De-Aged
They had contingencies for every possible situation - most of them had never actually been used. And while the most important ones were bird- and bat-themed, there were only so many bird- and bat-themed things that they could use as code. So the rest of them were strange combinations of numbers and words - that way there were less chances of them being randomly used. But using those codes depended on them being able to remember them.
And right now, Darcy was in no condition to remember anything past the age of seven.
8888
Tony, Bruce, and Jane looked in horror at Darcy. Normally she was the most calm out of the four of them, but not anymore. The scientists had only gotten one look at her before she started climbing, jumping, and flipping off of things. It was still enough to catch some key details, though. Like the red, green, and gold of her leotard, the slightly grown out pixie cut that she kept her hair in, and the frankly ridiculous amount of energy that she possessed.
“This is all your fault, Tony.” Jane hissed as the three scientists watched Darcy literally bounce around the room. She was trying to figure out who she could contact - she didn’t have Bruce’s number, and Babs was out of touch for a while, - Darcy had mentioned something the night before about how her girlfriend was in the middle of a system update and completely out of reach for at least a week. And none of the rest of the Wayne kids were old enough to do something about their current situation except one.
“What?” Tony asked, wincing as he watched the seven-year-old Darcy scale the walls. “What did I do?”
Bruce sighed, pulling off his glasses to clean them. It was always easier to deal with a catastrophe when he couldn’t see it, he had quickly learned. “We were explicitly told not to mess with the weapon that Fury brought in.”
“What do we do?”
“I… have no idea.” Tony said softly. “that’s a first, actually.”
Jane rolled her eyes, although she couldn’t help the small smile on her face as she kept an eye on her pint-sized intern. “Now isn’t the time to be stroking your ego, Tony. We have to figure this out before she hurts herself.”
“Any suggestions?”
Jane tried something - it was something that she had heard both Barbara and Alfred tell her friend on multiple occasions, and it always worked coming from them. “Darcy, I need you to calm down.”
Darcy stopped after her latest in a long row of handsprings, turning to face them all with a perfect landing and a bow, her short hair fluttering around her chin as she moved. A long string of words came out of her mouth - ones that only Jane recognized as Romani. But while she recognized them, she still didn’t know what to say. And Darcy realized it, too - after a few seconds of staring at them, waiting for an answer, her face started to crumble. “Dat!” she cried, turning in every direction as she tried to figure out where someone she knew was. When she didn’t see anyone - no mom, no dad, no brother, not even anyone from the circus - that was when the tears started.
“Great suggestion, Jane.” Bruce said dryly. “That worked really well.”
“I totally forgot…” she muttered under her breath. She had known that Darcy hadn’t spoken much English before Bruce Wayne had adopted her… and she had heard stories from the twins themselves of how the circus had worked, and they hadn’t trusted anyone. Which meant there was really only one person who could help them. “I'm calling for help.”
Bruce and Tony just looked at her in confusion. “Who are you going to call?”
“Her family.”
8888
Dick Grayson and Wally West both had a day off for once - and they were planning on using it properly. Between their day and night jobs, neither one of them ever really had time off. Which meant on the rare occasion they had it, it needed to be used properly.
Wally had cleaned the apartment while his husband had ordered groceries - neither of them were willing to leave the apartment after the last tabloid article had been written about a bruise on ‘Richie’ Grayson’s face. A statement had quickly been put out that the mark was from a drug bust that Officer Grayon-West had made in his job as a police officer, but the couple had still decided to lay low until everything had blown over. Dick was in the middle of cooking dinner for he and Wally’s date night - he had three pans of lasagna cooking, and was wondering if he should have made four - when his phone went off.
His good mood soured when he saw the contact information - Jane never called him unless something bad was going on. “What’s going on?” he asked as soon as he picked up the phone, knowing that the woman on the other end wouldn’t mind his lack of pleasantries.
The woman on the other end of the phone didn’t hesitate - and she certainly didn’t bother with any pleasantries of her own. “Dick, we need you to come to the Tower.” she said shortly. “Now.”
“Jane?” Dick asked, putting down what he was working on. “What’s going on?”
“Something’s happened to Darcy.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Dick spoke. “I’m on my way.” he replied, a hard edge to his voice that almost made Jane want to hide. She had seen what it was like when the older Grayson was mad - and while it was rare, it was still terrifying all the same.
“Wally!” he called out, jumping neatly over the kitchen counter and grabbing his coat. “We’re going to New York.”
The speedster appeared in the kitchen, shoes already on his feet and a worried look on his face. “Is Darcy alright?” he asked, studying his husband. While he had never been as close to the other Grayson twin, the pair were still fairly close, and he didn’t want anything to happen to her.
But his husband looked at him with grim determination. “She will be.”
Wally just took his words at face value, picking his husband up in a bridal carry and smiling as he did. “Let’s go visit the in-laws then.” he quipped, and they were gone.
8888
Jane had made her phone call only a few minutes ago, but already, JARVIS was announcing that someone had arrived. That in itself would have been surprising to the other scientists in the room if they weren’t too busy watching Darcy in horrified fascination.
“Where is she?” a black and blue blur asked as it crossed the room.
“Dat!” Darcy yelled, jumping up from where she sat and running towards the man who had just come out of the elevator. And while Bruce and Tony were slightly confused since the man didn’t look any older than grown-up-Darcy, Jane gasped slightly while the man froze in shock.
He was a few inches under six feet, with dark hair and bright blue eyes that were only made more obvious by the blue of his t-shirt. He just stared at the seven-year-old version of his sister in awe. He remembered her like this - this was a time before the rest of their family had died, and Bruce had taken them in. But despite how cute she was, he kind of wished that Jane had warned him about what he was walking into. Because while the tiny dark-haired spitfire clinging to his legs was adorable, she currently seemed to be under the impression that he was their father.
And oh, didn't that hurt. They didn't talk about their parents that much, really. But they had pictures of their parents, and Bruce had commented many times in the past about how much the twins looked like their parents.
He had just never expected his twin sister - in the body of her seven-year-old self - to be running at him, thinking that he was their father.
“Dat! Ich habe dich vermisst, Dat!” German. That lined up - one of their last stops on the European leg of the Haley’s tour was Germany, and to blend in easier they had only spoken in German for several months. “Wo bist du gewesen?”
Both of the Grayson twins were polyglots - something that wasn’t hard when one had grown up speaking as many languages as they had. But it was obvious that neither one of them had expected their supervisor to speak the language. “Was that German?” Bruce asked, looking back and forth at all of them. “Since when can Darcy speak German?”
Dick ignored all of the adults in the room, his attention focused on the little girl in the room. There was a part of him who wanted to coo over her, but he knew that there were more important things to take care of. Still, he managed to snap a quick picture of her before anything else, mentally checking Bruce and Alfred’s Hanukkah presents off of his list. “Hallo kleine schwester.” he said softly, lifting her up and settling her on his hip. “I see you’ve made some new friends.”
“Dick?” Darcy asked, blue eyes wide as she looked at her twin, who was somehow a lot older than she remembered him being. “You - speak English, da?” the words came out thickly, and it felt like a wave of nostalgia was washing over the man. It had been a long time since either of them had accents that thick, but it reminded him of brightly lit tents and the smell of pod peko cooking.
“Da, Darcy.” he said softly, before switching back to German. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, just confused.” she replied, the German words flowing much easier than their English counterparts. Their parents had just started to teach them English for when the circus went to America, but it was a tricky language. “Where am I? Where are Dat and Daj?”
Dick froze, not knowing what to say. “They’re…”
For the first time in his life, Dick thanked everything that he knew for Tony Stark. “Mind translating, J?” the engineer asked. “That way we can all try and figure out what’s going on.”
"That won’t be necessary, Mr. Stark. I had a feeling that this would happen - so I brought a few things by to help out.” Dick said, skillfully shifting his hold on Darcy so that he could pull something out of his pocket. Holding out his hand, he showed off a slim black box with a red ‘X’ on it. Bruce took it out of his hand, opening it up to reveal five earpieces nestled into black foam.
“What is that?”
“Universal translators.” Dick said, placing one in Darcy’s ear before doing his own. “That way we can all understand each other, and I don’t have to translate all the time.”
“Where’s a cop get something this nice?”
Jane nearly facepalmed - it was obvious that Dick hadn’t planned on anyone noticing that part of things. Luckily, he had a fairly good recovery. “I work with Bludhaven PD.” he shrugged. “There’s a lot of crazies out there, so we try to keep stocked on anything that might possibly come in handy.”
“Must be nice.”
“Darcy." Dick said slowly, bending down so that he was on his sister's level. “What happened?”
But Darcy just shrugged, giving her twin the most innocent expression that she could manage. And for the first time in their lives, he actually believed it.
“Right.” Dick decided, picking Darcy up and settling her on his hip. Somehow, that move made her look even smaller than she had before. “Well, I’m taking her back home with me for now. Obviously, you can’t be trusted with a seven-year-old.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
"You let her do an entire floor routine in the middle of the lab." He pointed out, his irritation written plainly on his face. "Holy safety hazards, guys."
With that said he turned on his heels, already heading back to the elevator as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Heyyyy, B.” he said after a moment. “What do you mean, what did I do this time? Why is it always me, maybe Darce did something. Oh no no no no no, don’t panic! Darcy is fine, she’s just…” the conversation was cut off as the elevator doors closed, and all three scientists were left wondering what had happened.