Chapter 14
Fury knew too much.
Pierce watched his friend disappear from his office, weariness settling in his chest. He’d hoped to have more time, confident that given enough of it, he’d be able to convince the director of the necessity of HYDRA.
HYDRA was the only logic in the chaos. Fury would have been compliant, would have been rewarded for his compliance, if Pierce had had more time.
That was impossible now. He returned to the Council to end the meeting, cutting short their protestations. Settling back into his desk, he called Rumlow.
“Send in the Soldier.”
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When Iron Man first broke on the scene, Darcy read about the unknown armored suit that single handedly liberated the village of Gulmira on the BBC app while walking to a history lecture. A few short weeks after that, she watched Tony Stark smugly announce “I Am Iron Man” while munching on Cheerios in her dorm room. She remembered admiring the ballsy move, small wisps of respect growing in her mind. During that whole Stark Expo fiasco, Darcy had been mostly preoccupied with spit balling SHIELD goons, but she still followed the news coverage of the aftermath with an interest born of her admiration for the Red and Gold.
Darcy was having a hard time reconciling that the same man staring at the coffee in her outstretched hand, his face in the closest approximation of a 404 Error Page that she had ever seen, was also the genius superhero she liked so much.
Tony, as he’d told her to call him earlier while rambling something about people who had electrocuted Thor having to stick together, made a choking noise behind gritted teeth.
“Are you allergic to coffee or something? Or are you having an aneurysm?” she asked, retracting the proffered cup slowly.
“No,” he said, still eyeing the coffee warily, “I have a thing. Being handed things, I mean, huge no-go for me.”
Darcy turned to glance at Thor who just shrugged his gorilla shoulders and took a sip from his own caramel latte, extra whip. She’d gone to the place down the street with the best grounds, figuring they should start the day with something good before having to face what remained of that horrible base. Everyone else had been appropriately thankful for the gesture. Clint was somehow drinking his while hanging upside down, his head off the edge of the couch and legs thrown over the back, eyes closed and humming in contentment. Jane was carefully sipping her tea, knowing that too much caffeine would shoot her nerves today.
That just left Tony and his apparent issues.
Darcy could only deal with so many things, so she extended her arm until the coffee cup brushed his chest and then let it slip through her fingers.
Tony squawked as he moved to catch it before it spilled and burned his junk.
“There,” Darcy smiled sweetly, “I didn’t hand it to you.”
Tony stared, looking from the leaking cup in his grasp and back to her.
“Well played,” he admitted, taking a dainty sip.
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B-U-C-K-Y.
It was all he could think about. Five letters.
They’d been carved into the ice of his cryotube when he woke up, flashes of dreams that he couldn’t quite reach plaguing him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d dreamt.
He couldn’t remember much of anything.
They’d prepped him, told him of his target, gave him his gun, gave him the location where they would force his quarry. Left him to prepare.
But all he could do was repeat those letters to himself, over and over in his cold mind.
Even as he shot under the car, as he ripped open the door, as he trailed his target to an apartment building, used the line of sight of the blonde man to fire armor piercing rounds into his mission, as he ran across roofs to avoid detection, he thought them over and over.
B-U-C-K-Y.
He heard the blonde man pursuing him, crashing through windows, making great leaps that the Asset had only ever seen himself land, landing on the roof behind him.
The whistle of a projectile of some kind hurtling through the air.
Even as he grabbed it with his arm, threw it back with all of his strength, he did all of it on instinct rather than any thought because he was too consumed with one thing:
B-U-C-K-Y
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Jane, Thor, and Darcy had agreed to keep Darcy’s abilities under wraps. Thor vouched for his team mates, sure, but Darcy still didn’t know most of them from Adam (the one exception being Clint, but a drinking buddy did not necessarily an ally make). When Thor had called Tony, he’d requested the aid of the Avengers to get to the bottom of who had been responsible for kidnapping Jane and what they were doing torturing people. Steve and Natasha were already on some covert mission and couldn’t be reached, but Clint had been working out of New York for months. He and Tony were on a jet to London within the hour.
The apartment had been cramped the night before.
“So,” Clint drawled, shoving crushed bits of cement out of the way so they could walk around the control room, “How did you guys find out they were doing human experimentation here? Because SHIELD has been going over the wreckage for a full twenty four hours, and we haven’t found any evidence of that yet.”
Darcy heard Jane gulp. Stepping on her foot behind a charred filing cabinet, Darcy stopped Jane from trying to lie. Poker was still her game.
“Considering SHIELD couldn’t get their shit together when rescuing Jane, that doesn’t really surprise me,” Darcy shot back easily, an eyebrow crooked accusingly.
SHIELD had swarmed the warehouse soon after she and Thor had hit it, but they hadn’t talked to the agency directly, not even to Ian who had shown up to check on Jane. Thor was just as wary of SHIELD as Darcy, the weight of their failure too much to dismiss.
Clint huffed a laugh. “You don’t pull your punches, do you?”
“Never saw the point.”
“God, you’re like a smaller, darker Pepper,” Tony chimed in from where he was hunched over a computer that had miraculously survived Thor’s rampage, “If this was ten years ago, I’d have been all over you.”
“If this was ten years ago, I’d have been fifteen, you perv,” Darcy grimaced.
To his credit, so did Tony. “Okay, no, I would not have been all over that. I just meant that though I am currently in a monogamous, committed relationship with the light of my life, if I was single, I’d…” he trailed off.
Darcy came over to stand behind him, peering over his shoulder at the screen. “It’s good that you know when to stop digging yourself further into a hole.”
“Huh?” Tony jerked, startled at her voice right next to his ear, “Oh, I don’t know how to do that, I just found something weird. Actually, I did not find something, and that was weird.”
Darcy wasn’t listening, instead reading the code. She pushed his hands out of the way to back up a few lines. Tony let her, blinking bewilderedly.
“Someone erased all the data remotely,” she concluded.
“You code?” Tony asked.
“I hacked the DMV for Thor once. Also some SHIELD satellites for Jane during the Battle of New York.” It was probably dumb to be bragging to one of the smartest people on the planet, but she didn’t love his tone of suspicion.
“You kind of look like me,” Tony squinted, holding up a thumb to block the top half of her face from his vision, “Similar noses and chins. Please tell me you know who your father is.”
“Dude,” Darcy laughed, “You have no idea.”
“That was not an answer,” Tony muttered worriedly, but she was too busy typing.
“Thor!” she yelled, troubled by what she was discovering. He came at her call, but only frowned at the computer, not knowing what to make of the data. “There’s an active camera feed on here,” she quickly explained, “It isn’t broadcasting now, but that’s because it’s been shut off. The default is to send a video feed… somewhere.”
“I’ll find where,” Tony pushed her out of the way and got to work.
She leaned on Thor. Now that she knew what to search for, she easily found the camera nestled high in the corner of the control room. It was covered in soot, like the rest of the wall, but was intact.
Nudging Thor, she pointed out the camera. “They have video of everything that happened in here,” she said quietly so they wouldn’t be overheard.
“We cannot be sure of that,” Thor wrapped an arm across her back and pulled her close, “It is no use fretting over something that is uncertain. You, Jane, I, and now also my shield brethren will, as you like to say, deal with it.”
Even as she smiled, she couldn’t help a small tremble, couldn’t look away from that innocuous camera. Maybe it was because it was in the corner of her vision, because she wasn’t focusing on it and could see it abstractly, but as she stared at the camera, a strange pattern emerged on the wall next to it, like something was painted underneath the ash.
“Clint,” she moved from Thor’s supportive embrace to stand closer, “Can you still do your circus acrobat shit?”
“Hey,” came Clint’s indignant shout from across the room, “I told you that in confidence! You pinky promised!”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh my Frigga, Jane could care less, and Thor likes all forms of entertainment. And do you really think Tony Stark doesn’t already know about all of that?”
“I definitely know about all of that,” Tony said, never looking up from the computer.
Clint huffed all the way over to her. “Still not cool. But yes, I am as spry as ever.”
“Do you think you could get up there to wipe away the soot? I think there’s something on the wall underneath.”
“Yeah,” he craned his neck, “I think you’re right. Gimme a sex. Sec! A sec!”
Darcy laughed hard at that.
That is until Clint had cleaned enough of the wall to reveal an emblem as familiar and horrifying as the swastika.
“Is that…” Jane began.
“HYDRA,” answered Tony, voice hard.
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The man on the bridge had been… wrong.
The buzz of scientists echoed around him in the vault, but he paid them no mind. They were fixing his arm from where the little spider had thrown her bite.
Little spider? No, she was a woman, but she was…
He shook his head, scaring the man to his left.
But the man on the bridge.
He’d said the letters.
B-U-C-K-Y.
But the man was too big. He needed to be smaller.
That didn’t make sense.
“Mission report.”
He did not move at the command, unseeing.
A blow to his face helped harness his thoughts, to concentrate on his handler. Pain was good for that.
“Mission report,” the handler repeated.
He opened his mouth to answer, but an open file folder on the far desk distracted him. Rather, the picture pinned to the folder distracted him.
It was the girl. The one who had shown him the letters.
B-U-C-K-Y.
Another hard blow to the face.
“I will not ask again, Soldier. Mission report.”
He looked at his handler, wanting to ask about the man on the bridge, but something stopped him, a voice inside whispering ‘Don’t’ .
The girl, with the big blue eyes, the girl that gave him the letters… It was her voice.
He would listen to her. He wouldn’t ask about the man on the bridge, the man that was too big.
“One of the targets was eliminated. The other, the woman, I shot her, but she was protected by an unknown assailant. Strong.”
His handler nodded.
“See? That wasn’t so hard,” his handler straddled a stool in front of him, “Now we don’t even have to take the time for a wipe.”
His handler smiled, but he shuddered. He couldn’t be wiped now.
He couldn’t lose the letters.
B-U-C-K-Y.
Unaware of his panic, his handler kept on.
“You’ve shaped the century. I need you to do it one last time, so HYDRA can give the world the freedom it deserves.”
He nodded.
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“I can’t get a hold of Cap,” Tony sighed from the couch.
Clint threw his phone across the cabin of the plane, landing it perfectly on the pillow next to Tony. “I can’t get Natasha, either.”
“Uh, guys?” Jane was perched in front of the television, CNN on mute. She grabbed the remote to turn on the volume, but the headline was clear.
Captain America Arrested After Firefight on Freeway
“This is bad, right? Like crazy bad?” Darcy asked, frozen next to Jane.
“Nat said Fury was working something big,” Clint answered, “But this is… This is really bad, yeah.”
“Is that not the Lady Natasha, leaning against the car?” Thor chimed in.
“Holy shit,” Clint put his head in his hands.
“I’m finally into SHIELD, so we can get some goddamn answers,” Tony grunted, furiously typing on his tablet.
“There is no way those answers are good, bro,” Darcy mumbled, but Jane jabbed her in the ribs with her bony elbows.
“Fuck,” Tony rubbed a hand over his face, “Yeah, answers are bad. Fury’s dead.”
“What?” Clint monotoned.
“He’s dead. Killed yesterday.”
“Shit.”
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The man, the one from the bridge and the one who was too small, he kept saying the letters.
He wanted to ask the man why, but he was fighting him. He had to fight him.
He had to fight him because…
Another hard blow to the face with that metal shield, the one with the familiar colors. The man was vaulting back up to the walkway, and he should have shot the man, especially as he plugged in a chip to the mainframe of the helicarrier and told someone to fire, but he couldn’t do anything. Wouldn’t do anything else to him.
Why did he know those colors?
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In Pierce’s last moments, he meant to use his final breath for HYDRA.
Instead, a red face hovered over him where he lay bleeding out onto the floor.
“Hello again,” said the devil, words smelling like sulfur, “You’re coming with me.”
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There were flames everywhere, the ship was falling, and he was stuck under a metal beam.
The man was gone, and he couldn’t see those familiar colors, and everything hurt.
Crying was not helping, but the tears burned his eyes anyway.
Then the man was there. For the first time, he was happy that the man was big. If he’d been small, then the man never could have lifted the beam.
He slithered out from under, wiping his eyes clear of the stinging water. The man knelt next to him, but was leaning back, away from him.
“You know me,” said the man, tensing up and resting his weight on his haunches like he was preparing to take a hit.
He was tired of hitting.
“No,” he said, “You’re too big. You’re supposed to be smaller.”
The man sobbed a laugh at that.
“You said that before,” the man cried, “God, Bucky…”
“Those letters… B-U-C-K-Y. I know them. She gave them to me. What… What are they?”
“They’re your name, Buck,” the man leaned forward, ignoring the chaos around them.
“My name,” he… Bucky sighed, “My name.”
There was a soft touch on his arm, the flesh one. The man was leaning across a cracked window, colorful shield laying uselessly next to him.
“Who is she, Buck? Who gave you your name?”
Bucky was going to answer, wanted to trust the man, but the crack in the window splintered at that moment, sending the man careening through and slamming his head on a steel beam. He watched the man’s eyes flutter shut as he fell through the air to the water below.
“Steve!” Bucky yelled and jumped after him.
The man’s name was Steve.
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It was total pandemonium after they landed, what with a chunk of DC destroyed by helicarrier debris and the total implosion of one of the world’s premier intelligence agencies. The political scientist in Darcy was drawn to the story in the wreckage, but the larger part of her, the survivor in her, did not want to be anywhere near it.
“Finally got a hold of Nat,” Clint said as they exited the airport, “Cap’s in the hospital. Said we’d meet her there.”
“I’ll call a car,” Tony stepped away, pulling out his cell phone.
“Jane and I’ll go get set up at a hotel,” Darcy offered to Thor, “You can go check on your friend.”
“Unless you want us to go with you?” Jane asked, but Darcy was secretly relieved when he turned them down. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t go and support Thor if he needed it, but she and Jane weren’t a part of this world, the world of shady agents and fucking HYDRA.
It was better that they weren’t involved directly.
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None of the scientists were the same size as him. It was a problem because he needed civilian clothes, and though there was now an abundance of clothing available to him, what with the bodies strewn about the vault, none of them would fit. He’d come back for answers, but they’d wanted him to go back: back into the chair, back into the tube, back into the shell of the Asset that had no name.
He was tired of hitting, but he was more tired of not having his name.
Bucky hadn’t killed any of them. He hadn’t needed to go that far, but they wouldn’t be getting up. Not for a long time.
A tremor of uncertainty ran up his back, but he beat it back. He had saved Steve, but he couldn’t stay with Steve. Not yet.
All he had was his name, and he needed more than that.
The file on the desk caught his attention once again, the one with her picture pinned to the inside. Picking it up, he fingered the crisp lettering at the bottom of the photograph.
Darcy Lewis.
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“This is way too much,” Jane whined for the umpteenth time the next day.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Darcy held up a dress to the light. “We literally hopped on Tony Stark’s jet straight from that creepy HYDRA base. We have no toiletries, no clothes, not even our phone chargers. You may be totally okay with wearing the clothes you slept in the night before, but some of us have higher standards.”
Jane straightened from where she had been slouched and pouting in one the overstuffed chairs in the boutique’s dressing room. “Okay, that was borderline bitchy. Are you okay?”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Darcy put the dress down and sighed, “I’m just on edge.”
“About not having clothes?”
“No, Janey,” she had to laugh at her friend’s obtuseness, “Although, we did score some excellent threads at the last store. Can you really not think of anything that we should be worried about?”
Jane’s brow furrowed as she contemplated, and Darcy went to sit next to her.
“HYDRA, boss lady. I’m freaking out about HYDRA.”
“Oh,” she pulled Darcy further into the plush chair, squeezing them both onto the loveseat, “Darce, it’ll be fine. The Avengers are on it.”
“They have a video of me doing my wacky party trick. That is a huge cause for concern.”
“We don’t know for sure that they have that, and Captain America just dealt them a pretty huge blow. They probably have more to worry about than one girl, you know, like not getting pulverized by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”
“I guess,” Darcy conceded, plucking at pulls in Jane’s sweater.
“You’re besties with the God of Thunder, and you’re pretty bad-ass in your own right. What’s the worst that could happen?”
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Later that night, when Darcy found herself alone in an alley facing the same goddamn cyborg assassin for the third fucking time, she cursed Jane for jinxing her.
“You gave me my name,” he said, holding her tight against a wall, “You’re going to help me get more.”