How Strange
Summary: Four of the most powerful women in the world walk into the Avenger's Tower Lobby. The CEO of a multibillion dollar company, a redheaded spy-assassin, an astrophysicist, and an intern. Gunfire screams and none of them will walk out. Two will be carried by lovers, one will stalk, and one will be dead. This, however, is not the story of how Darcifina Lynn Leanna Lewis died. It is instead, the story of how she lived. Language and Violence.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that MARVEL owns like the Avenger Movies, the Iron Man Movies, the Thor Movies, the Hulk, MARVEL's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or the Captain America Movies. I am willing to make unscrupulous deals for them.
Chapter One: How she Died
It was strange the longer Darcy thought about it. She'd always known that if she stayed with Jane (which in turn meant staying with Thor) or the Avengers, that they would be the death of her. She'd known deep down in her very marrow. She could chalk it up to her inherited mutant genes from her mom (who the fuck even knows who her dad was), but she'd known without a doubt. She was crystal clear on the point that if she stayed – she would die protecting Jane Louise Foster from something that Thor or the Avengers had dragged her into.
Still, Darcy was struck with the thought of 'how strange' as she glanced around. To see her (and Jane was hers) astrophysicist cradled in another's arms – wailing, screaming, screeching – while Virginia 'Pepper' Potts sat horrified (and quite possibly in shock) at the burden in her lap. Natasha "the Black Widow' cried silent tears as she rocked the weeping astrophysicist (oh, Janey) while taking stock of a situation she could not change and swept the area for any further threats (Thor had fried those fuckers with his lightening – GO THOR!). As for Darcy… Darcifina Lynn Leanna Lewis was lying Dead in Pepper Potts lap; deep red crimson soaking out of the bullet hole over her heart and into the CEO's once pristine business suit.
Darcy had knocked Jane into Natasha, surprising them both, and sending them sprawling behind one of the great support columns of the Tower's lobby before jumping in front of Miss Potts. Now. There she lay. Dead. In Miss Potts lap. Darcy though it very strange.
~*Two Hours Previous*~
Darcy Lewis was not what anyone would call a normal girl. She had many quirks – TOUCH THE IPOD AND BE TAZED! – and was very protective of her "Team Science" consisting of: Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Eric Selvig and most importantly – Jane Foster. She was trying to arrange for the transfer of Dr. Elizabeth Ross… but the rabid General kept stonewalling them. She kept Team Science fed, watered, mostly unsleep-deprived, and mostly unexpected explosion free. She could bribe, threaten, cajole, strong arm, and doe-eye like nobody else and within a week of the girl arriving at Avenger's Tower, Tony Stark's personal R&D was prospering like never before. Pepper and the Board of Directors were thrilled really. S.H.I.E.L.D. (or what was left of it) was fucking terrified.
She'd arrived with little fanfare to the Avengers Tower after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. Accompanied by Prince Thor Odinson, Doctors Jane Foster and Eric Selvig, she took one look around at the deplorable state of Tony Stark's "State-of-the-Art Candy Land" and immediately launched a coup with the eager help of J.A.R.V.I.S., Dummy, U, and Butterfingers. The labs designated to her newly acquired (and newly dubbed) Team Science were scrubbed clean, organized, restocked, and retrofitted with safety features that only the smartest people on the face of the planet would need. Darcy herself had written the emergency shut out code should one of the quartet attempt SCIENCE! after a stretch of more than 72 hours with no sleep. She'd also fitted Dummy with a dual hose system – that Stark may have thought was fire suppression – that functioned to soap down and then rinse the wayward scientists – because, seriously? Banner and Selvig were not so bad. But Stark and Foster? Had no sense of personal hygiene or self-preservation when on SCIENCE! benders. Thank Thor for the Hulk (and Selvig's age).
So far a few months in, there had been only a few hiccups (read: forced shutouts approved by Pepper, semi-forced feedings approved by Bruce, and one memorable forced cleaning of one Tony Stark approved by all – and 400 million YouTube hits). The number of unplanned or unapproved (TONY!) explosions have gone down significantly because none of Team Science wanted to A) Unleash the Hulk, B) Unleash the Wrath of Pepper Potts, or C) unleash the Wrath of one Darcy Lewis. Once the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. discovered what the Avenger's Tower newest 'secret weapon' was, they ordered Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton to take Tony Stark up on his offer up on moving in to the Tower to keep an eye on the girl. If anything to prepare for worst case scenario for when she attempted (succeeded really, because she had J.A.R.V.I.S. wrapped around her finger) to take over the world.
S.H.I.E.L.D. immediately regretted this decision – if they thought Barton was bad on his own, Lewis and Barton together were holy terrors with their prank war – and Romanoff had officially taken the girl under her wing and was teaching her self-defense and the Russian language. S.H.I.E.L.D. had thought that their two star agents would be the ones to help take her down… they were quickly disabused of this notion when they realized that Barton and Romanoff would be standing right there with her when the excrement hit the ventilator. Coulson had dealt with the girl in New Mexico and was pissed that he missed just how great of an asset she could have been to S.H.I.E.L.D. When he tried to suggest bringing her into the secret agency after it was clear Romanoff and Barton could have been compromised, Hill nearly shot him.
Once Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson were finally able to track down James Buchannan Barnes, it was agreed by all parties that they too needed to bring themselves to the Avenger's Tower. This made Fury, Hill, and, Coulson nervous – Darcy Lewis was still a wild card. Was she really on their side… or was she a secret HYDRA agent just waiting for a chance to bring the Avengers down from the inside? That's how HYDRA had done with S.H.I.E.L.D. It couldn't be left up to chance. So two days before the trio were to makes its way to the Tower, Maria Hill requested a lunch date with Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, Natasha Romanoff, and Darcy Lewis.
She's hoping to get a better feel for the girl away from the Tower and her new body guards… Maria knows that she can't take Romanoff, but she hopes that the need to keep the pair of super soldiers out of HYDRA control, will convince her that this needs doing. Romanoff had gotten close to Rogers during the DC fiasco – and she'd loved Barnes during her time in the Red Room. She's waiting at the restaurant less than a block away from the Tower when she can hear the gunshots and screaming ring out.
Hill is out of the restaurant and to the Tower before anyone even picks up her frantic calls to S.H.I.E.L.D. or said tower. She arrives just in time to see Thor finally touching down after one of the most terrifying electrical storms she's ever witnessed him create. He'd never been so violent even during the battle of Manhattan or Greenwich and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill knows that whatever she's about to walk into… it's going to be bad.
She was not however, prepared to make her way into the Tower lobby to hear Doctor Jane Foster wailing away in the arms of Agent Romanoff – or to see the girl she'd been so worried about dead in Stark Industries CEO Pepper Potts' lap.
Author's Note: Hi! This isn't the end and I've already gotten the majority of this story written and saved, so I will update very quickly. I don't want to put it up all at once due to the multiple 'Notifications' the bots will send. Please let me know what you think – and I may just upload sooner ;)