People have always underestimated Darcy Lewis.
First, as a child when she was twig thin and short, all knobby knees and bony elbows. And then later, in middle school when she filled out - thicker in her thighs and hips and breasts, but not fat and not exactly skinny. Then again in high school, when she was the girl who’s mom died.
None of her relatives seemed surprised when she decided not to double major and focused only on political science. Her aunt just smiled, soft and sad and nostalgic, and told her that her mom would have been proud of her, whatever she decided to do. Her father blinked once, twice, and then nodded absently. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” she asked, even though her fight had gone out of her. Call her desperate, but she just wanted a reaction. Something, anything, that showed that he cared even a little bit. He turned towards her, brown eyes glossy and for a moment she thought he was seeing her instead of her mother, was interested in her.
“Becca?” he replied and she frowned, chest caving in as her heart beat painfully in her chest. “No, Daddy,” she whispered, forehead falling against the doorframe. “It’s Darcy.” She paused, lip trembling while she tried to get a hold on her emotions. “I - I have to go. Aunt June will be here soon. I’ll call you sometime, okay?”
It felt like she was forcing herself to go to him, to wrap her arms around his shoulders and then press her lips to his cheek. Darcy left quickly, didn’t pay attention to his half-hearted response. She didn’t look back, didn’t call him much.
So it seemed fitting, somehow, that her words are a plea for help.
Please get us out of here, I can’t breathe, I can’t -
The words are hasty and cramped looking, like the writer’s head is going faster than their hand, and Darcy’s heart hurts when she looks at them. They’re stacked horizontally just above the inside of her elbow, a neat rectangle of messy handwriting. Her mother used to tell her it meant she was going to be a hero, but that was never in the cards for her and that was just a fact hammered in by her mom’s death.
So maybe she was thinking of them when she agreed to follow Jane into New Mexico, and then when she kept following her, or maybe she was thinking of the way her father’s face flickered between indifferent anguish and brittle hope when he looked at her, or the way the sun had glinted off her mother’s sleek, dark casket. Maybe she was thinking of fingers squeezing too tight and covering bruises with makeup or making excuses that even she didn’t believe.
Jane was Darcy’s family, blood be damned. The slender astrophysicist had become a vital part of Darcy’s life, and vice versa. Darcy hadn’t been the only one to acknowledge Jane’s brilliance. So when SHIELD comes knocking after Puente Antiguo, Darcy bought a gun. Her smiles were too wide, her eyes too sharp, and she refused with every bone in her body to be separated from Jane.
So when they suddenly got transferred to Tromsø, followed by radio silence from SHIELD and from Erik, well - Darcy wasn’t stupid. She hadn’t taken eight am classes for a poli science degree just to ignore what she learned. She knew when something was afoot. Some light hacking later, and she was there to hold Jane’s hand while they watched the Battle of New York. And when Thor left without a word, well, she was there to stumble with Jane to the conclusion to give up on the blonde hero.
Darcy first ran into SHIELD in London.
Well, that’s incorrect. Shield first showed interest in her while Jane was in Asgard, while she was in London. The woman entered their small apartment, dismissed Ian, and then settled her with an even look that Darcy matched with an equally bland expression.
“After reviewing your history, your actions, and your potential, Shield would like to express interest in you,” the tall brunette had said, perched delicately on one of the ragged armchairs. “Doing what? Taking science equipment and IPods? Or would I be stuck behind a desk, surrounded by people who would step on me without hesitation to meet their own ambitions?” Darcy shot back, tone like daggers and eyes like ice.
At that, the agent’s lips had tugged slightly at the edges. Darcy wasn’t sure if the agent was laughing at her or with her, and instead crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to think about the hasty words on her skin. She didn’t really succeed, and almost without meaning too, her thumb rubbed against the spot through her sweater for comfort.
The agent noticed, because of course the agent noticed. “Probably a bit of both, along with some other things. I’m Maria Hill, Deputy Director of SHIELD.” If she noticed the way Darcy’s spine straightened and her attention went into laser focus, she didn’t say anything. “What warrants the deputy director coming all this way?” she asked, allowing the redirection of conversation to pass without mention.
Hill’s lips quirked slightly and she leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees. “I see a lot of myself in you, Ms. Lewis. You have a lot of the basic skills we require from new recruits, and more potential than most of the agents that we’re training now,” she paused and then continued. “Off the record, there’s a good chance that you would make it farther than any of them in rank. Being a trainee of deputy director gives you a lot of room to wiggle in, especially if you decide to retire and take up a position on Capitol Hill.”
Darcy could read between the lines; if there wasn’t an offering for Hill’s current job somewhere in there, Darcy would hand over her IPod without a word of complaint. Her eyes fled to the chipped maroon polish on her nails as they sat in silence, thoughts whirling. Blue eyes pinned onto the other woman and then Darcy nodded, left side of her mouth twisting up.
“Alright. Find me after the hellstorm that’s sure to be coming, and I’ll sign all the paperwork you need me to.”
She’s definitely thinking of her soulmate when she’s seated at a table in the SHIELD base in London, signing contracts and NDAs. The possibility of meeting them seems substantially larger now, but the possibility of losing them also increases. Darcy knows loss well enough to know that she’ll come out on the other side.
It doesn’t mean that her soulmate will, though.
She fit into SHIELD surprisingly well. Her tenacity and attitude somehow served her well, as did her bitingly sharp glare and too-wide grin. The recruits around her hated her and the superiors loved her. It was like high school all over again, except this time she was surrounded by people who could kill her with a paperclip if the situation required it. She continued to be underestimated - that is, until she had her doubters belly down beneath her with an arm cranked between their shoulder blades.
And then SHIELD falls. Or, more accurately, Captain America (“Just call me Steve, ma’am”) takes it down. She doesn’t need to ask to know who dumps the information, she’s worked with The Widow enough times that she sees Natasha written all over the thing. Maria is involved, somehow, but she doesn’t ask and Hill doesn’t tell. They stick together, though, and if she hadn’t considered Maria family before, she did now.
They head to Stark Industries, Maria in Human Resources and Darcy in Public Relations. She doesn’t stay there long before Pepper Potts swoops in to snag her. The redhead and Maria have a long conversation tucked in Pepper’s glass office and Darcy chuckles bitterly to herself. She had always wanted to break glass ceilings, and here she was; protected by glass walls and doing her best to preserve them.
And then she has a corner office, with a view that’s absolutely stunning and wears heels five inch heels to meetings where she and Pepper efficiently destroy or fix other companies. Darcy still reports to Maria when something of interest comes up, still goes down every day to make sure that Jane (who has been officially convinced to work at SI) is being taken care of properly, and still thinks of her soulmate less than she maybe should.
Except, her mark has begun to ache. She couldn’t tell you when, exactly, she started to notice the throb, but it’s there. She doesn’t know if it means her soulmate is in physical or emotional pain, but she pushes all of the good vibes she has in her body towards them. Darcy doesn’t know if it actually works, but usually the mark stops throbbing, if only for a short while.
Then Phil Coulson comes to her and tells her that they need all hands on deck. So Darcy shimmies into the suit that Maria tosses to her, equips herself with more knives and guns and ammo than most would recommend, and heads out.
Darcy hasn’t been in the field in a year, maybe more or maybe less, but she finds her groove easily. The bots are a new one, she’ll admit, but once you’ve been the one getting your hands dirty for the Avengers, little seems like a challenge. Some of the baby agents call her ruthless - Maria calls her beautifully efficient.
Maybe it says something about her that she couldn’t care less about Sokovia and relishes in destroying.
Her eyes land on Clint, Natasha’s best friend, her pseudo father figure, curled over a child protectively. She doesn’t hesitate. “Cap! Shield!” she barks out, catching the smooth metal when it comes flying towards her. Darcy’s afraid that she’s not going to make it for a split second - she’s not accustomed to the weight of the shield on her arm - but she does, her body connecting with someone else as she flings herself in front of Barton.
The person goes sprawling, to the left behind her, and she ducks her head while bullets ricochet off the smooth metal in front of her. The bullet pierces her thigh and despite the adrenaline, she recognizes the grunt of pain as her’s. She stumbles as the hail of bullets halts, Clint suddenly at her side with a hand between her shoulders to steady her.
She doesn’t really look too hard at Steve when he sprints pass, flinging the shield and her grin is very much so more of a grimace when he catches it, shooting her a wink. Her eye is drawn to the stunned looking man on the ground, his own pale blue eyes latched on her. He’s handsome despite the dark bags under his eyes, with silver hair and dark roots. She offers him a wry smirk and offers her hand, tugging him up and then heading out.
She’s too busy helping civilians to the helicarrier to notice that her mark is thrumming like a too-fast heartbeat.
For her part, Hill only looks exasperated during the aftermath when she takes in the gun wound in Darcy’s thigh and the long slice on her side. The medics are not so easy going and snap that she’s going to need surgery and ‘don’t you know how lucky you are that it wasn’t higher! As is, you've done a hell of a lot of damage by staying on it!’
When she wakes up after surgery, her thigh wrapped up nice and snug, she’s surprised to find a stranger at her bedside. The woman looks about her age, if not younger, with long, dark hair and blue-green eyes. She smiles, soft and shy, when she notices Darcy looking at her.
“You saved my brother’s life, and for that you have my sincerest gratitude,” the stranger says, and her voice is lower than Darcy would have expected, with a heavy eastern european accent. It’s a nice voice, and Darcy grins back. “The kid that Clint was holding?” she asks, propping herself up on her pillows. The woman shakes her head fondly, though Darcy detects exasperation in her expression.
“No, the one you pushed on his ass,” she replied and Darcy laughs. It feels good to laugh, even though it’s a short moment. “Ah, silver boy,” Darcy paused and then leaned towards the woman with a mischievous grin. “Tell him he needs his roots touched up for me, would you?”
The woman is still for a moment before she’s laughing, probably too hard for Darcy’s jib but she doesn’t seem like she’s laughed in awhile, so Darcy doesn’t dissuade her. “Darcy Lewis at your service,” she says instead, offering a hand. “Wanda Maximoff,” the brunette replies, and Darcy feels a something brush against her concious.
Wanda takes to Darcy like a duck to water, and she wonders if this is what imprinting means. It takes two short weeks for her to begin to open up to Darcy, showing her the powers she was given and talking about what Sokovia was like. She teaches Darcy words in Sokovian and is there when Darcy tells the physical therapist to fuck off.
So, Wanda becomes her walking partner and when she’s finally released from the wing, Wanda is there to help set up the last few things in the apartment Stark gave her in the building. Darcy’s forgotten what friendship feels like, at least friendship like this. Jane’s her sister, and Maria is her partner, but neither truly fit into friendship. They trust each other, dare she say that they love each other, but there is no innocence to their relationships. They’ve all seen too much, apart and together, to cling to innocence.
Darcy wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s still nice to have someone who has seen horrors but isn’t jaded.
Wanda takes her to her physical therapy appointments, quips like a pro, and splits her time between the brother Darcy has yet to meet and Darcy herself. Darcy avoids most of the Avengers when they’re actually at the tower, save Bruce and Tony, and of course the spy twins. It’s nothing against them, but after the fiasco with Shield, trust is hard won (a rule that apparently doesn’t apply to Wanda, because hell if that girl didn’t blow through all her barriers with grin and a raised eyebrow).
The first time she meets Pietro Maximoff is at a required “family” dinner. Wanda would have let Darcy off the hook, made some excuse for her, but when Darcy opens her mouth to tell Maria she’s going to bail, the taller woman levels her with a look that says ‘abandon me and I’ll destroy you’.
So she goes.
She ends up between Wanda and Natasha, with Clint on Natasha’s right and Vision on Wanda’s left. Pietro is across from Wanda, with Maria next to him and across from Darcy. Not fifteen minutes in, Darcy’s phone beeps with Coulson’s ringer. Before she can check, so does Maria’s. They exchange a look and Darcy gives a wry grin as she accepts a red hair tie from Wanda, already winding her hair into a low bun.
“Got to go,” she chirps over the groans coming from the table of superheros, making her way towards the elevator with Maria at her side. Neither see the assessing look Pietro gives her as she leaves, though Wanda gives him a sly look when he glances back at her. He doesn’t need to be a mind reader to see the scheme already forming in her mind, and he narrows his eyes at her.
Her grin widens.
She doesn’t really meet him until two weeks later, when the mission goes south and the Avengers are called in. Hydra’s range is wider than they had previously thought, so when she and Maria get ambushed, it’s a surprise. She’s been caught in a parking garage, and has just taken out a Hydra agent when she hears the crack above her.
Looking up, horror fills her as she watches the ceiling crumble and begin to fall. Darcy squeezes her eyes shut, prays for forgiveness from whatever deity decides to listen, and prepares to die. She waits for concrete to crush her, only for the air to be knocked from her.
When she opens her eyes, she’s face to face with Pietro Maximoff and hell if she knows what to do about it. He’s attractive, but more so up close: in this proximity, she can see the thick, dark lashes surrounding his eyes, the cocky quirk of his mouth, the silver streaked through the stubble on his jaw and through his eyebrows. He was eye catching before (she’s an agent, not blind) but now he’s positively captivating.
She blinks once, twice, and a relieved expression has just started to cross her face when the ceiling crumbles completely. Darcy’s knocked to the ground, her grip on his muscular forearm dragging him down with her. She rolls instinctively, putting her back to a corner, and he comes with her. When the dust settles, their path is blocked by massive amounts of rubble and she gives a weary sigh.
He’s deathly still beside her, so she takes her time to inspect the small area around them. They’re enclosed by fallen concrete, and despite being stronger than she looks and him being pretty beefy himself, she doubts that they’d be able to move any of the main concrete blocking them in. She’s begun to piece together an escape route when a strangled inhale behind her catches her attention again.
Pietro was fairly vibrating, eyes darting and chest heaving. She doesn’t have to be an agent to see that he’s having a panic attack, and when she shifts slightly, his eyes lock on her. “Please get us out of here, I can’t breathe, I can’t -” his words choke off suddenly, and she can see the tears in his eyes. In her soulmate’s eyes.
Darcy knows the protocol for an agent having an anxiety attack, she’s talked a few agents out of them before, but it all goes out the window when he says her words. She doesn’t hesitate, crossing the small distance between them to reach up, cupping his jaw with both hands. Warmth explodes through her when she touches him, a feeling of rightness settling in her chest and she draws his forehead down to rest against her’s.
When she speaks, there’s absolute certainty in her voice. “I promise you, we’re going to get out of here safely.” He stares at her hard, blinking rapidly to push away the tears she can see threatening to spill down his cheeks. She doesn’t really know if he understands the weight of her words, or even if she’s his soulmate, but whatever he sees in her expression must convince him that he can put his faith in her.
He nods.
It’s a little difficult to figure out their path with him gripping her hand like a lifeline, but she doesn’t mind. She leads him through the small gap, talking about nonsense like the lipstick she got Wanda for her birthday and how Maria is definitely going to have their tech’s ass for this entire situation and how she doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.
When they finally break through to daylight, the battle seems to be dying out and she turns to him, studying him hard. His breathing has evened out, but there’s still a haunted look in his eye and that same nervous energy surrounds him. He catches her peering at him and gives her a quick grin, one side of his mouth curling up like he’s answering a challenge.
He tugs her into him, buries his face in her hair and whispers “thank you” against the shell of her ear. She tries not to shiver or to focus on the hard lines of his body against her or the way that he smells underneath the odor of sweat and rubble. He releases her after a few seconds that feel like eternity, and then wiggles his eyebrows. “I’m off to save the world,” he quips and then he’s gone, a faint blur of blue fading behind him.
Darcy just grins to herself and fiddles with her comm, relieved when it only takes slight adjustment to get her back in touch with the team. She throws herself back into the battle, and it’s enough to take her attention from the soulmate situation. It doesn’t stop her from seeking him out whenever she gets the chance, eyes searching for the telltale trail of blue or for his mop of silver hair. If Wanda sees her looking, she doesn’t mention it.
She ends up piloting the quinjet back to the compound with Maria, because Natasha is performing first aid for who needs it and Clint is completely wiped out, dozing against the wall of the jet. Darcy doesn’t mind, because at least she won’t have to dissect the loaded looks that both Wanda and Pietro keep settling her with. Maria knows something’s up, because of course she does. She asks silently, a neat brow arched when she glances over and in response Darcy pretends to crack her back and lets her eyes fall meaningfully on Pietro.
Maria glances in the same direction, both eyebrows raised when she looks back at Darcy, who subtly rubs her thumb against her concealed mark. Satisfied by that answer, Maria smirks and continues flying as if nothing happened and dammit, sometimes Darcy wants to punch her. She doesn’t, but the way that Maria glances over a few more times means that there’s sure to be a girl’s night with Natasha, Jane, Wanda, and Pepper in the near future.
The fast pace at the compound, of debriefing and getting people to medical and writing her report of the entire situation, means that she doesn’t come face to face with Pietro until three days after they first spoke to each other. She’s sprawled face down on the couch, finally able to let her body relax. She’d gotten back not half an hour before and has never been so thankful for the lack of people in the tower.
She feels him before she sees him, her mark thrumming to life and a tingle at the top of her spine. He appeared a moment later, sliding to the floor next to her face. Darcy took the moment to study his profile, smiling lazily with pure satisfaction of being so close to her soulmate. His lips quirked upwards as if he heard the sentiment and he turned his head to face her, pale eyes pinning her in place.
“You keep saving me,” he said softly, and his voice is deeper than his sister’s and soothes the rest of the tension out of her shoulders. “I do, don’t I?” she replied, voice equally quiet, a little rough from exhaustion. He takes a moment to study her and she stares unabashedly back, fondness she shouldn’t feel so strongly rushing through her. It feels too soon, but she knows him through Wanda; she’s been graced with dozens of stories from their childhood, of recent events.
She wants to hear all of those stories and then some from his perspective.
He leans forward suddenly, chastely kissing her cheek and the corner of her mouth before letting his lips brush against her own. His breath smells like mint toothpaste and his cologne is mild and accents the clean smell of men’s soap nicely. He pulls away then, pinning his bottom lip with his teeth. “Is that okay?” he asked and she can’t see any of the arrogance that Wanda so often complains about.
“Yeah,” she whispered back, propping her head up with on hand, elbow digging into the soft cushions below her. “Yeah?” he parrots, a pleased smile beginning to spread across his face. Her breathing hitches just a little, stunned into silence by the expression as she mutely nods. He leans forward again, pressing his lips against her’s a little more firmly and she relaxes into it. It’s soft and innocent for all the warmth that washes through her, and she hums happily in her throat when they part again.
“Movie?” she offers, pushing up to settle against the arm of the couch. He nodded silently and while Friday pulls up Netflix, they settle together like they’ve done this a thousand times before. Her shoulders are propped up by cushions and he’s settled between her legs, arms wrapped loosely around her waist and his head resting against her chest.
As she wraps her arms around his shoulders, she realizes that it’s intimate. Too intimate for a pair of soulmates that have just truly met and who haven’t gotten to know each other. Then again, she thinks as she watches the tension slide from the lines of his shoulder and back, they’re a pair of definitely-not-platonic soulmates. Who’s to say there’s rules they have to follow?
So she cards her fingers through his hair as the movie begins to play, and every moment of hell that she’s been put through is suddenly worth it when he sighs in contentment and presses a soft kiss to her forearm.