making friends is easy
Bucky is minding his own business, trying to unclutter all the cluttered memories his brain has managed to dig up, when the vents open up again.
He freezes in place for a nanosecond, glancing around his surroundings for a weapon and an escape route - even though he knows there’s no way out - before turning back to try and gauge the threat.
The thought that Hydra has found him again makes his blood run cold for a moment before an eco bag is thrown haphazardly into the room followed by a pair of short, definitely not Hydra-like legs.
And then Darcy Lewis is standing in front of him again.
It had been a few days since her last visit and he hadn’t thought he’d see her again, even as she’d babbled about being back.
“Hey, dude,” she waves at him happily, completely ignoring the glare he was sending her way. He couldn’t believe her lack of instinct for self-preservation.
There’s a brief flash of a memory where he’s yelling at someone to “aw, quit gettin’ into fights, Stevie. I’m not gunna be around to save your ass every time.”
But then he blinks it away, storing it to analyse once he was alone again. Darcy may not be a physical threat, but Bucky’s not stupid. There are other ways to be dangerous; especially when you look like that.
The first day he’d met her and shoved her against the wall, the first thing he’d noticed was that she was gorgeous. She’d shaken loose a memory of dancing and girls with red lips and victory rolls as he’d held his arm against her throat, hard enough to hold her in place but not enough to hurt. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t hurt her.
Even Sam and Steve had been a little shocked as they’d moved down the hall and away from the pretty dame who, while unarmed and clearly untrained, was dangerous all the same.
And here she was again. Standing in front of him shaking a bag of what, Bucky didn’t know.
He narrows his eyes at her, watching the bag swing back and forth and trying to burn through it. Her lips are moving but all Bucky cares about is what’s in the bag and whether it’s a threat.
“I tried to hack my way into the server,” she was saying once he manages to pay attention to her words. “But Tony’s good,” she admits grudgingly, “so it’s taking me a little longer to give myself clearance. And then Tony went on a mini science bender - between you and I, he’s building you an arm - so I had to literally cut power to his lab to make him leave it. Pepper said I could so no matter how mad Tony was, he couldn’t get me into trouble.”
Bucky was finding it difficult to figure out her angle.
“If he’d let me help with some of the mechanics, maybe I would’ve let him keep playing but he was being selfish. He’s been pouty ever since you got here, and then I find out that he’s building you an arm and won’t even let me help?” She continues to rant, kneeling down and pulling things out of the bag in quick succession. “You know he made me promise not to tell Steve about it? As if he didn’t run to tell him himself as soon as he left the lab.”
Bucky blinks back at her. He really doesn’t know how to respond to that; he doesn’t even know if he’s supposed to respond.
“So, I wasn’t sure what you like,” she continues, completely unphased at his lack of responses. “And I ended up just bringing a bunch of my favourites. I gotta tell you, Buckster, I’m not sure I can forgive you if you don’t at least like some of these. The 21st Century may be a crapshot in some ways, but the food is definitely not one of them.”
She holds up a bag of candy similar to what she had been munching on a couple of days ago. He feels his stomach gurgle a little as curiosity folds over him. It had been a while since he’s actually wanted to try something.
Food had always been what the handlers had given him. And even then it had always been just enough to keep him sustained but not enough for him to enjoy. And definitely never anything that tasted or smelt very nice.
She rips the package open and pulls out a fluffy white, cloud like candy that she shoves in her mouth and them promptly moans around. Bucky tries to ignore the sounds she’s making and instead tilts his head to try and peer into the bag.
“Want some?” she walks closer until she’s standing directly in front of him, separated only by the thick, reinforced, Stark Industries Special plane of glass.
Bucky feels the edges of his lips twitch as she stares down at her while she continues to shovel small clouds of candy into her mouth.
“You sure those’re for me?” he quirks a brow as she shrugs and continues to chew.
“Thought we could share,” she responds, shooting him a wide smile.
“And how are we s’posed to do that?” he taps the glass between them, making sure to use his flesh arm and not the metal one. Just because he didn’t know what she was here, didn’t mean he wanted to scare her away.
“Just cos I couldn’t hack my way through - yet,” she added, “doesn’t mean I don’t have other tricks up my sleeve. JARVIS?” she looks up at the ceiling. “Think you could do me a teeny tiny favour?”
“Depends on the favour, Miss Lewis,” the AI droned. Bucky thinks he sounds a little dubious, but maybe that was just him projecting how he felt about this whole thing.
“Think you could let me in?” she asks sweetly, a saccharine smile splitting red lips that were now dusted white from the candy she was still eating.
“Don’t think that is a good idea, Miss,” JARVIS replies. Her lips turn down in a pout as she begins to frown. But before she has a chance to argue, there’s a slight hissing sound and the solid plane of glass in front of him starts to split. “But perhaps this will be of assistance?”
Darcy continues to frown a little while longer before she shrugs and her smile is back again. “It’ll do for now,” she concedes, placing the bag of candy on the slab of glass that was now acting as a mini table between them. “But don’t think I won’t keep trying.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS quips back, sounding far too human than a machine has any right to.
She leaves the bag of candy and turns back to the eco bag she’s dropped beside her and picks it back up. “No offense, dude,” she tells him as she pulls out a fluffy purple cushion. Bucky couldn’t hide his surprise no matter how hard he tried. “But this place looks suuuuper depressing. And, I mean, I get it. Hydra Spysassins don’t have time for comfort blah blah blah, but this is Stark Tower and the 21st century. Comfort is a human right, dammit.”
She thrusts the cushion through the small window and Bucky just has enough time to move the bag of candy away so it’s doesn’t spill all over his feet.
“It’s super comfortable,” she tells him. “One of my favourites so you better look after it. Once you’re out of this…” she pauses for a second and for the first time since he’d first seen her, Bucky notices the flicker of doubt that crosses her face before it’s gone just as quickly. “I’ll be real with you, Sarge, this place is like a cage,” she shrugs apologetically. “Anyway,” she grins again. “Once you’re out, I’m gonna want it back so keep it safe.”
He’s not quite sure what to say to that so he keeps quiet while she continues to pull things out of the bag.
“You don’t say much do ya?” she asks, straightening back up and facing him, holding a neatly folded cotton shirt.
“Don’t got much to say, these days,” he responds automatically, a little bit of his old Brooklyn drawl slipping through.
Darcy’s eyes light up at the words. “Everyone’s got something to say,” she states. “Just gotta figure out what it is.”
He goes back to responding with shrugs and grunts and she deflates a little before shaking it off. “So, I noticed you didn’t have anything to change into when I was here last and really, I’m going to have to have a chat with Cap because he really should know better. I stole some of his clothes as revenge. You guys look like you’re the same size. But I gotta warn you, someone introduced him to muscle tees and good old Steven can never, for the life of him, find the right size.”
Bucky snorts again. “Sounds like Stevie.”
Darcy’s eyes light up again at his answer. “Try this on,” she thrusts the shirt at him, and he grabs at it automatically, the fingers on his metal arm sliding against hers for a moment before he rips himself away from her. She doesn’t seem to notice, smiling up at him as she rocks back and forth on her feet.
He waits for her to turn away, or shut her eyes, give him some semblance of privacy but when she doesn’t he feels a wave of approval run through him. Good, he thinks, never turn your back on the enemy.
He doesn’t feel comfortable turning his own back to her yet either, so he slips his current shirt over his head, leaving his chest bare for a few seconds before pulling the shirt she handed him on over his head.
When he looks back at her he catches the way her eyes are fixed on his metal arm. He clenches his fist in response, the metal plates shifting in place and snapping her out of the trance.
“Sorry,” she apologises, her cheeks colouring a delicate pink.
“‘S ok,” he shrugs, his face clouding over a little. “‘M sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”
She frowns at that. “It doesn’t. I think it’s cool,” she admits. “Can you imagine the people we can help if we use the mechanics to develop prosthetics?” she lights up. “At least some good might come out of Hydra.”
Again, Bucky’s not sure what to say to that, so he stays quiet.
“Here.” This time she hands him the eco bag itself. “There’s more stuff in there. I brought the whole Harry Potter series for you as an introduction to pop culture. Read them, learn them, love them. They’re my favourite books.”
He watches her look back at him expectantly before he reaches in and pulls out a book, quirking a brow at her in question.
“Not that one,” she scolds. “I’ve labeled them for you from books one through seven.”
He looks down then, noticing the bookmark with the number ‘3’ written on it and places the book back into the bag, rummaging around until he finds the one with the number ‘1’. He holds it out to her.
Darcy nods at him happily.
-
She doesn’t know how it happened, but within a few weeks she finds herself happily sitting around with Bucky chattering away about the day’s events and teaching him about pop culture.
Well, ok, that’s a lie. She knows how it happened. It happened the same way a lot of her friendships seemed to form these days - with her lack of filter and dubious definition of personal space.
Still, she hadn’t expected him to give in to her so easily. Even Steve had been harder to crack. But she wasn’t complaining.
She’d even managed to hack Tony’s systems and now had free reign of the Hulk Space. But JARVIS was still preventing her from getting inside the actual cage.
(She has a feeling that was more Bucky than anything though - she’d heard Steve talking about how he wouldn’t let anyone inside yet. And as dubious as Darcy’s definition of personal space was, some things she knew not to push.)
Sometimes, when she came to see him, she still crawled through the vents, partly because usually there were guards outside the door and partly because she’d kinda grown fond of the sneaking around.
Mostly though, she kinda did it for the small smile she’d see on Bucky’s face when she jumps down and he realises it’s her.
She has a feeling Nat knows what she’s been up to, and by extension, Clint probably does too. They’ve both been bullying her into taking up more training with them in the gym and when she’d declined, they’d started staging surprise attacks on her while she was at work or in her apartment.
She still remembers the thunderous look on Bucky’s face the day she walked through the door with a bruise covering half her face and her wrist firmly wrapped in a splint.
(It probably shouldn’t have stirred the emotions it did inside her, but sue her, she’s a warm blooded human and he looked hot.)
He’d looked ready to break out of the cage and go on a murder spree until she calmed him down and told him what had happened. She hadn’t heard him laugh like that before and it more than made up for the throbbing pain in her cheeks as her own face split into a smile.
Too tired to crawl through the vents, she used the door today, ignoring the way the guards had looked at her suspiciously as she swiped her card. It had opened up for her with a quiet buzz and Darcy had marched her way over to stand in front of Bucky.
“Hiya, Doll,” he drawls as she approaches. His Brooklyn accent has been coming out more and more recently, not that Darcy was complaining. She loved it. “You’re lookin’ like you’ve seen better days,” he spoke, the last few letters of the word better blending together and ringing through the room as ‘betta’. She wonders if maybe he does it on purpose sometimes, as though it helps remind him of who he can be and not what they made him into.
“That’s because I have, Sarge,” she glares, Bucky’s lips twist in amusement. He’s told her before, when he was having one of his better days, that he thinks she looks like an angry kitten when she’s mad.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” He asks her fondly, and Darcy feels a little bit of the resentment she’d marched in with melt away. He only calls her that when he’s having a particularly good day and no matter what her mood may have been like before, the lightness she could see around his eyes always made her feel a little better.
But today, even that wasn’t enough to help her calm down completely.
“Tony locked me out of the labs so it was just him and Janie inside and they were being childish and doing all the things I never let them do. And for good reason!” She rants. “They set off a stupid fucking explosion in my half of the fucking lab and my laptop was the victim! I lost all my mother fucking data from the last month!” She curses repeatedly, Bucky’s eyes darkening the more she swore. Good, she thinks. Those two assholes deserve the Murder Glare. She’ll take a picture of him and attach it to every email and text she ever sends them until they’re begging for her forgiveness.
“Can Stark do somethin’ ‘bout the data you lost?” He tries to come up with a solution. “Your computer is StarkTech, isn’t it?”
“It’s also now just a pile of broken pieces of plastic,” she grumbles, the fight suddenly leaving her. “I told them both any work that was lost is theirs to find again. I’m not doing any of that shit again, dude. See these fingers?” she wriggles them in a wave. “They were sore and wonky for weeks after I compiled all those reports. Bruce said I was on my way to early arthritis when he finally convinced me to let him take a look.”
He’d tricked her, actually, by asking her to be his guinea pig for a new ultrasound/x-ray Stark Industries had designed. But that was neither here nor there.
“Can’t be havin’ that, can we?” The corners of his lips twitch upwards and Darcy narrows her eyes.
“You think it’s funny,” she accuses him.
“I’ve been used as a weapon of war for seventy odd years. I get my laughs where I can,” he bats his eyes at her innocently, and honestly, Darcy had thought Steve was a little shit but Bucky Barnes was giving him a run for his money.
She finally sees why they were best friends and wonders briefly who was the worse influence. The answer comes to her almost as quickly as the question did: Steve.
He’d taken to the 21st century like a mosquito to blood. And that’s the metaphor she’ll use until they're digging her grave. Steve was a parasite when he wanted to be, especially when he was put into a room with Tony and there wasn’t any recent alien invasions to put out.
Turns out superheroes turn into children when they’re bored. Especially superheroes the rest of the world thinks are Mature Mark’s.
If it wasn’t for all the NDA’s Darcy had been forced to sign after being handed her contract, she’d have exposed them all by now. But she’d have to settle for in-house bullying only. Which is a shame. She thinks twitter would absolutely love seeing Captain America wearing Iron Man underwear.
(Thank you, JARVIS).
“You’re gonna use that line as long as you can, huh?” She crosses her arms, feeling strangely satisfied when his eyes flickered to her chest momentarily. Fuck yeah, not even the former Winter Soldier could resist. She smirks at him knowing he knows he’s been caught.
He stares right back at her, not a single bit of embarrassment or remorse on his face as his lips split into a smirk to mirror hers. “You betcha.”
Darcy rolls her eyes.
“Miss Lewis,” JARVIS interrupts, his voice sounding throughout the room. Both Darcy and Bucky glance up at the ceiling as he speaks. “Sir is on his way down here with Captain Rogers.”
“Aw, c’mon!” She grumbles. “He refuses to leave the lab when I literally beg him to, but when he’s more than willing to ruin all my plans for the day!”
“Plans?” Bucky quirks a brow at her curiously.
“I had Big Things for us to do today, Bucky,” she tells him ominously before reaching into the bag that was hanging off her shoulder and pulling out a StarkPad. “It’s the latest model,” she tells him. “It does this really neat thing where it splits and becomes a bigger screen and I finally finagled my way into Tony’s Netflix account. His password was totally Captain America Sucks, with an ‘x’, bee-tee-dubs. I was gonna set you up with an introduction to modern cinema. Superheroes have The Worst timing.”
She walks over to Bucky and hands him the StarkPad through the little window JARVIS always opened up for her when she came in. Bucky had reprimanded her for it a number of times because it wasn’t safe for him to have even the slightest chance of escaping if the soldier came for a visit, but eventually he’d given up.
As usual her hand brushes against his fingers as she hands him today’s gift.
“Same story as always, JARVIS?” she quizzes him just to make sure.
“Yes, Miss Lewis. WHen Sir asks I will tell him you sent it down with Dum-E and U,” he recites back to her dutifully.
“Thanks, J,” she grins up at the ceiling. “Tony’s gonna be so pissed when he finds out you like me more than him.”
JARVIS doesn’t reply as he slides open a vent above her head.
-
“No! Not without you!” he yells as he grasps onto the railing in front of him.
There’s a man on the other side with a shield telling him to run. But he can’t - he won’t - leave him behind.
Not again.
He watches the man glance around, slide his shield onto his back, and take a few steps away from the railing. Bucky’s eyes widen in surprise, then dread. He knows what the man’s about to do and he doesn’t think he’s gonna make it.
‘Steve, no!’ the words get caught in his throat as he watches his friend - he was his friend - take a running start a leap across the void, his hand reaching out for Bucky to grab and Bucky reaching back.
And then he was falling, like Bucky had known he would. Except… Steve wasn’t falling, he was.
It was cold.
He was surrounded by snow, he realised.
There had been a train - where was the train? - and a rail that couldn’t hold his weight.
And Steve.
Steve who’d been trying to grab him before he fell. Because he had. He’d fallen. And fallen and fallen.
And then there had been pain.
He’d screamed. He remembers screaming. For Steve. For help. For someone.
And then: Soldat.
Bucky woke with a start, his hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat and there was someone in the room with him, shushing him and trying to call out his name.
He grabs hold of whoever it is that has almost wrapped themselves around him and throws them to the floor with as much of his strength as he can gather. And then he’s standing poised to attack, a Winter Soldier snarl curling his lips as he looks around for a weapon. He finds nothing. So he quickly turns to catalogue the threat, analyse the enemy and find their weakness.
“Ugh, dude, you’re strong.”
It’s Darcy.
Darcy is standing in front of him, arms loose and guard completely down.
Darcy was the one who’d wrapped herself around him.
Darcy was the one he’d thrown bodily across the room. He feels his lungs collapse at how close he’d come to really hurting her. Even though she stood in front of him unharmed, looking a little annoyed.
“Nat will have an absolute fit if she ever sees this,” she muses, completely unaware of the turmoil rippling through Bucky. “I’ve been ditching lessons and she’s gonna totally use this as collateral if she ever sees it. JARVIS please delete the footage,” she practically begs the computer before following it up with a rushed: “wait, no, don’t delete it yet. Send it to me first. I totallynailed that tuck and roll. I bet I look awesome.”
Bucky continues to stare at her, shock colouring his expression as it finally snaps into place that Darcy was here.
Inside.
“You’re looking a little green there, dude,” she tells him warily. “I know this is the Hulk Cage and all but, you doing ok? You’re not gonna hurl on me or anything are you? Cos I gotta warn you, I’ll hurl right back. I’m not ashamed to admit that.”
“How did you get in?” He grits out, clenching and unclenching his fists to try and release some of the tension rolling through his body.
“Uh, I asked JARVIS?” She poses it as a question.
“Actually, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS interrupts, making them both jump. Well, Darcy jumped, Bucky merely stiffened in place. “Miss Lewis hacked my system and let herself in.”
“Ok! In my defence, you were both being silly!” She crosses her arms across her chest. Bucky wills his eyes to stay on her face. “And you’re lucky I was here,” she glares at him, a sudden fire burning in her eyes. “JARVIS was this close,” she holds her fingers the tiniest bit apart from each other, “to calling Steve for you. Did you want him to Mother Hen you for the next two weeks because you had a nightmare? He’d never leave your side. And I have plans, dammit! We haven’t even watched any of the Harry Potter films yet!”
Bucky can’t help it. He cracks a little smile at that. “Darcy, you could’ve been hurt,” he says, more seriously. I could have hurt you, he means.
Darcy rolls her eyes and skips towards him. “I would’ve tased you,” she pulls the weapon out from under her shirt and shoes it to him. He hadn’t even realised she was carrying it. “I’m not an idiot, I know you can totally snap me in two if you wanted to. But dude, I tased Thor because he looked big and dangerous, I’ll do it to you too. I’ve tased Clint for less. I’ll probably even enjoy it,” she admits.
“You can’t be in here,” he tries to tell her again.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not safe, The Soldier can come out at any point, blah blah blah,” she waved him off, moving to jump onto his bed and patting the mattress beside her. “I told you, I’ll tase you. Also, JARVIS will definitely sic Tony’s toys on you to protect me. They’re standing on standby.” She waves around the room, gesturing at the wall of red and gold that JARVIS had stationed where Darcy normally stood when she came to see Bucky.
“Darce,” he sighs, still trying to come to terms with what had happened and the memories that had been knocked loose while he slept.
“Bucky,” she calls to him softly. “Come sit.”
And he does as she asks, stiffly making his way over towards his bed. He’s still trying to adjust to how soft it is, and how every time he goes to sleep now he doesn’t have to worry about being cold. He makes sure to leave enough space between them that so she’ll have time to draw her taser if she needs to before he can try and hurt her again. He’d much prefer she keeps it aimed at him, but if he can’t make her leave his cell he doubts he’ll be able to talk her into anything.
He tries anyway. “You shouldn’t be in here, doll,” he tells her.
“I’m not leaving now that I’ve finally broken in. That’s like asking a criminal not to commit the one crime they’ve been working towards their whole life.” When he looks at her strangely she continues. “I’m adding the Ocean's Trilogy to our Must Watch List. Oh, maybe we can invite Steve. But only if he behaves.”
“At least keep your taser out,” he urges her, ignoring her little tangent.
“No.”
“Darcy,” he warns her.
“'Darcy',” she mocks him.
“No offense, Bucky-”
“Sounds like I’m ‘bout to be offended,” he cuts her off, feeling himself loosen a little at her glare.
“No offense, Bucky, but you’re not as scary as you think you are. Especially not since you got rid of the beard and got a trim,” she waves at his face. “You’re actually kinda pretty.”
“Only kinda?” he teases, eventually giving up. “Stevie’s mum used to joke that she’d never needed to have a daughter. I used to go over there often enough, and she always told me I was pretty enough to give a run for any of the dames that came knocking.”
Darcy snorts. “If only she could see her son now. He’s the real pretty boy,” she fans at her face dramatically. “I walked in on him when he was changing once and wow would I salute to that.”
“I don’t got anything to say to that, doll,” he admits. Bucky isn’t one to be easily surprised these days, but Darcy somehow still manages to shock him at times.
“No one ever does,” she says mildly as she reaches over and pats him on the thigh before moving away once more, careful to keep the distance between them the same. He wonders if she’s doing it on purpose and immediately decides that she is. Darcy is a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them.
He feels another little knot inside him unravel at how she manages to both treat him like a normal person and still respect the boundaries he’s placed between them - some of them anyway, he thinks wryly.
“So, wanna watch a movie?” She holds up the StarkPad she’d smuggled in for him with a giant smile on her face and Bucky doesn’t have the heart to say anything but yes.
-
The day Steve and Tony find out she’s been creeping in to see Bucky, was decidedly not a good one.
Darcy had snuck down to see Bucky after Jane had declared the labs closed for the next few days while Thor was in town, and Darcy hadn’t argued with her. Tony and Bruce were still puttering away in their own labs but she’d decided that they could fend for themselves for a day, especially since she and Bucky were finally about to watch The Empire Strikes Back. She was buzzing with excitement to see his reaction at the big Vader reveal.
When she’d made Steve watch the films with her, he’d looked personally betrayed at the revelation and everyone had been forced to listen to him rant about it for days afterwards.
It was almost like watching the films all over again.
“Alright, Bucky,” she rubs her hands together, the StarkPad set between their respective beanbags. Over time she’d started sneaking more and more of her favourite things into Bucky’s space, turning it more into a room than a prison cell. She was surprised no one had questioned anything yet. “Are you ready to watch this masterpiece?”
“I gotta say, I feel like you’re setting me up here, Doll,” Bucky tells her with a suspicious frown on his face.
“Have I let you down yet?” Darcy demands from him, handing him a bag of caramel popcorn she’d stolen from Tony’s lab.
“You made me sit through four movies about vampires that sparkle in sunlight,” he points out accusingly.
“Don’t talk shit about Twilight if you know what’s good for you,” she narrows her eyes at him threateningly. “Those movies should’ve won Academy Awards.”
Bucky holds his hands up in surrender, a small smile on his lips.
He doesn’t get much of a chance to respond though as the panic alarms started ringing around the room.
She stands up quickly, Bucky already on his feet watching the door with an anxious frown on his face.
“JARVIS?” Darcy asks the ceiling carefully. No response comes and Bucky glances back at her with wide, worried eyes. He’s been relaxing more and more around her, his face becoming easier to read.
“Stay behind me. And keep your taser ready,” he warns her, donning a protective stance in front of her and hiding her from the line of sight of whoever walks through the doors next.
“It’s probably just Tony blowing something up,” she tries to reassure him, though she doesn’t sound like she’s very sure about that. “Maybe I should go and check on him.”
She tries to take a few steps around Bucky to make her way out of the room, but he blocks all her attempts. “Stay behind me,” he tells her again, shooting one last warning glance at her just before the doors start to open.
“Soldat,” came a silky, accented voice, making Bucky freeze up in front of her. “It took me a while to find you. But I have learnt to be a patient man.”
“Who are you?” Bucky demands, voice cold. “We’ve never met.”
Darcy feels a chill run down her spine at his tone. There was no feeling in it at all and she’d never heard him sound like that before, not even the first couple of times she’d met him, when he’d looked more like the Winter Soldier than his current self.
“My name is Helmut Zemo,” the man says. Darcy still hasn’t managed to get a look at him, staying firmly hidden behind Bucky like he’d asked her to. “You are right, we have not met before,” he confirms when Bucky remains silently frozen between them. “And we may never have, had it not been for your friends.”
“Hydra? We aren’t friends,” Bucky says sharply, metal arm flexing beside him.
“No,” Zemo agrees, and Darcy imagines him nodding his head. “But they are not the friends I am referring to,” he continues. “It is a shame we find ourselves in this place,” he says calmly. “But it must be done.” Darcy thinks he sounds falsely regretful. “Your friends took everything from me, and now you will take whatever you can from them, for me.”
“Yeah?” Bucky drones back at him, and if she listens carefully Darcy can almost hear the cocky lilt to his words. “And why would I be doing that?”
Zemo shuffles around a little bit and she feels a little bit of dread settle in her stomach at the slight intake of breath she hears Bucky take.
“No,” he says, his words sound angry - furious, even. “No.”
“I do apologise, Soldat.” Darcy notes that he doesn’t sound very apologetic at all. She thinks he sounds sadistic. “But they took everything from me,” he repeats his earlier sentiments. “And I will have my revenge, and you will do it for me. It took me too long to find The Red Book and get my hands on it for me to stop now.”
The Red Book.
Darcy knew what that was. She’d read about it when she’d been doing her Winter Soldier research and she knew that if this man had it with him, she, and everyone else in the tower, were in danger.
“JARVIS?” Bucky calls out desperately.
“The computer cannot help you now, Soldat,” he says calmly. “He is currently indisposed.”
And then he starts to recite words in a foreign language that Darcy knows is Russian from hearing Nat curse around the tower, but she has no idea what any of them mean, just that they are being used as a trigger.
“No!” Bucky flinches in front of her as more and more words are said.
He turns to face her and she’s able to get her first glance at the man standing outside the glass wall. He doesn’t look very surprised that Darcy is there and she thinks that he’s maybe known of her presence from the start.
“Darcy,” Bucky calls her name desperately, pulling her eyes back to his face. She’s never seen him look so tortured before. Not even that time he’d woken from a nightmare the first time she’d snuck into this room. “You gotta get out of here,” he begs her. “You have to leave, do you understand?”
Darcy nods at him. “But will you be ok?” she asks him and watches as a quick wave of exasperation temporarily washes over his face.
“Darce, you’re the one in danger,” he tells her. “You have to run. Use your taser if you can, but don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to be a hero,” he adds.
“Trust me, I’m not above running,” she tells him, ignoring the dubious look on his face just as Zemo finishes the last word and Bucky freezes in front of her.
A cold, detached look passes over his face as he looks at her without really seeing her.
“Soldat,” Zemo calls for his attention and Bucky turns slowly to face him, back straight and body standing as still as a soldier. “Are you ready to comply?” he asks.
“Ready to comply,” Bucky confirms robotically.
“Good. Kill her,” he smirks, eyes meeting Darcy’s as he gives the order.
He turns to look back at Darcy, no recognition in his eyes as he locks his gaze on her.
Darcy’s hands shake beside her as he begins to walk towards him, murder strut on full display and even scarier in person than on video.
“Uh, hey there, Sarge?” she speaks nervously. “You good? It’s me Darcy. We’re friends, remember?” she swallows and takes a single step back. Bucky freezes in place as she moves, causing her to do the same. She tries to appear as non-threatening as possible as she blinks back at him while he watches her. “Listen, dude, I know I said I’d run, but you’re kinda blocking my exist,” she continues, doing the one thing she always does when she’s nervous or excited - she babbles. “And to be honest, Homicidal Foreign Dude is holding a gun out there,” he waves behind him. “So I’m not sure I’ll be any safer around him, anyway.”
He tilts his head at her a little, eyes trailing over her. She thinks he’s trying to analyse her for a threat and does her best to keep her posture open. When he doesn’t immediately attack her, she thinks she’s doing a pretty good job so she continues talking.
“I gotta say though, The Avengers really need to work on their response time and Tony needs to work on JARVIS’ internal coding because, no offense,” she leans around Bucky and scowls at Zemo and speaks directly to him now, “but you don’t seem like the smartest tool in the shed to be able to hack in so easily - especially since you chose to attack inside the tower where there are literally thousands of shield agents walking around, and literal superheroes and aliens living just a few floors up.”
“I told you to kill her, Soldat,” Zemo says, sounding impatient. “We have more important people to go after.”
“I’m plenty important, thank you very much!” she glares at him, crossing her arms across her chest and forgetting for a moment that her life was in danger.
But Bucky still didn’t attack her.
There was a sudden noise behind Zemo and all three of them turn to watch the door slide open once more as Tony and Steve enter the room in full getup - finally.
The commotion causes Bucky to jump back into action as he launches himself at Darcy. She thinks for a moment that she’s done for, that she’s going to die and she wasn’t even going to get to see Bucky’s reaction to the Darth Vader reveal, so she squeezes her eyes shut and waits.
But nothing happens. Instead someone calls her name.
“Darcy! What the hell?” Tony calls out for her, the face plate moving aside on his Iron Man suit as he speaks.
She peeks through her lashes, seeing nothing but a heavily muscled back for a moment.
It takes her a second to put together what was happening, but eventually she realises that Bucky is standing in front of her again; protecting her.
She notices that he’s holding her taser in his non-metal hand as he watches everyone else critically while making sure he was blocking their path towards her.
“Bucky?” Steve calls out to him, holding his hands out placatingly.
Darcy notices that Clint and Nat are holding Zemo down, preventing him from escaping. She wonders who unarmed him but immediately decides that she doesn’t care.
“Who the hell’s Bucky?”
Darcy watches Steve flinch and remembers that those were the exact words he spoke to him on the bridge after Shieldra was first revealed.
“Ok, Murderbot,” Tony cuts in, taking over for Steve who still has a pained look on his face. “How about you just let the girl go and then we can talk about getting you a better room since apparently my security for this place seems to be shit.” He sounds annoyed at himself.
“No,” Bucky says simply, widening his stance as though preparing for an attack.
“Hey,” Darcy reaches out for him carefully and rests a hand on his metal arm. Bucky looks down at her, frowning a little a little at where her hand was making contact with him. “It’s ok,” she says to him gently, ignoring the others. “They’re the good guys.”
He blinks at her for a few seconds before nodding and handing her back her taser. She slips it back into her pocket.
“Darcy, what’s going on? How did you get in there?” Steve asks her, finding his words once again.
“She’s been sneaking in to see him since he got here,” Nat answers for her, saving Darcy from an explanation for now.
“What?” Tony sounds livid. “And how long have you known this?”
“Since the beginning,” Natasha shrugs, hitting Zemo behind the head when he begins to squirm.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Steve scolds Nat, Tony nodding in agreement from beside him. Natasha just rolls her eyes. “C’mon, Darce, let’s get you to safety.”
“Uh, can’t I just stay here?” she asks, shuffling a little closer to Bucky - or, the Winter Soldier. She wasn’t sure who he was right now.
“No,” both Tony and Steve say at the same time.
Bucky shifts beside her at their tone to make sure he was still standing in front of her just enough to be protective.
“Aw, but we were about to watch The Empire Strikes Back,” she whines as Tony types into a keypad beside the glass wall. It splits enough to allow an opening for just one person to walk in or out.
“Please don’t start this again,” Clint groans at the outraged look on Steve’s face.
“Darcy,” Natasha calls her name, ignoring the others and looking at her pointedly. “We all need to talk, and he needs to rest,” she nods towards Bucky.
“Fine,” Darcy looks up at him and sighs. “I’ll be back later, ok?” she reaches up and touches his cheek gently.
Bucky leans into her hand for a moment before stepping back and allowing Darcy to walk past him and through the opening in the glass wall. Tony places her in front of him as soon as she’s close enough and leads them all back out and over to an emergency elevator while Natasha and Clint take Zemo over to a holding cell.
“How the hell did you manage to make friends with the Winter Soldier?” Tony grumbles as they wait.
Darcy shrugs, a satisfied grin on her face. “I’m loveable.”
Steve snorts.