Darcy Lewis and How She Basically Becomes Mulan
Steve is immediately banned from helping with her training.
For all of his scrappiness when he was smaller, he sure as hell doesn’t have any of it now and he keeps trying to show her moves that only work if you’re a two hundred and forty pound man and have height on your side.
She contemplates throwing a dumbbell at his head before Natasha swoops in and saves the day.
🌸🌸🌸
“You’re not a battering ram. People are going to underestimate you. Use it to your advantage,” Natasha points out, makes her practice the moves Natasha learned in the Red Room.
Darcy thinks Natasha gets some kind of vengeful glee out of teaching them to her. She’s not complaining.
She practices them until she can do it blindfolded, Natasha spends way too long laughing at her the first time she trips over her own feet, and then Natasha calls in the big guns.
🌸🌸🌸
Darcy can’t throw Bucky or Steve down on the mat the way Natasha can, but she throws them off balance and she counts it as a win.
Sam likes to be used as her ‘normal’ test dummy and swears it has nothing to do with her thighs wrapped around his head.
(It has everything to do with her thighs wrapped around his head, Darcy wasn’t born yesterday.)
She can make him tap out nine times out of ten and she’ll never be as graceful as Natasha, but it’s good enough.
🌸🌸🌸
Pepper can light people on fire.
Pepper doesn’t need to know hand-to-hand.
Pepper shows her how walk in heels instead.
“The heel of a stiletto can can be used to impale someone in a pinch,” Pepper explains, and Darcy doesn’t want to know why Pepper knows this.
(Darcy’s a liar, she wants to know why so badly she can almost taste it; but she values her sanity.)
“Seems like it would take a lot of effort to stab someone with heels,” Darcy points out, and Pepper gives her a feral grin.
“It doesn’t take that much pressure to stomp in someone’s windpipe with them.”
🌸🌸🌸
Darcy feels like a newborn giraffe the first few times she wears the Louis Vuitton’s Pepper picks out for her.
She’s off balance and all gangly limbs, windmills her arms and catches herself on the wall to keep from going down more than once.
(Tony shows his appreciation for her in heels very thoroughly and often, guides her down with a hand between her shoulder blades and he damn near loses his mind when she convinces Pepper they should surprise him.)
It takes three weeks, but she keeps up with Pepper’s power walk after that and that’s all she can really hope for.
🌸🌸🌸
Bruce builds her a taser.
Steve twitches for twenty minutes and Bucky laughs so hard he starts choking on his own spit and Darcy worries he’s legitimately gonna die.
“I’m just gonna -“ Bruce snatches the taser out of her hand and Darcy doesn’t question it.
JARVIS sends her the video of Steve going down and she watches it on repeat for well over an hour.
🌸🌸🌸
Bruce gives the taser back four days later.
There’s a soft pastel green casing on it now and she has a sticker sheet that Sam gave her full of flowers that would look so perfect on it.
“There’s a locking mechanism now,” Bruce says when she grabs it. He points out the smooth section on the side. “This is basically JARVIS, but smaller. Tap it three times with your thumb and let it scan your fingerprint on the third.”
Darcy beams at him and leans into his touch when he cups her cheek with the palm of his hand.
“You’re kind of adorable,” Darcy teases, and Bruce rolls his eyes. His thumb is gently sweeping back and forth over her cheekbone.
“I love you more than anything in this entire world,” Bruce whispers. Darcy doesn’t even have time to take a breath before he ruins the moment. “I did it so you wouldn’t accidentally tase yourself in the ass.”
🌸🌸🌸
Sam is absolutely no help to her.
“Baby, I literally have wings and fly away from the bullshit. We can practice more of Tasha’s moves if you want, though,” Sam offers, shrugging his shoulders.
Darcy narrows her eyes at him.
“You just want me to try and smother you with my thighs.”
“Yeah, but what a way to go,” Sam sighs dreamily, a dazed look in his eyes and a smirk on his lips.
Darcy chunks a throw pillow at his head and calls it a day.
🌸🌸🌸
Bucky gives her a gun and a fuckton of ammo.
He shows her how to strap the holster he buys to her thigh and makes her go to the shooting range five days a week until she can field strip the gun and reassemble it in forty-five seconds flat.
He has Steve paint ‘Gigi’ on the holster in beautiful gold calligraphy because she won’t stop calling it ‘Fuck Off The Second’ and he can only roll his eyes so much.
🌸🌸🌸
Tony shows her something under a microscope, smaller than a grain of rice.
“There’s a lot of science words I can bore you to death with, but in an oversimplification that hurts my soul to even, let alone give as an explanation-“ Tony nods his head at the look Darcy gives him. “It’s a microchip.”
He scratches the back of his head and does that thing with his shoulder that makes him look like he’s trying to fold in on himself.
“And you’re not, like, a dog but when you were taken-“ Tony takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “We had no idea where you were. Where to even start looking. And this, this’ll let us know where you are right down to the centimeter and I won’t have to feel like I can’t fucking breathe ever again because I’ll know where you ar-“
Darcy cuts him off with a kiss, pressed her body in to his so he can feel that she’s perfectly fine.
🌸🌸🌸
It takes less than ten minutes to load it in a needle and inject it under her arm.
It hurts like a bitch and she sheds a few tears, but, well.
Tony’s peace of mind is worth a little pain any day of the week.
🌸🌸🌸
Clint shows her how to hide like a sniper, how to make herself small and invisible.
“You did good when you get under the table, but that’s the first place somebody would look,” Clint explains, leading her in to the training room.
It’s basically hide and seek on steroids.
Clint raises the stakes a few days in to it, removes a piece of clothing for every time he can’t find her.
It takes almost five weeks before he’s the one completely naked and she’s only missing her socks.
They end up having to disinfect the sparing mat after they get done celebrating.
Darcy has a friction burn on her back.
So worth it.