darcy asks. She's learned over the time she's known him that Thor is a good person to give you an honest opinion that's actually helpful. Most people make the mistake of treating him like a barely cognizant brute because of his size and strength but he's surprisingly sweet and wise.
"If you saw Clint's devastation at your peril, you might understand his overly zealous attitude towards your safety." No one can say yes quite like Thor.
"He can't dictate what I do with my life," Darcy argues and Thor makes a thoughtful sound.
"Indeed, I am not suggesting his actions have been rational or well thought out. He wants what is best for you but he has gone about it in a..." Thor kind of waggles his hand.
"Bone-headed way?"
"Quite."
"I'm allowed to be angry at him, right?"
"Of course you are," Thor assures her and Darcy leans sideways until she can drop her head on his shoulder. "Darcy, some times we must wear other people's shoes."
"That's not exactly... no, never mind," Darcy says, sighs.
"Sometimes we must make compromises for those we care about," Thor says and Darcy thinks about what that means for Thor. He's got to go through one hell of a commute to stay with Jane, plus he's probably reigning in his own protective instincts most of the time while she does increasingly outlandish things in the name of science.
"I just wish he'd asked me," Darcy says. "I mean, I wouldn't have minded moving to Coulson's office considering all the super secret memos I'll probably get to read if he hadn't made it sound like he was laying down the law." Darcy tilts back up straight, frowning. "Plus, his job isn't the safest in the world. You don't see me telling him to give it up."
"Don't punish him too harshly. From what I understand, he expects the loss of all those he holds dear to him."
"Stop making so much sense," Darcy complains, punching Thor lightly in the bicep.
*
Darcy compromises by accepting the position with Coulson but giving Clint the silent treatment. She's grateful that she was given her own room at Tony's mansion because she would have felt bad banishing Clint from his.
Not that she'll ever let on to Clint, but working for Coulson is awesome. Everything runs through him and he stops with the sad, puppy eyes every time he looks at her after only two days. She still lets him treat her to lunch every now and again mostly because he knows all the weird little out of the way places with awesome noms.
She's happy because she has time enough to pester Bruce during her day as well, another person who's on the Darcy guilt train despite having no way of knowing what would have happened that day.
She's thinking about completely forgiving Clint two weeks into her new job when his I'm sorry post-it notes with increasingly devastated looking frowny faces border her computer monitor completely.
Of course, that's when everything really goes pear-shaped.
*
"He's not even going to let me in the same zip code as a SHIELD office after this," Darcy laments to Jane, cell phone pressed to her ear while she tries to navigate the evacuation route of the SHIELD office and find the damn rally point.
"Just get out of there," Jane orders, sounding worried. She has every reason to be, considering some guy with a teleportation device is currently blipping in and out of the offices, picking up random people and then blipping off to somewhere high to drop them. The only good thing is he seems to be a speechifying type of bad guy so Thor and Tony have time to catch people.
They're eight for eight at the moment and Darcy is trying not to think about them missing.
"I'm going," Darcy says. "Geez, you'd think they'd make places like this easier to navigate." Darcy lets out a surprised squeak when a guy in overlarge glasses and a scratchy looking jumper just appears in front of her, clutching a boxy looking metal gadget that seems to be the lovechild of a toaster and a hair dryer. "Oh n-"
He grabs her around the waist and there's a sickening lurch. Suddenly the solid ground underneath her feet is just gone and she's being held over the side of a building. He's misjudged his landing and her relative weight to his own if the hilariously surprised look on his face is any indicator when she immediately slips out of his grasp.
She's falling, and there wasn't even the ten-minute long diatribe before to give Tony and Thor time to spot her. She sees what must be Tony in the distance hurtling towards her, but he's too far away, she knows he is and then she hits.
*
"-arcy, Jesus Christ!"
"Ow," Darcy groans and rolls over, or tries to but whatever she's lying on is unforgiving and she struggles for a second before Tony's there, telling her not to move you've probably got massive injuries oh my god how are you alive and-
"I think I'm okay," Darcy says, surprised. There's the tinkle of broken glass and a groan of metal as she finally manages to pry herself off whatever it was she was lying on and then Tony's helping her up and out, face plate raised and eyes wide and shocky. "I swear, I think I'm just a little winded," she says. "Nice catch by the way."
"I didn't catch you," Tony says, still looking horribly pale and more confused. "Just-" he raises a hand, points behind and Darcy looks, sees a car that has a large, Darcy-shaped dent in the roof.
"Huh," is all Darcy can really say about that.
*
Darcy lets Clint squeeze her for as long as he wants to when Tony passes her off to him. He's babbling something into her hair that she doesn't try to make out, his hands spasming rhythmically on her shoulder and hip. One thing Darcy understands about Clint is that he's a man of pure physicality, a touch meaning more than a thousand words ever can. Being able to hold onto her until he's reassured works better than Darcy telling him over and over again that she's fine.
When he finally brings himself to release her it's only because Coulson insists on a debrief. He keeps contact, knee, shoulder, hand like he thinks she'll just evaporate if he doesn't but it doesn't bother her in the least.
Not after he told her that the news cameras cut away right after she hit the car and he hadn't known she'd survived. The guy who dropped her hadn't either which was actually a blessing as he'd freaked out and given himself up immediately, only wanting attention and not wanting to actually kill anyone, hence the delay in dropping people.
"I'm sorry to say there'll be a lot of tests in your future," Coulson is saying, wearing his official agent-man expression.
"Only if it's Doctor Banner," Darcy says and Coulson looks like he's going to argue but then he just leans forward, types something on the tablet in front of him while nodding.
"Can we leave now?" Clint asks, already standing and tugging Darcy with him.
"She should really-"
"Great, thanks," Clint says with a sharp look and then he's towing her to the conference room door and out.
"I really need some booze, some takeout and some trashy television," Darcy says and Clint turns to her, smiles for the first time in hours and says, "Your wish is my command."
*
"No autopsy," Darcy says and Bruce laughs.
"I couldn't even if I wanted to." He'd tried to take blood, skin and hair samples and he hadn't been able to. Darcy presses a finger into her skin. It feels the same, still soft and warm and yielding yet a syringe just bent uselessly when Bruce tried to tap a vein.
"It's weird."
"That's the understatement of the century," Bruce says. "I mean, we know it's the serum but I can't really find out how. The effects weren't immediate so..." Bruce's voice wears away like the end of an old record and Darcy watches him making notes with lips still moving. She knows he stopped talking to her specifically after the first few minutes and she just swings her feet and lets him drift in his own little Banner-world for a while before he obviously remembers that she's still there.
"You don't seem to have enhanced strength, speed or agility like Steve," Bruce says.
"So, just invulnerable then?" Darcy says, grinning and Bruce shrugs.
"Looks like. You might develop more... enhancements later, we can't really be sure." He takes his glasses off, chews on his thumbnail. "Or, this could wear off and you could become completely normal. It could be like a vaccination, not permanent, just protecting you for a while."
"Hey, it saved my life once. That's enough to make me happy."
"I wouldn't recommend throwing yourself off anymore buildings," Bruce says. "You know these things, likely to wear off at inopportune moments."
"Is there... can this help you?" Darcy asks, hesitant and Bruce looks puzzled for a moment before he frowns.
"I... maybe, but the only sample we have is in you and currently there's no getting it out. I've got a saliva swab but..." He digs around on his table for a moment before he comes up with a couple of plastic jars with yellow tops. Darcy sighs, realizing the indignity of the day isn't quite over.
*
Darcy hardly ever sees Clint sleep. He usually only drops off after her and he's always up before. She'd feel guilty about keeping him awake but he's assured her over and over that his sleep is broken, no matter what his circumstances.
He's come back from a few missions banged up enough to need something to put him under and that's usually the only time she seems him that vulnerable. It's surprising when she gets back to the mansion and her room to find him sprawled belly down across her bed, out for the count.
Darcy discards the clothing she can be bothered to and then drops onto the bed herself, not being careful about it because for some strange reason that's the fastest way to wake Clint. He doesn't budge so she nudges into the space under his arm and rests her chin on his shoulder blade before he finally stirs.
"Hey," he croaks, sleep roughened voice always doing lovely things to her. "Tough day?"
"I had to pee in a cup," Darcy grumbles. When Clint snorts, she says, "That's harder for girls than it is for guys you know."
"I'm sorry, I'm sure it was terrible," he says, turning over under her and hooking arms around her, rubbing a thumb across her brow. Darcy leans up and nips at his bottom lip. Clint doesn't let her escape without making the kiss deeper and wetter for a few minutes, making a contented rumble in the back of his throat when she scratches across his ribs.
"Technically this is your fault this happened," Darcy says as she kisses down his chest. His hands grip on her shoulders and haul her back up, his expression stricken and she says, "Oh no, hey, I was kidding."
"You're right though, I made you take-"
"Clint, no, okay?" Darcy says, firmly. She gets both hands on either side of his face so he can't duck his gaze away. "The Lewis' have long been known for their bad timing and even worse jokes."
"If anything had happened to you..." Clint's voice breaks and Darcy drapes herself over him, gathers him against her, trying to touch as much as possible because it's the only language he truly understands. After a while she feels him let out a shaky breath and she slides sideways, leg and arm still thrown across his body.
"It won't," she says.
"Not on my watch."
*
Darcy seeks Steve out because he's probably the utmost authority she has at her disposal for her situation. He's only too happy to answer any questions she has, but she comes away from the conversation discomfited.
Not from anything he said, but from the very fact of him, alive and perpetual and possibly ageless.
"Is Steve getting older?" Darcy asks.
"He's showing negligible senescence-" Bruce starts to explain, takes in Darcy's expression and says, "His cells aren't degenerating like normal humans so he's... technically biologically immortal. He can die from traumatic injury but I don't think any of us are going to live long enough to see him get a gray hair."
"What about me?" Darcy asks. "I'm kinda looking forward to getting old so I can be crabby and judgmental and no one can say a damn thing about it."
Bruce scratches a thumb along his jaw and grimaces. "We don't know if your invulnerability is going to last," he reminds her.
"I mean, Clint says he already feels a little skeevy because of our age difference. He's going to get even less thrilled if I still look like this in ten or twenty years."
*
Three weeks later, an evil robot straight out of science fiction and nobody able to get near it. Darcy says, "Maybe I can-"
"Absolutely not," Coulson says, but he hesitates which means he thinks about it for a second. Darcy senses a definite in.
"Thor's way out of town, Tony's coming but from China and Natasha and Clint are completely scary but not bullet proof," Darcy points out, watches for the sideways twitch of Coulson's mouth that means he's about to give an order he doesn't like. "We can't lob explosives at it because of what it's standing in front of."
"Barton can shoot me from where he is," Coulson says, winces which Darcy takes to mean that across comms Clint is promising to do just that.
"That's a day care," Darcy says, pointing to the building the killer robot is positioned in front of, a cheery sun painted between two first floor windows. "You really want me to just stand here when there's kids inside?"
"The robot seems to be motion triggered. The children should be fine as long as they stay inside," Coulson says but he's sounding less convinced.
"Or until the bad guy who left it here gets bored and starts remote controlling it or something," Darcy says.
"I still don't think you could-"
"Tony can talk me through it," Darcy says, cutting off Coulson's last objection. "Get me one of those camera headset thingums and get him on the line. He can talk me through getting this evil garbage can from hell shut down."
Coulson's shoulders drop and even though an arrow comes winging out of nowhere and embeds itself right next to his elbow, he says, "Okay, but let's get you into a uniform so it doesn't look like a civilian just wandered into a kill zone."
*
Every instinct tells her to duck and cover when the evil robot spins to life, showering the street with bullets. Darcy can feel the hits, her hair tossed around and the places where the shots go right through the fabric of the SHIELD onesie she was forced into. It's kind of uncomfortable, like someone flicking her all over with middle finger and thumb but she's not going to complain about that.
Tony's a calm voice in her ear, the only thing keeping her steady. That and the tiny hand she can see pressed against a window for about a second before it's snatched away.
Tony talks her through taking the back cover off the robot, thankfully not welded in place which had been a concern, and says, "Let's take care of that pesky motion sensor first, eh?"
It's soothing, Tony being the one to guide her through. She's done this, hours spent in his workshop where he's been all, hold this here and move that there and especially now you've got peanut butter on it, Jesus Darcy.
She almost can't believe it when the thing makes an almost disgruntled noise and powers all the way off. It's a relief to step aside as SHIELD's Public Safety Bomb Disposal guys swarm forward just in case the robot was built with any nasty surprises inside. They wave her off and she retreats, can see Clint has made his way down from his perch and Natasha has followed him. He's leaning into Coulson, both of them tense and Natasha obviously there to intervene if things turn ugly.
Clint spins on her when she's reached him, opens his mouth and she clamps a hand over it, says, "Can you scream at me after I've seen the kids come out safe?"
He deflates, anger draining away and instead he grabs her and hauls her in. He's murmuring something over and over that's either swearing or a prayer, she can't tell. When the passel of kids and a couple of frightened looking adults are hustled out, flanked by junior agents, Clint turns Darcy in his arms so she can watch, still holding on.
*
"You didn't know!"
Clint had only been able to set aside his anger for so long.
"I had a pretty good-"
"You didn't know!"
They've been having the exact same argument, going around in circles for about twenty minutes. No one else has entered the mansion's main kitchen the whole time which is possibly a new record, given the kinds of metabolisms Darcy's living with so either their yelling is carrying through the house or JARVIS is warning everyone off.
Darcy figures it's probably a bit of both.
"I fell off a building and Bruce has poked me with all kinds of sharp, pointy objects. I had a pretty good idea that I'd be okay."
"Unless Bruce shot you, you couldn't have known you'd be okay!"
"I'm not going to stand here and just let you yell at me when if things were reversed you would do the exact same thing."
"I'm allowed to risk myself," Clint growls, obviously straining to bring down his volume but still let her know that he's pissed off.
"Oh yeah, says who? I don't remember signing that particular permission slip."
"I'm trained for situations-"
"Oh my god, are you really going there?" Darcy snaps, frustrated. "Just remember buddy, I see your paperwork now. Coulson has macros for disregarded direct order and cavalier attitude to own personal safety because of you."
Clint's clenching and unclenching his hands into fists, probably longing for something to shoot. "I can't do this... I can't just watch you..." He sounds broken now, his anger morphing into something else, something Darcy doesn't like at all.
"I have to," Darcy says, steps into him because she knows she can now. He turns his face away from her when she leans up to kiss him so she puts hands on either side of his face and forces him to look at her. "With you, I have to watch. With my heart in my throat every time."
"Darce," he says, an exhalation more than a word. He grips her wrists, lifts her hands away from him and steps back.
He walks away from her and Darcy watches him go.
*
"I need a name," Darcy announces, flopping down on the couch next to Steve and Thor who are playing Wii bowling. Thor's learned not to throw the controller but it took a while.
"I think Darcy is a lovely name, why would you want to discard it?" Thor asks, lining up his shot carefully.
"No, not discard my name. I mean like... Natasha's Black Widow," she says.
"Or Clint's Hawkeye?" Steve asks, looks horrified at himself for having mentioned Clint in Darcy's presence. They all know what's been going on the last few weeks, all walking on eggshells around the both of them. Darcy and Clint have been like ships passing in the night, never in the same room for more than a handful of moments, strained and edgy.
Darcy's just grateful that they're living in such a large place so they can avoid each other if need be. Darcy doesn't want to leave and doesn't want Clint to feel like he has to. She definitely doesn't want him to go because then this weird pause they've been on might turn into something more permanent.
"It's okay, you can mention him. I'm past the point of spontaneously weeping," Darcy says, smiling bravely but Steve doesn't look like he believes her.
She doesn't really believe herself.
"So, c'mon, make with the brainstorming."
"I don't have another name," Thor says. "Should I?"
"No, you're Thor. That's superhero enough." Thor grins, adorably pleased. "Impenetrable Lass?"
"That's a bit of a mouthful," Steve says.
"Okay, Captain America," Darcy says with a roll of her eyes.
"You can't make your problems go away by giving yourself a new name," Steve says gently. "I know you probably think it would be easier to not be Darcy right now, but I think Darcy is who you need to be."
"Did you just Yoda me?"
"I have no idea what that means."
*
"Look Buster," Darcy says, marching into Clint's room and finding it empty. "Crap."
"He left an hour ago Miss Lewis," JARVIS supplies. "There was an urgent matter."
"There's always an urgent matter."
"Would it help you to know that he has been standing outside your room for the last three nights. He looks to have gotten closer to knocking each time. I know he wanted to apologize but wasn't sure how, I've learned over long experience to know what that looks like."
"Jarvis, if you weren't a disembodied AI, I would kiss you."
"Thank you, Miss Lewis," JARVIS says, sounding about as flattered as he ever can.
*
Darcy heads to the office at a bit of a loose end and finds it strangely empty when she passes in. The place is usually bustling with agents and admin staff even on a Sunday, but the foyer is empty, no signs of life.
She makes her way up to Coulson's office, worried, and his door is standing open, papers strewn across the floor and a chair turned over. Darcy grips the handle of her bag tightly and backs up, right into someone.
"Where'd you come from?" a gruff voice demands and Darcy's grabbed and spun around. The man's tall with a scraggly beard and a giant gun pushed into what must be a custom holster at his belt. There's something a little off about his features. Everything's there, eyes, nose, mouth but it's almost like a pastiche, not all of them meshing like they should.
Darcy's left thinking alien which might account for the quick evac, SHIELD having detection in place for that kind of thing.
"No matter, you can tell me where everyone is," the guy grunts. "I came for great violence and found nothing."
"I'm sorry, I'm just part of the cleaning staff. I have absolutely-" Darcy's sentence finishes up in a squeak as the guy grips her wrist and grinds down. She feels pain, sharp, bright and present and when he releases her the wrist throbs.
Bruce had said inopportune time and he certainly hadn't been wrong.
*
Darcy knows Clint practices for this kind of thing, moving through drop ceilings and air ducts. He knows SHIELD like the back of his hand, always makes it a point to scare any new agents, usually waiting until they're holding something liquid for maximum hilarity. As Darcy gets towed along, she really hopes he's close by.
She'd let him yell at her all he liked after this one.
The guy doesn't believe her when she tells him everyone's in a magic panic room, even when she mentions the part about the mythril. He leans in real close to her so she can see when his face ripples like something's scurrying around under the skin and she cringes away.
He shoves her into a stationary cupboard she recognizes because they're still near Coulson's office and leaves her there, promising to be back for her. Darcy tries the door but he's blocked it from the other side with something heavy and she wonders just where Steve or Thor are when you need them.
There's silence except for her own shaky breathing and a faint scrabbling sound in the air ducts above her head. Darcy turns to follow the noise slowly, watches the vent cover above the cupboard with the boxes of manila folders pop open and Clint's head appear, upside down. "Do I get forgiven for being an ass if I stage a daring rescue?" he asks, looking cheeky and relieved and so very him that she wants to pin him to the floor and have her way with him immediately, alien bad guys with scary faces be damned.
"I'll have to think about it," Darcy says, makes a show of tapping her chin for a second before she says, "Okay, yes, forgiven." She makes grabby hands at him until he rolls his eyes and disappears, reappearing boots first.
When he drops, Darcy immediately wraps arms around his neck. Her still aching wrist reminds her there's something very important she has to tell Clint but she doesn't get a chance before the door has swung back open and the alien guy is standing there, looking annoyed. "Now where did you come from?" he demands as Clint steps in front of her.
He doesn't have his bow and the alien still has the giant gun.
"Wow, did you ever fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down," Clint remarks and the alien laughs in a way that Darcy doesn't like at all, right before the skin down the middle of his face splits open, revealing crawling, squirming, pulsing things underneath.
Darcy buries her face in the back of Clint's shoulder because she just doesn't want to see that. Because she does, the gun shot is a surprise and she actually screams a little, thinking it's Clint that's been shot. He turns in her grasp and she can't open her eyes and see, she just can't but he's holding her face and saying, "It's okay, I'm alright, you're alright," until she's able to slit her eyes open.
She peeks around Clint's shoulder and the alien is down. Clint's looking behind her, back at the vent he'd dropped through. "Nice shooting, tex."
Darcy turns, sees Coulson hanging awkwardly out of the air duct, gun still in hand. "Nice antagonizing, Barton," he returns. "Now you wanna help me down before I pass out from all the blood rushing to my head?"
*
"Carpatheetes have a tough, thick hide that's hard to get through," Clint explains, leading Darcy down the strangely deserted hallways by the hand with Phil ahead of them. "To really nail 'em you gotta goad them into..." Clint pauses for a second, drops her hand and clasps his own over his face before opening them and waggling his fingers.
"Ugh, don't remind me," Darcy says. "Where do those guys come from anyway?"
"They're a bit of a scavenger race, cobbled together, no one truly knows where they first came from. Even Thor said that while the Asgardians knew of them, they didn't know which world they'd come from initially." Clint gets moving again, tugging her along. "We're just lucky they're loners."
"Here we are," Phil says, interrupting Clint's explanation and Darcy's mouth drops open as she watches Phil slide a panel back from the wall she couldn't even see, key in a code on the pad underneath and have his eyes scanned. A whole section of wall slides away, revealing a crowd of admin staff crouched behind some determined looking junior agents all with their guns out, although held low and to the side.
"No way. You mean we actually do have a panic room?"
"You didn't know?" Coulson asks, looking back at Darcy with a raised eyebrow. He gives Clint a puzzled frown and Clint laughs.
"We were kind of wondering why you kept telling the Carpartheete where our people were hiding."
"I didn't know I was." Darcy looks around, realizes she was so close when the teleporter had grabbed her. "Hey, so, um-"
"Honestly, I'm just glad you have that invulnerable mojo going," Clint says, watching Coulson helping the other agents get everyone out of the secret room. "Phil wouldn't have been able to talk me into an actual plan otherwise."
Darcy looks down at the hand Clint's not holding, at the bruising blooming around her wrist. She tucks that hand behind her, smiles at him gamely and says, "Yeah, hooboy, very lucky."
*
"Huh, would you look at that," Bruce says.
"I'd rather not," Darcy says, screwing her face up. Bruce is drawing blood and while needles don't really faze her, she doesn't exactly like watching her blood being drawn out of her body.
"Did you feel any different?" Bruce asks.
"Nah, I just kinda figured it out when the feet guy was grinding my bones to make bread," she says.
Bruce looks confused for a moment before he cracks a grin. "Carpatheete."
"You said it happened this morning."
"Cheese and crackers!" Darcy yelps because Clint is suddenly right there.
"Oh, this is... I'm going to... go over there now," Bruce says, beating a hasty retreat. Clint rounds on her, puts hands on either side of Darcy's legs where they're hanging off Bruce's lab table so she can't escape him. He gives her his not messing around stare.
"There was a whole spilled milk thing going on," Darcy says. "Bad guy dead, us alive, whoopee!" Darcy raises her arms, winces when she realizes she's exposed the bruising and Clint zeroes in on it immediately, of course.
"Darce," he says as he takes her arm, walks ever so gentle fingers over the bruising. He says it in the way he did when the last thing he'd said was I can't and Darcy doesn't think she can take that again.
"Look, buddy. I'm not the wallflower type. I'm not going to just hang around with my pompoms waiting for you to swoop in and out. I'm involved in your life, in the things that happen to you and sometimes it's not the safest place to be but I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else."
"You can't make me like it."
"I wouldn't expect you to. Just like you wouldn't expect me to like you throwing your silly ass off buildings and just trusting someone's going to be there to catch you." When Clint looks shifty at that, Darcy says, "Oh yeah, I saw that news footage."
"I don't think you can judge people about jumping off buildings."
"I was dropped, I didn't fling myself-" Darcy takes a steadying breath, knows they're going to end up having another fight that goes nowhere if she isn't the one to put the brakes on. "You can't protect me from everything."
"I can try."
"I love that you try," Darcy says, gripping the front of Clint's shirt and tugging him down to her. "I love that you stepped in front of me even though you still thought I was invulnerable and it was a stupid thing to do." Darcy flicks him on the forehead and Clint ducks away, surprised and laughing.
"So," Clint says, looking intent, wolfish grin in place. "You have pompoms?"
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 7,700
Spoilers: None
Fandom: Avengers | Thor
Category: Clint/Darcy, Team
Summary: Where Darcy gets a super power, kind of, sorta. Geez, she's just having a bit of a weird week, alright?
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
AO3
"There's a panic room."
"That can withstand the Hulk?"
"The door's made of... mythril."
"There's no panic room is there?"
"Okay, so maybe there's panic stairs that lead to another panic floor and lots of panic agents." Darcy sighs, knowing that nothing she says is going to make Jane like her working in Doctor Banner's labs. Nothing is going to make Jane like Darcy being separated from her which is sweet but Darcy had started to get the impression she was more underfoot than helpful with Jane and she'd asked for a move.
"Thor agrees with me, it's too dangerous-" Jane starts to say, there's scuffling and then Thor himself is on the line.
"I think what I said was that you would have weighed the risks and merits of working for Doctor Banner and would have made your decision accordingly," he says. Darcy loves that you can hear the smile in Thor's voice.
There's more scuffling noises and then Thor actually makes a pained noise and Jane's back on the line. "What did you do to make a god say ow?" Darcy demands, wondering if Jane's playing with experimental weapons and if so, why isn't she sharing?
"Apparently my elbows are very pointy," she says loftily. "I still don't like it."
"Doctor Banner's lab is in the Avenger's tower. There's Avengers in the Avenger's tower. I'm really safe, I swear," Darcy repeats and Jane makes a disgruntled noise.
Darcy replays that conversation in her head the very next day when she's being held hostage.
"We need you to get Doctor Banner out of his lab for a few minutes," Coulson says, almost making Darcy drop the coffees she's carrying on a tray balanced precariously on one hand while she uses her phone with the other by just appearing in front of her. She's got to learn not to walk and twitter at the same time, especially in a place filled with super spies.
"Why?" Darcy asks, because she knows it drives Coulson just a little bit nuts when she fails to just follow orders like he expects everyone to.
"Need to know. Can you do it?" Coulson asks.
"I'll need an- hey!" Darcy protests when Coulson lifts the two coffee cups from her grasp and passes them back to a junior agent that appeared as quietly as he did.
"Looks like he needs to go out for coffee," Coulson says. He's not smirking but Darcy just knows he wants to.
"Fine," she grumbles. "Give me a sec."
Darcy pushes through the lab doors, waves at Cooper the lab assistant on duty and finds Bruce hunched over his table, opening a case with a nasty looking syringe inside. "Is that what they brought back from the raid this morning?" Darcy asks, curious. Bruce is someone who doesn't mind answering her questions, seems particularly jazzed that she's interested most of the time in fact. "That's one nasty looking flu shot."
Bruce snorts the exasperated laugh she's grown to like, the one he lets out mostly around Tony but more and more around her. Tony and Darcy have started trading off getting Bruce out of the tower and the tension that was permanently in his shoulders seems to have eased a little over the last few months. "I wish it were that innocent," he says, setting the syringe aside and getting a few glass slides out. "Unfortunately it might be proof that the bad guys are further along recreating the Captain America serum than us."
"Wow," Darcy says, then leans into Bruce's line of sight and grins. "How about I set up and you go get us coffee."
"Wasn't that where you just went?" Bruce asks, blinking in the way that means he hasn't actually been out of the lab since the day before.
"Machine's broken in the office," Darcy says. "We'll need outside caffeine and you look like you could use a little outside."
"I don't know. The line at Starbucks could be a little too stressful for me," he says. He's joking and she likes that he's starting to do that. He sighs, eases his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I look that bad?"
"You have slid from deliciously rumpled into hobo rumpled since I last saw you."
"Okay, fine. I'll grab a shower too," he relents, squeezes her shoulder and retreats.
"I'm da bomb," Darcy chuckles to herself as Bruce disappears out the lab doors.
Maybe thirty seconds passes and suddenly the lab is filling with agents, all with guns out. Darcy swears and moves to duck behind Bruce's table, but she crashes into Cooper who'd been coming around from the other side. His hand is darted out and Darcy makes a grab for the syringe just as he snags it, something in his face warning her. She goes to dart back the other way but he snatches the end of her ponytail, wrapping her hair around his fist and dragging her back against him.
"Darcy, you were supposed to go with Doctor Banner," Coulson says, sounding exasperated. His gun is pointed just to the left of her face, probably where Cooper's is.
"I didn't know that," Darcy squeaks as something sharp touches her neck.
"There's no way we're letting you out of here," Coulson says in a completely different tone and Darcy feels the grip on her hair tighten, pulling painfully at her scalp. She's forced to look at the ceiling or lose hair so she can't see any super secret gestures Coulson would be making at her to get her out of this thing alive.
She's pretty sure she'd misinterpret them anyway. Life is rarely, if ever, like the movies.
"You will unless you want me to pump Miss Lewis here full of this stuff," Cooper threatens and Darcy isn't reassured in the least that he sounds freaked out, like a scared kid caught shoplifting. She'd prefer a cool-headed, detached, super villain type, someone less likely to jab her accidentally.
"Think about it Cooper, you're a smart guy. Is there any way at all in which this ends well for you?" Coulson's voice is calm, level as ever. Darcy kind of knew in a peripheral way that he was a totally cool cucumber under pressure but it's completely different when presented with evidence. "You either surrender to us, or you leave this tower and get scooped up by Hydra agents thirty seconds after your feet hit pavement who will see you as nothing more than a liability."
Cooper's grip slackens just the tiniest bit, enough for Darcy to be able to drop her gaze back down to see Coulson, see his eyes widen and his neutral face break right as Cooper says, "In that case-"
There's pain and gun shots. Darcy's consciousness doesn't last long enough for her to hit the floor and for that, she's extremely grateful.
Darcy wakes up and it's not a languid drift to consciousness but a kind of sharp turn, leaving her with a pounding head. Someone, maybe two people are shouting and she tries to tell them to shut up because her head is killing her but she's pretty sure the strangled kind of "Muh-hur," sound she makes doesn't break through the yelling.
Her right hand is being gripped and tugged around, like whoever's holding it has forgotten they are while gesturing madly. Darcy tries to tug her hand free and that's what gets attention, the voices silent so suddenly that her ears ring. Clint's face appears in her line of sight, brow furrowed and lined with concern. "Hey, hi," he says, sounding flustered and pressing the hand he was holding back to her chest, gentle.
"See what you did!" Jane's voice is somewhere to Darcy's left, her small arm and tinier fist darting across Darcy's body to punch Clint in the shoulder.
"Did we wake you?"
"I think it was the vigorous arm calisthenics," Darcy says after she clears her throat noisily for what feels like ten minutes to get it working. Clint blushes and Darcy wonders if it's weird to be struck by how adorable he is before she's even gotten her bearings properly.
"Next time I'll be more explicit in my instructions," Coulson says from the end of her bed. He looks terrible and she's pretty sure the yelling was between him and Clint.
"Where am I?" she asks, first things first.
"Medical wing," Clint says, sitting carefully on the edge of her bed. She's not even slightly jostled. He picks her hand up again like he needs to be holding something, touches a thumb to each finger and circles her palm.
"What happened?"
"I'm really sor-" Coulson starts to say and Clint overrides him with a, "It's a bit late for that now!"
"Hey, angry version of Clint. Let him answer my question," Darcy orders, watching Clint reign himself in. Coulson's head drops, cowed and Darcy doesn't like that at all.
"We really thought Cooper would surrender. I read the situation wrong. He injected you with the liquid found in the new Hydra labs before we shot him."
Darcy takes a moment to process this, watching everyone watch her. "Do we need to start making tearful farewells?" she asks, proud that her voice only shakes a little.
"Oh god, absolutely not," Coulson is quick to say, Clint shaking his head. "We think the new serum was missing the activation agent. The doctors believe your body will fight the effects off like an infection, basically break it down and absorb it."
"So..." Darcy says. "Until then it's pampering and all the apology ice cream I can eat, right?"
What she says gets the desired effect. Clint and Jane stop looking so murderous and Coulson finally cracks a smile.
Darcy enjoys the pampering and hovering for about three days, but by the fourth she's decided she needs a little breathing space. Jane and Clint are tag teaming her, Jane apparently having forgotten all about her initial reservations about her taking up with the arrow guy that spied on us like a creeper in solidarity of wrapping Darcy well and truly in cotton wool.
Sending Clint out for donuts and Jane being in the shower lets Darcy make her escape. She heads for the one place in the mansion she knows no one will think to look for her, Tony's workshop.
"Not that I'm complaining, but what are you doing down here?" Tony asks, flipping up his welding mask when JARVIS lets her in. She's apparently one of the few people allowed without being announced because she doesn't touch anything that might blow up.
The rest of the Avengers don't have the same kind of self preservation instincts.
"I beg sanctuary," Darcy says, waiting until Tony points her at the stuff she can touch. There's always a bench full of new gadgets that are allowed to be played with and she gets to because she's patient.
"I'm not sure you can do that here."
"Don't really big, kickass mansions have the same rules as churches?" Darcy asks and Tony snorts.
"I hope not. There are many and varied things I've done in this place that would get me in a lot of trouble if that were true." Tony eyes her for a second. "Barton and Foster driving you crazy?"
"I feel like they're monitoring me," Darcy says. "Like they don't trust what the doctors have said and are waiting for me to... hulk out or something."
"Darcy smash!" Tony yells, grinning while punching the air and Darcy rolls her eyes.
"Something like that."
"I can mock up an interactive hologram of you, make it walk through a wall, really freak them out."
"How are you not on the evil side of the genius spectrum again?" Darcy asks, but she can't help laughing.
"While you're here, you can make yourself useful," Tony says, not ever one to idly chat for long. "Hold this. I think Dummy is the only robot arm in existence with an intention tremor."
"I can't help that I'm Jarvis' favorite," Darcy says when Clint complains, long and bitterly later about how Jarvis kept assuring him that she was fine without divulging her whereabouts. "Try talking to him like he's a person and not a disembodied ceiling ghost. He might warm to you."
"You can't just disappear like that," Clint grumbles and she kind of likes when he's growly and protective, but Clint can get a little obsessive about things.
She sees the way he cleans his bow.
"I spent twenty three years without your supervision without dying, I might add. I was inside the mansion, nothing was going to happen to me-"
"We thought that about you working in Banner's lab," Clint points out and yes, he has her there but there were circumstances and really bad luck. It wasn't like Bruce was going to hire another evil lab assistant, at least on purpose. "Look, I don't think that's a good idea anymore."
"What's not a good idea?" Darcy asks slowly, pretty sure she knows exactly where this conversation is going but without a clue how to brake and reverse away from it. She's been enjoying Clint as her boyfriend immensely, mostly because he's avoided dickish behavior.
Until now.
"I told Coulson to transfer you," he says.
"You what?" Darcy demands, incensed. She was pretty sure Clint was about to ask her to quit, not go behind her back and do it for her.
"Still in SHIELD, just somewhere safer. His Executive Assistant is going on maternity leave next week. You can type, right?"
Darcy's mouth drops open. For one of the very few times in her life, she's been rendered completely speechless. She points a finger at Clint, who goes almost cross-eyed looking at it leveled between his eyes, before she lets out an exasperated noise and stalks away from him.
Darcy heads for the roof instead of Tony's lab, because while the lab has many sharp, pointy things, it might be more satisfying to push Clint off something high if he follows her. He doesn't and Darcy's not sure if that's him showing rare restraint or JARVIS once again having her back.
The trap door opens and closes after about twenty minutes but the fact that she can hear the footfalls across the pebbled roof and that they're heavy tells her it isn't Clint. She's sitting on the edge of the roof with her legs dangling off when Thor drops down beside her. "Did Jane send you?"
"I sought you out myself," Thor says. Darcy gives him the side-eye, then bites her lip on a snort when she sees what he's wearing. His t-shirt says Push it, push it real good with a picture of a lawnmower. Thor's recently discovered the internet and shortly thereafter internet shopping and every funny t-shirt site there is. Considering on Asgard he gets around in the same outfit all the time, she supposes he's allowed a few wardrobe missteps in his downtime.
"Am I being overly sensitive?" Darcy asks. She's learned over the time she's known him that Thor is a good person to give you an honest opinion that's actually helpful. Most people make the mistake of treating him like a barely cognizant brute because of his size and strength but he's surprisingly sweet and wise.
"If you saw Clint's devastation at your peril, you might understand his overly zealous attitude towards your safety." No one can say yes quite like Thor.
"He can't dictate what I do with my life," Darcy argues and Thor makes a thoughtful sound.
"Indeed, I am not suggesting his actions have been rational or well thought out. He wants what is best for you but he has gone about it in a..." Thor kind of waggles his hand.
"Bone-headed way?"
"Quite."
"I'm allowed to be angry at him, right?"
"Of course you are," Thor assures her and Darcy leans sideways until she can drop her head on his shoulder. "Darcy, some times we must wear other people's shoes."
"That's not exactly... no, never mind," Darcy says, sighs.
"Sometimes we must make compromises for those we care about," Thor says and Darcy thinks about what that means for Thor. He's got to go through one hell of a commute to stay with Jane, plus he's probably reigning in his own protective instincts most of the time while she does increasingly outlandish things in the name of science.
"I just wish he'd asked me," Darcy says. "I mean, I wouldn't have minded moving to Coulson's office considering all the super secret memos I'll probably get to read if he hadn't made it sound like he was laying down the law." Darcy tilts back up straight, frowning. "Plus, his job isn't the safest in the world. You don't see me telling him to give it up."
"Don't punish him too harshly. From what I understand, he expects the loss of all those he holds dear to him."
"Stop making so much sense," Darcy complains, punching Thor lightly in the bicep.
Darcy compromises by accepting the position with Coulson but giving Clint the silent treatment. She's grateful that she was given her own room at Tony's mansion because she would have felt bad banishing Clint from his.
Not that she'll ever let on to Clint, but working for Coulson is awesome. Everything runs through him and he stops with the sad, puppy eyes every time he looks at her after only two days. She still lets him treat her to lunch every now and again mostly because he knows all the weird little out of the way places with awesome noms.
She's happy because she has time enough to pester Bruce during her day as well, another person who's on the Darcy guilt train despite having no way of knowing what would have happened that day.
She's thinking about completely forgiving Clint two weeks into her new job when his I'm sorry post-it notes with increasingly devastated looking frowny faces border her computer monitor completely.
Of course, that's when everything really goes pear-shaped.
"He's not even going to let me in the same zip code as a SHIELD office after this," Darcy laments to Jane, cell phone pressed to her ear while she tries to navigate the evacuation route of the SHIELD office and find the damn rally point.
"Just get out of there," Jane orders, sounding worried. She has every reason to be, considering some guy with a teleportation device is currently blipping in and out of the offices, picking up random people and then blipping off to somewhere high to drop them. The only good thing is he seems to be a speechifying type of bad guy so Thor and Tony have time to catch people.
They're eight for eight at the moment and Darcy is trying not to think about them missing.
"I'm going," Darcy says. "Geez, you'd think they'd make places like this easier to navigate." Darcy lets out a surprised squeak when a guy in overlarge glasses and a scratchy looking jumper just appears in front of her, clutching a boxy looking metal gadget that seems to be the lovechild of a toaster and a hair dryer. "Oh n-"
He grabs her around the waist and there's a sickening lurch. Suddenly the solid ground underneath her feet is just gone and she's being held over the side of a building. He's misjudged his landing and her relative weight to his own if the hilariously surprised look on his face is any indicator when she immediately slips out of his grasp.
She's falling, and there wasn't even the ten-minute long diatribe before to give Tony and Thor time to spot her. She sees what must be Tony in the distance hurtling towards her, but he's too far away, she knows he is and then she hits.
"-arcy, Jesus Christ!"
"Ow," Darcy groans and rolls over, or tries to but whatever she's lying on is unforgiving and she struggles for a second before Tony's there, telling her not to move you've probably got massive injuries oh my god how are you alive and-
"I think I'm okay," Darcy says, surprised. There's the tinkle of broken glass and a groan of metal as she finally manages to pry herself off whatever it was she was lying on and then Tony's helping her up and out, face plate raised and eyes wide and shocky. "I swear, I think I'm just a little winded," she says. "Nice catch by the way."
"I didn't catch you," Tony says, still looking horribly pale and more confused. "Just-" he raises a hand, points behind and Darcy looks, sees a car that has a large, Darcy-shaped dent in the roof.
"Huh," is all Darcy can really say about that.
Darcy lets Clint squeeze her for as long as he wants to when Tony passes her off to him. He's babbling something into her hair that she doesn't try to make out, his hands spasming rhythmically on her shoulder and hip. One thing Darcy understands about Clint is that he's a man of pure physicality, a touch meaning more than a thousand words ever can. Being able to hold onto her until he's reassured works better than Darcy telling him over and over again that she's fine.
When he finally brings himself to release her it's only because Coulson insists on a debrief. He keeps contact, knee, shoulder, hand like he thinks she'll just evaporate if he doesn't but it doesn't bother her in the least.
Not after he told her that the news cameras cut away right after she hit the car and he hadn't known she'd survived. The guy who dropped her hadn't either which was actually a blessing as he'd freaked out and given himself up immediately, only wanting attention and not wanting to actually kill anyone, hence the delay in dropping people.
"I'm sorry to say there'll be a lot of tests in your future," Coulson is saying, wearing his official agent-man expression.
"Only if it's Doctor Banner," Darcy says and Coulson looks like he's going to argue but then he just leans forward, types something on the tablet in front of him while nodding.
"Can we leave now?" Clint asks, already standing and tugging Darcy with him.
"She should really-"
"Great, thanks," Clint says with a sharp look and then he's towing her to the conference room door and out.
"I really need some booze, some takeout and some trashy television," Darcy says and Clint turns to her, smiles for the first time in hours and says, "Your wish is my command."
"No autopsy," Darcy says and Bruce laughs.
"I couldn't even if I wanted to." He'd tried to take blood, skin and hair samples and he hadn't been able to. Darcy presses a finger into her skin. It feels the same, still soft and warm and yielding yet a syringe just bent uselessly when Bruce tried to tap a vein.
"It's weird."
"That's the understatement of the century," Bruce says. "I mean, we know it's the serum but I can't really find out how. The effects weren't immediate so..." Bruce's voice wears away like the end of an old record and Darcy watches him making notes with lips still moving. She knows he stopped talking to her specifically after the first few minutes and she just swings her feet and lets him drift in his own little Banner-world for a while before he obviously remembers that she's still there.
"You don't seem to have enhanced strength, speed or agility like Steve," Bruce says.
"So, just invulnerable then?" Darcy says, grinning and Bruce shrugs.
"Looks like. You might develop more... enhancements later, we can't really be sure." He takes his glasses off, chews on his thumbnail. "Or, this could wear off and you could become completely normal. It could be like a vaccination, not permanent, just protecting you for a while."
"Hey, it saved my life once. That's enough to make me happy."
"I wouldn't recommend throwing yourself off anymore buildings," Bruce says. "You know these things, likely to wear off at inopportune moments."
"Is there... can this help you?" Darcy asks, hesitant and Bruce looks puzzled for a moment before he frowns.
"I... maybe, but the only sample we have is in you and currently there's no getting it out. I've got a saliva swab but..." He digs around on his table for a moment before he comes up with a couple of plastic jars with yellow tops. Darcy sighs, realizing the indignity of the day isn't quite over.
Darcy hardly ever sees Clint sleep. He usually only drops off after her and he's always up before. She'd feel guilty about keeping him awake but he's assured her over and over that his sleep is broken, no matter what his circumstances.
He's come back from a few missions banged up enough to need something to put him under and that's usually the only time she seems him that vulnerable. It's surprising when she gets back to the mansion and her room to find him sprawled belly down across her bed, out for the count.
Darcy discards the clothing she can be bothered to and then drops onto the bed herself, not being careful about it because for some strange reason that's the fastest way to wake Clint. He doesn't budge so she nudges into the space under his arm and rests her chin on his shoulder blade before he finally stirs.
"Hey," he croaks, sleep roughened voice always doing lovely things to her. "Tough day?"
"I had to pee in a cup," Darcy grumbles. When Clint snorts, she says, "That's harder for girls than it is for guys you know."
"I'm sorry, I'm sure it was terrible," he says, turning over under her and hooking arms around her, rubbing a thumb across her brow. Darcy leans up and nips at his bottom lip. Clint doesn't let her escape without making the kiss deeper and wetter for a few minutes, making a contented rumble in the back of his throat when she scratches across his ribs.
"Technically this is your fault this happened," Darcy says as she kisses down his chest. His hands grip on her shoulders and haul her back up, his expression stricken and she says, "Oh no, hey, I was kidding."
"You're right though, I made you take-"
"Clint, no, okay?" Darcy says, firmly. She gets both hands on either side of his face so he can't duck his gaze away. "The Lewis' have long been known for their bad timing and even worse jokes."
"If anything had happened to you..." Clint's voice breaks and Darcy drapes herself over him, gathers him against her, trying to touch as much as possible because it's the only language he truly understands. After a while she feels him let out a shaky breath and she slides sideways, leg and arm still thrown across his body.
"It won't," she says.
"Not on my watch."
Darcy seeks Steve out because he's probably the utmost authority she has at her disposal for her situation. He's only too happy to answer any questions she has, but she comes away from the conversation discomfited.
Not from anything he said, but from the very fact of him, alive and perpetual and possibly ageless.
"Is Steve getting older?" Darcy asks.
"He's showing negligible senescence-" Bruce starts to explain, takes in Darcy's expression and says, "His cells aren't degenerating like normal humans so he's... technically biologically immortal. He can die from traumatic injury but I don't think any of us are going to live long enough to see him get a gray hair."
"What about me?" Darcy asks. "I'm kinda looking forward to getting old so I can be crabby and judgmental and no one can say a damn thing about it."
Bruce scratches a thumb along his jaw and grimaces. "We don't know if your invulnerability is going to last," he reminds her.
"I mean, Clint says he already feels a little skeevy because of our age difference. He's going to get even less thrilled if I still look like this in ten or twenty years."
Three weeks later, an evil robot straight out of science fiction and nobody able to get near it. Darcy says, "Maybe I can-"
"Absolutely not," Coulson says, but he hesitates which means he thinks about it for a second. Darcy senses a definite in.
"Thor's way out of town, Tony's coming but from China and Natasha and Clint are completely scary but not bullet proof," Darcy points out, watches for the sideways twitch of Coulson's mouth that means he's about to give an order he doesn't like. "We can't lob explosives at it because of what it's standing in front of."
"Barton can shoot me from where he is," Coulson says, winces which Darcy takes to mean that across comms Clint is promising to do just that.
"That's a day care," Darcy says, pointing to the building the killer robot is positioned in front of, a cheery sun painted between two first floor windows. "You really want me to just stand here when there's kids inside?"
"The robot seems to be motion triggered. The children should be fine as long as they stay inside," Coulson says but he's sounding less convinced.
"Or until the bad guy who left it here gets bored and starts remote controlling it or something," Darcy says.
"I still don't think you could-"
"Tony can talk me through it," Darcy says, cutting off Coulson's last objection. "Get me one of those camera headset thingums and get him on the line. He can talk me through getting this evil garbage can from hell shut down."
Coulson's shoulders drop and even though an arrow comes winging out of nowhere and embeds itself right next to his elbow, he says, "Okay, but let's get you into a uniform so it doesn't look like a civilian just wandered into a kill zone."
Every instinct tells her to duck and cover when the evil robot spins to life, showering the street with bullets. Darcy can feel the hits, her hair tossed around and the places where the shots go right through the fabric of the SHIELD onesie she was forced into. It's kind of uncomfortable, like someone flicking her all over with middle finger and thumb but she's not going to complain about that.
Tony's a calm voice in her ear, the only thing keeping her steady. That and the tiny hand she can see pressed against a window for about a second before it's snatched away.
Tony talks her through taking the back cover off the robot, thankfully not welded in place which had been a concern, and says, "Let's take care of that pesky motion sensor first, eh?"
It's soothing, Tony being the one to guide her through. She's done this, hours spent in his workshop where he's been all, hold this here and move that there and especially now you've got peanut butter on it, Jesus Darcy.
She almost can't believe it when the thing makes an almost disgruntled noise and powers all the way off. It's a relief to step aside as SHIELD's Public Safety Bomb Disposal guys swarm forward just in case the robot was built with any nasty surprises inside. They wave her off and she retreats, can see Clint has made his way down from his perch and Natasha has followed him. He's leaning into Coulson, both of them tense and Natasha obviously there to intervene if things turn ugly.
Clint spins on her when she's reached him, opens his mouth and she clamps a hand over it, says, "Can you scream at me after I've seen the kids come out safe?"
He deflates, anger draining away and instead he grabs her and hauls her in. He's murmuring something over and over that's either swearing or a prayer, she can't tell. When the passel of kids and a couple of frightened looking adults are hustled out, flanked by junior agents, Clint turns Darcy in his arms so she can watch, still holding on.
"You didn't know!"
Clint had only been able to set aside his anger for so long.
"I had a pretty good-"
"You didn't know!"
They've been having the exact same argument, going around in circles for about twenty minutes. No one else has entered the mansion's main kitchen the whole time which is possibly a new record, given the kinds of metabolisms Darcy's living with so either their yelling is carrying through the house or JARVIS is warning everyone off.
Darcy figures it's probably a bit of both.
"I fell off a building and Bruce has poked me with all kinds of sharp, pointy objects. I had a pretty good idea that I'd be okay."
"Unless Bruce shot you, you couldn't have known you'd be okay!"
"I'm not going to stand here and just let you yell at me when if things were reversed you would do the exact same thing."
"I'm allowed to risk myself," Clint growls, obviously straining to bring down his volume but still let her know that he's pissed off.
"Oh yeah, says who? I don't remember signing that particular permission slip."
"I'm trained for situations-"
"Oh my god, are you really going there?" Darcy snaps, frustrated. "Just remember buddy, I see your paperwork now. Coulson has macros for disregarded direct order and cavalier attitude to own personal safety because of you."
Clint's clenching and unclenching his hands into fists, probably longing for something to shoot. "I can't do this... I can't just watch you..." He sounds broken now, his anger morphing into something else, something Darcy doesn't like at all.
"I have to," Darcy says, steps into him because she knows she can now. He turns his face away from her when she leans up to kiss him so she puts hands on either side of his face and forces him to look at her. "With you, I have to watch. With my heart in my throat every time."
"Darce," he says, an exhalation more than a word. He grips her wrists, lifts her hands away from him and steps back.
He walks away from her and Darcy watches him go.
"I need a name," Darcy announces, flopping down on the couch next to Steve and Thor who are playing Wii bowling. Thor's learned not to throw the controller but it took a while.
"I think Darcy is a lovely name, why would you want to discard it?" Thor asks, lining up his shot carefully.
"No, not discard my name. I mean like... Natasha's Black Widow," she says.
"Or Clint's Hawkeye?" Steve asks, looks horrified at himself for having mentioned Clint in Darcy's presence. They all know what's been going on the last few weeks, all walking on eggshells around the both of them. Darcy and Clint have been like ships passing in the night, never in the same room for more than a handful of moments, strained and edgy.
Darcy's just grateful that they're living in such a large place so they can avoid each other if need be. Darcy doesn't want to leave and doesn't want Clint to feel like he has to. She definitely doesn't want him to go because then this weird pause they've been on might turn into something more permanent.
"It's okay, you can mention him. I'm past the point of spontaneously weeping," Darcy says, smiling bravely but Steve doesn't look like he believes her.
She doesn't really believe herself.
"So, c'mon, make with the brainstorming."
"I don't have another name," Thor says. "Should I?"
"No, you're Thor. That's superhero enough." Thor grins, adorably pleased. "Impenetrable Lass?"
"That's a bit of a mouthful," Steve says.
"Okay, Captain America," Darcy says with a roll of her eyes.
"You can't make your problems go away by giving yourself a new name," Steve says gently. "I know you probably think it would be easier to not be Darcy right now, but I think Darcy is who you need to be."
"Did you just Yoda me?"
"I have no idea what that means."
"Look Buster," Darcy says, marching into Clint's room and finding it empty. "Crap."
"He left an hour ago Miss Lewis," JARVIS supplies. "There was an urgent matter."
"There's always an urgent matter."
"Would it help you to know that he has been standing outside your room for the last three nights. He looks to have gotten closer to knocking each time. I know he wanted to apologize but wasn't sure how, I've learned over long experience to know what that looks like."
"Jarvis, if you weren't a disembodied AI, I would kiss you."
"Thank you, Miss Lewis," JARVIS says, sounding about as flattered as he ever can.
Darcy heads to the office at a bit of a loose end and finds it strangely empty when she passes in. The place is usually bustling with agents and admin staff even on a Sunday, but the foyer is empty, no signs of life.
She makes her way up to Coulson's office, worried, and his door is standing open, papers strewn across the floor and a chair turned over. Darcy grips the handle of her bag tightly and backs up, right into someone.
"Where'd you come from?" a gruff voice demands and Darcy's grabbed and spun around. The man's tall with a scraggly beard and a giant gun pushed into what must be a custom holster at his belt. There's something a little off about his features. Everything's there, eyes, nose, mouth but it's almost like a pastiche, not all of them meshing like they should.
Darcy's left thinking alien which might account for the quick evac, SHIELD having detection in place for that kind of thing.
"No matter, you can tell me where everyone is," the guy grunts. "I came for great violence and found nothing."
"I'm sorry, I'm just part of the cleaning staff. I have absolutely-" Darcy's sentence finishes up in a squeak as the guy grips her wrist and grinds down. She feels pain, sharp, bright and present and when he releases her the wrist throbs.
Bruce had said inopportune time and he certainly hadn't been wrong.
Darcy knows Clint practices for this kind of thing, moving through drop ceilings and air ducts. He knows SHIELD like the back of his hand, always makes it a point to scare any new agents, usually waiting until they're holding something liquid for maximum hilarity. As Darcy gets towed along, she really hopes he's close by.
She'd let him yell at her all he liked after this one.
The guy doesn't believe her when she tells him everyone's in a magic panic room, even when she mentions the part about the mythril. He leans in real close to her so she can see when his face ripples like something's scurrying around under the skin and she cringes away.
He shoves her into a stationary cupboard she recognizes because they're still near Coulson's office and leaves her there, promising to be back for her. Darcy tries the door but he's blocked it from the other side with something heavy and she wonders just where Steve or Thor are when you need them.
There's silence except for her own shaky breathing and a faint scrabbling sound in the air ducts above her head. Darcy turns to follow the noise slowly, watches the vent cover above the cupboard with the boxes of manila folders pop open and Clint's head appear, upside down. "Do I get forgiven for being an ass if I stage a daring rescue?" he asks, looking cheeky and relieved and so very him that she wants to pin him to the floor and have her way with him immediately, alien bad guys with scary faces be damned.
"I'll have to think about it," Darcy says, makes a show of tapping her chin for a second before she says, "Okay, yes, forgiven." She makes grabby hands at him until he rolls his eyes and disappears, reappearing boots first.
When he drops, Darcy immediately wraps arms around his neck. Her still aching wrist reminds her there's something very important she has to tell Clint but she doesn't get a chance before the door has swung back open and the alien guy is standing there, looking annoyed. "Now where did you come from?" he demands as Clint steps in front of her.
He doesn't have his bow and the alien still has the giant gun.
"Wow, did you ever fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down," Clint remarks and the alien laughs in a way that Darcy doesn't like at all, right before the skin down the middle of his face splits open, revealing crawling, squirming, pulsing things underneath.
Darcy buries her face in the back of Clint's shoulder because she just doesn't want to see that. Because she does, the gun shot is a surprise and she actually screams a little, thinking it's Clint that's been shot. He turns in her grasp and she can't open her eyes and see, she just can't but he's holding her face and saying, "It's okay, I'm alright, you're alright," until she's able to slit her eyes open.
She peeks around Clint's shoulder and the alien is down. Clint's looking behind her, back at the vent he'd dropped through. "Nice shooting, tex."
Darcy turns, sees Coulson hanging awkwardly out of the air duct, gun still in hand. "Nice antagonizing, Barton," he returns. "Now you wanna help me down before I pass out from all the blood rushing to my head?"
"Carpatheetes have a tough, thick hide that's hard to get through," Clint explains, leading Darcy down the strangely deserted hallways by the hand with Phil ahead of them. "To really nail 'em you gotta goad them into..." Clint pauses for a second, drops her hand and clasps his own over his face before opening them and waggling his fingers.
"Ugh, don't remind me," Darcy says. "Where do those guys come from anyway?"
"They're a bit of a scavenger race, cobbled together, no one truly knows where they first came from. Even Thor said that while the Asgardians knew of them, they didn't know which world they'd come from initially." Clint gets moving again, tugging her along. "We're just lucky they're loners."
"Here we are," Phil says, interrupting Clint's explanation and Darcy's mouth drops open as she watches Phil slide a panel back from the wall she couldn't even see, key in a code on the pad underneath and have his eyes scanned. A whole section of wall slides away, revealing a crowd of admin staff crouched behind some determined looking junior agents all with their guns out, although held low and to the side.
"No way. You mean we actually do have a panic room?"
"You didn't know?" Coulson asks, looking back at Darcy with a raised eyebrow. He gives Clint a puzzled frown and Clint laughs.
"We were kind of wondering why you kept telling the Carpartheete where our people were hiding."
"I didn't know I was." Darcy looks around, realizes she was so close when the teleporter had grabbed her. "Hey, so, um-"
"Honestly, I'm just glad you have that invulnerable mojo going," Clint says, watching Coulson helping the other agents get everyone out of the secret room. "Phil wouldn't have been able to talk me into an actual plan otherwise."
Darcy looks down at the hand Clint's not holding, at the bruising blooming around her wrist. She tucks that hand behind her, smiles at him gamely and says, "Yeah, hooboy, very lucky."
"Huh, would you look at that," Bruce says.
"I'd rather not," Darcy says, screwing her face up. Bruce is drawing blood and while needles don't really faze her, she doesn't exactly like watching her blood being drawn out of her body.
"Did you feel any different?" Bruce asks.
"Nah, I just kinda figured it out when the feet guy was grinding my bones to make bread," she says.
Bruce looks confused for a moment before he cracks a grin. "Carpatheete."
"You said it happened this morning."
"Cheese and crackers!" Darcy yelps because Clint is suddenly right there.
"Oh, this is... I'm going to... go over there now," Bruce says, beating a hasty retreat. Clint rounds on her, puts hands on either side of Darcy's legs where they're hanging off Bruce's lab table so she can't escape him. He gives her his not messing around stare.
"There was a whole spilled milk thing going on," Darcy says. "Bad guy dead, us alive, whoopee!" Darcy raises her arms, winces when she realizes she's exposed the bruising and Clint zeroes in on it immediately, of course.
"Darce," he says as he takes her arm, walks ever so gentle fingers over the bruising. He says it in the way he did when the last thing he'd said was I can't and Darcy doesn't think she can take that again.
"Look, buddy. I'm not the wallflower type. I'm not going to just hang around with my pompoms waiting for you to swoop in and out. I'm involved in your life, in the things that happen to you and sometimes it's not the safest place to be but I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else."
"You can't make me like it."
"I wouldn't expect you to. Just like you wouldn't expect me to like you throwing your silly ass off buildings and just trusting someone's going to be there to catch you." When Clint looks shifty at that, Darcy says, "Oh yeah, I saw that news footage."
"I don't think you can judge people about jumping off buildings."
"I was dropped, I didn't fling myself-" Darcy takes a steadying breath, knows they're going to end up having another fight that goes nowhere if she isn't the one to put the brakes on. "You can't protect me from everything."
"I can try."
"I love that you try," Darcy says, gripping the front of Clint's shirt and tugging him down to her. "I love that you stepped in front of me even though you still thought I was invulnerable and it was a stupid thing to do." Darcy flicks him on the forehead and Clint ducks away, surprised and laughing.
"So," Clint says, looking intent, wolfish grin in place. "You have pompoms?"