What Have I Become?
Avenger’s Tower - New York City - June 2014
It was three am when the Avengers who had managed to retire for the night were awaken by an excited voice shouting over intercom.
“I’ve got it! I know how we can find her!” Bucky recognised Jamie’s voice, and immediately made his way to the war room where he found her bouncing on her toes and playing with something on Stark’s holoscreen.
“What’ve you got?” he asked, and just as her head snapped up towards him in confusion, the rest of the assembled group filed in behind him, rubbing their eyes and yawning. Stark strolled in at the back of the pack, and Bucky could tell he hadn’t slept since he showed up. Although, to be fair, a toddler could tell he hadn’t slept in a while seeing as he was carrying an entire pot of coffee.
“Where did you all come from?” she asked, cocking her head and furrowing her brow.
“If I may,” Jarvis’ smooth british accent interrupted, “I took the liberty of broadcasting your triumph to the rest of the team, so that they could assist you in any way possible,” At this, Wade grumbled from where he had plopped himself down at a chair, wearing just the bottom half of his tac suit.
“Please tell me I didn’t just wake up from a perfectly good cat nap in the vents for nothing,” he grunted, and stole Tony’s pot of coffee, taking a large gulp. Tony’s indignant cry was cut off by Clint’s sharp warning to stay out of his territory.
Bucky kept his gaze trained on Jamie, who was wearing her pyjamas and giving Wade a … lustful stare? He really hadn’t pegged her as the type to go after a slightly psychotic mercenary, but as Darcy always said, Whatever floats her boat. When he cleared his throat and gave her a pointed look, her cheeks tinged pink, and Deadpool seemed to perk up a little from his slouched over position.
“If you two are quite done,” Carl interrupted, giving Wade a dirty look, “Do you think you could maybe fill us in on your suggestion?” His question seemed to spring Jamie into action, as she began rapidly flicking through things on the holoboard and flicking some up to display.
“Well, it isn’t exactly the most solid plan, but since Jarvis called you all in here before I could work something better out, it’ll have to do for now,” she began, and when she seemed to have finished searching the device she turned her full attention to Darcy’s Father’s.
“I used a program of my own combined with what I know about Project Insight to make a tracking system that should find someone anywhere on the planet. The only problem is… I need a sample of her DNA,” at this, she shrugged helplessly. “So unless someone has a vial of her blood sitting around somewhere, its pretty much another dead end,”
In the silence that followed her statement, Bucky noticed Tony’s head slowly rise.
“What about her parents DNA? Could you work with that?” he asked uncertainly, his gaze flickering between her and Darcy’s Father’s.
“Real funny, asshole. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but she’s kind of adopted,” Jake broke in with a snarl.
“What about her biological parents?” Bruce asked, turning his full attention to the men. At this, Carl shrugged helplessly.
“It was a closed adoption, I have no idea where to even start looking,” he explained, and Jake’s hand came up to grip his shoulder gently.
“Her mother’s dead,” Clint said casually from where he was picking at lint on his purple sweatpants.
“And how would you know that?” asked Luke menacingly, taking a threatening step towards him. Looking up to meet his eyes Clint gave a sardonic smile and shrugged.
“Darcy told me, she saw it happen. Suicide, she didn’t like talking about it,” at his confession, Luke dropped heavily into a chair.
“LA,” he whispered, and when Clint nodded in confirmation, he dropped his head into his hands and cursed heavily.
“That’s a shame,” Jamie broke in, “Because that could actually work,” Nodding to himself, Tony rose out of his chair and crossed the room, rolling up his sleeve as he did. Offering her his arm, he gave a tired smile.
“Have at it then,” he told her, and everyone in the room froze. After a moment, the dramatic silence was broken when Bucky began laughing loudly. When the others turned to give him incredulous looks he raised his hands and laughed even harder.
“Five dads,” he choked out, and within minutes, the rest of the room had joined him in hysterical giggles.
When they had calmed down, and Jamie had drawn Tony’s blood and disappeared to her lab with Wade in tow, Clint cocked his head and asked the question everyone else was thinking.
“How long have you known?”
"Since New Mexico,” Tony sighed, and gave a self deprecating smile, “I was thinking of recruiting her for the initiative as support, and Pepper mentioned that she seemed like the female, well... me. It got me thinking, and so I ran the tests,”
“Why didn’t you ever tell her?” asked Steve, scrunching his face up in a way that said he couldn’t imagine having family that didn’t know about his existence. Shrugging carelessly, Tony gave another little smile that told Bucky he was far more affected by everything than he let on.
“I figured she had enough Fathers who already knew what they were doing,”
Just then, a red faced Jamie and Wade returned to the room, sporting identical guilty smiles.
“So..?” Bucky asked, choosing to ignore the ‘Just hooking up in the lab’ vibe he was getting off of them. “What now?”
“Now…” she said, taking a deep breath and smiling at him reassuringly, “We wait,”
Unidentified Location - Eastern Europe - June 2014
The next time Darcy woke up, she was wearing clothes, and she decided it was an indication of just how disastrous her life had become that she counted that as a major win. The second thing she noticed was she wasn’t in any pain, in fact, she had no noticeable wounds. Lying perfectly still the way Clint had taught her, she took stock of her cell. She seemed to be lying in some sort of cot, and the room she was in was incredibly warm - or perhaps it was just her. Deciding that discretion was not the better part of valour, she sat up abruptly, and was surprised to find her sight perfect without the need for glasses.
“Did I get… laser?” she asked herself quietly, before catching sight of her reflection in the glass wall that was next to her face.
Letting out a horrified scream, she launched herself backwards off the bed and backed into the corner, staring at the reflection that was staring back at her with a horrified interest. Growing up, Darcy had loved her eyes - I mean, who doesn’t love blue eyes? But now - they were a horrifying silver colour. When she blinked, they seemed to shimmer, and the colour was so unnervingly unnatural that after a moment she had to close them and look away.
Which was when she noticed the other obvious change. The odd warm feeling that had been lying over her like a blanket had suddenly intensified at her shock, and there were small bolts of electricity flickering from finger to finger. Letting out another horrified scream, she quickly made a flicking movement with her arms, hoping to rid herself off the dancing energy. Rather than dissipating, the crackling seemed to intensify the more effort she put into throwing it away. Starting to work up a really decent freak-out, she collapsed to her knees and let out an ear piercing scream that could be heard miles away. At her collapse, she released a burst of energy that sent webs of cracks skittering across the surface of her prison, and in her despair, she wailed out the only question she wanted to know the answer to.
“What am I?!” She was so wrapped up in her horror that she almost didn’t hear the velvet like voice reply.
“What fate intended, my dear,”
Darcy's Eyes