Bygone

“Are you really awake this time?” Jane leans close, so her nose is practically touching Darcy’s. “Last time I thought you were awake, but then you asked me to beam you up.”

Darcy groans as a throbbing headache makes itself known. “Water.”

“Got it.” Jane shoves a glass of water at Darcy, then holds out her hand. Two large white pills rest in her palm.

“You’re a gift, Jane Arnold Foster.”

Jane’s face crumples. “Darcy. Oh, god, I missed you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Darcy chugs the water, trying to relieve the sharp dryness in her throat so she could actually talk. “Jane. Janie. Do you know what I was just telling Tony a few months slash who the hell knows how long ago?”

“Tony.” Jane covers her mouth as tears well over.

“That I wouldn’t change it. Jane, you don’t even know.” Darcy coughs and takes another drink. “Or maybe you know a little.”

A laugh shudders out of Jane. “Only you would get sent back in time and marry Captain America.”

“I’ll tell you all about it.” Darcy promises, even as she realizes there is so much that Jane doesn’t know. That maybe Darcy won’t be able to explain. “But I think what’s happening right now is more important. What year is it?”

“2016.”

For a second, her vision reduces to a tiny pinprick. Gooseflesh prickles all over her skin. Her world tilts sideways. “2016. It happened. I went past my time. I’m going to keep going. No. No.”

“Darcy, stop.” Jane climbs onto the bed and holds Darcy’s face between her hands. “Darcy. You’re not going anywhere, okay? Never again. I have the files and you can see for yourself. Are you listening to me?”

Jane scrambles off the bed and runs from the room, bare feet pounding. She comes skidding back, the medical file clutched in her hands.

“Darcy, look. Look at this.” Jane adjusts Darcy’s head, so it’s pointed down. Two scans of a human body are side by side. “This is you in 2004, after the car accident. And this is you today, Darcy.”

Jane jabs at the first image, motioning to a bright red discoloration that surrounds Darcy’s body. “And that? That is your energy signature. I mean, you looked like a star, Darce. But Helen and I separated the energy from you today. That’s why you feel like shit. Also, because you got shot.”

“Again?” Darcy murmurs, looking between the two scans. “How do you know, Jane? I mean, for sure.”

“That’s a lot to go into right now, and we have so much to cover, but just trust that Tony, Helen and I all agree. Can you trust that? Can you trust me?”

Darcy looks up at her friend. Her friend from what feels like so long ago. Jane looks grim, she looks tired, but Darcy had seen her grim and tired. This is different. This is more.

Darcy feels like she’s a different person, and maybe Jane is too. Time has passed for Jane just like it had for Darcy. Darcy lets out a breath as she recognizes the steady look in Jane’s eyes, the one that had been there when Jane promised she wouldn’t leave Darcy behind after New Mexico.

Well, Darcy isn’t leaving Jane behind either.

“Of course I trust you.” Darcy runs a hand over her front. She finds a lump caused by bandages underneath her shirt. It’s one of her nightshirts, and her bra is gone.

“Again?” Jane asks, pulling Darcy’s hand away. “How many times have you been shot?”

“This is my third time. Another two times I was just grazed.” Darcy twists her fingers in Jane’s when the other woman winces. “We’re not going to be cool if you keep holding this against yourself. I could have holed up someplace and hid, but I didn’t. I made my choices, Jane. I’m pretty happy with all of them, starting from when I signed on for a twelve month internship so I didn’t have to spend another semester waking up at seven for a physics class.”

Darcy's ease is ripped away when she hears something thump out in the living room.

“It’s okay. It’s Maggie and her team.” Jane looks back towards the door. “And Sten, Hogun and Sif.”

There’s a knock at the door, and Maggie Carter sticks her head in. She looks relieved to see Darcy awake. Her brown curls now have a shot of gray, but she still looks mostly the same. A few extra lines at her eyes and mouth, but the same green eyes and brashly confident way of holding herself.

“Maggie.” Darcy smiles.

“Yeah, yeah, Rogers. You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?” Maggie comes further into the the room. It’s the first time Darcy has seen her out of one kind of uniform another. The other woman wears a pair of dark jeans and a drape-y blue shirt. If it wasn’t for the gun strapped to her hip, she’d look right at home at a farmer’s market. “They had to dig the bullet out, but you’re going to live. I had them keep it, just in case you wanted it.”

“You keep yours, don’t you?” Darcy asks, not quite able to hide a shudder.

Maggie smirks and holds up her left hand. A metal bracelet graces her wrist, a mesh of different colored metals. “I’ve got the rest of the team here. I’ll introduce you to the ones you haven’t met once you’ve pulled yourself together.”

The other woman ends her sentence with a judging glance over Darcy’s place in bed. It makes Darcy smile, and Maggie smiles back before nodding.

“Stark told us we could trust Dr. Foster here. Is there anything you need from us?”

“I’m good with Jane, and I’m good with Tony.” Darcy tells her, trying answer all the questions she didn’t ask.

Something flashes in Maggie’s eyes, but the other woman only nods again and leaves the room.

“Tony is okay, right?” Darcy tries to control the panic that wants to race through her veins. She’s in the future now. She has no idea what’s going to happen. No assurance that Tony lives through whatever is going on, and since she’d last seen him he’d suited up and decided to become a superhero.

She kicks at the sheets and twists out of them, pushing through the pain to get to her feet. There’s the little side table she bought in Spain with Dum-Dum and Jac, and Howard had shipped home for her.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just when Rebecca told me-“ Darcy lets out a shaky breath and turns back to face Jane, who now stands at the foot of the bed, arms stretched towards Darcy. “We were in bed, it’s stupid. Stupid, sorry, but Tony?”

“The last that anyone heard, Tony is fine. There are rumors he’s in Japan or Australia. Or Seattle.” Jane shrugs.

“The last anyone heard?” Darcy frowns. “What does that even mean? Tony doesn’t do low profile.”

There’s another knock at the door, and Hogun steps in. He scans the room, then merely looks at Jane.

“We’re fine. Thanks.” Jane says, then rolls her eyes when he leaves the room. “How is that,” she flaps a hand towards the living room, “our life?”

“Jane, I just noticed that a big chunk of New York is on fire.” Darcy nods towards the windows, and the part of the city that has smoke pouring out of it. “Maybe some housekeeping notes are in order?”

There’s that look again. The one Maggie had given her. “Jane, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Darcy, there is a lot to cover. I don’t know where to start.”

“Start somewhere, because I want to know why people were shooting at us and where the fuck Tony is.”

“Uh, okay. I’m going to do my best here, okay? So aliens invaded New York, and Thor teamed up with Tony and some other people to defend it. Oh! Clint and Natasha! You know them. They were there, as Hawkeye and Black Widow. And the Hulk.”

“Big green guy who broke Harlem?”

“Yes, he’s actually Dr. Banner from Culver?” Jane waves her hand. “But that doesn’t matter right now. So anyway, they teamed up and they were the Avengers.”

“Tony’s doing team sports?” Darcy quips, partly in genuine surprise, and partly because there is something heavy and scary in Jane’s eyes.

“Yes. Team sports. And then Tony accidentally made an evil robot army, and they had to fight that. A small country, Sokovia, got mostly destroyed.”

“Damn.” Darcy blows out a breath. “He means well, Jane. I don’t know what went wrong, and I know he seems like an asshole, but Tony is a good person. And it would have killed him. We need to find him.”

“There’s more.” Jane interrupts. “It kind of turned into a big political debate. Who are the Avengers accountable to? What right do they have to insert themselves into international issues? Someone made a mistake, and people got hurt in Lagos. The Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross, pushed for the Sokovia Accords.”

“They made General Ross fucking Secretary of State? What the fuck?” Darcy tips her head backwards and looks up the ceiling. Politics are fucking insane. “He’s evil, Jane. I’m nearly certain he’s evil. Does no one pay attention? He’s fucking nuts. That shit with the Hulk? That was not okay.”

“Well, somehow it happened. And a bunch of nations signed the Accords. Including us, the UK, France... Wakanda.”

“Wakanda?”

“I should have known you would know about Wakanda.” Jane holds up her hands. “Anyway, some of the Avengers signed. Others didn’t and became fugitives. Ross sent the ones that did sign to apprehend the ones that didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah. That sounds reasonable. And the world is just going along with this?” Darcy paces, then stops because that hurts. “So Tony didn’t sign, and the other Avengers are after him.”

“Tony did sign. So did the Black Widow and Vision.”

“What? Tony signed something with Ross? Where was Jim? Pepper? Who is Vision?” Darcy gives in and sits on the edge of the bed. “Or am I missing something here?”

“To be honest, I don’t really know, Darce. Tony doesn’t really have heart to hearts with me. And Thor was off-world in all of this, looking for you.” Jane sits next to Darcy. “Up until six months ago, we thought you’d been sent someplace in the universe. But after the prison break, someone started digging where Ross was concerned.”

“Ross? What does Ross have to do with me, and what prison break?”

“After we get through this I’ll hand you a tablet and you can go to town, okay?” Jane promises. “The point is, someone started digging, and Ross came up dirty.”

“I for one am shocked.” Darcy mutters.

“It turned out that he had classified Tony as expendable. Tony’s suit could be worn by a better soldier, and Tony was an acceptable loss, unnecessary.” Jane takes Darcy’s hand. “And he had labeled me as a level one threat to global security. He arranged for an unstable element to be placed my lab. It had an out of control energy signature, and had caused numerous lab explosions.”

“Energy signature.”

“Yeah. It didn’t cause an explosion. It sent you back in time apparently.” Jane squeezes Darcy’s fingers. “Somehow he found that out, and he had an entire file on you. You’re also a member of the level one threats club. You rated a kill on sight order.”

“Getting shot makes more sense now.”

“At least is seems like most of the world is really pissed about it? And all of Asgard is?”

“Is that why we’ve got Thor’s besties out there?”

“Kind of. It turns out being his lightning sister is kind of a big deal. Also, I married him.”

Darcy had just taken another drink of her water and chokes. “Wha-fuck. Jane. Warn a girl.”

“If I warned you about every crazy thing I have to tell you, we’d be here all day.”

“Fair enough, but still.” Darcy takes another couple sips. “Are you happy? Are you guys okay? Where is he now?”

“He’s on earth. He’s looking for the others.” Jane takes Darcy’s empty water glass and walks to the bathroom. The sink comes on. “And we’re good. It wasn’t a huge thing. I mean, we wanted to get married, but we did it now because of all of this. He wanted me to have the universe version of diplomatic immunity, in case this goes any more to shit. And also for Ross to get sanctioned for basically trying to kill us.”

“What I’m hearing is that once we get this all straightened, I get to throw a giant ass party for you.” Darcy accepts the newly refilled glass of water. She’s still super thirsty. Apparently a side-effect from the whole energy time-cannon thing. “Okay. Politics are shit. Assassination is a worry. Tony is fucked up right now. You’re married and space royalty. Is that everything?”

There’s that look again.

“What? What else could there be?”

“Well, last housekeeping thing. There’s some big threat out in space, and it’s coming here. Thor is worried, that’s why he’s trying to find the Avengers. So they can defend Earth.” Jane bites her lip. “It turns out that Earth somehow ended up with some of these things called Infinity Stones, and there’s this guy called Thanos who has most of them. The thing Ross put in my lab was one of them.”

“Ah, world ending event. How could I have forgotten that one?”

“Darce.”

“I would super appreciate it if you didn’t look at me like that. I’ve seen a lot of that look over the years, you know? Someone died, and you already told me Tony is okay. It’s Peg, isn’t it?”

“Damn, I forgot about Peggy. Yeah, Darcy. I’m so sorry, Peggy passed away earlier this year. If it makes you feel better, she passed in her sleep.”

“Okay. Okay.” Darcy stands again. “Damn. Damn it, Peg. Oh, hell.”

Jane waits while Darcy gets herself under control. Darcy can practically hear Peggy telling to pull herself together. Now isn’t the time fall apart, Rogers.

“Darcy?” Jane says softly. “I will help you get through this. Whatever you need.”

“There’s more.” Darcy nods, steels herself. “Okay. Hit me.”

Jane hesitates. “It’s about Steve. Steve Rogers?”

“That is the first Steve that comes to mind.” Darcy deadpans. Jane had called her Darcy Rogers earlier, so Jane knows. “But Howard was practically obsessed with finding Steve during the forties. I really doubt anyone dug up anything Howard missed.”

“They found his plane. Frozen solid on the bottom of the Arctic ocean.”

“The Valkyrie.” Darcy murmurs. “Was he- Was he on it, still? Was he recovered?”

Jane bites her lip and nods. “He was recovered. He was frozen.”

Darcy flinches. It had been in the Arctic waters. Glaciers. She’d had dreams, after seeing some of the search and rescue footage Howard had. Dreams of Steve trapped inside the plane, icy water closing around him. In her dreams, he’s still her Steve and not Captain America.

Her eyes burn at the thought again.

“He was frozen in a solid block of ice. SHIELD found him, and they thawed it off him.”

Shuddering, Darcy turns away as if that will change things. “I don’t know that I want to know this, Jane.”

That was a lesson she’d learned. Steve is a huge gaping wound in her heart. Maybe someday it would heal a bit, scar over. But spending days and weeks and months in Howard’s vault, learning everything she could about Captain America, hadn’t helped her deal with losing Steve.

“He’s alive, Darcy.” Jane says, squeezing her fingers tight. “Steve’s alive.”

A laugh bursts out of Darcy’s throat. Then she pushes her hair back from her face and her brain just grinds to a halt. Everything just stops. Like her world jumped tracks and there’s nothing on the new one.

“Not funny Jane.” Darcy says, her voice coming out lower than normal.

“I would never joke about this. He was the leader of the Avengers, he fought at the battle of New York, and he was the leader of the part of the Avengers that didn’t sign the Accords.” Jane picks up a tablet. “He’s also the one that broke the other fugitive Avengers out of the Raft, which is a giant maximum security prison. Here.”

On the screen that Jane pushes into Darcy’s hands, a man wearing the Captain America uniform flings the shield at a hulking thing in armor. The man is fighting next to Natasha. Then Jane flicks that video away, and instead Darcy is looking at him in sweats, running at the National Monument.

There are more images, more videos, even some where he’s talking, at a press conference. But there is a roaring sound in Darcy’s ears. She turns away from Captain America, and instead looks at the picture on her nightstand. John had gotten it for her, somehow tracking down Eddie Krantz from the old newspaper, who had taken a picture as a favor to Steve, but had never developed it. It's Darcy and Steve outside the courthouse, the day they got married. It's her Steve.

It’s how Darcy learns that Sten isn’t a warrior sent down to protect the future queen. He’s a healer. He gives her something to drink, it’s got a pinkish hue and tastes kind of like tea, only it’s a little gritty.

And she suddenly doesn’t feel like she’s breathing through a straw.

Maggie Carter stands behind him, watching his every move. Jane holds Darcy’s hand tightly.

Sten mixes something else together. It steams. “Drink this, Lady Darcy, and you will know peace. Your contact with the Space Stone, and the removal of its effect from your body has left you weakened. This will take your pain, soothe your spirit, and order your mind.”

“It’s okay, Darcy. You can trust him.” Jane assures her.

Darcy’s got some kind of magic potion, peer pressure joke rattling around in her brain. But she’s also got a strong urge to throw up, the tip of her nose has gone numb from lack of oxygen, and her heart is threatening beat right out of her chest.

So she takes the round little glass Sten holds out and tosses it back in one gulp.