They Come At Night
Jane twists and turns in the bed uncomfortably, blowing a strand of hair from her forehead already covered in a shin layer of sweat. The air, both inside and outside of the room were way too warm for her liking, and the night gown she was wearing was sticking to her back uncomfortably.
She kicks off the thick blanket covering her and pulls from the collar of the camisole, feeling as if it was trying to choke her. With a resigned sigh she gives up on trying to sleep, knowing that the thick covers and hot air weren't the reason she couldn't. In one of the rooms somewhere in that house, Bucky was laying on his bed already asleep and in the morning, he would be gone forever. No apologies, goodbyes or final words being said between them. Jane stares at the ceiling for a few seconds before she reaches for one of the pillows above her head and hides her face under it screaming as loud as she can, on top of her lungs and until her throat feels sore.
In moments like this, she often – always – spoke to Darcy. But Darcy had told her that she had to stay in her room since it was one of Loki's rules, as if she didn't know Jane well enough to know that she would try to sneak out to find her. No one would stop her anyways.
Despite Loki being the High Commander and that being his house, Jane noticed that there weren't many maids or guards walking around the hallways. Apart from Loki himself, his sister Hela, and the two women who served them dinner there wasn't anyone else living in the house. Perhaps Darcy wasn't being serious, but then the tone of her voice... It sounded like a warning to Jane, a strange strained tone that she hadn't heard from Darcy before. Jane had the feeling that Darcy didn't trust or liked Loki as much as she had pretended to, the way she addressed him more cold than respectful and the entire diner conversation where she hadn't left neither Jane or Bucky talk about what had happened, despite Jane telling her everything minutes before. She didn’t even tell them his name wasn’t Jack, but she had asked Jane about it afterwards.
A feeling of unease invades Jane all of sudden. No longer wanting to go to Darcy because she wanted to talk, but because Darcy seemed afraid.
Without wanting to make much noise, in case there was someone on the other side of the door, she stands from the bed and walks towards the closet where Darcy had left the satchel she had been carrying, locking herself in the bathroom afterwards. Jane kneels on the tiles and opens the satchel, scattering the contents on the cold bathroom floor. The gold dagger falls with a metallic sound that makes her cringe and still for a few seconds, she leaves it aside alongside a box of bullets, and when she finds the flashlight she uses it to illuminate the room. Bucky's gun is also there – another wave of relief rushes through her body – and then she finds the wrinkled letter Darcy had sent her. Jane reads it again and again, noticing that just like during diner, Darcy had lied in the letter. With the exception of the last words.
"Winter is coming" Jane whispers, folding the letter again, "Darcy, what is going on?"
Jane bites her bottom lip clutching the flashlight and the piece of paper tightly against her chest.
"You are being paranoid, Jane" she tells herself, and it comes out a breathless whisper, "You are tired and jumping to con-"
Her eyes fall on the dagger then. The room is dark, but the light from the flashlight reflects briefly on the handle, the shinny gold showing Jane something she hadn't notice before. She reaches for it and illuminates it completely. In the very tip of the handle, of the dagger that belonged to Arnim Zola once, carved in gold is the same strange symbol Loki had been wearing in his chest just that night, the same one the Shadow Men wore on their sleeves.
A head with many tails that Jane had seen several times around Loki's house but didn't pay attention to before.
“Make a single line!” The fist man yells.
Jane, barely awake and still confused about what was happening, reaches for Darcy’s hand. She feels her squeeze it softly before she lets it go, and Jane understands they must do as they are being told. The grey robes she was wearing were similar to the ones the rest of the people there was wearing, it was the staff’s uniform and Jane recognises each and every single one of them. They make a single line as they are being escorted outside of the house by men in uniform. Jane tries to look at their faces, but she is nudged in her shoulder.
“Don’t look at them, miss” The person behind her whispers.
Jane blinks several times and looks over her shoulder, Letitia offers her a small nod and Jane can see she is shaking like a leaf. She looks at her feet realising she is shaking too, and she clutches her hands tightly on each side of her body until her nails digging into the skin of her palms, and when it stings and she doesn’t wake up, she feels her eyesight blur with tears. When they finally fall, as they all starts walking again, the cold wind dry them almost immediately.
“Walk faster!” A second man yells, “Pick up the fucking pace!”
They make them stop at the plaza, where then the masked men make them kneel infront of the Galileo Galilei in the middle of it, its arms spread wide while its eyes looked up to the sky. Jane can see her father’s driver, George, struggling to do so because of his old age. And when one of the soldiers see him, he pushes him down, Jane can hear someone yell to leave him alone, and that’s when she realises there is a crowd in the plaza. People from the citadel that had awoken by the scandal. The crowd is trying to stop them, and soon a fight breaks out, people trying to push pass the soldiers making a barricade between.
Stop. Jane wants to yell. They will hurt you.
Screams of ‘what is going on’ and ‘why were they doing that’ fill her ears, and when a single shot is heard everyone goes quiet. Letitia grips Jane’s wrist tightly, Jane looks at her first but she is looking ahead, and then she sees a few feet away from them George’s body falling to the ground. The snow tinted red with blood seconds later.
“Oh, god,” Letitia whimpers, talking to herself, “Why is this happening?”
Jane looks for Darcy frantically, unable to ignore the screaming of the crowd and the smell of smoke. When she looks behind her, she sees fire consuming her house, by pure instinct she tries to stand, but is pushed to her knees again, before someone strikes her face. The metallic taste of blood fills her mouth and her cheek starts throbbing.
“Stay down!” The man says.
Jane feels the anger take over her, and she glares at him defiantly. She wants to see his face, to memorise it and then maybe… But she realises she wouldn’t be able to see him anyways. They were all wearing black masks that only let her see their eyes and mouth.
The man raises his arm again.
“Hey, hey, hey, at ease soldier!” She hears another one say.
Jane stays frozen in place her heart pounding violently against her chest and a cold shiver running down her spine. These men, who had woken her entire colony, barged into her home and dragged everyone outside, were soldiers.
“The young ones are precious cargo” The man continues, Jane looks at her feet, “Pierce wants them”
“What a joy to be king of the hill” The other one replies, he then reaches for the back of her neck, “Look at how pretty this one is”
“Hail Hydra, bitch” The other chuckles.
The two men chuckled, and one of them strokes her cheek before they walk away. She then looks around and notices the way they stood in strategic places, the way they held their guns and the uniforms. All black from head to toe with the exception of a red crest on their shoulders.
A head with many tails.
“Oh, dear lord!” someone shrieks, “It’s the High Commander!”
Jane looks up in time to see her father being dragged by two soldiers.
Erik Selvig’s face is covered in blood, someone had beat him up before getting him out of the house, Jane wants to scream his name, for him to look at her so she could run to him and be able to at least hold him. But then she sees Julia right behind him, and like she knows what she is thinking, she shakes her head softly, pleadingly, and Jane cries harder but doesn’t move at all. As if they were nothing, with no speech or explanation of their actions, the masked soldiers throw a rope around Erik’s head and then do the same with Julia. She stares with wide, glassy eyes as they throw the ropes across the statue’s open wide arms, and they start to pull.
“Their necks won’t snap” A man says, “Fuck’s sake, just shoot them”
Jane looks at Julia, and she asks her to look away. She shakes her head and is about to stand when one of the soldiers puts his gun on her father’s temple and pulls the trigger.
Bang.
It’s deafening. The first time Jane hears a gun go off.
And just like that, his life is gone.
Jane looks at the snow underneath her then, as they shoot Julia she hopes Darcy didn’t get to see like she did. And while she hears the screaming and pleading of the crowd as the soldiers massacre the ones trying to fight them, and the blood pouring from George’s head was flowing like a river infront of her.
Jane feels the bile rise to her throat.
The feeling of betrayal stabs her in her chest. Loki wasn't Darcy's saviour, or hers. Jane covers a sharp gasp of air with her hand, the flashlight falling to the tile and cracking before it goes off, and then a sob leaves her throat, muffled by her hand. Jane stands with shaky legs from the bathroom floor, gripping the dagger tightly. She shakes her head pacing back and forward.
Loki and Pierce.
Hydra.
Odin and her father were friends. She was suppose to marry Thor. Both had died months apart and Loki had been left with everything, Glassmere being attacked during the same period of time while other colonies are being sacked and silently invaded by men commanded by Alexander Pierce. The Shadow Men.
But how did Darcy fit into all of it? Or her? How did she end up with Loki? But instead of trying to answer those questions, Jane's mind travels to someone else.
Bucky.
Jane wipes the tears from her cheeks, and gripping the dagger tightly against her chest she takes a deep breath and walks towards the door at a hurried pace. But when she opens the door, she bumps into a bulk of a man, and when she looks up she finds a sly smirk and green eyes looking back at her.
"Loki"
Despite feeling tired, he can’t fall asleep. Not because of the thousand thoughts running through his mind, the bitter taste of regret behind his tongue or the warmness of alcohol in the pit of his stomach. There is an uneasy feeling about the room he was in. Maybe it was too quiet, the walls felt too close to eachother and the fact that he was alert didn’t help either.
He twists and turns on the bed for what feel hours, but whenever he catches a glimpse from the clock on the nightstand, barely two or three minutes pass. Keeping his eyes shut, he begins counting backwards from a thousand, and when that doesn’t work he tries clearing his head, trying to convince his brain that he is already asleep. It isn’t until a few minutes later that he begins to feel himself drift, but that’s when the door opens slightly, whoever is on the other side stopping when it creaks, before sliding inside the room. The gun. His mind supplies, but then he remembers he left it in Jane’s satchel and curses mentally.
“I can tell you are awake”
The mattress sinks with the weight of the woman, and when she reaches for him he grips her wrist and sits in one swift motion. Hela chuckles amused and wrenches herself from his grip at the same time he turns the lamp on the nightstand.
“What are you doing here?” He hisses.
Hela smirks widely and glances at his nude chest, “Loki said you had already being paid”
He looks at the painting left next to the door.
“That can’t be all you want” She reaches for him, brushing a strand of hair off his face, “My, my… How handsome you are up close”
His jaw grits his teeth. The woman smiles wickedly, dragging her nails across his abdomen before she flips her hair long black hair across her shoulder. He inhales sharply, not taking his eyes from her face. He isn’t sure if this is some king of test, if there was a second intention behind it. Hela pouts and he doesn’t realise she is pushing him softly back to the mattress at the same time she leans in, until his head hit the pillow and he feels Hela’s weight on his stomach as she straddles him.
“So strong” She says softly, hands moving up and down his arms.
As she touches him, he feels his muscles tense. Hela leans in to leave a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Her red tinted lips have a familiar smell, and he frowns slightly because he can’t quite put his finger on it.
“You deserve a real reward” She smiles, her lips close to the shell of his ear, “And I know you didn’t take anything Loki was offering”
“I took-“
“So maybe you can take what I am offering”
The smell becomes overwhelming, and he blinks several times trying to focus on it, because it seems familiar. Hela reaches for something behind her. He knows that smell, he remembers it.
Hela smiles wickedly, “Hail Hydra”
Honeysuckle. Jane called it.
He grips Hela’s wrist, and in one movement flips them over, pinning her against the matters. The woman struggles under his weight, and he tightens his grip on her left wrist, while he reaches for her other one and pins both over her head.
“Someone likes it rough” She chuckles.
Bucky narrows his eyes at her and reaches for her hand. She is holding a tube like device with a needle in one end and a button in the other.
“What is this?”
Hela narrows her eyes, “Get off me” she grits out.
“Answer me” Bucky growls, “What. Is. This.”
The woman purses her lips, “It’ll just knock you out for a few hours” she answers, “For some reason Loki wanted you two alive"
He tenses visibly and Hela’s face is split by a wide grin, he clenches his jaw and feeling the anger recoil his insides.
“I guess you won’t mind if I use it on you then”
Hela lifts her chin, “Do as you please”
He sticks the needle into her neck and presses the button on the other end of the injector. It makes a clicking sound and a blue light lights up, and Hela inhales sharply under him. Almost immediately she relaxes and he lets her go, standing from the bed.
“You really didn’t know” She tries to stand but falls on the bed again.
Her head starts bobbing, as if she is dizzy, and she holds onto the bedpost trying to focus her eyes on him. Bucky looks away and starts searching for his clothes, dressing as fast as he can. He thinks about Jane, if Hela or Loki had tried to attack her too, he needed to go to her.
“Your little princess must be…” Hela slurs, before she chuckles suddenly, “They are looking for you”
He tenses, and turns to her.
“Who?”
She chuckles, “Hydra has… Has many heads, Soldier”
Bucky tenses, feeling a chill run down his spine at the mention of his Legionary name. They knew who he was. Darcy lied, he realises, about Cinders being a safe place for Jane. Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing by getting him and Jane there. Before he leaves, he reaches for the injector and takes it with him, throwing one last glance at Hela not being able to ignore the way her lips formed a disturbing smile.
He closes the door behind him and turns left, bumping into a dark shape. He grabs it by the neck, pinning the body against the nearest wall before he rips off the hood covering most of the face. There is nothing but heavy panting for a few seconds, until his eyes get used to the dark and he recognises Darcy’s feature.
“It- It’s me” She says.
He circles her throat, “S'That suppose to make me feel better?” He sneers, “What are you doing here?”
Darcy narrows her eyes, “I came for you” she says, “We need to get Jane out of this place“
“You mean this place you brought her to?” Bucky looses his grip but doesn’t let go.
She shuts her eyes, “I had to, Loki would have gotten to her himself”
Bucky licks his lips, “He is working with Pierce, they- they call themselves-‘
“Hydra” Darcy nods frantically, “I know”
He glances at the end of the hall, and Darcy takes that chance to try to push him off, reaching for something inside her pocket. He overpowers her, taking the knife from her and gripping her wrist. He leaves the blade against her jugular.
“Why are you with them?” Darcy looks taken aback, “They took your home, they killed your mother-“
“I’m not!” She exclaims, “I’m working against them”
Bucky narrows his eyes, “What do you mean?”
Darcy sighs heavily, “Listen, we have no time to-“
“What do you mean, Darcy?” And the blade sinks almost breaking the skin.
“This is bigger than just us” She says, “This people- this Hydra organisation had been growing like cancer as the New World developed, and now they are ready to put their plan in motion”
“You talk about it as if- as if it’s some king of huge conspiracy?”
Darcy nods, “They are responsible for the Old World dying” she continues, and she sounds so sure of all of it as crazy as it sound to him, “They want to cross the ocean and finish what they st-“
“Where do you or Glassmere fit into all of this? Or Jane?”
Darcy closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath in.
“Erik was one of the heads of Hydra”
He freezes at the mention of Jane’s father and Darcy swallows tightly.
“Like his mother, and her father before him,” She swallows tightly, “For fifty years the Selvigs ruled Glassmere, while the Pierce dynasty kept Arcadia” He looses his grip on her wrists, “They needed to have Cinders on board so they had to find a way”
Bucky takes a breath in, “That’s why Jane had to marry Thor”
“Yes” Darcy stares at him, “But Erik backed down on it- on everything as soon as he found out what Hydra was really about” She takes a shaky breath in, “By then Pierce already had gotten Loki and Hela to join him”
He loosens his grip.
“You said you were working against them” Bucky takes a deep breath in, “How?”
“To put their plan in motion Hydra needs something from Maraud, I stole information from Loki and I will deliver it in exchange of protection” she says, “For me and Jane”
Finally, he lets her go. She takes the knife from him as he gives a few steps back trying to catch his breath. Despite all the information, all he thought was how to get Jane out of that place.
“You can leave” Darcy tells him, “There is an abandoned barn behind the house, one of the cars is yours”
He glares at her.
“And- and they are both packed with supplies to-“
“No” Bucky cuts her off, “I’m not leaving without Jane”
She stares and after a few seconds nods, "Then we need to go for her now"
They are halfway through the hall when Darcy stops him, making him look at her.
“We can't tell her about Erik" Darcy says, "It will tarnish the memory of her father, it would destroy her"
Bucky understands what she means, but he shakes his head, "If everything she has been through hasn’t break her, nothing will" he says, "she deserves the truth, you hear me?"
Darcy’s bottom lip trembles, and after a few seconds she nods. And then leads the way.