This was supposed to be a routine asset transfer, Agent Lewis thought, surveying the wreckage. Dr. Hill underwent relocation on a regular basis, and despite Priority Red status no one expected any trouble. But here, on this bland stretch of highway, three agents had been put out of commission and the man had been kidnapped.
Her phone chirped. "This is Lewis. Okay. Oh, no. Goddamnit...when?" She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "What about Gross? Alright. Keep me posted, will you? Thanks."
She turned to her clean-up crew. "Agent Jennifer Little was D.O.A." She stopped and took a deep breath, trying to keep grief from her voice. "There was nothing they could do."
Agent Lopez swore, and hefted his sledgehammer. He looked ready to swing at the nearest hostile target. "What about Gross?" he ground out. "Any news?"
"Agent Gross just went into surgery. The branch nicked a few vital organs, but the doctors are hopeful." Darcy adjusted her glasses and put her hands in her pockets. It was pep-talk time. She fumbled for the right words. Her predecessor had been so much better at this. But her predecessor had chosen Darcy for this job, and she wanted to make him proud. She took a deep breath.
"I know you're all upset. Jenny was one hell of an agent. This was a stupid, pointless way to die. They're sending in Coulson's team. You know him; you know he'll find out who did this." Darcy met the eyes of every one of her team. Agent Jackson was looking a little teary, and Greene had clenched his jaw so tightly she could hear grinding teeth. Ngyuen's face was impassive, but a pulse beat furiously in her neck. "We need to do our job, and do it right."
They nodded, for once entirely in agreement. "Good. Now, to add to our bad luck today, we have a news van incoming. They were out covering some podunk parade in Fort Morgan, which means we have about twenty minutes. Lopez, Jackson - you're on sledgehammer duty. Make those cars look like they've been through the wars." They departed with a nod. Both demonstrated great enthusiasm in beating the crap out of the cars Darcy had brought along for staging. The Prius' alarm blared once, then was silenced by a well-placed blow from Jackson's sledgehammer.
"Greene - I want to you to borrow that guy over there-" she gestured at a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent scanning fingerprints on a backhoe, "and tackle the field. We need a scar. Nothing huge - we don't want to destroy the farmer's livelihood. Just enough to look convincing. Keep it close to the road."
Greene looked unimpressed. "I know my job, Darcy. We went over this in the chopper. Twice."
She smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. "Let's call it exposition then, Adam - and you know how I love to exposit. Especially every time I remember what you did in Miami."
He swallowed and looked away.
"So get!" she shooed.
He went.
"And I will be painting the blood and bruises, then? Because I am made of china?" Ngyuen queried sarcastically.
"Because you are made of very pregnant woman, you nincompoop," Darcy retorted. "And you've got mad makeup skills that make me jealous."
Clare Ngyuen looked resigned and set off to battle-scar the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents remaining on the scene. Darcy checked her watch. "Eighteen minutes, people! Look alive! Shake a leg! Get cracking! Get the lead out! Er..." she flailed. "Hurry up!"
The next eighteen minutes (actually seventeen and twenty seconds, Darcy later noted smugly), were a flurry of activity. She briefed Agent Mack on his role, and was glad to see he was still mostly unflapped. The man was a tank - she'd seen footage of him taking out six Russian agents with a Big Gulp, a package of mini-donuts, and head-butts. Darcy wasn't surprised that he'd walk away from being dropped out of the sky with nothing more than mild lacerations.
"Your 'dumb hick' routine is solid gold," Darcy told him, "Just keep that up. Maybe throw in a couple of 'as God is my Witness, I thought I was going to meet Saint Peter at those pearly gates!'- type stuff," she said in a fake southern accent. "Those make awesome sound-bytes. And they totally distract people from the real story! Win-win!" She flashed him two thumbs up.
Mack lowered the icepack from his forehead and eyeballed her. "Yeah, sure. Play an offensive stereotype. Do you know know I went to Harvard?"
Darcy grinned. "That's a goddamn shame."
Her next step was making sure all non-essentials were removed from the scene. This was done by pacing the stretch of highway, occasionally crouching to get a different point of view, or framing the scene like a director. Waaaay more melodramatic than her old boss, but hell - she got results. Occasionally she'd bark an order - the ambulance needed to be moved closer, or a road sign made more decrepit-looking. Night had fallen and darkness could cover a multitude of sins, but Darcy didn't like leaving anything to chance.
After ten minutes she was satisfied, and made her way to the last S.H.I.E.L.D. van lingering at the scene. Coulson's B-Team were loading cases into the back of it.
Man, 'Coulson and the B-Team,' she thought. That would be an awesome band name.
"Agent Lewis," he said, stopping a conversation with Agent May to greet her. Darcy wasn't fooled; it had more to do with the fact they were discussing Top Secret Information A Press Liaison Should Never Hear than a desire to grant her his undivided attention. Alas, she thought.
"Phiiiiiil!" she declared, bouncing on her toes. "How's it hangin'?"
He blinked and quirked an eyebrow. From Coulson that was the equivalent of a lighthearted chuckle. "Somewhat oddly."
"Oh? Do tell."
"It's Level 7," drawled Agent Ward. Like many of black ops specialists she'd had the misfortune to meet, Ward had the ability to look both smug and impassive simultaneously. "Above your pay grade, Lewis."
"Thank you, Agent Ward," Coulson said. "Would you please help Agents Fitz and Simmons with their equipment?"
Darcy bared her teeth at the smug bastard as he departed. "I don't know how you put up with him. He is the worst."
This time Phil did smirk. "You should give him another chance. What happened in Kanniyakumari was a long time ago."
She glared. "It was not. It two years ago. How can I forget? What about those kids? Will they forget? Jesus, Phil. It was right on the beach..."
"Do you want me to assign him another rotation on the clean-up crew?"
"What?!" she boggled. "Fuck no! Never, ever again. I know it's supposed to teach field agents 'outcome responsibility', but that ship's sailed for Ward. Besides, I'd try to kill him. Then he'd retaliate and I don't want to die."
"Seems fair. Alright, it's time for us to roll out."
"Oh, pshaw," Darcy scoffed. "We've got, like, three minutes before the press van gets here. You're not even going to ask?" she challenged.
He smiled. "I'm sure you've got it under control."
"Damn straight I do." Darcy puffed out her chest under her University of New Mexico hoodie. "I'll be playing a student in tonight's performance. Everyone's a Lobo!" she quipped. She made what looked like a shadow-puppet dog with her right hand. "Woof! I'm on a fall break road trip. And holy moley, I've never seen a tornado before! I didn't know what to do!" she wiped an imaginary tear from under her black-rimmed glasses. She hadn't worn glasses like that in years, but they fit her role.
Coulson nodded in approval. "It's a believable cover story, Agent Lewis."
"Thanks, boss-man." She beamed. He turned to leave, but she snagged his arm. "Phil?"
"Yes?"
"This is weird. I mean, not weird on the scale of 'alien lizards squeezing through a portal in the sky' weird, but still weird. I don't like invisible things, even though they make my job a hell of a lot easier. Just...be careful, will you?"
He looked down curiously at the hand she'd wrapped around his elbow, almost like he didn't know what it was. It was peculiar. She was embarrassingly tactile for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but she'd thought him by now more or less immune to it.
Well, she thought. This was awkward. Darcy carefully removed the offending digits from his person, and stuck her hands in her pockets. "Ooookay...I guess I'll see you around."
"Darcy?"
She turned.
"Our jobs are always a little weird, but I'm always careful." He gave her - her! - his goddamned buck-up-little-trooper expression. She smiled weakly in return.
"Sure," she muttered to herself, walking away. "Except when you're not."
In a hotel room in Denver, Darcy Lewis collapsed on a bed and groaned. She had just enough energy to pick up the remote and turn on the TV before burying her face in the pillowy comforter.
"Welcome to News 9 at Nine," the perky anchor announced. "We have news out of Logan County tonight, where a tornado reportedly touched down just south of Sterling."
"Yeah!" Darcy cheered, muffled under a pile of bedding. "The exposition channel!"
"A tornado, Dawn?" the other anchor was saying. "Isn't it a bit late for tornadoes?"
"It sure is, Bob, but there's no doubt about it. This twister touched down just east of the I-76, and crossed the road before dissipating in a field. We go now to Jim Colt, reporting live from the scene. Jim?"
"Good evening, Dawn and Bob. That's right. At about six o'clock this evening, the tornado tore across the interstate, damaging vehicles and sending two to the hospital. It's shocking - the force of this tornado sent one SUV into a tree, and actually tore apart a semi-trailer. The semi was carrying a load of paper, which is now scattered across the countryside. It's a mess."
The camera cut to Agent Mack in full trucker persona.
"Yeah, that's right," he said with an Oklahoman twang. "That twister come outta nowhere...I ain't ever seen something like that. It picked up the rig and twisted it around. I thought I was going to see Jesus tonight, and that's no lie."
"And the cargo you were carrying?"
Mack shook his head. "Oh, that's gone gone gone. Hope they won't hold it against me, because this surely was an act of God if I ever seen one!"
The camera panned over the crowd: Agent Ngyuen, sitting in the back of an ambulance wrapped in a shock blanket and rubbing her belly while Agent Jackson played concerned husband at her side. Agent Greene was having some superficial (and fake) injuries tended to by Agent Lopez, who was dressed as a paramedic. And then...
"The star of the show," Darcy muttered to herself, experiencing the now familiar surreal moment of seeing herself, but not quite herself, on the television. "Jesus, orange is not my color."
"I was visiting my boyfriend for fall break," TV Darcy said. "I've never even seen a tornado, except on TV. It was, like, the scariest thing I have ever seen. It got super dark all of a sudden like it was going to rain, and then things started flying by my window..." She tucked a strand of neon orange hair behind her ear. "I mean, my boyfriend just told me this morning to drive carefully, and I'm always careful. But, like, sometimes things happen right? And now my car's totaled, and they had to take those people to the hospital...it was just super scary."
In her hotel room, Darcy rubbed her hands over her face. Between jumping five time zones in two days, losing a colleague, and the constant low-level fear of Epically Terrible Badness she'd experienced since joining S.H.I.E.L.D., she felt exhausted.
She was due an early night. Tomorrow would probably be another long one.
Notes:
Darcy is curiously aware of fourth wall-breaking narrative structure in this chapter. I figure that if a budding super hero can declare his origin story in the pilot episode, Darcy Lewis can announce exposition.
I was also amused by the idea that SHIELD requires all recruits to do a rotation through the PR department, to teach them (ideally) how to not fuck up and make a mess. I'd like to think that's why all of Coulson's crew are aware of the (made up) consequences of setting foot on Maltan soil.
Also, I'm afraid the Kanniyakumari incident is classified. Rest assured, though, Ward deserves Darcy's ire.
Finally, the moment Agent Mack turned on his Tony Stark holographic computer windscreen, my husband turned to me and said, "He is now my favorite character." So this one is for him. Nerd. :)