Bygone

Their foray into the outside world has burst their bubble, and something uneasy jitters between them.

Tony helps her work on her tasers. He sets her up with a pager to go in her pouch that she can kind of ping his pager with. He gives her a credit card and promises to make sure it always works. She kind of doubts that and makes sure she has cash on her.

They fight over the things she won’t tell him about where she’s from and how all of this had happened to her.

“How am I supposed to fix it if you won’t give me anything to start with?” He yells.

“I don’t want to change anything!” She yells back.

“So you’re from the future. That’s a thing that’s real.” He’s thoughtful, staring at her with narrowed eyes.

Darcy leaves. She flies to see Dum-Dum. She sneaks him greasy hamburgers. She sees Falsworth and does his hair again, since he won’t let any of the nurses or medical staff do it. Like the last time, his mind is lost in the past.

She plays along, and while it hurts, it also reminds her of the friend Peggy had been to her. One time it had been Peggy waiting under her wing, with open arms and a grin on her face.

On her way out she has to hide in a janitorial closet when an older but still recognizable Tina Jones passes her in the hallway, headed to her father’s friend’s room.

Darcy flies to DC to visit Peggy. Peggy lives in the house she’d raised her family in, but she lives alone. Darcy doesn’t ask when Charles passed away, and Peggy doesn’t offer the information.

Instead they have lunch and then tea. Twice Peggy tells her the same story about her granddaughter Maggie, who won a gymnastics competition.

Like Morita’s granddaughter Meg, Maggie is named Margaret after Peggy.

Darcy accepts her invitation to stay the night, if only because she is exhausted. Peggy makes her a full English breakfast in the morning and laughs remembering the time Steve tried blood sausage.

Something in the way that Peggy tells the story, almost proprietorially, makes Darcy think the woman has forgotten who she is.

Then Peggy offers her more eggs, and looks up with a crinkle of her brow. “Darcy?”

“Yep.” Darcy smiles. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“Of course, darling.” Peggy smiles, but her eyes are worried.

Darcy calls Morita and tells him about what she’d seen. He acknowledges that it’s been happening more and more.

“She needs someone with her then. It starts with mild confusion, but then she’ll leave something on the stove and take a nap, or she’ll drive to the store and forget where she is.” Darcy tells him.

“I’ll talk with Dan and Ellie.” Morita says, voice heavy.

“I saw Tina yesterday. She didn’t see me, don’t worry. How is she? Davis?”

“They’re fine. Darcy, I’ve got to go now.” Morita says. “You’ll call me Saturday?”

“At our normal time.”

Jim comes to visit them before he leaves on a deployment. Tony is wired. He has a meal catered that’s enough to feed twenty-five, buys a yacht in case Jim wants to take the party out to sea, and gives Jim a custom pager that should work within twenty-five miles of any major city.

“You’ll take care of him?” Jim asks her the next day, after eating her breakfast specialty - toast. Tony is still dead to the world.

“For as long as I can.” Darcy replies. Jim frowns. “It’s-

“Complicated.” He surprises her by giving her a hug. “He’s better. So I’m glad you came.”

Darcy nods.

He hesitates, his travel bag looped over his shoulder, aviators clipped to the neck of his t-shirt. “Tony is my best friend. Lord knows how it happened.”

“You might have the US Air Force fooled, James Rhodes, but don’t pull that I’m on the straight and narrow bullshit with me.” Darcy tells him.

“He’s an arrogant asshole with the emotional maturity of a nine year old.” Jim puts a hand on her shoulder, looking her directly in the eye. It’s a big change from interacting with Tony, and it makes it harder for her to shove her emotions down so she can look like a functioning human being. “I know you’re hurting. I don’t know what Howard and Maria were to you, what Tony means to you, but I can tell it’s real.”

Darcy looks away, because if she doesn’t she might start crying. These days it doesn’t take much, although it has been getting better. “Words could never describe what the Starks were to me.”

Jim pulls a card from his pocket. “Tony already has this, but I’m giving it to you too. He told me to put you down as Darcy Barnes. If you need anything, even just to talk, you can call me.”

Darcy nods, but as she looks at him, she’s thinking she doesn’t think she can take losing anyone else. She’s already petrified to leave again. She’s gonna lose people, guaranteed. And Jim is getting deployed.

He claps a hand on her shoulder, and then he’s gone.

Darcy heads down to the lab, needing work. Something to keep her mind busy.

Tony comes straight to the lab when he wakes. She can tell because he’s still sleep rumpled and attached to his coffee mug. He works for thirty-six hours straight. He doesn’t mention their fight, or Jim’s absence, and neither does Darcy.

He ignores her for three days when she attempts to bring it up a few weeks later, so she goes to see Peggy again.

The visit turns into a week long trip into Canada. She’s partnered with Maggie Carter, Peggy’s award winning gymnast granddaughter turned apparent SHIELD operative that isn’t opposed to taking unsanctioned assignments from her grandmother.

They’re tasked with investigating a government financed human experimentation facility that had recently been destroyed. Peggy apparently has maintained some contacts within SHIELD, and whatever this is, there are a lot of questions. Darcy worries about what might be real, and what might be dementia. But Peggy is agitated and worked up, and when she asks Darcy to go, there is something heavy in her eyes.

“You know you only have to ask, Peg.” Darcy tells her.

Darcy gets to fly a new prototype tentatively named a Quinjet.

It’s supposed to be near-perfect. Darcy has a few words for whoever decided that, not that she’ll ever get to say them. The thing is buggy as hell, and the weather turns to shit.

Maggie Carter is a jarring mix of her grandparents. She has Charles’ curly brown hair, face, and green eyes. But her build, and her expressions are clearly Peggy. She also has Peggy’s demeanor as she readies herself for the mission. Cool competence, ease that comes from the self-assurance that practically oozes from her pores.

Despite the various malfunctions of the plane, Maggie seems to trust Darcy implicitly. She notices Darcy checking on her.

“Gran said you’re the best pilot she’s seen since Falsworth.” Maggie says, and her measuring look is all Peggy. “Gran says my shooting is ‘adequate’, and I’ve been the best in my class for three years running.”

“I once landed a foreign plane in a blizzard with a bomb in my lap, and your Gran said it was sloppy.”

Maggie grins and unzips a pocket on her jumpsuit. She holds out a green and orange can. “RAWR? They’re delicious.”

Darcy shrugs and takes the can, and Maggie pulls out another.

Outside the windshield the storm clouds roll below. For now Darcy has managed to put the jet above them. She opens the can and takes a sip, then promptly sprays it all over the dash.

That will have to do for getting back at the fucked in the head tester.

“I am never trusting you again.” Darcy says, wiping her mouth. She’s tempted to try to wipe her tongue off.

“Well, it’s kind of an acquired taste, but then it’s the best.” Maggie offers, looking at the drink covered control panel with no small amount of amusement. “Like coffee.”

Darcy gasps. “You shut your whore mouth, Carter.”

“Does Gran know you talk like that?”

“Remember my sloppy landing?” Darcy asks, giving in and trying to wipe the taste off her tongue with her fingers. Maggie nods. “I told her to shove it up her ass.”

Darcy realizes just then that Peggy is the only one she never took back off of probation. It had all been a long running joke, but Darcy would bet that Peggy had noticed. Maybe there was only so much you could do once someone had kissed your husband, wartime or no.

Their joking camaraderie comes to an end once they reach the facility. Whoever had destroyed it hadn’t been fucking around, but there’s still evidence left behind.

Ruble with iron hand restraints bolted to the wall. Claw marks dug deep into cement floors by repetition, not strength. Terrifying looking tanks with restraint chains inside.

They diligently photograph everything. There are no records left behind, and no computers. Someone had already been and gone, cleaning the place up as best they could. Darcy finds an electric shock set up hooked up to a metal bed frame.

It’s been a solemn three hours when Darcy hears a gunshot. She ducks down, thinking that she might not have been seen, but then a bullet ricochets off a piece of cement near her head and she has to think fast.

She’s not gonna say it was pretty, but she manages to make her way to where Maggie is holed up. Together they make a break for the jet. Tony’s modified tasers kick ass and take names.

And if Maggie is an adequate shooter, Darcy does not want to meet the person that Peggy thinks is ‘good’ or Thor-forbid, ‘excellent’.

Maggie pitches forward in front of Darcy, about thirty feet from the jet. Red blood gushes out of her leg. Darcy rips off one of her arm bands and shoves it down Maggie’s collar, then throws a handful of shock BBs. They emit a field of electric shocks, which are attracted to metal. Like guns.

“Come on. Up, Carter.” Darcy ducks under Maggie’s arm, wrenching her to her feet. She feels something hit her arm, but ignores it as they crouch run into the back of the quinjet.

Darcy dumps Maggie into the seat closest to the medical set up and runs for the cockpit. She deploys the thrusters first off, just to stir up a lot of dust.

Take off is shaky as fuck. Tony would have that fixed in an hour. Darcy looks down at her arm and sees the blood.

Curiously, it hurts worse than the time she’d been shot in the stomach. But Morita had said she was going into shock then, so there’s that. Arm wounds must not be good enough for shock. Assholes.

Someone shoots a tracking missile at them, but at least that part of the jet works fine, and Darcy drops their own hot missile to throw it off.

She puts them up high enough to fuck with anyone’s radar, and to be far, far out anyone’s normal fly zone, then puts them on autopilot and goes back to check on Maggie.

“Let me help.” She says, seeing that Maggie has already started dressing the wound. Blood is smeared on Maggie’s cheek and into her short cap of brown curls. “Oh man, you touched your face and your hair with bloody hands. Amateur mistake, Carter.”

“I was supposed to be the one keeping you alive.” Maggie says as Darcy wraps the cleaned wound. She looks upset with herself.

“I’m pretty sure Peggy sends me out with her granddaughter, I’m the one supposed to be keeping someone alive.” Darcy tells her flippantly. She wonders how old Maggie is, and how much pressure Peggy is putting on her. She’s just a kid.

Maggie shakes her head. “No. You’re special.”

“So are you.” Darcy tells the woman, standing up. “I mean, how many people on this earth can actually stomach that acid you called a drink? And insult coffee in front of me and live to tell the tale?”

“We are legion. Well, when it comes to RAWR. I don’t know about the coffee thing.”

“Not so legion.”

They return the jet to the bumfuck hangar, and Darcy leaves her camera and other borrowed equipment with Maggie. Peggy has a car waiting for Darcy, so she wraps her arm and gets with Peggy’s program and makes herself scarce.

Tony’s furious when she returns with a bullet hole in her arm.

“It’s not a bullet hole, I was grazed, Tony. I’ve been shot before, I know the damn difference.” Darcy tells him, but he’s beyond reach. She knows it has to do with their fight, with her poking at old wounds.

He patches her up, berating her for taking stupid chances.

He looks shattered when she feels the pull. She wants to stay with him, to take care of him like she promised. To let him take care of her.

And she feels gut-wrenching panic, because there was so much she should have said to him and now she might be too late.