Chapter 6
Clint had some experience with women erupting into tears in bars.
Ok, a lot of experience.
At least this time he was pretty sure it wasn’t his fault.
He approached cautiously, ready for any sudden movements, history causing him to be wary of weeping women.
“Kid?” Clint used the same voice he’d used that first time he’d met Katie-kate, trying to seem calm and friendly. It hadn’t worked on Kate, but he was factoring in her more violent nature. "You alright?"
Darcy had her face in her hands, tears tinged black from her mascara leaking out between her fingers. She was shaking, but Clint didn't hear anything from her: no shuddering breath, no keening, nothing. Checking his hearing aids and finding nothing wrong, he moved to sit next to her. "Darce?"
The only indication that she had heard him was that she began to dig her nails in where they met her forehead. "Woah, hey girly, let's not do that to your pretty face, ok?" Clint pulled her arms down by her side with more effort than he would have liked. "I need you to tell me what that phone call was about, Darce."
She bit her lips, brutally crushing them between her teeth. Clint was already holding her arms and did not know how to stop her from chewing her goddamn lips off, especially without making a scene.
"Jesus, please stop hurting yourself, ok? Just tell me what happened or what I can do."
She whimpered, but at least stopped trying to draw blood. "There you are, that was good," Clint dared to release her hands so that he could wrap an arm around her and pull her into his chest. "Who was that on the phone?"
She shook her head, burying her face in his shirt, crying even harder.
"Aw, no, don't cry on my shirt. Wait, I mean don't cry. Don't cry." People liked it when you rubbed their hair, he thought, but when he tried to soothingly pet her head, his watch got caught in her tresses. Clint blinked at his wrist.
"Um."
Darcy kept on leaking all over his chest, damp spot growing, while he tried to subtly shift her hair out of the metal. When he thought he was in the clear, he swiftly yanked his arm back down. Except for how the hair was apparently wrapped more tightly than he thought and he instead jerked the poor girl's head down into his crotch.
Clint decided that he should just stop moving.
"Uh. This looks bad."
The safest thing to do was definitely not stare at the brunette face down in his lap, but Clint didn't know where the hell else to look.
At least she wasn't crying anymore. He didn’t know if hysterical laughter was any better, though. If it was laughter. It sounded a little weird like it was full of static, but maybe his hearing aids were fritzing again.
“Oh my God.” she huffed, hoarse from her sobbing, “Oh my God. This can’t be happening.”
“This is actually very normal for me, believe it or not,” he replied while successfully disentangling her hair.
Darcy gingerly rubbed at where her hair had been tugged, but didn’t really move from his lap. She just laid there, laughing. Except the laughing was definitely coming in fuzzy. He discreetly tapped the aids, but everything else sounded normal. Just her laugh was… not right.
“Not this, but,” she laughed or cried and squeezed her eyes shut again, “The call was…”
Clint went for her shoulder this time and hoped the rubbing was comforting rather than creepy. Shoulder was neutral. Just enough pressure that she could feel his hand through her sweater. He knew all about location and pressure. You couldn’t always use arrows, after all.
Darcy was still talking, but he’d forgotten to pay attention with all his efforts at a platonic, totally not weird shoulder pat, “… think it was a heart attack.”
Clint had no clue what she was talking about, but she had stopped crying at least. He made an encouraging ‘hm’ noise that was ambivalent enough that she wouldn’t know she’d lost him.
He was killing it on the comforting front. “There, there,” he said before he could help himself. Darcy wasn’t noticing regardless; she was staring at the wet spot she’d made on his hoodie.
“I just… She’s gone. My mom’s gone.”
His hand froze in its deranged petting. This was definitely out of his wheel house.
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He wasn’t so egotistical that he had trouble admitting defeat. If you didn’t know when you were in over your head, then you’d make a shitty assassin.
Which was why he had practically carried a drunk, broken Darcy out the bar and back to the lab. He rolled his eyes at the bike lock looped through the handles of the front door. Dr. Foster was committed, he’d give her that, but did she really think that something anyone could buy for ten bucks at Walmart would keep SHIELD out? Clint had the door opened in less than a minute even with the handicap of an arm full of semi-catatonic girl.
He settled Darcy at the kitchen table, not bothering with telling her to stay put. She was barely blinking, so he doubted she was going anywhere. Making his way out the back, he waved off an approaching Agent Kirk. The kid didn’t need any more people in her business.
Dr. Foster’s trailer was dark, but that was unsurprising. Last he’d checked, she had been in the lab for eighteen hours and counting. The woman was ruthless when it came to her work, but Clint had seen for himself the smile she had for Darcy when the kid shoved pop-tarts under the doc’s nose. He’d heard the bickering over the right way to make coffee or how often a person really needed to shower.
It may have been a long time since his relationship with Barney had resembled anything good or healthy, but Clint could still recognize Jane and Darcy’s relationship for what it was: affectionate, close, and familial. He could have been mistaken, but he knew what effect life or death situations had on people.
So with all the certainty of a man who knew he was doing the right thing, he banged on the metal door of the trailer with both fists, fully aware of the wrath he was invoking.
His first thought when Dr. Foster ripped open her door was that SHIELD needed to hire her for interrogations.
“Who the ever loving fuck are you and what in Frigga’s name do you fucking want?” she growled, impressively terrifying for someone with dried toothpaste on her chin.
He held his hands up, palms out for the second time that night, officially in
Don’t Shoot Pose more times than even the Budapest mission. “It’s Darcy!”
Dr. Foster’s whole body immediately went from irate to alert. She raised to the balls of her slippered feet, eyes narrowing and hands firmly placed on her hips. “What about Darcy? Where is she? What did you do to her?” With each question, she took a step down the stairs from her trailer.
Clint didn’t back down because he was Strike Team Delta for Christ’s sake, but it was a near thing. “She got some bad news, in the lab, and nothing! You’ve got some serious trust issues.”
She scowled at that, but at least backed up out of his personal bubble. “What bad news?” She peered around him like she thought she’d be able to see her intern through cement walls.
“That her mom died tonight.”
Dr. Foster’s gaze snapped back to him. “What?”
“I don’t know the details. We were at the bar having a good time when she got a phone call and started sobbing. I figured the best move was to bring her to you.”
She spun around to pull her trailer door closed; then tied her robe with short, furious movements as she came all the way down her stairs. “Yeah. Best move. I’ve got this,” she looked up at him, seemingly unbothered with the huge height difference between them now that they were on even ground, “I’ll take care of Darcy.” She nodded to herself like all that the universe needed for something to be true was for her to say it out loud.
She moved past him, but stopped just short of the lab. Twisting her neck to look back at him, she called out “Thank you. For bringing her to me.”
Then she turned back and went inside.
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Clint had been drinking warm beers outside under the stars for about an hour before Coulson found him. He’d picked them up from a gas station on his way back to base and figured he’d avoid his responsibilities by curling up outside in the dirt. Cold desert and flat beer were honestly preferable than having to go give his mission report.
The original file SHIELD had made on Darcy Lewis had only been about half a page, the notable things about her were a good academic record and being the sole heir of an old family from the coast. After every single agent assigned to watch her had been caught with their metaphorical pants down, including Hawkeye himself once, it was clear that the file had missed something. There were some ID’s she’d made that Clint thought even Nick Fury would have missed. Given they were still based on the battleground of Norse Gods come to life, this anomaly made people twitchy.
Coulson had assigned him to, in Coulson speak, “evaluate Darcy Lewis and reassess her threat level”. Clint had done this kind of op before, and it almost always was in relation to the Index. He got it, he really did. The world was a big, scary place with ever changing threats. In order for those threats to be controlled, data had to be accumulated and monitored.
All very logical and straight forward. He’d never had a problem with it before.
But now he couldn’t help but see her face, eyes full of tears as she broke over losing her mother, her only family, and he had a big problem with the idea of her being put on anyone’s list.
Technically, he didn’t have a reason to put her on the list. She didn’t have any powers that he’d confirmed.
Except there was something at the base of his skull that felt it.
Felt that she was something else.
With what he did, he knew how to trust his instincts. He’d even had this feeling before, with other people who were eventually proven to be more than they appeared and put on the Index. Call it primal instinct, an old buried impulse that recognized danger, but he may not know who or what Darcy was; he just knew it was Other.
This was exactly what Coulson had wanted him to determine, and that was exactly why he’d been drinking lukewarm beer outside of HQ until Coulson found him.
“Barton,” Coulson eyed the can in his hands with barely concealed disgust, “Couldn’t you at least get a cooler out here?”
Clint smiled at him, having always liked working with Coulson. The man was good, personable, and trust worthy. It made what Clint was about to do uncomfortable.
Her eyes had been so big and so wet.
“After such a boring night, I had to drown my sorrows immediately.”
“Boring?” Coulson asked, eyebrow lifted in skepticism.
“Boring might be a bit disrespectful. Fun girl, but ultimately, she was just that: a girl. Observant little thing. Remember that cologne Nat got me for Christmas last year? Apparently, it was one her ex wore and he was enough of a jerk that she always notices it when she smells it. I was betrayed by my own vanity,” Clint said and let the next bit be coated in just enough lecherousness to sell with his reputation, “Hot as hell, though. Shame about her mother. Could have been a fun night instead of just a sad one.”
Coulson cocked his head in polite interest, but was clearly already itching to go back to more important things.
Clint took a drink, curling his nose at the taste. “Got a call from back home. Mom died tonight of a heart attack.”
“She’ll be going home then, presumably,” Coulson replied looking thoughtful.
“I think the Doc will go with her,” Clint explained dropping off Darcy at the lab.
“Just as well. We aren’t making as much progress here as the Director would like. You’ll most likely be accompanying Selvig to our Phoenix site.”
Clint gave him a mock salute and clicked his heels together. “Sir, yes, sir.”
He heard Coulson muttering something about smart asses as he walked away. Clint stayed outside a little longer, wondering if he had made the right call.
In the end, it didn’t matter, of course.
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Darcy couldn’t remember most of the week her mother died. She remembered the call. She remembered Clint being kind. And she remembered Jane being the rock upon which she rested.
Jane was there to get them tickets to North Carolina. Jane was there to pack their things. Jane was there to book a hotel room when Darcy threw up in her front yard before she could enter her childhood home. Jane was there to lay right next to Darcy holding her hand the first night even though there were two beds because Darcy couldn’t stop shaking. Jane was there to talk with the police because Darcy couldn’t manage to ask the right questions. Jane was there to help some of Diane’s friends plan the funeral, everyone agreeing that it would be cruel to expect Darcy to do it.
And Jane was there to stand behind Darcy when Darcy cried at the podium at the head of the church, while she tried to describe the woman her mother had been to her and to everyone who knew her. Jane’s hand on Darcy’s back had been the one thing that allowed Darcy to focus enough to pull through saying goodbye to her mother.
On the sixth day, Darcy could finally get through the front door of her house, and Jane was there with her for every step.
On the seventh day, Darcy didn’t cry, and she sat with Jane in the living room going through old scrap books her mom had put together and telling Jane stories about growing up Lewis.
On the eighth day, she left to go meet with her mother’s attorneys without Jane. Jane had wrung her hands, but Darcy thought she deserved a break from taking care of her pathetic intern. Jane had looked so affronted on Darcy’s behalf that she furrowed her eyebrows hard enough to become an actual unibrow. Darcy laughed until she fell to the floor, and soon Jane was down there giggling with her. Darcy left feeling a little lighter. Jane took a well deserved nap.
The ninth day Darcy alternatively spent freaking out over not having taken economics more seriously and packing away parts of the house to be dealt with at a later date. What did a twenty-two year old know about running finances? Also how safe was it to just leave a house sitting empty? Jane assured her that it would be fine, and she had set up a system with some of Diane’s friends to check in on it until they could come back and decide what to do with it later. Darcy cried that Jane had said ‘we’.
By the tenth day, the day that she and Jane were going back to New Mexico, Darcy had more or less come up with a plan. She didn’t have anyone but Jane, now, and the thought of leaving her was panic inducing. So on the plane ride home, Darcy asked if she could stay on working for Jane.
“Darcy, you know I’m here for you. You don’t need to work for me; we’ve been through too much for us to just be Professor and intern. Also, you graduated,” Jane rushed to reply, worried.
“I know all of that. We’re besties for life. Bonds of friendship forged through aliens and tragedy. Strong stuff,” Darcy nudged her side, “But I wasn’t thinking intern. I was thinking more assistant. I don’t know that I can go back to the normal world, not after everything.”
Jane smiled knowingly. “I get that, but I can’t pay you. I’d love to hire you because you’re my friend and you are oddly amazing at data collation given your aversion to science class, but I literally can only afford the indentured servitude of interns on my budget. It’s the lot of being a scientist.”
Darcy huffed out a laugh, trying not to sound as sardonic as she knew she will. “Really won’t be an issue, boss lady.”
Jane scrunched her nose and put on the ‘I am older and wiser and you will listen to me’ voice that she’d used a lot in the last week. With good intentions, of course, and mostly for things that Darcy was usually in charge of like meal times and social etiquette.
“Darce, you can’t just be an unpaid intern forever, no matter how much I’d love for you to stay with me. You need money; it’s a pretty important part of surviving as an adult.”
“Oh, I know.” For the first time since this whole nightmare began, Darcy didn’t feel like the baby duckling following Jane blindly. It felt good. “But I actually could have been an intern forever even if all I’d had was my trust fund.”
Jane blinked at that.
“Trust fund?”
“Yes, trust fund. Although, now it isn’t just my trust fund. Now it’s…” Darcy couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought, but Jane’s warm hand wrapped around her own just in time.
“Okay,” Jane said, and her smile was only the tiniest bit wobbly. “I trust you to know what you’re doing. But since you apparently can afford it, I’m not springing for your coffee anymore. In fact, you can spring for mine from here on out. That fancy stuff you like so much.”
That made Darcy laugh instead of cry, and she thiought she might love Jane for that. Laying her head on her friend’s bony shoulder, Darcy knew she did.
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Alexander Pierce knew the truth about patterns. People thought that they began with threes, but that wasn’t accurate. Those were the same morons who believed in coincidences.
Patterns started with the number two.
He flipped through Agent Kirk’s report on the Thor incident and came to the obvious conclusion.
Here in front of him was a two.
Two times Darcy Lewis was involved in the unexplainable.
SHIELD had cleared her, but SHIELD was weak, vulnerable, and prone to mistakes.
No.
There was a pattern here, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.
Darcy Lewis was going to be explained.