One Chance
Stark starts talking almost before they get through the door, his tone sharp and his gaze hyper-focussed. “I think they found another of your sisters. Is it the one who killed my parents?”
Darcy blinks in surprise. Stark’s wild-eyed and nearly vibrating with energy, but at least he’s not trying to kill her. Discreetly, she returns her knife to its sheath and looks around. Stark’s main 3D display has been converted to a world map covered in a multitude of virtual pins. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s the Red Room’s progress on tracking you down,” Stark says. “Try and keep up, would you?”
Though most of the pins are blue, one is red and sits somewhere in Australia. Darcy steps forward and taps it lightly. It expands to reveal Anya’s photo shoot, the words ‘Asset retrieved’ blinking along the bottom. Another touch minimises it again. There’s another red pin located in New York — that, she doesn’t need to see. She turns to Stark as Bucky munches on one of the pastries they thought to collect from the common kitchen on the way.
Stark huffs in annoyance at her raised eyebrows. “They had some rudimentary facial recognition software trawling the net, okay? These are the ones it identified. Their files indicate they are in the process of tracking them down one by one. I had Friday run a more detailed scan of their results using their parameters and one jumped out.” He jabs a finger at a green pin in New Zealand and another photo magnifies.
It is a head shot, professionally taken from the looks of it. The young woman looks confident, competent, and heart-achingly familiar, even though her hair is darker than Darcy remembers.
“It’s one of the Lynxes,” Tony continues. “I need you to tell me which one.”
“Why would I do that?” Darcy counters, minimising the photo once more, though not without stealing one more look. “Why would I betray my sister to you? I can’t imagine you want to offer her the Maria Stark Foundation scholarship.”
“I-” For a second, Stark looks lost, as if the question hadn’t occurred to him, but then his face hardens. “She needs to face justice!”
Darcy snorts. “For what? For killing your parents? Again with the lack of proof, Stark. All you have is an ancient file that doesn’t even call her by name.”
“She’s still a murderer.”
“If you’re going to use that logic, so am I.”
Stark’s expression turns crafty. “Maybe I should turn you in myself, then.”
Darcy waves the idea away like a particularly irritating fly, feigning an indifference she doesn’t feel. “Go ahead. But I am not trading my hard-won freedom for that of my sisters’ and you are not using me to get close to them.” She smiles, knows there’s no happiness in the expression. “Besides, I’d wager they’d find it hard to hold me.”
“Us.”
She smiles up at Bucky’s gruff correction, flicks a flake of pastry off his chin. “No, you need to stay in the shadows so you can bust me out. The Lynx isn’t even a footnote in the annals of history, they’ll underestimate me. The Winter Solder? Not so much.”
“Or,” Bucky looms over Stark, forcing the short inventor to look up. “You could leave us alone and we’ll be on our way.”
“We still need to rescue Anya,” Darcy reminds him. “Even more after what we talked about last night.”
“Rescue her?” Stark asks. “Barton said she betrayed you back there. We saw her evacuate the training compound with the rest of them. Doesn’t seem like she wants or needs rescuing.”
Darcy and Bucky shudder in unison. “Brainwashing,” Darcy states flatly, and Stark’s eyes narrow.
“Is this just another trick to play on my sympathies? You’ve used the only card you held — I know who killed my parents now.”
“It’s no trick,” Darcy assures him. “But if a brainwashed assassin trained and controlled by a foreign secret service is not enough motivation to act in and of itself, I guess we know what you really think of the greater good. Guess we’re not so far from the weapons manufacturer after all.”
She knows who she was working for - like any good asset, she did her research. All of it indicated Tony Stark truly regretted that period in his company’s not-too-ancient history. Controlling her face carefully, she feels a surge of satisfaction as Stark looks pained, then resigned.
“Fine. I won’t turn her in — but I still want to talk to her, and soon. For all we know, the Red Room are tracking her down as we speak. The virus I wrote would have wiped this from their system but I don’t know what type of backups they kept.”
Darcy nods. “Let us know when the quinjet leaves.”
“What makes you think we’re letting you in on this? You’ve already had one sister beat you up.”
“Believe it or not, Stark, I care about my sisters and we both don’t want the Red Room to get their hands on any of them. At least let me talk to her first.”
“Fine. But if this one beats you up too, don’t come running to my medic for help.”
“Believe me, I won’t,” Darcy says, hoping against hope it wouldn’t come to that.
A young couple step into the offices of a mid-level law office. His dark brown hair is pulled into a loose bun, hers curls loose around a face topped with heavy glasses. “We’re here to see Ms Williams,” she says to the receptionist. “James and Darcy Lewis?”
The receptionist scrolls through the calendar on his computer and nods. “She’s ready for you. Second office on the right?”
They thank him and cross the office floor, past the pod of law clerks tapping away at their computers. If he stays a half step behind her and keeps a wary eye on their surroundings, the clerks are too busy researching to notice. Darcy stops at the appropriate door and notes the mismatched fading underneath the nameplate. Tapping on the door, they receive a “come in” from inside.
The woman inside stands up to greet them as they enter. She looks near-identical to the photo Stark found, though the welcoming smile she wears drops off her face, to be replaced with wide, shocked eyes.
“Darya?”
Bucky shuts the door behind them as Darcy offers up a shy smile. “Hey, Katya.”
“What are you doing here?” Katya demands, dropping into Russian.
“Nice to see you too,” Darcy says in the same language.
“I mean it! The separation was your idea. ‘We’ll be safer if we never see each other again.’ What happened to that?”
Darcy shrugs. “Plans change. I met my soulmate, ended up coming clean to the Avengers.”
Katya fixes a bright, fake smile onto her face and Darcy abruptly remembers Katya is unmarked. “Nice to meet you,” Katya says to Bucky, in flawless, unaccented English. “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this.”
“Not a problem,” Bucky replies amiably, and Katya switches her focus back to Darcy.
“The Avengers? You thought Romanova would help you? She never lifted a finger to help us before.”
“To be fair, she didn’t know we existed. We disappeared pretty effectively.”
“Then why are you here?” Katya hisses. “We were out! I have a life here and you bring the Avengers to my doorstep?” She glances out her window as if expecting Iron Man to be hovering outside.
“We have a problem,” Darcy begins, but Katya shakes her head, throwing her hands up in the air.
“I don’t care! You see that?” She points to a set of certificates on her wall. “That is my law degree! Five and a half years studying law and history. Do you know how hard it is to get into law school when you never finished high school?”
“…No, but-”
“Scrap that, when you never attended school at all, let alone in the right country? I had to falsify thirteen years of schooling just to get into university! And next to my degree? That’s the certificate I got for busting my ass as a clerk and getting my profs. I’m a certified immigration lawyer, now, Darya. I help people start new lives, not end them! I have a photo on the website! So unless you and your soulmate need some help applying for a visa, you can take your problem and go back to the Avengers!”
There is a knock on the door. “Everything okay in there, Katie?”
Katya smooths down her hair and steps around Bucky to open the door wide. “Not at all, Gav. These two just wanted to sue for personal injury, didn’t seem to get that’s not how things work around here. Americans, right?”
There is a ripple of laughter from around the room. Katya looks at Darcy meaningfully, tilts her head towards the exit. “Nice to meet you, Mrs Lewis, Mr Lewis, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Darcy doesn’t need to fake her disappointment, not in front of all these people, but she can’t leave without giving some type of warning. “You might end up Red,” she says as she passes her sister. “I hear that’s going around.”
Katya’s smile doesn’t falter. “I’ll take my chances, thanks.”
“If you change your mind, we’re at the Intercontinental Hotel. Room 317.”
“Absolutely. Have a nice day.”
As they reach the receptionist’s desk, Darcy tries one more time. “And if you meet an Anya, don’t trust her.”
Katya freezes for the slightest second. Her lips part to ask more, but the clerks are watching with interest. Lips firming into a thin smile, she ushers Darcy and Bucky from the office.
Defeat bitter in her mouth, Darcy slumps against Bucky, who slips an arm around her waist. “We did what we could,” he murmurs into her hair.
“She didn’t even hear us out,” Darcy complains. “I don’t remember her being this stubborn.”
“You said she liked her plans, right? You did just upend several of hers. At least she knows to be vigilant.”
“At least there’s that.”
“So this was never the one who killed my parents?”
“I never said it was, Stark.” Darcy shoots a glare at Romanova. “How have you not killed any of these idiots yet?”
Romanova smirks. “Haven’t you heard? I’m one of the good guys now. Good guys tend to look down on casual murder.” She inspects her nails, rubbing an imaginary smudge off one before adding “I can’t say I haven’t been tempted, though.”
“As if you could,” Stark snorts, leaning back on his chair and kicking his feet onto the table. Every head in the room turns to him in disbelief. “Listen, I’m not knocking you, Romanoff,” he says defensively. “But all I hear from this one is talk, talk, talk. Seems like the Red Room got soft on their recruits after you left.”
Darcy stalks towards him, ice filling her veins. “Soft?” she hisses. “You want to talk to me about soft, Tony Stark? You grew up in luxury — even in the Red Room, we heard of Howard Stark and Stark Industries, American capitalists profiting off the blood of innocents. They killed your parents when you were 21? Boo hoo, they killed mine when I was five, so I would grow up in the ‘orphanage’. I first shot a gun at seven, killed a man at ten. When we were eight, they broke our right arms so we would learn to shoot with our left. I can hold a plié for six hours because Trainer Petrova would strap us for every inch of deviation. Every nice thing I had was at the expense of one of my sisters — a ribbon for knocking Clara unconscious, an extra portion of dinner for coming first in the survival exercise as Iliana froze to death outside. We followed orders because it was all we were ever taught to do because punishment could mean being target practice the next day. Yes, I’ve killed people, and so have all my sisters. But we did it to survive and we were damn good at it, too. So go ahead and judge from your ivory tower, but don’t be surprised when your arrogance comes back to haunt you. It’s no more than you deserve.”
Stark’s eyes grow wider and wider during her rant. As she tails off, it’s clear he has no idea what to say. Tired of the whole thing, Darcy stomps through to the adjoining suite. Slamming the door behind her, she comes to an abrupt halt when she sees Steve Rogers slumped on the sofa, head in his hands. He looks up at her entrance and it takes all she has to repress a sigh at the kicked-puppy look on his face. “Miss Lewis? Uh, Darcy?”
“What now?” she demands.
“I wanted to apologise. For what I said before, and how I acted. It was unconscionably rude and presumptuous. It all took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“Apology accepted,” Darcy grinds out. When he doesn’t make to move, she sighs. “What else?”
“He won’t talk to me.”
She doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about, not with the way he stares at their closed bedroom door. “Why would he?”
“Because I’m his friend! We grew up together, back in Brooklyn.”
“Correction: you were his friend before they went and screwed with his head. For the last 70 years, you’ve been the living embodiment of the enemy.” Seeing his woebegone face, she softens. “Look, it took all of us by surprise. Give him some time and space.”
He nods, brightening somewhat, and she shakes her head at the oddity of acting as agony aunt to Captain America. She crosses to the bedroom door, finds it locked. Rattling the handle, she calls “It’s me! Let me in, would you?”
The door opens so suddenly, she nearly falls into Bucky, who pulls her inside and shuts the door again behind her. “Heard you talking to Steve,” he mutters, arms closing around her protectively.
“Oh, it’s Steve now, is it?” she teases.
“I guess it is. Huh.”
“Does this mean you’re remembering more?”
He pulls away slightly to look down at her, thoughtful. “I don’t know. It comes and goes. What was the yelling?”
“You heard that from here?” At his nod, she sighs. “Just Stark being Stark.”
“Asshole.”
“No argument from me on that front. Maybe he’ll get a clue, now.”
“Good luck with that.”
Pepper drags Tony back to America for an SI board meeting after two days and Steve is recalled for a SHIELD mission soon after. Before long, it is just Barton and Romanova left in New Zealand with them.
“It’s pretty much a holiday,” Barton confides, munching a cheese scone from a cafe down the road. “The moment I step back onto American soil, Fury will have something for me to do that will no doubt be both boring and dangerous. I like babysitting duty much better.”
Bucky and Darcy, both older than him, share a glance and snort in unison.
“Why are we still here, anyway?” he asks, brushing crumbs off his lap. “I get that me and Tasha need to watch you, but you’ve tried to talk to this girl on four separate occasions and she’s avoided you each time.”
“I can’t just leave her,” Darcy says, though the words sound flat, even to her ears.
“Stark paid up until the end of the week,” Romanova informs them from her spot in the corner. “After that, if there has been no significant developments, I say we go.”
Reluctantly, Darcy nods. It seems the Red Room weren’t coming for Katya after all.
The night before they are set to leave, Darcy sleeps badly. Despite Bucky’s presence sleeping soundly beside her, she tosses and turns. When she finally falls asleep, the nightmares come thick and fast until something jolts her awake. Knife in hand, she finds herself on her feet, blinking into the dark.
“What is it?” Bucky asks from beside her, his silhouette a defensive pose that mirrors her own.
Darcy creeps over to the window and peers out. Downtown, something is burning, billows of smoke obscuring the lights of the city. Even as she looks, sirens begin to wail in the distance.
“I think there’s been an explosion.”
Bucky joins her at the window. “Is that Katya’s office?”
Heart pounding in her chest, Darcy dresses quickly, knives slotting into place like old friends. Her thighs feel light without her pistols strapped to them, but it hadn’t seemed worth the hassle to get them authorised through New Zealand’s strict gun laws.
She is pulling her hair into a ponytail when there is a knock at the door to the apartment. Peering through the peephole, she breathes a sigh of relief — then remembers Anya.
“Cover me,” she hisses to Barton and Romanova as they emerge from their own room, similarly clad. The others spread out around the lounge and take cover behind the furniture as Darcy opens the door.
Katya stands there in, sooty and smelling of smoke. There is a rapidly forming bruise on one cheek and her bottom lip is split and swollen. “You were right,” she admits.
“Right about what?” Darcy asks, studying her sister for any signs of coercion.
“Everything, all right? Now let me in. I swiped an access card to get up here and I don’t know when they will notice it gone.”
There’s something off about her posture, though she has none of that unnatural stiltedness Anya was exhibiting. Still, Darcy signals for the others to remain behind cover before opening the door wider. She ushers her sister in, then checks the hallway behind her for signs of pursuit. Seeing none, she closes the door and turns to face her sister. “What happened?”
“Anya just blew up my office.”
“We did try and warn you,” Bucky reminds her, crossing the room to stand with Darcy. “Several times. You didn’t want to listen.”
“Because I like my life! I’m tired of running and hiding and changing my name.”
Darcy thinks back, to years of new names and new faces, memorising a new backstory in case anyone ever asked, and to more recently, choosing to stay Darcy Lewis even when it was clear they had found her. “Tell me about it. At least you’re alive, right?”
“Yeah, but my career is in ruins. The firm was barely breaking even; the senior partner made it clear to me that if things took a turn for the worse, I would be the first to go.” She laughs, short and bitter. “I suppose this would qualify. After all, it is my fault.”
Darcy sighs and turns to flick the light on. “What actually happened?”
There is a strangled gasp from behind her and she spins, dropping into a crouch. Katya’s eyes are fixed on Bucky’s arm and one hand is raised as if to ward him off. “Zimniy Soldat,” she breathes, backing away from them. “Darya, what have you done?”
Darcy straightens, replaces her knives back in her sheaths. “I told you, Katya, I found my soulmate. Good thing I did, otherwise I’d be dead by now.” She goes to loosen her tac vest, realises it won’t convince her sister of anything. She nudges Bucky instead. “Take off your top.”
He turns to her, startled. “What?”
“Katya knows my handwriting. Take off your top.”
He does not look amused. “I’m not removing protective gear in the presence of a potential threat.”
“But if she sees your soulmark…?”
“That won’t help. If things had turned out differently with Anya, we could both be loyal minions of the Motherland once more.”
“The Avengers,” Katya says, looking between the two of them. “You said you were with the Avengers. Prove it.”
“’With’ is overstating things a bit,” Clint says from behind Katya, and she jumps nearly a foot into the air.
Darcy snorts. “That’s not what you said when I gave you cookies yesterday.”
“You must have done something to those. Nothing good can smell that heavenly.” His eyes sharpen as they rake over Katya. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
Darcy takes another look and hisses out a sharp breath, recognising the way Katya is holding herself. “It’s broken, isn’t it? What’d you do, get caught in a headlock?”
Katya nods, fine lines at the corners of her mouth. “She should’ve remembered I knew how to break that hold. What happened to her?”
Darcy opens her mouth to answer but Romanova beats her to it.
“We should get moving. This location may be compromised if you were followed. Do you have ID? Under a new name?”
“Yes, but it’s at my flat…”
Romanova sighs. “We’ll get it. Lewis, get her cleaned up and ready to move. We’ll meet you at the airport.”
Katya gives them her address and they disappear out the door. Bucky stands guard as Darcy sets Katya’s arm with a splint and some bandages, then Katya washes up in the bathroom as Darcy fetches some makeup to cover her bruises.
“Family emergency,” Darcy tells the night manager, dropping the keycards on his desk. Before he has a chance to question them further, they hustle through the main doors and vanish into the night.