"I'm sorry?" she asked, very quietly. "Can you say that again?"

Ward cleared his throat, and repeated himself. "Due to residual gamma radiation, it was decided that the safest course of action was to collapse the structure-"

"I know what you said! I wanted to see if you had the balls to say it again!" There was something squeaking on the other end of the phone. If Grant had to guess, he'd say it was a dog toy being chewed vigorously. Coulson got a plane after being stabbed by an alien; he wondered what injury Agent Lewis sustained in New York to rate taking her dog to work. Unless...wait.

"Are you visually impaired?" he asked abruptly, and then winced. Very smooth, Ward.

"What does that have to do with...? No, jackass, I'm not. Are you? Because from what I can tell you're completely blind to property damage, cultural sensitivity, and world heritage status. As usual."

"It wasn't a World Heritage site."

"Not yet, but it was - and I'm quoting the Peruvian Minister of Culture - 'An exceptional example of pre-Colombian Peruvian architecture.' It was one of the most well-preserved Sican pyramids in Peru. Do you know how rare those are?"

"More rare than yesterday," he observed.

She made a disgusted noise. "That's it. I'm done talking to you. Why am I talking to you, anyway? I called Coulson."

"He left his phone on the table."

"And you just answered it? Jesus, what kind of manners do they teach you in spy school?"

"He's busy with something - he told me to answer it," the black ops agent said, feeling slightly miffed. And increasingly suspicious.

There was a long pause. Grant listened to three carefully measured breaths before she continued. "That dirty fink set you up. If he thinks I'm going to cool down about this, he's got another think coming because I fucking love pyramids."

Something popped, loudly, over the phone. Grant jumped. "Soooo," she continued. "Fine. Please tell Agent Coulson to call Agent Lewis. Also, please tell him that because he's unable to take time from his busy day to explain why there are Peruvian secret police splattered from Cuzco to Chihuahua, I'm unable to prevent Directory Fury from finding out what happened to his airplane. Also, if you could blow a raspberry at him at this point in the message, that would be great."

She hung up. Grant Ward felt a cold sweat break out.


Darcy Lewis sat in her office. It was an ugly office, located in the dark basement of a nondescript office block in Midtown. She didn't mind; she could take her lunch to Bryant Park if she wanted some sunshine. Times Square was just around the corner if she felt like watching tourists get pick-pocketed.

Her job was stressful. For one thing, S.H.I.E.L.D. was wall-to-wall Type-A personalities. But Darcy had been born with a strong set of lungs, so raging agents didn't phase her. Even better was that this job let her tap a hitherto unrecognized vein of megalomania in herself, which she expressed by juggling one disaster after another, intimidating agents all over the globe, and keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. looking shiny. Darcy discovered that she thrived on that shit.

Of course, she couldn't exactly tell her mother any of those things, so when asked Darcy would tell her about the more generic perks of her job. For example, the grey walled room in the basement was all hers. She had her own microwave, and a mini-fridge. She even had a couple of lackeys to buy her coffee and file things. She had a 401K and great health insurance. She had four - count 'em, four - interactive white boards. She also had the phone numbers of at least one high-ranking official in every legitimate government in the world, as well as the contact information for every rebel faction, most extremist groups, and home phone numbers for many of the world's most dangerous spies. It was pretty rad.

Okay, that last one was also something she would never tell her mother.

Another perk of her job was this. She popped her chewing gum loudly and ignored the vibrating phone on her desk, letting Coulson's fifth call in as many minutes go to voicemail. Darcy skimmed a document and paused to highlight 'Proposed Cover: Military Training Exercise'. Then she added, used for 04/03/13 incident. As lame as 'weather balloon'. Find more original excuse.

Her phone started to vibrate again. Darcy smirked and put it in a drawer.


Notes:

I'm trying to avoid making Darcy too mean. Hopefully "exasperated" is coming across instead.

But still...she's asking the questions I wanted to know after watching that episode. And while the most immediate question I had was, "How did a Mayan pyramid get to Peru?", others also arose. I may end up writing another one for this episode because...what? Skye doesn't think S.H.I.E.L.D. is collecting her texts? Nobody noticed that Coulson seems to have a certain M.O. when it comes to team building? Did Nick Fury get shorter?

Long story, short: there may be more of these Damage Control post-eps in the future.