you should have seen this coming
Darcy is sitting around a giant round table in the middle of a Stark Industries conference room while Tony disassembles his Iron Man suit and Steve is standing to her left with his hands on his belt, full Captain America pose on display.
She feels like she’s back in high school with her parents standing on either side of her as she waits for the principal to call her in for punching one of the kids in the playground. To be fair to Darcy, she’d tried to be diplomatic and asked the kid to fuck off but he’d continued to stare at her boobs so she’d whipped her wrist back and thrown a punch right at his nose. Maybe if he hadn’t been looking down her chest he’d have seen it coming and been able to dodge her flailing arm. But he hadn’t and that was his own fault.
Right now feels a lot like that moment.
With Tony and Steve standing on either side of her, like disappointed parents, Darcy feels like a teenager all over again. So she crosses her arms across her chest and leans stubbornly back in her seat as they wait for everyone else to file in.
It doesn’t take as long as she’d like and before she knows it, Darcy is somehow the main topic of conversation even though there were clearly more important topics to be discussed. Like how a crazy lunatic managed to make his way into the tower undetected, disable Jarvis and sneak into The Hulk Cage all in the same day.
She’d had to go through a whole evaluation before she’d been allowed to set foot into the tower and some douche with a shitty revenge plot somehow walked right in. Darcy was pissed.
She wonders how Bucky is doing and her glare deepens even more when she remembers how the plans she’d had for her whole afternoon had been completely dismantled by the Homicidal Foreign Dude.
“Darcy, are you even listening?”
She tunes back into the conversation around her at the sound of her name and looks towards Tony, who is now glaring at her.
“No,” she replies honestly. “Nothing you’ve said is remotely interesting enough for me to pay any attention. I’ll tune back in once you start talking about the creepy dude who just tried to kill everyone.” And what you plan on doing with Bucky, but she doesn’t say that part out loud.
“Don’t worry about him,” Steve brushed her off. “The bigger problem is that you’ve been sneaking in to see Bucky without telling any of us. Do you know how dangerous that could have been?” He reprimands her.
“Nat and Barton knew,” she crosses her arms. “And I was totally safe. I had my taser with me the whole time.” She pats her hip fondly where her bejeweled zapper sits.
“And you two,” Tony begins, pointing a finger at Nat and Clint, before Steve can utter a response. “You knew this whole time and didn’t think to tell any of us what she was up to?”
“It was taken care of,” Natasha replies, crossing her arms as if daring Tony to question her further.
He didn’t, instead turning back to Darcy who was eagerly trying to mimic Nat’s pose. It wasn’t working. She drops her hands and takes her usual stance, hands on her hips and brows raised. “I’d do it all again, exactly the same.” She turns her chin up defiantly. “And I know you’re moving Bucky somewhere you think I won’t find him,” she turns her gaze to Steve, “but it won’t work. I know this place as well as Barton does. And if that fails and I can’t find him on my own, I can be annoying enough to trick one of you into finding him for me.”
“We’re not stupid,” Tony rolls his eyes.
“No, but you are gullible. You know he let me get all up close and personal with his arm?” she smiles sweetly at Tony, who gapes at her. “It was magnifique ,” she kisses her fingers, imitating a French chef she’d seen in a cartoon once.
“It’s not safe.” Steve says firmly.
“Maybe not for you,” Darcy glares at him. “Just because you think he’s going to kill everyone who comes in contact with him doesn’t mean he’s going to. I’ve been seeing him for weeks,” she ignores the way Nat smirks at her when she says those words. She ignores the way they sound and the blush that creeps up her neck, hoping no one else notices it. If they do, she’ll tell them it’s because she’s angry - no, furious. Because she is. “And all we’ve done is watch stuff and read books. Dude,” she turns to Steve seriously, “he’s got even more catching up to do on the world than you did.”
“And you’re helping him the way you helped Steve?” Tony asks dubiously, clear sarcasm in his voice.
“Yes, I am. Because apparently all the rest of you do when you go to see him is quiz him about everything he remembers and all the stuff he doesn’t,” Darcy berates them. “Maybe try and treat him like a human being and he’ll actually talk to you.”
She ignores Steve’s flinch and sits back down in her seat, refusing to say another word.
“We’ve been training her,” Clint says after a beat of silence. “Nat and I have been forcing her to take lessons with us and then ambushing her at random times of the day when she’s alone.”
“Yeah, can you guys quit it? Last time I hobbled everywhere with a sprained ankle for a whole freaking week,” Darcy grumbles.
“And I was shot with a fucktonne of electricity,” Clint glares right back.
“Serves you right.”
“Children, put your claws away,” Tony drawls, as though he’s already bored with the conversation. Darcy wasn’t buying it. She knew Tony better than almost anyone else in the room and he’d been glancing at her with envy ever since she’d told him Bucky let her look at his arm. “Darcy, the adults need to talk now. We’ll come find you later.”
And there it was.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. Bucky is my friend. He hasn’t hurt me. And he won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that, Darce,” Steve says softly.
“Yes, I do!” Darcy finally bursts out, standing back up and shaking her hands out. She had a lot of pent up adrenaline waiting to escape. “God, are you so blind that you’re all ignoring the facts right in front of you? Bucky was protecting me! He didn’t hurt me the first time we met and he hasn’t hurt me at all the whole time I was with him. He tried to protect me from the Homicidal Foreign Dude that broke into the tower - which you guys are completely ignoring!”
“Then how do you explain this?” Tony smirks, turning the projector on and playing a clip from weeks ago when Bucky had had a nightmare and he and Darcy had had a moment .
“Fuck you, Tony,” she glares at him as everyone’s eyes are glued to the screen watching Darcy wrestle with a huge black eyed Winter Soldier. “That was nothing. I wasn’t hurt .”
“Sorry, Darce,” Steve doesn’t look her in the eye. “You’re a civilian.”
Darcy has no words. No, she has plenty of words, but none of them were appropriate and none of them seemed to make their way past her throat.
She opens her mouth a few times, trying to formulate a sentence. When nothing comes out she looks towards Nat and Clint, begging them for some help, but neither one of them is looking at her.
She stares at them all for a few more minutes then looks Tony and Steve right in the eyes as she says, “I’m never speaking to either one of you again.” And she means it. Until they let her back in to see Bucky, she wouldn’t say a word to them. She wouldn’t even look at them again. “Tell Pepper to find you a new assistant. I quit.”
And then she walks out of the room and straight down to Jane to vent some more.
-
“Darcy, maybe they have a point?” Jane begins gently. Trying not to make Darcy any more angry. But it was the wrong thing to say, of course it was. What was Janey thinking.
“No. Bucky is my friend,” Darcy glares. And then she deflates. “Janey, he was - is - my friend. It’s not fair. I like him, he likes me - I think. He tolerates me at least. Even when he was The Soldier he protected me. Why can’t they see that! Just because he had one little regression? It wasn’t even anything bad! I wasn’t hurt!”
“But you could have been, Darce,” Jane says softly, “I think that was the point.”
“Not you too!” Darcy’s eyes widen, feeling betrayal spread through her.
“No, listen, I just think maybe you should give it some time. Wait until he’s been a bit more rehabilitated. So he doesn’t hurt you accidentally when no one is around to help.”
“Jane, that’s fucken rich coming from you,” Darcy scowls. “You’ll go off into the most dangerous situations just because a star shines more brightly in one direction than another,” Darcy rolls her eyes and spins in her chair.
“That’s not fair, I have Thor.”
“You didn’t before though! Also, that's how we met Thor! Because you went on a hairbrained adventure and took us all with you.” Darcy knew she was being mean, but Jane was meant to be on her side, and right now, she wasn’t. “I’ve been more hurt and injured and scared around every other person in this building, than I have around Bucky.”
“I’m sorry, Darce,” Jane says, and Darcy thinks she means it.
“Yeah, yeah. I know you are. Whatever. I’m going to go for a walk.”
“Be safe.”
-
Bucky was pacing his cell. It had taken him a minute to shake off the last little bits of The Soldier after Darcy had left, but he’d finally done it. And now he was pacing, waiting for someone to come in and update him about what had happened and if she was ok.
He knows he hadn’t hurt her - God, he was so relieved that he hadn’t hurt her. But he was terrified he’s scared her off for good.
He clenches his metal hand into a fist, listening to the whirs of the plates as they shifted into place. It was comforting.
He is distracted a moment later as the door to the room opens. For one second he forgets what had happened a couple hours ago and thinks it’ll be Darcy. He lets his guard down for a minute, glancing hopefully at the door.
When he sees Steve and Stark’s son - he shutters his eyes and crosses his arms across his chest. As much as Bucky loves Steve, he didn’t want to see him right now. He wanted Darcy.
“Barnes,” Stark nods at him. “How are you feeling? Assassin-y?”
“Tony,” Steve scolds, elbowing him harshly in the side. Stark just shrugs.
“Hey, Bucky?” Steve turns to him cautiously. Bucky almost wants to roll his eyes. The way he treated Bucky these days was starting to piss him off. He wonders if this was how Steve felt when they were growing up and Bucky was always scolding Steve’s skinny ass whenever he got into trouble too big for him - which was always.
“What do you want, punk?” Bucky grunts out, his mind still a million miles away.
“Just wondering how you’re feeling? It’s been, uh, a big day.” Steve reaches back and scratches his neck awkwardly.
“Feel fine,” Bucky grinds out, letting Steve stew in discomfort for a little more. “Where’s Darcy?” he finally asks when no one else seems to want to say anything.
“Miss Lewis will be away for a while,” Stark answers diplomatically.
“What the fuck does that mean, Stark?” Bucky growls, eyes cutting towards him for the first time in a Winter Soldier worthy glare.
To his credit, Stark merely blinks back at him. “It means,” he starts slowly, “that she shouldn’t have been sneaking in to see you unsupervised - or at all, really. You’re not safe to be around civilians. Especially nice ones like Darcy Lewis.”
“Tony!” Steve cuts in again, glaring at him to stay quiet. “Darcy is… uh, well, she’s just… we’re going to assess the situation some more before we let her back in.” Steve finally finishes his sentence.
“Is… fuck. Is she ok? Have I scared her?” Bucky forces the words out, looking away from Steve when he flinches.
Stark scoffs. “That girl doesn’t know when to be scared if someone screamed it in her face,” he says without thinking.
“Then where is she?” Bucky demands.
“We’ve asked her to stay away from you for a while,” Steve admits and this time he’s the one looking away as Bucky fights off the flinch he can feel building under his skin. Steve didn’t trust him. And Bucky couldn’t even blame him. He’d known the little peace he’d found with Darcy and her big blue eyes wouldn’t last. He wasn’t safe to be around and he’d known sooner or later someone would have figured it out, and it seems that they had.
“Ok.”
“Ok?” Steve asks, the anxiety rolling off him in waves. Bucky turns his back on the both of them, hoping they would take it as the dismissal he intended it to be. “Bucky,” Steve begins gently. “I… is there anything we can do for you?”
“No.”
He hears Steve let out a disappointed breath of air. “Ok. ok,” he repeats. “I’ll come by to see you tomorrow.”
“What happened to Zemo?” he asks, remembering the reason he was in this situation with Darcy far away.
“Nat handled him,” Stark answers this time. Bucky doesn’t know what that means, but he finds he doesn’t care - he remembers Natalia from a long time ago and he knows that she’ll do what needs to be done to make sure Zemo is out of action.
“Steve,” Bucky says one last time, just before they could leave the room. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, Buck?” Steve asks curiously, and Bucky hates what he’s about to do. Hates that he can hear the little bit of hope in Steve’s words before he abolishes it. He turns to look at his old friend before he says, “don’t come visit.”
“Bucky,” Steve starts, eyes filled with hurt.
Bucky turns back around, repeating, “don’t come visit,” more firmly this time. Because they were right, he wasn’t safe.
And if he wasn’t safe for Darcy, then he wasn’t safe for anyone.