glory and gore - r - darcy/bucky - part two
title: glory and gore (go hand in hand)
category: thor/captain america
genre: romance/action/drama/humor
ship: darcy/bucky
rating: R
prompt: au - assassin!darcy goes for bucky
warning(s): rape of a minor (trigger warning); explicit violence; minor character death; explicit consensual sex; strong language
word count: 4,651
summary: (au) In the high-stakes game of sniping people, Darcy Lewis is the best assassin for the job. And she's just been given her biggest mark yet: The Winter Soldier. Usually, this wouldn't be a problem; she'd happily add him to her list of accomplishments. Only, then she goes and does something stupid; she falls in love with him.
| face claim (darcy & bucky) | polyvore [1] polyvore [2] | 8 tracks |
previous: chapter one,
TRIGGER WARNING: There is rape of a minor in this chapter. Be aware and please take this into consideration before reading. It is the second italicized part.
glory and gore (go hand in hand)
II.
The dishes pile up. The laundry goes unwashed. The cupboards and fridge get emptier and emptier.
Darcy watches her home become a shell of what it was, like a mirror to her mother. What was once filled with love and laughter, now echoes with the noise of the television, of beer and whiskey bottles clattering, of a lighter clicking on and off. The smell of her mother's perfume, her father's aftershave, the potpourri her mother put in various rooms, is long gone, replaced with the pungent smell of empty beer cans and bottles, piling up in the corner by the overflowing garbage. Cigarette smoke clouds the living room, clinging to the furniture, seeping into the walls.
Darcy avoids it all. She starts using her window to get in and out each morning and night. If she has to go to the bathroom in the dead of night, she holds it. If she gets hungry, she eats at her friends or raids the supermarket for something, anything, to get her by. When she hears them fighting, she learns to drown it out, putting on her headphones and turning up the volume as loud as it'll go. But she can feel her house rattling as her mother is thrown against walls, she can feel the rage build up in her bones as she wants to go out and help, to stop him, but the last time she did, she got a black eye and a fat lip for her trouble. Only one of which was from Carl, her mother slapped her so hard across the face her ears rung. And her apologies, her "Darcy, I didn't mean to, please, I-I'm sorry. I-You just never know when to leave well enough alone," it all leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
Let them kill each other if they want, she decides.
Still, she grips the knife under her pillow tight.
She tells herself she didn't mean to leave her door unlocked, but some part of her knows… She hopes he tries, hope he comes through that door to rage at her like he does her mother, because if he does, she'll gut him where he stands.
'Go on,' she encourages in her head. 'Go ahead and try.'
He doesn't come, but the rage continued to simmer under her skin, waiting for a chance to strike.
Sitting in her apartment, a far cry from where she actually set down roots, Darcy considered the quandary she found herself in. Dressed to impress (literally, no one but herself), in her underwear (Captain America, in fact, because irony) and an oversized Ramones t-shirt, she thumbed through the, long ago memorized but still worth re-reading, folders of information she'd collected on the main players, which really only amounted to two.
Barnes and Rogers.
Rogers would be a problem, she'd decided that from the word 'Go.' He wasn't on her list, and she made it a rule never to take out anybody she wasn't paid to. Which meant she would have to plan around him. He spent most of his days at Stark Tower, called home regularly, and seemed to be working on rebuilding SHIELD. In the first two weeks she watched them, Rogers was home every night, but, more and more, he was working, taking on jobs to hunt down a few known HYDRA agents. This gave her an opening, because taking on Barnes while Rogers was there would be asking for trouble. Even if she managed a headshot, which was becoming far less appealing to her, having him nearby would present a problem in packing up and disappearing. She'd been careful in hiding her trail, but she wouldn't underestimate Rogers, or his grief, in coming for her just as soon as Barnes was hit. More, some part of her didn't want him there to witness it. She'd read the reports; he'd watched Barnes fall from the train. He was helpless, had to listen to his best friend fall, screaming, and could do nothing to change it. And listening in on their conversations, hearing that very obvious loyalty they had to each other, it had an effect.
Maybe she was growing a heart. She'd long thought it had died and the ground had been salted so another wouldn't have a chance to grow, but maybe she'd been wrong.
The point was, she was beginning to second guess herself here. And that made things difficult.
She didn't like difficult.
Darcy played to her strengths and, while she knew she could get the job done, she wasn't so sure she wanted the job done.
She's seventeen the first time she kills someone. And she never regrets it.
She's managed to keep her distance. She takes to staying at friend's houses or hiding out in the shed her daddy keeps all of his guns in, of which only she has a key. Carl's smart enough not to come for her there.
But he tries his luck one night when her mother's at bingo. Darcy gets in late from studying at her friend's house and swears a storm under her breath when her bedroom window won't open. She doesn't think much of it. It gets stuck sometimes. So, she goes through the house, quickly, making her way toward her bedroom. Her footsteps are as quiet as they can be, aware of how much the floor can creak under any pressure whatsoever. She's almost within reach of safety when her mother's bedroom door flies open. And there's Carl. Looming, leaning in the doorway in that awful, stained wife beater of his; an apt name given the person wearing it.
When he grins at her, eyes glazed, the pungent odor of whiskey and sweat wafting off him, she knows what's coming. A shiver of cold dread runs down her spine right before she turns and sprints away. Her sneakers squeal on the kitchen linoleum as she races across the floor and through the back door to the yard. She nearly trips as she crosses the porch and leaps down to the grass, adrenaline pumping through her veins and fear clawing at her skin.
Despite being a slob of the highest caliber and always finding a way not to put any physical work into anything, Carl catches her halfway across the yard, an arm banded around her waist, and shoves her face down into the grass so hard that she almost can't breathe. Part of it is the fear, she knows. It's like a vice around her lungs. Panic crawls up her throat and exits in a terrified, angry groan.
She wants to turn over, to shove her feet up and kick him in the chest, the face, to get him off of her. She wants to hear the satisfying sound of bone crunching under her foot, but he doesn't let her. He reaches under her and fiddles with the front of her jeans, pulling at the button and yanking down the zipper. Horror makes her scream, makes her claw at the ground and start crawling, desperately, toward the shed. He grabs her behind the neck, his blunt fingernails digging into her skin, and shoves her down again, pinning her there while his other hand pulls at her jeans and her underwear, yanking them roughly down her thighs. She's crying then, sobbing and screaming and calling him every name she can think of. She pleads, not to him, but to her father and her mother and to anybody, please, just anybody, help her, save her, but no one…
No one comes.
No one saves her.
When he's done with her, he leaves her there in the yard, half-naked and bleeding and broken.
Broken.
Because she isn't Darcy anymore. Not then. She isn't the girl who sat on her father's knee every chance she got. She isn't the girl who stood on a stool to watch her mother cook and bake, trying to memorize her recipes, passed down from her grandmother. She isn't the girl who could spend hours doing nothing but knitting; hats and blankets and socks, all of which her parents used and showed off proudly. She isn't who she was. She isn't sure who she is, but it's not that girl.
When she finally gets up, she doesn't know how much time has passed, but there's something cold inside her. Something dark and empty and made of ice.
It hurts. Everything hurts. But she shoves that pain to the back of her mind, swallows it down, and pulls her jeans up. She limps as she walks to the shed, but it doesn't stop her. She pulls the keys out of her jeans pocket and fiddles with the lock, her hands trembling. She gets her father's favorite shot gun out. A Browning A-5. She loads it slowly, unhurried, letting her fingers glide down the grip with reverence. Her hands stop shaking then.
And then she walks inside her house, her hair in disarray, grass and dirt clinging to her, tear tracks still drying on her cheeks, and she finds Carl sitting in his arm chair, a bottle of beer in hand and a cigarette dangling from his lips.
He gets out, "No, no, no," staring up at her with wide, desperate eyes. His cigarette falls from his lips to the carpet along with the beer bottle, rolling, spilling, as he raises his hands up in defense.
She shoots three times, center to the chest, and doesn't feel one bit of regret. She leaves him, dead on the floor, blood pooling around him, and walks away. She gathers up her things, takes her father's favorites from his gun and knife collection, lights a match and walks out of the house, letting it burn behind her.
She never looks back.
Sometimes, Darcy wished she had someone she could talk to about these situations. It wasn't like there was a 24-hour crisis line for assassins who were second-guessing themselves. She imagined that would end poorly for anybody who called, which was a little ironic, actually. Because if they were calling, they probably weren't the type sitting high on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Herself excluded, of course.
In any case, this was one of the few times she lamented the severe lack of friendships when it came to being an assassin. Sure, she'd met people just like her. They didn't have conventions or anything, but there were occasions where more than one was hired to do a job and whoever got there first reaped the spoils. And other times, when multiple assassins were hired by various sources and they had to rock, paper, scissors it to see who would take the shot so they could both leave, happily paid and no worse off. So, she knew a few other people in her line of work, but calling them up to complain that she wasn't sure she wanted to kill someone wouldn't exactly be like an episode of Sex and the City, where Carrie and the girls got together to talk about their various issues over cosmos and tried not to judge each other. If anything, telling someone would be a sign of weakness, not one she could afford in her line of work.
Some of them had handlers they could go to, mentors that could help them figure things out. And Darcy had too, once upon a time, but no more. So, that settled that; she had to figure this out on her own. To kill or not to kill, that was the question. And not one she struggled with often, to be totally honest.
More than once, she found herself sitting in her window, eye at the scope, watching Barnes walk around his apartment in his low slung sweatpants, shiny metal arm on display. She watched him lay on the floor, doing sit ups and push ups, working up a sweat. Or sitting on the couch, legs curled under him, as he browsed what the TV had to offer. More often than not, though, he was a reader; preferring the arm chair that left only his foot in view through the window, spending hours lost in some book or another. He was getting comfortable with the window, though. Some nights, he stood there, forehead braced on the glass, and stared out at the world, his brow furrowed, as if he were still trying to understand it.
The simple fact that she had the perfect angle, that she could blow his brains out at any moment, and not once… not once had her finger strayed to that trigger, said a whole lot more than she wanted it to.
She's nineteen and she's lived in six different cities. She gets antsy, worried someone might recognize her and turn her in for murder and arson. She's living on the streets of New York, paying for food with the money she gets out of pick-pocketed wallets, when she meets Camille in the subway. A sophisticated woman, early fifties, dark skinned, elegant and confident.
It's not until later that she realizes Camille could have more than handled the situation herself. But in the moment, all Darcy sees is a man attacking a woman, trying to intimidate her, touching her like he has any right. He's got his hand wrapped around Camille's wrist and he's screaming in her face, shoving her back against the wall. He raises his hand to hit her when Darcy strikes. She doesn't pause, doesn't question what she's doing; she just reacts. She takes the hunting knife from her hip, leaps onto his back, and slits his throat where he stands, memories of Carl flashing in her head all the while.
While he bleeds out on the ground between them, Camille looks at her, wearing clothes too big for her frame, skinnier than she's ever been, dirty and tired and just a little wild. And Camille smiles at her. It's not friendly; it's a little terrifying, actually. But then Camille holds a hand out to her, all polished, manicured nails and gold bracelets. "You must be hungry…" she says, and Darcy's traitorous stomach proves her right.
Camille buys her dinner at a diner Darcy imagines she'd never set foot in otherwise. As it is, Camille wipes down the table with a napkin and does her best not to actually touch anything. Still, she buys Darcy whatever she wants and then makes her a job proposal she can't refuse. So, she doesn't. She signs up to be Camille's protégé, realizing soon enough that Camille is a trained, but retired, assassin and thinks she might just be able to take all of that raw talent she sees in Darcy and make it into something useful.
Darcy looks into the eyes of the devil and signs away her soul.
The second time she let Barnes see her, she just wanted confirmation that she was making the right decision.
She'd always been the moth that danced too close to the flame, and this was no different.
There was a bar a few blocks down from his apartment. He didn't go often, but sometimes, when he was getting antsy, he would leave, walk down and sit at a table by himself, knocking back shot after shot of vodka. It was the only thing he ever drank. She wondered sometimes, if he was trying to get drunk, or if taking the edge off really just took that much alcohol for him.
As it turned out, he was a sloppy drunk.
Darcy, as a rule, avoided bars. The smell of whiskey still made her stomach twist up. But she made an exception this time, in part because she occasionally liked to test her own ability to stand up in the face of her own fears. Years ago, her mentor told her that what she did, her job, it was her way of coping, of therapy. Darcy wasn't so sure about that, seeing as therapy probably led to a happier, more proactive life, not to more death, but then, her mentor had a reason for telling her that. And, to be frank, she wasn't the same girl that her step-father had brutally raped in her own backyard, nor was she the girl that shot him three times in the chest and left her childhood house to burn to ashes. She was something else, a hybrid of them, she supposed. She was stronger, more certain of herself, comfortable in her skin. Was she a good person? God, not likely. She would laugh if someone said otherwise. But she was free. She made her own choices. She controlled her life and what she did with it.
She took a seat at the bar where she could keep an eye on him without being obvious; the paneling behind the bar shelves was made up of mirrors, giving her a view of everything and everyone. She ordered a beer and nursed it throughout the night. Being drunk would leave her vulnerable, and she was never vulnerable. Not anymore.
So, she sipped at her beer, splitting her attention between the hockey game playing on the screen in the corner and on the sad excuse for an ex-Russian assassin getting wasted on vodka.
It would be funny later, when she had time to think about it, she decided.
But it wasn't funny as it happened.
He was sad. Pitiful, even. Maybe she really would be doing him a favor by putting him out of his misery.
He drank until closing and passed out on the table, face buried in his metal arm, shrouded in at least three layers of clothing.
He looked like shit, to say the least. His hair was in disarray, falling out of the low ponytail he tied it in at the nape of his neck. He had a couple days' growth of stubble that needed a good shaving. His eyes were drooping and glazed when open, with heavy bags beneath. He struck too strong a resemblance to the sad hobo that first showed up on Rogers' doorstep more than a year ago.
When the bartender walked over to him, sighing, muttering about having to call the cops to come haul his drunk ass away, Darcy stepped in. "He's my neighbor, actually. I can probably get him home." The bartender shouldn't have trusted her. He didn't know either of them, had no reason to believe her. Maybe it was a little sexist, assuming she couldn't do anything to do this much larger man. Or maybe he just didn't want the hassle of waiting for the cops to show up and drag his drunk customer's ass out of the bar, especially since it would probably have them asking questions he couldn't answer, like why he didn't cut Barnes off earlier. Either way, he waved them off, telling her, "He's all yours, lady."
She shook Barnes' arm gently, her hand already reaching for the knife strapped to her thigh, ready to take him out if she had to. But he barely stirred, vaguely lifting his head and peering up at her through squinted, bloodshot eyes. He was gone, to say the least.
She sighed at him, pursing her lips.
"Coffee," he mumbled, and she snorted.
"Yeah, you could use a pot or two." She gave his arm a tug. "C'mon. Bar's closed. It's time to go home."
He groaned, muttering under his breath. Her Russian was rusty, to say the least, but the general idea was that he didn't want to get up, or leave, he just wanted to sleep.
It took some doing, getting him up from the table, arm around her shoulders as she dragged him out of the bar, but she managed.
She asked him where he lived just in case he actually remembered it the next day. Of course, as he pointed down the road and they started walking, it occurred to her that this was the prime time to take him out. Then again, the bartender might remember her and put two and two together… Or maybe she was just making excuses. She could turn down the alley twenty feet ahead of her, lead him down into the darkest parts, and put two bullets in his head. Or a knife through his neck. Or any of the other multitude of ways she knew to kill a person.
Instead, they walked right by the mouth of that alley and two more until he swayed on his feet, motioning toward the building he lived in.
She helped him up the stairs, pausing twice as he leaned too far out of her reach and nearly toppled out of her arms while he tried to dig his keys out of his jeans. Eventually, he found them and she wrestled them away to get the door open, helping him down the hall and into the elevator. She brought him up three floors and down the hall to his and Rogers' apartment, occasionally asking for directions, despite having long memorized the blueprints of the building.
Rogers was still out as she helped Barnes down the hall to his bedroom. It was plain, with empty walls and standard furniture. She wondered how often Rogers had pushed for him to try and make it more his own, add a little color, some pictures, anything to remind him of himself, before eventually giving up. She helped Barnes to his bed, with its dark blankets all tucked in and smoothed down military style. Turning him, she gave him a little push so he'd sit down on the edge. He complied, more or less plopping down, arms on his knees, head ducked. Staring down at him, she found herself lingering, considering her options. She could help him with his shoes, it was the polite thing to do, but that put her in a bad position. He could choke her out, snap her neck, any number of things, and she'd be all too vulnerable to it. Then again, this whole night put her in a terrible position. He could have killed her just as easily as she could have killed him.
It was a sobering reminder.
Of course, it happened while she was already mid-way through undoing the laces on his boots and pulling them from his feet.
She looked up then, to see if he'd sobered up any.
He was staring at her, still looking more than a little drunk, but his eyes weren't as hazy as they'd been before. They stared right at her, through her, and she wondered what, exactly, they saw.
Whatever it was, he must have misread a few things, because he leaned forward and slanted his mouth across hers.
What followed was something she would later chalk up to the beer she'd been drinking earlier; it must've hindered her ability to think more than she'd expected, because she didn't shove him away. She didn't pull out her hunting knife and put it between his ribs. She didn't warn him never to touch her like that again. Which she'd done more than a few times in the past with men who'd taken liberties she never asked for and hadn't wanted. Instead, she let herself lean in, let her lips part as his tongue ran the seam of her mouth. She let herself get lost in the feel of his lips moving against hers, his tongue stroking and flicking, his fingers burying at the nape of her neck and tangling in her hair. It was hot and needy and full of more passion than she'd found in any man before him.
He was kissing down her cheek, the rasp of his stubble dragging against her skin in a way that made her shiver, anticipation warming her down to her toes. His teeth scraped down the line of her jaw, mouthing a kiss at the hinge, and then she woke up. What was she doing? What was he doing? No, never mind, he was drunk and lonely and probably vaguely recognized her. She was a hired assassin meant to kill him and instead she was getting lost in him. And, yes, sure, she'd done this to get close to marks before, but she'd never felt it quite so… sincerely before. In the past, she'd let men get close, let them take her up to their hotel rooms, and then, just as they were distracted with her, she would strike.
She was reminded, once again, that she should, and could, be doing that right now. But her hand didn't stray for the gun strapped to one thigh or the knife on the other. And that was a cold shot of reality.
With a groan of disappointment in herself, both for not killing him and for putting an end to what was happening, she stood, staring down at him, panting a little, her lips swollen, her hair in disarray.
He stared up at her, still looking lost and lonely and incredible vulnerable.
He reached for her, a hand on her hip, and leaned forward, resting his forehead on her stomach.
What a pitiful puppy, she decided.
He was no guard dog. No vicious killer. He was just a man. A broken man.
Shaking her head at herself, she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back. He fell against his bed, staring up at her with half-lidded eyes. She reached down and tugged his legs up by the knee, pushing them onto the bed with him. He crawled up his bed a little and dropped his head on his pillow. And it was a mistake, of course, it was a weakness, really, but she reached out, stroking her fingers through his hair, and let her palm slide down his cheek, watching as his eyes fell closed, mouth turned up in that faint, vague smile of his.
She walked away as he fell asleep, closing the door behind her, and frowned to herself.
What the fuck was she doing?
She takes to training like a fish to water. Knives, hand to hand, guns (long and short range).
Camille puts a weapon in her hands and tells her to prove herself.
So, she does.
Her mentor is quick to correct her, to tell her what she's doing wrong and how she can fix it. To rearrange her body for maximum effect, to make sure every blow lands as hard as it can, every knife is thrown with unmatched accuracy, every bullet hits with lethal grace.
Darcy sheds her past, her history, and becomes something else, something new.
"It's like a phoenix rising from the ashes, isn't it?" Camille tells her, smiling all the while.
And she's known Camille for more than a year now, but that smile always feels like a serrated blade on her skin, just waiting for one wrong move before she cuts.
"Reborn," Darcy answers. "Shiny and new."
"The tears of a phoenix are said to have healing properties, you know…" Camille hands her two blades, watches as she weighs them in her palms to get a feel for how she should throw them. "But we don't cry, do we?" At Darcy's shaking head, she nods. "So we heal in other ways. We cleanse our sins in blood, Darcy."
"Isn't that the opposite of clean?"
"No." She catches Darcy by the chin and lifts it up so they're eye to eye. She stares down at her, shadows clouding the edges of dark eyes, only they aren't haunted, and she knows that whatever Camille's done, she has no regrets. She feels no remorse. The shadows are something else, something cold. "Clean is what we decide it is. Now…" She turns Darcy toward a wall, pinned with headshots of targets. "Tell me… Who's first?"
Darcy flips one dagger up into the air and catches it between her fingers before she throws it. It lands center in a man's forehead and she smiles.
It's time to cleanse her battered soul. Whatever soul she has left.
[Next: Part III.]
author's note: Thank you everybody who's reviewed; I really appreciate it and am glad you're sticking around for the ride. On the subject of Darcy and her rape by Carl, I would like to touch on her feelings of being 'broken,' because I don't want to imply that all rape survivors are broken and there's no chance of help or recovery. I'm only trying to convey how Darcy felt in that moment, which was that she was broken beyond repair and that the person she'd been had basically been destroyed by Carl's actions and her mother's inaction. So, that's where I was going with that and the way it was written and I truly hope I haven't offended or triggered anyone.
Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to know what you all thought about the scene between Darcy and Bucky and the evolution happening there. So, please review; they're my lifeblood.
- Lee | Fina