"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all."
- Emily Dickinson
Part Four: Train
Darcy dances in a club in Paris.
She wears ear plugs that only partially smother the sounds of the club. Without them she wouldn't be anywhere near a place like this. She started coming here when she and Jane moved from London several weeks ago. She still can't sleep through the night so she goes dancing.
It's day 183, according to her journal. 183 days since she woke up in Fenham. When she managed to sleep for a couple hours before she got to the club, she dreamed of that man in London, Robbie.
It was incredible, what her mind could do. She managed to have a sex dream of such intensity that she woke up soaking, clenching on nothing. She was sure she'd never felt more aroused in all her life. Robbie was attentive with his hands and mouth down her body, tasting her, caressing her slick folds with his thick fingers before filling her so completely with his cock. His eyes were so blue they seemed to shine down at Darcy as they rutted again and again.
She'd never find him. Being in another country with nothing but his first name would never be enough to bring that dream to life, if he ever wanted her.
Darcy hasn't had sex in months. She feels bodies press up to hers when she dances and she knows she's starving for some kind of intimacy. She reminds herself that she shrinks away from strangers on the train. She can't expect herself to snap out of this, all this.
The music's too much so she drifts away, feeling her sweat for the first time. She glances at her arm, seeing the little dent there. The last doctor she went to said she wasn't gaining weight. Darcy felt smaller – the doctor said it was muscle. She was toned, now. Darcy argued she never worked out, never did anything particularly active to gain muscle. The doctor didn't know what else to say – except that maybe it was puppy fat.
She rips out the earplugs and tucks them back in her denim jacket pocket. She thinks about slipping into a bar somewhere. Last time she drank she didn't calm down. She drank and drank and drank and nothing seemed to sink in. Another time she bought a bottle of vodka and drank it all, feeling queasy from the sheer volume of it. She knew she might poison herself, but she tried to will herself, will her body to release, to succumb to something else. Nothing happened.
She checks Jane's data over and over, for something they might have missed, but there's no activity around the area she disappeared, or the park in Fenham. There's nothing to explain it all.
Even the way she moves through the world, like in Paris now, is different. Her footsteps are measured. She can see obstacles further away, like a straggling tourist couple, or someone about to drop their umbrella. She doesn't understand where this agile movement is coming from. She always was such a clumsy person, all her life.
She knows that in a way she is lucky. She didn't die when she disappeared. She's older than her mother ever was by several years. She still has Jane even though Erik moved back to Denmark for a while.
She lets herself into the apartment and listens out for Jane, seeing her bedroom light is off. She glances around the kitchen and she can hear people in the street. She can hear them speaking as if they're in the room with her. She shoves the earplugs back in and tries to sleep some more.
She has a new dream, with the same vividness as the Robbie dream. She is running through the woods, the fastest she has ever moved. It's like she's flying, and she can hear the wind whipping as she hurtles along. She's barefoot, running over grass, leaping over logs. She hears barking in the distance, and a siren far away. She can hear the roar of her blood in her ears. She can feel the sun on her bare arms.
Darcy jolts awake. She stares at the ceiling in the dark of her room, panting.
That wasn't a dream.
It's a memory.
Ian sees Darcy every day, she obviously doesn't know that. She's more alert than ever.
She's spent a year in Paris with Jane. She's still susceptible to triggers, which is good. HYDRA needs all the agents they can possibly use now that the US faction is nearly gone.
After terminating Robbie, Ian had to investigate the Scot's exploits. It was easier said than done, because the bastard had no electronic fingerprint of any kind. His only known place of residence in Camden only had a mattress on the floor with a small shelf carrying only two books inside: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Both books were sent off to Russia and thoroughly examined.
If it weren't for Molokhov revealing Robbie's true allegiance, Ian may never have suspected the Scot was disloyal to HYDRA. After several months Molokhov finally sent Ian a full dossier detailing exactly what Robbie had done over the entirety of his career. Among the contract killings and surveillance for HYDRA, he undermined the organizations sleeper agent network for over a decade. He was a collector of female agents especially, making their escapes possible over years of planning.
Ian didn't doubt that Robbie had intended to release Darcy. The day he made sure to run into her in the street was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Ian was glad he was able to snuff that out.
They dumped Robbie's body in Barcelona and the man had never looked uglier. Police were only able to identify him with the fake passport HYDRA planted on him. The police concluded he must have been backpacking through Europe and met some unsavory tourist along the way, since he was also discovered with traces of cocaine on his person and no money. His death was not considered worthy of much attention by the international press.
During the Sokovia incident a HYDRA agent defects and Ian is put on high alert. The female agent was only known as Canary and networks spot her in Paris soon after.
It would be Darcy's one last test, before she could complete her mission.
Darcy blinks rapidly, hearing someone scream. She steps back and the world comes flooding back. She's in the metro tunnel but she doesn't remember coming there.
She gets the feeling it's not an accident. She chose at some point to come here. She wonders who screamed. There's a train screeching to a halt.
There's yelling from other people on the platform. Darcy's French is good enough to make out some of the yelling.
Someone's dead. A jumper. She glances down as sees she's cut her hand. The sting is delayed, the pain reminding her she is still somehow in her body.
She's alone, behind a column, almost completely covered from the light. She's lurking, why was she lurking?
She tries to remembering walking down here, getting ready for a train. It's Wednesday. Jane didn't send her out, she'd remember that.
She's gasping for air. She remembers a knife slicing her hand – her shoving.
Did she -?
Darcy's eyes widen and she smothers her mouth with her bloody hand, coming it with her clean one as she presses herself into the wall behind her.
She remembers the scream. She made that woman scream.
She pushed her.
But it must have been an accident. She can't have meant to push a stranger into an oncoming train. That's insane. The woman must have spooked her, cut her with a knife.
Maybe she was trying to rob her?
No –
Darcy sees for fragments, her spotting the blonde woman wearing a beanie, her backpack on her shoulders in front of her as Darcy followed her down.
She'd been looking for her. She followed her down, down, down and she turned around, and –
The scream again, Darcy pushing her easily in the way of the train.
Darcy squeezes her eyes shut, and she tastes the blood on her lips where she's pressed her hand. She wipes at her face and glances around. No-one is coming for her. She's alone, everyone is distracted by the train halting, the horrible accident –
It wasn't an accident. Darcy pushed that woman.
She sucks in a breath and retreats, practically running out toward the escalators, shoving people out of the way. Eyes bulge at the smears of blood on her face.
She has to disappear now. She has to figure this out.
She bursts into the apartment out of breath. She ran all the way home. She sees no sign of Jane. She's probably gone for a walk somewhere. She checks her phone and sees no messages, no apps open.
Her phone rings.
Darcy wakes several hours later on the couch. Her hand is fine, no sign of a cut.
She had another horrible nightmare and she lets go of a shaky breath, putting her face in her hands.
She needs to get a fucking grip.