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Barely Breathing
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So… It starts again. I've had a lot of this written out for a while and it's about time I published it. Sorry about the mistakes, they are all mine, I'm currently writing another fic so don't have a lot of time to triple check this and don't want to burden my Beta, so any errors please point them out and I'll fix them eventually….
Sandra, please don't hate me for putting this up, I just need to get it off my hard drive!
Enjoy!
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Chapter 1
Darcy was sipping her large hot chocolate in the small coffee shop on the corner of a busy Paris street.
"Miss Lewis?" A tall, lanky man with dark blonde hair stood a foot from her table, a sheepish smile on his handsome face. Her mouth hung open slightly as she stared at the Michael Fassbender doppelganger. Wow, that was even hard to pronounce properly in her own head. She plastered a bright smile on her face, lots of teeth and completely fake.
"Yes?" She answered, her heart rate picking up as her hand slowly reached for the butterfly knife she kept in her handbag. Thanks to a handy YouTube video she was fairly confident with using it quickly.
"I am sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, I'm Agent Hunt, I was told to check up on you by Director Fury, he said I would most likely find you here." He explained, glancing over at the empty seat on the other side of the small iron table. Darcy rolled her eyes at his unsubtle hint to get an invitation to sit down. She waved her hand over to the chair, which he happily took and sat in, taking off his satchel and hanging it on the back, Darcy know she didn't really have a choice in avoiding this conversation.
"Of course he did. You know how stalkerish it is that he knows exactly where I am and when? I'm halfway across the world, for Christ's sake!"
"He knew the woman who lived next door to me's name. I think just tracing your phone is child's play." Darcy raised an eyebrow at his retort. Usually agents just shrugged her comments like that off or reeled off hundreds of S.H.I.E.L.D related protocols.
"Touché. You may have won this battle, sir, but I shall win the war!" Darcy announced in the best 'epic battle cry' impression she could muster, holding the plastic stick with a ball of solid chocolate on the end out as if it was a sword, testing him. "So, what's your thing?" She asked, popping the chocolate ball into her mouth as if it was a lollypop. She thinks it's meant to be used to stir her drink and fill it with more yummy chocolatey goodness but the hot chocolate was already sweet enough for her and she liked lollypops.
"My thing?" He was amused by her casually random question, his eyebrow raised and a charming smile to accompany his look. Damn, he was goodlooking. They should call him Agent Goodlooking… Were those dimples? This man must be an awesome spy.
"You know, walk through walls, super strength, mind reading? Oh, are you the one who can control ants? I totally can't wait to meet that guy!" Darcy's eyes were wide and sparkling.
"I can't control ants." He shook his head lightly with a good natured chuckle.
"Have you ever tried?" Darcy challenged.
"... No..." He said after a long pause, as if he was genuinely searching his memories to see if he'd ever once tried to control the tiny insects.
"So what is it?"
"I'm just a spy." He said in a hushed voice. Just a spy? In Darcy's mind that was amazing, yet he said it as if he was ashamed he was just a spy.
"Cool cool. So, how are things back home?" She didn't notice her own slip-up.
"I was about to ask you that, I haven't been there in a while. I've been working here for over six months." He looked relaxed and comfortable as a waitress came over and took his order. "*Petit café avec un peu crème, et votre numéro de téléphone si vous êtes intéressés?*" Darcy didn't understand everything he said but she assumed he ordered a drink and made a joke as the young woman blushed as she hastily scribbled something on her notepad. She practically skipped away and Darcy raised her eyebrows at him, unable to cover her smirk. "Not that I'm complaining about it!" He justified.
"Riiiight. So are you going to hand me a blank envelope that will explode three seconds after I read it or what?"
"Actually, I'm going to take you to The Louvre as you've been here three weeks and not been yet." He looked at her as gasped, mock shock gracing his sharp features. "What? You are officially the worst tourist." The waitress returned with a cup and a slice of some fancy pastry that Darcy looked at earlier but thought it was too sickly sweet looking. As the woman placed the food on the table, she leaned a little too close to the S.H.I.E.L.D spy and slipped a piece of paper into his front jeans pocket. Darcy didn't think it was possible, but her eyebrows were now so high they must be on the top of her head. Her smirk only increased when he tried to look innocently at her, pretending not to know what was going on. Damn, this guy was better than Bond, or at least she guessed he was.
"I'm not a tourist." She couldn't think of anything else to say, a first for her.
Agent Hunt groaned and rolled his eyes. "Yes, you're here to 'find yourself'." The air quotes were enough for Darcy to move to get up and leave. "Wait! I'm sorry. I'm not used to talking to normal people. I'm just a little excited."
"Normal people?" Darcy could feel her face scrunching up. "Why? Who are you usually speaking to?"
"Boring rich people who think because they are the greenest person on the planet because they have a Jimmy Choo designed reusable coffee mug or 'recycle' the- their clothes, which actually means they wear them more than once in public, not giving them to charity or making a pencil case out of them or something." Darcy thought he was still being sarcastic until she saw the slight desperation in his eyes. Wow, were people really like that? She looked down at her jumper. It had a dog on it, well, it was so faded now that you could hardly see the color the dog used to be, she wore it roughly 3 days a week for the past 3 years.
"Fine." She sighed and sat down, giving up. She hadn't really spoken to anyone out loud since she'd been in Paris. She'd emailed Natasha, Jane, Loki and her dad, who she was still keeping her mouth shut about his and her involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D, and even sent Fury a postcard after her first trip to the Eiffel Tower. Plus Agent Hunt seemed nice enough, not to mention safe, seeing as he was assigned to check up on her by Fury. "But only if you tell me your first name."
"Luke, it's a pleasure to meet you Miss Lewis." He reached up and over the small table and shook her hand. Darcy gladly accepted it and smiled back at him.
"It's nice to meet you Luke, please, call me Darcy." She let go and sat back down. "So, you ever worked with Agent Barton?"
The mischievous glint in his eye was enough to answer her question.
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"So, I was left alone in the relay room, completely helpless, my harness wires wrapped around my own ankles and then I saw him. He was hiding in the fucking rafters! He'd made a nest that morning and waited there the whole time!"
"No way! All day?" Darcy and Luke laughed as they walked around the museum, pausing to look at various painting, some Darcy understood and others she just used her imagination.
"I swear, if it wasn't for Barton, I wouldn't be here today."
Darcy tilted her head at one frame, trying to ignore the swell in her chest that talking about Clint caused. If she closed one eye and squinted with the other then she could almost make out an elephant in the paint. "Elephant." She proclaimed, pointing at the centre of the picture.
"No way, that's a tree."
"Where? Show me the tree. That is totally an elephant."
He coughed and pointed at the small plaque that said "Tree in Spring Rain", a cheeky grin on his face as an elderly couple next to them walked away.
"Fine, I'll give you tree but I'm going to get the next one!" It was a fun morning, full of laughter and stories about various S.H.I.E.L.D related things. Luke was fascinated about The Avengers and Darcy loved hearing adventures that Luke and Clint had together when they were younger. She missed him so much but she wasn't ready to think about going back. She enjoyed the imagery and could almost picture him hiding in a nest like the bird he was named after, it both increased and helped ease the clenching in her chest.
"So, Lewis, any relation?" He grabbed her hand and spun her around in the middle of the hall as if they were dancing. She could bet that this man could charm the pants off anyone, and by the sounds of it, that was his primary mission.
"My dad." She nodded, still not sure how she felt about that. She remembered the first time she tried to email him after she found out. She went through three drafts, the first was just angry, the second curious, the third upset before she finally sent a vaguely normal update of her life, leaving out any detail that could be traced back to S.H.I.E.L.D or Jackson Norris.
"That's interesting." Luke mused, mainly to himself. "That must have been hard, growing up knowing your dad would kill anyone who so much as looked at you the wrong way."
Darcy shrugged, her head becoming a little clearer after the spinning. "You'd think so, right? But I didn't know. He hid the whole agent thing from me, I mean I knew he was always hard core, he actually took out his hunting gun when I first brought a boy home, but I assumed it was from his Army days. I only found out the truth a month ago."
"Hmm… That's very interesting." Darcy could see his spy brain working, she looked away, trying to focus on the next painting.
"Now that is an elephant!" She called out, earning her a glare from the elderly aged couple who were peacefully contemplating over the picture. She bit her lip, embarrassed at disrupting them again but laughed as soon as they had left that section.
Darcy spent the rest of the day with Luke until he had to leave just after five pm, something about a charity dinner he needed to get ready for. She had a great time and they swapped numbers and agreed to meet up tomorrow for lunch.
She walked down the busy street by the Seine heading towards her bed and breakfast. It was a humble place owned by a lovely old couple who spoke very little English so Darcy was trying her hardest to learn French quickly so she could actually have a decent conversation with them. So far all she could make out was that they had two daughters who both lived in London and a son who worked in a restaurant that they wanted to take her too one day.
"Salut!" She called as she closed the door behind her. They lived in the rooms downstairs and shared the kitchen while Darcy had her own bedroom and bathroom upstairs. She heard them call out a welcome from somewhere nearby and jogged up the stairs, dumping her handbag on the floor and falling back on the bed.
She closed her eyes and instantly fell asleep, it had been a busy day, wondering around one on Paris' busiest attraction for hours and messing around with Luke. She woke up the next morning with a smile on her face and no tear stains on her face.
Her heart had begun to mend itself.
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French Translation:
*Petit café avec un peu crème, et votre numéro de téléphone si vous êtes intéressés?*
= Small coffee with a little bit of cream, and your phone number if you're interested?
Please note, I don't speak French so this is a Google Translation, I would be very happy to change if anyone could translate it properly for me?
Well, I hope you enjoyed this and don't hate me now! I know a lot of people didn't like the way I ended Breathe so I hope this starts to make that up to you :-D
Please review! I love them :-D
Review! I even made a little template:
Hi,
When I saw you'd made a sequel to Breathe I thought: About time!/ More of this rubbish?/ Yay!
I liked: Darcy/ Luke /The Waitress because (insert reason here).
The plot and setting so far are: Disappointing/ Boring/ Interesting/ …unsure.
I can't wait/ am dreading the next chapter.
Kind Regards,
(Your name here)
Hope that helps make it a little easier as I love you're feedback!
Until next time,
Charlie