fic: before the day is done (thor movieverse)
gen, r, ~3200
She’s been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there’d been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and Darcy blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next. myth-based au; movie-compliant; follows bound
title from florence + the machine; spoilers for mcu films
Her latest pair of ear buds burn out fifteen minutes into her workout.
It’s her fifth pair of dead ear buds in the last week but Darcy only digs her next pair out of her bag and goes right back to her exercise, already used to the string of bad luck she’s had since Jane had shooed her out of S.H.I.E.L.D.
If it’s still this bad after another month, she’ll start bitching the universe out.
Or maybe tell Jane to tell Thor to tell one of his buds to try to help her out a little because, really?
They all totally owe her.
But she’s let go of her momentary annoyance by the time she’s heading for the locker room to shower and dress, and it’s completely forgotten by the time she’s lusting after the menu at the coffee house down the street.
Reminding herself again that she doesn’t need to get Jane coffee too because Jane and her haven’t talked in a good month and a half (or seen each other in even longer), she snatches her drink as soon as it touches the counter.
Iced coffee today, with extra whip cream on top because she got an extra fifteen minutes at the gym, and when she turns and crashes into a young woman two inches taller than herself, she feels the plastic explode in her grip and the liquid gush between her fingers. “Oh, come on-”
When she looks down, her coffee is untouched, whip cream looking fine.
Better than fine, actually, and better than it had looked a moment before.
Her coffee looks like it could be in a commercial for Starbucks.
“What?” Darcy asks the universe in a moment of utter confusion as people jostle around her in the temple to caffeine, and the young woman clears her throat, the sound delicate and annoyed. “Huh?”
The woman that apparently didn’t murder her liquid soul mate is her age or somewhere around there, dark hair drawn back into a complicated looking braid, expression… confused. “You are Darcy Lewis.”
“I.” She glances down at her coffee, raises it to take a sip and experiences a small orgasm. “Oh.”
There’s a moment of silence as her tongue brushes over her lip, as she savors the existence of her beloved.
“Ah…” Her own voice sounds all kinds of sexed-up, and she blames the coffee she now clutches with both hands, gaze torn between her beloved and the stranger in front of her. “Jane isn’t living with me anymore, though.”
The woman stares at her, head tilted slightly, and Darcy stares back, unsure what’s going on but not very bothered.
Cool in the face of confusion and the general oddness of the universe around her, that’s her.
“People who track me down like this are usually looking for Jane.” She takes another slow sip of her coffee, swallows only when she has to, and realizes the other woman is watching her drink with an expression of disgust. “Coffee is fantastic,” she explains because the woman clearly has not experienced heaven, and the woman only looks more baffled, eyes dropping to the drink as if she’s just realized she’s looking at Elvis reborn.
There’s a beat, a pregnant pause, and the chick’s still staring at the coffee.
Darcy is pretty sure this is what a kid looks like when somebody first explains the concept of Santa.
“Um,” she starts, a little unnerved for reasons she can’t understand, and the woman shakes herself.
Straightens in her perfectly fitted coat and plays it cool and collected like some thankfully-not-half-starved supermodel because, seriously, the chick is attractive in that smoky-eyed, European kind of way.
Not sexy, though (and if Darcy’s swung both ways a few times, that’s no business of anyone else) and that's also weird because this is her type.
“You will need to come with me.”
“I told you, Jane isn’t with me anymore-” Darcy stops because she realizes the chick is staring behind her now, eyes narrowed threateningly, like, really threateningly, like… like she’s going to start busting peoples’ heads open. “Uh.”
“Come on,” the woman bites out like she’s suddenly pissed off, or maybe scared, she might be scared, the way the color’s draining out of her face and she’s grabbed Darcy’s wrist, started pulling her to the door.
“Whoa, girl-”
It’s like trying to stop a train, the chick almost taking her clean off her feet as they step out of the coffee house and down the sidewalk to the nearest corner, the woman stopping for only a second to glance over their shoulder before stepping into traffic like she has no understanding of giant metal death on wheels.
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, this isn’t how we-”
Something hits her, an impact that sends pain ripping into her neck and down her spine.
The coffee sits in the midst of the chaos where it falls, landing on its bottom, its contents undisturbed.
She jolts back once to bright lights and a rush of motion, doctors in masks with hard eyes staring down at her.
“Darcy,” someone says, and it’s a second before she realizes someone is actually shouting the name.
Her neck throbs, stiff and unmoving, but she knows the voice the third time her name is shrieked and jerks to it helplessly, the closest thing she’s ever had to a friend feeling like a beacon.
“-sedative, we need more-”
Jane looks at her from beyond the ring of people in white, held back by two guys trying to look too much like a SWAT team but apparently refusing to let that stop her. Teary-eyed, confused but steady, Jane is reaching for her.
When she tries to reach back, automatic because this is her friend, her wrist is held back.
Straps, a quiet murmur inside her identifies, cloth ones wrapped tight around her wrists.
And just like that, Darcy is crying like a child, instantly blinded by the tears as Jane is pulled away, snot starting to run as the world grows so heavy it starts making her eyelids hard to keep up.
Darcy wakes up to a tongue that feels too big for her mouth, staring at the white above and all around her.
It goes black for a moment, lightens to gray and then fades out again before she has some sense of self returned.
A minute passes, two, and when she slowly lifts her head from the pillows beneath her, Coulson watches her.
“Holy shitcakes,” she offers, and he just stares, slim folder gripped in one hand.
“How are you, Ms. Lewis?” His voice is weird, tight and a little lower than she remembers when he pretty firmly escorted her from the building where Jane had just gotten her new job a day before. “Back with us?”
“I feel like I got hit with a bus.”
There’s a momentary silence before his mouth quirks, eyes glinting oddly. “Direct as always.”
Darcy slowly pushes the covers off herself, easing up onto her elbows.
Her neck aches, her back is stiff, but she feels… well, she can’t really think of the words.
“How did I get-” A vague memory of Jane’s face, tear-streaked and frantic. “What happened?”
Coulson rises to his feet easily and her stomach lurches as he stares down at her, his gaze a lot harder than it was the last time she’d seen him, almost… annoyed. “Did you interact with the Tesseract?”
What? “What?”
He opens his mouth, considers, and closes his eyes for a moment as if in pain. “The ‘glowy cube of doom thing,’ Ms. Lewis, did you interact with it before you… left our association some months ago?”
“I wasn’t even in the same room with-”
Coulson straightens, mouth twisting down as if asking Are you shitting me? and she hunkers down a little, half-wanting to duck under the covers again because she knows that face and it’s way scarier than any of Fury’s.
Because she totally could go drinking with Fury, and they can share stories about crazy exes and Coulson… well, Coulson… probably just hooks himself up to a booze IV and catches up on paperwork.
“Okay, I was in the room but… but, there wasn’t any interaction, the others were doing the inter and the action, and I was just… playing sidekick, okay, I didn’t do anything-” Off his face, suddenly upset because she hadn’t done anything she hadn’t been told to do: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Who were you talking to?”
Actually the stupid thing was talking to- oh- oh, yeah, never mind. “In the coffee shop?” His left eyebrow ticks up a millimeter and she quickly explains, not at all frantically, “I don’t know who the hell she was, I promise, she just… popped up out of nowhere and dragged me out like a crazy woman, I don’t know who she was-” A thought, Darcy shifting her weight uneasily, nervously. “Wait, is she okay?” Coulson stares at her, face closed. “Oh, god, she actually was crazy, wasn’t she, like, crazy-crazy, is she… is she okay or…” Darcy’s voice fails her, and Coulson is quiet. “What?”
“Did you see this woman interact with anyone else?”
“Uh. No.” Coulson’s face is empty, flat; his eyes are suspicious. “What’s wrong?”
“You'll be staying here until further notice-”
“What?” But he’s already walking to the door, and she realizes only now how… closed the room is, how there’s no windows in the walls or in the door or anywhere, and the vents are really tiny and- and she’s seen S.H.I.E.L.D.’s prison cells before. “Let me out- Phil-”
The door slams behind him, and her neck hurts, and she’s shaking.
Alone.
The truth is?
The truth is that the weird-ass cube thing had tried talking to her a grand total of once and that only Jane and Fury know about it, Jane because she’s her best friend and Nick Fury because he’d been there. Because he’d seen her face when the little voice had started telling her to seek or whatever, and then she’d panicked and kicked it.
Right into the psycho god’s hands, right, okay, but that had been an accident, and a good thing, right?
Because it had totally all worked out in the end, totally, and Fury had sent her his card with his actual phone number for “emergencies” like she wasn’t the world’s biggest fuck-up and she's completely sure that nobody could be that much of a hard ass without having dealt with a lot of fuck-ups over the years.
Everything was cool, people, and she still doesn't know what the hell happened between the coffee shop and here.
Someone pushes her tray of food through the little slot at the bottom a few times a day and Darcy tells herself that the fact that it’s all her favorite food is a good thing because it has to be.
Fury calls her Lewis.
Darcy not-so-secretly calls him Hard Ass.
Their relationship is a strange thing that other people would probably call a friendship.
So the fact that at least two days go by with no sign of Fury leaves Darcy completely sure that she’s screwed.
Completely screwed, totally screwed, she’s going to be here forever, no one is coming for her, ever, and she still doesn’t even know what the hell happened to her-
Darcy closes her eyes and presses fingers to her forehead, makes a noise that some people would call a growl.
A moment later, she starts singing Elvis to herself again.
She’s totally going to piss off whoever it is watching her on the cameras they have to have in here watching.
Maybe… maybe Jane will totally stage a rescue, right?
Yeah, yeah, and Thor is totally in Jane’s league when it came to mental capacity, right?
The world jolts, and she wakes.
It’s a weird feeling, her eyes opening and her head lifting from the pillow, and it’s even weirder how she feels like she wakes up again only a heartbeat later, how the light in the room changes just slightly as she shifts, waits-
The sound is faint, when it reaches her, but impossible to mistake for anything else.
Darcy sits up completely and the world seems to turn over in itself, rocks so hard she almost brings up the pizza and grape soda Coulson had passed into her a few hours before, and now the alarm reaches her even more clearly.
The lights are still on though, right, that’s a good thing, and Tony’s improvements to the already-awesome security are totally the best-
The world goes dark.
Darcy says, “Crap” and half-falls out of the bed in her haste to reach the door, smacking into it just as the lights snap back on, flickering a little too much for her to pretend that everything’s totally cool.
Also, you know, the other alarms have started going off.
Which.
“Shit,” she decides, and tries to pry the little slot open to stare out like it’s worked at all when she’s tried it the last couple of days, and growls at it and tries again and then again because Jane is out there somewhere, and Thor-
Darcy screams, falling back hard on her ass, when the door is ripped open in front of her.
Fury stares down at her with a confused gaze and something like exasperation, really big freaking gun at his side.
“What the hell are you doing down there?”
“What the hell do you mean ‘what the hell’-?”
Fury grabs her wrist and yanks her right up from the floor and through the door. “We’re leaving, Lewis.”
“But you guys arrested me or whatever-”
“Darcy,” and there, right there, she shuts her mouth and follows him down the hall, something uneasily close to hysteria growing in the pit of her stomach as the lights flicker but don't die, as they dim but return because Tony is just that good, thank god for Tony's brain.
Except why is Fury the only one around, why is the building still shaking, where the hell is-
Oh, oh right, and only she can ask him, randomly, in a moment like this without really thinking about before she speaks: “How many times have you guys had to replace this building?”
For just a moment, Fury’s quick stride falters, single eye cutting at her carefully.
Well, that’s a good enough answer.
“I don’t even know what’s going on-” Her throat clogs, and she doesn’t know where Jane is. “Why did you guys-”
She’s been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there’d been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and she blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next.
Because one minute Fury is leading her through what she recognizes as pretty much the most secret of the secret exits (that she knows about) in the bottom of the building and the next the gun is out of his hands and the next he’s gone, a heap of a body a few yards away from her.
Her head jerks, brain struggling to catch up with the motion, and someone locks their hands around her arms, fingers bruising. She lunges back, instinct doing its job a second too late, but it’s like trying to bend metal when you’re not Thor or Tony in his suit or Natasha when she gets drunk or Bruce, well, some of the time.
“Let-” she starts, and stops just as suddenly, frozen.
All Darcy can see is wild green eyes and tangled black hair, skin so unnaturally pale it borders on bloodless, and she can hear the muttering though his mouth isn’t moving, is only twisted into an almost-snarl.
And oh god, oh god, it’s Thor’s old bro, the freaky one that had tried to smush her with Cap’s shield in the middle of that mess a few months before, the one who would be kind of hot if he wasn’t absolutely fucking insane.
And dead, he is also fucking dead, because didn’t that glowy Rubik’s Cube kill his ass?
“Oh, god,” Darcy starts, and then can’t get anything else out as his hand locks around her throat.
She’s lifted, and already crying (she doesn’t even know when she started crying, can’t remember at all) and so angry and so sad all at the same time that she can’t even deal with it.
Her legs kick once, and then start kicking more, more violently than even she expects because she can’t breath-
There’s a flurry of motion beside them, shadows seeming to unfold from themselves, and then a scream that's way more than a scream, that sounds more like some war cry out of a really bad Mel Gibson movie, and Darcy drops like a ragdoll a heartbeat later as the thing holding her tears backwards into the wall.
And it is a thing, a shifting mass of different animal parts that seems to crumple on impact into the shape of Thor’s brother.
Darcy shudders as she stares at him, at it, because it’s wrong in a way that makes the hair on her arms stand up and makes her want to hit things, and the woman is now standing over her with what looks like an ax.
And the fact that she doesn’t find it the hottest thing ever is totally weird.
Thor’s brother is shaking, blinking, head jerking one way and then another as if someone’s talking to him, and the chick shifts backwards to stand more protectively over Darcy like some weird ax-wielding Amazon-
Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshit-
Someone shouts, a male voice far in the distance filled with concern in his search as he calls out her name, and Loki convulses in the middle of trying to twist to his feet, collapses to the floor like a water balloon splitting open. There’s a bizarre image of too many different body parts shoved together again, ripples of change under his skin, and then he screams, a thin sound like shattering glass that makes Darcy’s hands fly over her ears and her eyes fill with tears as she curls into herself because it’s horrible, she hadn’t known it was possible for someone to sound like that, she wants to never hear it again.
It ends, finally, and she's sobbing and doesn't even know why, can only cry and shake.
When she forces her eyes to lift fearfully, Thor’s ex-bro is gone and Thor has reached them, is staring at something above her with eyes blown wide in confusion and something that might be fear.
Oh, right, the European model from hell.
Darcy starts to say, “You guys said he was fucking dead!” or “Is Hard Ass okay?” or “Oh god, oh god, oh god, take me to Jane, oh god, oh god.”
But before she can the woman snaps at Thor, in a tone that makes Darcy’s eyes bug out a little, “Clearly useless no matter the universe,” and grabs her shoulder, lifts Darcy up from the floor with an easy flex of her arm.
Thor’s mouth opens, his body suddenly lunging forward to grab her, and then he’s gone-
And then everything’s gone.
She’s been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there’d been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and Darcy blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next. myth-based au; movie-compliant; follows bound
title from florence + the machine; spoilers for mcu films
Her latest pair of ear buds burn out fifteen minutes into her workout.
It’s her fifth pair of dead ear buds in the last week but Darcy only digs her next pair out of her bag and goes right back to her exercise, already used to the string of bad luck she’s had since Jane had shooed her out of S.H.I.E.L.D.
If it’s still this bad after another month, she’ll start bitching the universe out.
Or maybe tell Jane to tell Thor to tell one of his buds to try to help her out a little because, really?
They all totally owe her.
But she’s let go of her momentary annoyance by the time she’s heading for the locker room to shower and dress, and it’s completely forgotten by the time she’s lusting after the menu at the coffee house down the street.
Reminding herself again that she doesn’t need to get Jane coffee too because Jane and her haven’t talked in a good month and a half (or seen each other in even longer), she snatches her drink as soon as it touches the counter.
Iced coffee today, with extra whip cream on top because she got an extra fifteen minutes at the gym, and when she turns and crashes into a young woman two inches taller than herself, she feels the plastic explode in her grip and the liquid gush between her fingers. “Oh, come on-”
When she looks down, her coffee is untouched, whip cream looking fine.
Better than fine, actually, and better than it had looked a moment before.
Her coffee looks like it could be in a commercial for Starbucks.
“What?” Darcy asks the universe in a moment of utter confusion as people jostle around her in the temple to caffeine, and the young woman clears her throat, the sound delicate and annoyed. “Huh?”
The woman that apparently didn’t murder her liquid soul mate is her age or somewhere around there, dark hair drawn back into a complicated looking braid, expression… confused. “You are Darcy Lewis.”
“I.” She glances down at her coffee, raises it to take a sip and experiences a small orgasm. “Oh.”
There’s a moment of silence as her tongue brushes over her lip, as she savors the existence of her beloved.
“Ah…” Her own voice sounds all kinds of sexed-up, and she blames the coffee she now clutches with both hands, gaze torn between her beloved and the stranger in front of her. “Jane isn’t living with me anymore, though.”
The woman stares at her, head tilted slightly, and Darcy stares back, unsure what’s going on but not very bothered.
Cool in the face of confusion and the general oddness of the universe around her, that’s her.
“People who track me down like this are usually looking for Jane.” She takes another slow sip of her coffee, swallows only when she has to, and realizes the other woman is watching her drink with an expression of disgust. “Coffee is fantastic,” she explains because the woman clearly has not experienced heaven, and the woman only looks more baffled, eyes dropping to the drink as if she’s just realized she’s looking at Elvis reborn.
There’s a beat, a pregnant pause, and the chick’s still staring at the coffee.
Darcy is pretty sure this is what a kid looks like when somebody first explains the concept of Santa.
“Um,” she starts, a little unnerved for reasons she can’t understand, and the woman shakes herself.
Straightens in her perfectly fitted coat and plays it cool and collected like some thankfully-not-half-starved supermodel because, seriously, the chick is attractive in that smoky-eyed, European kind of way.
Not sexy, though (and if Darcy’s swung both ways a few times, that’s no business of anyone else) and that's also weird because this is her type.
“You will need to come with me.”
“I told you, Jane isn’t with me anymore-” Darcy stops because she realizes the chick is staring behind her now, eyes narrowed threateningly, like, really threateningly, like… like she’s going to start busting peoples’ heads open. “Uh.”
“Come on,” the woman bites out like she’s suddenly pissed off, or maybe scared, she might be scared, the way the color’s draining out of her face and she’s grabbed Darcy’s wrist, started pulling her to the door.
“Whoa, girl-”
It’s like trying to stop a train, the chick almost taking her clean off her feet as they step out of the coffee house and down the sidewalk to the nearest corner, the woman stopping for only a second to glance over their shoulder before stepping into traffic like she has no understanding of giant metal death on wheels.
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, this isn’t how we-”
Something hits her, an impact that sends pain ripping into her neck and down her spine.
The coffee sits in the midst of the chaos where it falls, landing on its bottom, its contents undisturbed.
She jolts back once to bright lights and a rush of motion, doctors in masks with hard eyes staring down at her.
“Darcy,” someone says, and it’s a second before she realizes someone is actually shouting the name.
Her neck throbs, stiff and unmoving, but she knows the voice the third time her name is shrieked and jerks to it helplessly, the closest thing she’s ever had to a friend feeling like a beacon.
“-sedative, we need more-”
Jane looks at her from beyond the ring of people in white, held back by two guys trying to look too much like a SWAT team but apparently refusing to let that stop her. Teary-eyed, confused but steady, Jane is reaching for her.
When she tries to reach back, automatic because this is her friend, her wrist is held back.
Straps, a quiet murmur inside her identifies, cloth ones wrapped tight around her wrists.
And just like that, Darcy is crying like a child, instantly blinded by the tears as Jane is pulled away, snot starting to run as the world grows so heavy it starts making her eyelids hard to keep up.
Darcy wakes up to a tongue that feels too big for her mouth, staring at the white above and all around her.
It goes black for a moment, lightens to gray and then fades out again before she has some sense of self returned.
A minute passes, two, and when she slowly lifts her head from the pillows beneath her, Coulson watches her.
“Holy shitcakes,” she offers, and he just stares, slim folder gripped in one hand.
“How are you, Ms. Lewis?” His voice is weird, tight and a little lower than she remembers when he pretty firmly escorted her from the building where Jane had just gotten her new job a day before. “Back with us?”
“I feel like I got hit with a bus.”
There’s a momentary silence before his mouth quirks, eyes glinting oddly. “Direct as always.”
Darcy slowly pushes the covers off herself, easing up onto her elbows.
Her neck aches, her back is stiff, but she feels… well, she can’t really think of the words.
“How did I get-” A vague memory of Jane’s face, tear-streaked and frantic. “What happened?”
Coulson rises to his feet easily and her stomach lurches as he stares down at her, his gaze a lot harder than it was the last time she’d seen him, almost… annoyed. “Did you interact with the Tesseract?”
What? “What?”
He opens his mouth, considers, and closes his eyes for a moment as if in pain. “The ‘glowy cube of doom thing,’ Ms. Lewis, did you interact with it before you… left our association some months ago?”
“I wasn’t even in the same room with-”
Coulson straightens, mouth twisting down as if asking Are you shitting me? and she hunkers down a little, half-wanting to duck under the covers again because she knows that face and it’s way scarier than any of Fury’s.
Because she totally could go drinking with Fury, and they can share stories about crazy exes and Coulson… well, Coulson… probably just hooks himself up to a booze IV and catches up on paperwork.
“Okay, I was in the room but… but, there wasn’t any interaction, the others were doing the inter and the action, and I was just… playing sidekick, okay, I didn’t do anything-” Off his face, suddenly upset because she hadn’t done anything she hadn’t been told to do: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Who were you talking to?”
Actually the stupid thing was talking to- oh- oh, yeah, never mind. “In the coffee shop?” His left eyebrow ticks up a millimeter and she quickly explains, not at all frantically, “I don’t know who the hell she was, I promise, she just… popped up out of nowhere and dragged me out like a crazy woman, I don’t know who she was-” A thought, Darcy shifting her weight uneasily, nervously. “Wait, is she okay?” Coulson stares at her, face closed. “Oh, god, she actually was crazy, wasn’t she, like, crazy-crazy, is she… is she okay or…” Darcy’s voice fails her, and Coulson is quiet. “What?”
“Did you see this woman interact with anyone else?”
“Uh. No.” Coulson’s face is empty, flat; his eyes are suspicious. “What’s wrong?”
“You'll be staying here until further notice-”
“What?” But he’s already walking to the door, and she realizes only now how… closed the room is, how there’s no windows in the walls or in the door or anywhere, and the vents are really tiny and- and she’s seen S.H.I.E.L.D.’s prison cells before. “Let me out- Phil-”
The door slams behind him, and her neck hurts, and she’s shaking.
Alone.
The truth is?
The truth is that the weird-ass cube thing had tried talking to her a grand total of once and that only Jane and Fury know about it, Jane because she’s her best friend and Nick Fury because he’d been there. Because he’d seen her face when the little voice had started telling her to seek or whatever, and then she’d panicked and kicked it.
Right into the psycho god’s hands, right, okay, but that had been an accident, and a good thing, right?
Because it had totally all worked out in the end, totally, and Fury had sent her his card with his actual phone number for “emergencies” like she wasn’t the world’s biggest fuck-up and she's completely sure that nobody could be that much of a hard ass without having dealt with a lot of fuck-ups over the years.
Everything was cool, people, and she still doesn't know what the hell happened between the coffee shop and here.
Someone pushes her tray of food through the little slot at the bottom a few times a day and Darcy tells herself that the fact that it’s all her favorite food is a good thing because it has to be.
Fury calls her Lewis.
Darcy not-so-secretly calls him Hard Ass.
Their relationship is a strange thing that other people would probably call a friendship.
So the fact that at least two days go by with no sign of Fury leaves Darcy completely sure that she’s screwed.
Completely screwed, totally screwed, she’s going to be here forever, no one is coming for her, ever, and she still doesn’t even know what the hell happened to her-
Darcy closes her eyes and presses fingers to her forehead, makes a noise that some people would call a growl.
A moment later, she starts singing Elvis to herself again.
She’s totally going to piss off whoever it is watching her on the cameras they have to have in here watching.
Maybe… maybe Jane will totally stage a rescue, right?
Yeah, yeah, and Thor is totally in Jane’s league when it came to mental capacity, right?
The world jolts, and she wakes.
It’s a weird feeling, her eyes opening and her head lifting from the pillow, and it’s even weirder how she feels like she wakes up again only a heartbeat later, how the light in the room changes just slightly as she shifts, waits-
The sound is faint, when it reaches her, but impossible to mistake for anything else.
Darcy sits up completely and the world seems to turn over in itself, rocks so hard she almost brings up the pizza and grape soda Coulson had passed into her a few hours before, and now the alarm reaches her even more clearly.
The lights are still on though, right, that’s a good thing, and Tony’s improvements to the already-awesome security are totally the best-
The world goes dark.
Darcy says, “Crap” and half-falls out of the bed in her haste to reach the door, smacking into it just as the lights snap back on, flickering a little too much for her to pretend that everything’s totally cool.
Also, you know, the other alarms have started going off.
Which.
“Shit,” she decides, and tries to pry the little slot open to stare out like it’s worked at all when she’s tried it the last couple of days, and growls at it and tries again and then again because Jane is out there somewhere, and Thor-
Darcy screams, falling back hard on her ass, when the door is ripped open in front of her.
Fury stares down at her with a confused gaze and something like exasperation, really big freaking gun at his side.
“What the hell are you doing down there?”
“What the hell do you mean ‘what the hell’-?”
Fury grabs her wrist and yanks her right up from the floor and through the door. “We’re leaving, Lewis.”
“But you guys arrested me or whatever-”
“Darcy,” and there, right there, she shuts her mouth and follows him down the hall, something uneasily close to hysteria growing in the pit of her stomach as the lights flicker but don't die, as they dim but return because Tony is just that good, thank god for Tony's brain.
Except why is Fury the only one around, why is the building still shaking, where the hell is-
Oh, oh right, and only she can ask him, randomly, in a moment like this without really thinking about before she speaks: “How many times have you guys had to replace this building?”
For just a moment, Fury’s quick stride falters, single eye cutting at her carefully.
Well, that’s a good enough answer.
“I don’t even know what’s going on-” Her throat clogs, and she doesn’t know where Jane is. “Why did you guys-”
She’s been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there’d been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and she blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next.
Because one minute Fury is leading her through what she recognizes as pretty much the most secret of the secret exits (that she knows about) in the bottom of the building and the next the gun is out of his hands and the next he’s gone, a heap of a body a few yards away from her.
Her head jerks, brain struggling to catch up with the motion, and someone locks their hands around her arms, fingers bruising. She lunges back, instinct doing its job a second too late, but it’s like trying to bend metal when you’re not Thor or Tony in his suit or Natasha when she gets drunk or Bruce, well, some of the time.
“Let-” she starts, and stops just as suddenly, frozen.
All Darcy can see is wild green eyes and tangled black hair, skin so unnaturally pale it borders on bloodless, and she can hear the muttering though his mouth isn’t moving, is only twisted into an almost-snarl.
And oh god, oh god, it’s Thor’s old bro, the freaky one that had tried to smush her with Cap’s shield in the middle of that mess a few months before, the one who would be kind of hot if he wasn’t absolutely fucking insane.
And dead, he is also fucking dead, because didn’t that glowy Rubik’s Cube kill his ass?
“Oh, god,” Darcy starts, and then can’t get anything else out as his hand locks around her throat.
She’s lifted, and already crying (she doesn’t even know when she started crying, can’t remember at all) and so angry and so sad all at the same time that she can’t even deal with it.
Her legs kick once, and then start kicking more, more violently than even she expects because she can’t breath-
There’s a flurry of motion beside them, shadows seeming to unfold from themselves, and then a scream that's way more than a scream, that sounds more like some war cry out of a really bad Mel Gibson movie, and Darcy drops like a ragdoll a heartbeat later as the thing holding her tears backwards into the wall.
And it is a thing, a shifting mass of different animal parts that seems to crumple on impact into the shape of Thor’s brother.
Darcy shudders as she stares at him, at it, because it’s wrong in a way that makes the hair on her arms stand up and makes her want to hit things, and the woman is now standing over her with what looks like an ax.
And the fact that she doesn’t find it the hottest thing ever is totally weird.
Thor’s brother is shaking, blinking, head jerking one way and then another as if someone’s talking to him, and the chick shifts backwards to stand more protectively over Darcy like some weird ax-wielding Amazon-
Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshit-
Someone shouts, a male voice far in the distance filled with concern in his search as he calls out her name, and Loki convulses in the middle of trying to twist to his feet, collapses to the floor like a water balloon splitting open. There’s a bizarre image of too many different body parts shoved together again, ripples of change under his skin, and then he screams, a thin sound like shattering glass that makes Darcy’s hands fly over her ears and her eyes fill with tears as she curls into herself because it’s horrible, she hadn’t known it was possible for someone to sound like that, she wants to never hear it again.
It ends, finally, and she's sobbing and doesn't even know why, can only cry and shake.
When she forces her eyes to lift fearfully, Thor’s ex-bro is gone and Thor has reached them, is staring at something above her with eyes blown wide in confusion and something that might be fear.
Oh, right, the European model from hell.
Darcy starts to say, “You guys said he was fucking dead!” or “Is Hard Ass okay?” or “Oh god, oh god, oh god, take me to Jane, oh god, oh god.”
But before she can the woman snaps at Thor, in a tone that makes Darcy’s eyes bug out a little, “Clearly useless no matter the universe,” and grabs her shoulder, lifts Darcy up from the floor with an easy flex of her arm.
Thor’s mouth opens, his body suddenly lunging forward to grab her, and then he’s gone-
And then everything’s gone.