Chapter 36
Stark Tower
May 2011
Deafening silence echoed for several seconds.
Darcy kept her chin up, meeting all their incredulous eyes one by one.
“I’m sorry, what?” Tony snapped, leaning forward with his palms flat to the table.
Darcy just nodded.
She glanced around again and gauged their reactions. Maria was mostly expressionless, but there was a tic in her jaw. Clint’s shock, anger, and grief were visible in the line of his mouth and the set of his eyebrows. Bruce - Bruce just looked stunned.
And Tony was furious. Predictably.
“How do you know this?” Steve said measuredly.
Darcy took a breath. “I was there,” she said, and told them the story: watching Romanoff’s conversation with Loki, her own odd interchange with him, hiding in the viewing room, and watching the fight. She was glad Jane wasn’t here for this. Guilt twisted Darcy’s stomach. Jane hadn’t even questioned Darcy’s whereabouts during the helicarrier fight, and Darcy had taken advantage of her friend’s absentmindedness.
She’d have to tell Jane later.
“I ran out as soon as Loki was gone,” she said. “Coulson was still conscious. He told me there was a medical call box and I went and pulled the thing, and… I waited until the medical team showed up. Fury beat them there, but not by much.” She swallowed. “Coulson was… beyond saving.”
“Let me get this straight,” Tony snapped. Darcy was forcefully reminded that he was volatile at the moment, little more than a yawning pit of grief and worry with a precarious safety net of this group holding him up. “You knew this all along and didn’t say anything?”
“I was wondering if Fury would tell you,” Darcy said coldly, lifting her eyes to meet Tony’s. She didn’t regret her decision to keep the secret.
Tony opened his mouth again, but Maria talked over him. “You mean to tell us that Fury knew about this and kept it to himself.”
“Presumably so you would continue to work with Thor during the battle,” Darcy said. “Or to keep you pissed at Loki. Most likely both.”
“And you’re sure he knew the truth.” Maria’s jaw was set and her eyes glittered with either tears or anger. Darcy knew she had worked closely with Coulson - that they’d been friends.
Darcy hid her own grief. It was really all she knew to do with sadness: bury it under flippancy and move on. “Like ninety-six percent. He chased me away. He was the one who heard Coulson’s last words - I could see them talking. What are the odds Coulson didn’t tell Fury? And then when Fury came and talked to me, he was asking all these pointed questions. I played the dumb bimbo and cried a lot and lied my ass off. I’m not sure he totally believed me but hey, I’m still breathing, so it must have been passable.”
Maria shook her head. “I can’t believe you lied to Nick Fury of all people and it worked.”
“More or less,” Darcy muttered.
“And you said Loki didn’t finish Coulson off,” Steve clarified.
Darcy shrugged. “He reached out like he was about to, but then he twitched and bolted like someone set his clothes on fire.” She paused. “That would’ve been kinda funny, actually…”
“Darcy,” Steve said.
“Steve,” she mimicked, and smirked when he blew out a sigh.
Tony stepped to the side and into Darcy’s direct line of sight, commanding her attention. “You’re almost as good at secret-keeping as Fury himself,” he accused.
“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a passive-aggressive one, Tony,” Darcy retorted. “I couldn’t contact you before the battle because you were stuck in the communications black hole around the helicarrier and then I was, oh, that’s right, drugged in your safe room, and I already explained why I’ve kept the secret from then until now. So I’d appreciate you not jumping down my throat.”
Amazingly, Tony backed down, although he didn’t apologize. Darcy didn’t mind - she didn’t apologize, either, not if she could help it.
“I noticed a lot of weird things, actually,” Darcy said. “First of all, the whole invasion plan? It was really fucking stupid. He started in Germany, of all places he could’ve chosen, and made a huge show as a dictator, which got the attention of the entire world focused on him. I find it hard to accept that he didn’t do any research beforehand. And a choke-point invasion with an army on a connected neural network? Not a good plan. Especially since, according to Thor, Loki is a brilliant strategist and battle commander. And then there’s the whole thing with the scepter. I’ve been through the footage, heard all your reports. Did no one else notice that Loki took off after he got Hulk-smashed and left the scepter lying there? The key to the portal and his main weapon through this whole fiasco?”
“Darcy, what are you suggesting?” Bruce asked.
Darcy met his eyes. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely asking if anyone else noticed something a little weird.”
“I have.”
They all turned to look at Maria.
The dark-haired agent straightened her spine. “Darcy raised several excellent points. I’m reminded of the fact that someone had to order Selvig to build that fail-safe into the portal. I remember what it was like under the scepter’s influence. There was no independent thought, no room for me to have taken any action like that.” Though she remained stoic, Darcy detected nervousness or tension in her voice, and she definitely noticed how Clint oriented himself slightly toward Maria as she spoke, as if to provide an almost-undetectable support network.
“I agree,” Tony said, to Darcy’s surprise. His hatred of Loki was so strong, she’d expected him to be the most resilient to accepting any idea other than the one they’d been presented with.
But then again, she realized, a large part of that hatred had come from Coulson’s death. If Loki wasn’t the perpetrator…
This is great.
“But how do we find out for sure?” Steve asked. “This is all… speculation.”
Maria, Tony, and Darcy all swiveled toward him incredulously, and he raised his hands. “I’m not discounting that you make interesting points,” he said defensively. “But we have no witnesses other than Darcy, and that was just for the fight in the helicarrier between Loki and Thor - it’s not like we can interview Loki.”
“Loki also said he wouldn’t be permittedto spare me if I interfered with that fight,” Darcy remembered. “So whose orders was he taking?”
“Are you suggesting that Loki was working for someone else?” Steve asked.
Darcy shrugged.
“We still face the same problem,” Bruce added after a moment. “We have no one to ask.”
Darcy held up her StarkPhone, Erik Selvig’s contact on the screen. “We can ask him.”
The phone rang, and rang, and rang.
Just when Darcy thought Erik wouldn’t pick up (she didn’t even know where he was in the world, much less the time there, but whatever), there was a click and his voice came over the line, scratchy but understandable. “Darcy?”
“Erik!” she said.
“Darcy, it’s the middle of the night here,” he complained.
“Pretend you’re dreaming or something. I need to ask you a question.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask!”
“You’re calling me with a prank marriage proposal like last year on this date. No.”
Darcy checked her watch. “I’m insulted that you think I would try the same thing twice. Also, April Fools’ Day was a month and a half ago. It’s May.”
There was a burst of frantic shuffling from the other end, and then a muffled curse. “May,” he grumbled. “When did that happen?”
“Probably while you were under Loki’s mind control. Thanks for the segue. Who gave you the order to build a failsafe into the portal machine thing?”
Steve and Maria were staring at her with puzzled looks on their faces. Boy, did these soldier people need to lighten up. At least Clint and Tony were showing appropriate levels of appreciation for Darcy’s awesomeness. She grinned back at them.
“I already told you all, I don’t remember,” Erik said slowly.
“Okay, but could it possibly have been you?” Darcy asked. “Like… your own decision. That you built in secret. Or programmed. However you put commands into a machine that controls an alien space door thingy.”
“I don’t see how it could’ve been,” Erik replied. “He was… into everything. I was key to the plan, you know; he focused a lot of his… attention… on me. My head. There was - no room for deviation. But then again, there was no one giving orders except Loki.”
Darcy glanced up. Erik’s words had clearly reached the rest of the team. Steve and Bruce looked deep in thought, Clint troubled; Maria maintained her stony expression.
“Awesome,” Darcy said. “Thanks. Go back to sleep. This was just a dream.”
“Apparently even my subconscious can’t make you less annoying,” Erik muttered, and hung up.
Darcy snickered and tucked her phone away. “Well, I think we answered that one fairly well.”
“And then there’s the eyes,” Tony said. “Darcy, you said it was the blue eyes that tipped you off about Loki in the building? His eyes were bright blue when I… ran into him here.”
“You mean when he threw you out the window,” Darcy said, grinning.
Tony glared at her. “I’m in my forties, Lewis.”
“Poor old man. Loki’s older and he still kicked your ass.”
Steve jumped in. “That’s enough. Tony, Darcy… What are you suggesting?”
Darcy met Tony’s eyes.
“That Loki was under the influence of the scepter as well,” Tony said quietly.
Silence.
“I mean, all the evidence does seem to be pointing that way,” Darcy said. “And I know you’re not going to want to accept it, but… if someone else was controlling Loki, then maybe our problems aren’t over. And we can’t just bury our heads in the sand. Not if we want to actually do this Avenging schtick.”
“You seem to think that I’m going to just swallow the easy story without pause,” Steve said. His voice was measured but there was a challenge in his eyes.
Darcy leaned back. “Are you?”
“No,” he snapped.
She beamed. “Then we’re fine.”
“There’s not a lot we can do at the moment, though,” Bruce pointed out.
Darcy shrugged. “I can go deal with the guy who’s threatening to sue you for his Hulk-smashed building.”
“Shouldn’t a lawyer handle that?” Steve said.
Darcy smirked. “A lawyer can handle the court case. It’s my job to keep that court case from ever happening. Capiche?”
Steve looked confused.
Darcy ignored him. “‘Kay, I’m out. Text me if there’s any PR disasters I need to head off.”
She walked to the elevator with confidence in her step, but the second Darcy got inside it, she leaned against the wall with a long sigh. Her hands trembled slightly and she clenched them into fists.
Coulson was gone. Saying it… made it so much more real.
She missed the man.
And now she had to go talk to Jane about this.
Darcy allowed herself a count of thirty and then clamped down on her emotions. She got her posture and expression under control and left the elevator feeling much more like herself.