Bygone

Darcy spends two full weeks with John, Rebecca and JJ. Until Howard comes himself to pry her away and back to his labs.

EJ is always on his case about drinking while he’s healing, and Howard is always trying to sneak some. Plus he ‘pulled something’ entertaining a lady of questionable intelligence called Fawn. Darcy judges him for weeks on that.

When she goes back to London with him in the Spring, Rebecca makes her promise not to hijack anymore planes. Darcy holds up her end of the deal, but she does get caught up in a small explosion during a weapons testing gone wrong.

“I told you, Howard!” She grumbles, one ear ringing. She tastes blood in her mouth and discovers she’d bitten her tongue. Her mauve pantyhose are shredded.

A shrill alarm is shrieking.

“Where’s the fire?” Howard yells.

Darcy looks around, but doesn’t see one. She climbs free from the wreckage of her desk and checks all of her limbs. Deciding she’s in acceptable shape, she picks her way through the jumble of rubble to Howard.

He’s on his back and staring up and the ceiling in a dazed manner. His face is black with soot, and part of his right eyebrow is singed off. Darcy grunts as she lifts a filing cabinet off him.

A corner of another table is covering his feet and she tosses it aside, then sighs. “Damn it, Howard. You blew off your damn toe.”

She calls him the nine toed wonder after that. He’s not impressed. After any type of lab accident, big and small, she asks after his toe until he just tacks that onto his status reports to beat her to it.

“Next time we’ll crank it up to five, and my toe is fine.”

The other lab workers ignore it. EJ always smirks discreetly into his collar.

Her ear is still ringing when she arrives stateside in the early summer for JJ’s fifth birthday party.

Rebecca and Darcy help the cook with the cake, much to the woman’s annoyance. Bunting and streamers are draped throughout the backyard, and tables are set up with tablecloths.

Gabe Jones shows up early, saying he thought he’d keep Darcy company. John and Rebecca are happy to meet him, and Gabe says he can see the family resemblance between Rebecca and Bucky.

The adults at the party have a mixed reaction to Gabe, and Darcy hears several people muttering about the colored man.

“Darcy Rogers!” Ruth proclaims loudly. “I haven’t seen you in an age! Or is it still Rogers?”

Ruth looks slyly to Gabe sitting next to Darcy on the garden wall. It’s obvious she’s hoping for something salacious.

“It’s still Rogers.” Darcy replies, teeth on edge. “You must not recognize Gabe Jones, one of Steve’s Commandos.”

“He was my Uncle Bucky’s friend, right Aunt Darcy?” JJ collides with Darcy’s legs. He has a metal figure airplane clutched in one hand and a party hat in the other. “My hat came off.”

Darcy takes the proffered hat and sets it back on his head, tying the strings in a bow under his chin.

“Gabe, make me fly.” JJ demands, holding his arms up. After that most of the men in the party are recruited to be the supports for an air battle.

Ruth seems thrown by the interaction, either Darcy’s aggressive response, or maybe her nephew’s obvious adoration of Gabe. Or maybe it’s the arrival of Gladys, who doesn’t suffer any bullshit these days.

“Darcy, you look wonderful.” Gladys observes. Her lips twitch. “You must share your skin regimen.”

“Raw liver under the eyes once a week.” Darcy responds promptly.

“Truly?” Ruth frowns, but then nods. “I suppose it isn’t stranger than some of those masks.”

There’s a yell and then a crying voice calling for a mother, and Ruth huffs. “I told Robert to be careful with her. An airplane! What does a little girl need to pretend to be an airplane for anyway?”

“She’ll be putting liver on her face tomorrow, I guarantee it.” Gladys says, taking a draw off her cigarette.

Gabe returns to her side nearly an hour later, rubbing at his left arm. “They should have recruits come to a kid’s birthday party during boot camp.”

Darcy returns to the mansion with Falsworth who was still recovering from his injury. He’d had corrective surgery and was nearing the end of his recovery period and restless with it. He’s a damn slave driver, and Darcy clocks more time in the air than she does on the ground excluding sleep time.

In July Darcy joins Falsworth and Howard in piloting SHIELD planes running cargo across the Atlantic. The cargo is top secret, and Peggy hadn’t wanted to bring in anyone else. The group of people Peggy trusts implicitly is small, and comes to be referred to as the Rogers Circle by the high level people who know of it. They think it has to do with Steve, when in reality it’s because the people inside of it are the ones who address Darcy by her real name.

The flights are supposed to be low risk, and they fly in formation together. Her second to last flight has her engaging in evasive maneuvers after taking fire from a boat below.

She sticks as Falsworth’s shadow, and he keeps both of them safe.

Falsworth radios ahead to Peggy and she sends reinforcements.

After that he has her back in the airspace above Stark Mansion again. At first she just has to stay in his shadow, and he has Bruno on the ground watching for the slight deviances on her part. Bruno is ruthless in his reports, and Darcy hates them both.

The commandos come to watch, and Morita calls her an ace. Gabe and Jacques congratulate her. Falsworth looks over Bruno’s notes and gives her a considering look and says she’s not bad.

Darcy is soaked with sweat, her arm muscles ache from fighting the plane into dives, barrel rolls, and one goddamn loop de loop. She punches him right in the damn face, and he grins at her through his bloody nose.

Dum-Dum is quiet while EJ goes for ice for her hand.

“What?” Darcy asks him. “Don’t think I won’t punch you too. Jacques, you’ll knock him down so I can reach, right?”

“Just can’t help but wonder what Cap would think of this.” Dum-Dum says. “And Peggy set me straight on her, but she’s trained for this.”

“What do think flying with Falsworth has been? Paling around? If so, James, you’re fired as my friend and I never want to hang out again.”

“But the rest of us are still on probation, right?” Morita asks, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

“I can tell you what Steve would think of this.” Darcy says. “Because when he changed up his body, he changed up from neighborhood bullies to Nazis and Hydra, but he was the same man. Steve would have been beside himself with worry the first time I flew. He would have hated it. And then after that he would have been proud of me, he would have believed in me and trusted me. And I never would have made the jump from the wing to the ground, because he would have been waiting to catch me.”

Her last flight goes off without a hitch, other than the September fog that rolled in over DC.

Morita is waiting under the wing and she shakes her head at him before jumping into his arms. “You’re off probation. Don’t tell the others.”

He tells them as soon as they get inside.

Dum-Dum is walking her through the SHIELD facility underground when she feels the prick and tingle.

“Well, damn.”

Dum-Dum looks down at her, his bowler hat tipped jauntily to the side. His arm darts towards her, but his fingers close over nothing.