"Things get worse before they get better, but this is a worse that feels too big."
Darcy's body swayed back slightly, as if physically impacted by what Logan had just said to her; her heart skipping a beat or two and then speeding up to make up for them, making her skin feel too tight and a firm knot of nausea to settle in her throat.
That was not what she had been expecting to hear when she travelled down to the garage for this little pow- wow. Sure, she suspected that it had something to do with the stalker shit storm she was currently weathering; her Hardy boys wouldn't have come for anything less, especially as they were her and Nat's ride home in a few hour's time, but she thought that maybe they had some urgent questions to help with a line of enquiry that just couldn't wait- not an actual identification. Not so soon and not without Phil being down there with her. That alone was ringing her shit's-about-to-go-down alarm bells, which she had acquired somewhere between when tall, blond and Godly got mad tazed on the side of the road and when Loki sent a fucking scary as shit alien robot to mow down New Mexico to deal with his inferiority complex(es).
"Wow," Darcy swallowed hard, trying to calm her elevated heart rate and stop Thor's Meade from making a reappearance all over her super cute (and freaking expensive) heels and Logan's steel capped ass-kickers. She looked up at said ass kicker in question with wide eyes, "You guys don't fuck around, do you?" she breathed, giving herself a moment longer to compose herself for what she was about to learn.
Logan huffed a laugh through his nose, a wry smile ever so slightly quirking the corner of his mouth. "Not when it comes to this, Darce." He told her quietly, the lines around his mouth and eyes becoming less harsh as his stare softened on her for a long moment. Darcy doubted he liked people seeing that side of him too often, though he seemed to have no issue whipping it out for her when she needed it and Darcy very much appreciated it in that moment.
Darcy tilted her head with a ghost of a smile of her own at the obvious marshmallow centre of the man before her, her heart slowing a little in response to his obvious attempts to make her feel a tad bit better. For all his surly nature suggested he really did care, he just sometimes showed it differently; you just had to be fluent in Logan-ese and Darcy felt that she was well on the way to being fluent.
"Not to interrupt this touching scene," Seth interrupted a bit too loudly as he scowled at Darcy- making Darcy scowl right back at him- his tone a little too accusatory for the situation and her liking; his previously pained expression taking on a more heated twist that Darcy couldn't even begin to translate. "But as you were so adamant on letting Miss Lewis know what we discovered, maybe you'd like to get on with it." Seth bit out as he set that scowl on Logan, which he seemed to appreciate even less than Darcy had if the growl emanating from his chest was any indication. What had happened to her security detail that blushed in the face of her brashness she didn't know, but she could admit that she missed his tomato face if this was what she was going to be getting instead. He was teetering on douche-y SHIELD drone and she didn't have enough energy to add 'hating Agent Kyle' to her ever expanding to-do list.
"Oh, bub," Logan chuckled darkly as he stared Seth down, "You're gonna wanna shut your mouth, take a good few steps away from me and wipe that look off your fuckin' face," he warned as he flexed his hands ominously and his body swayed forward. "I'm even less in the mood now than I was earlier when you led me on that merry little chase to deal with your bullshit." And Darcy's previous scowl turned into a frown of confusion at whatever the hell that meant.
"Hey," Seth bit out in harsh indignation that Darcy had never heard coming from him before, "I told you what I knew to be facts, not what I thought to be the truth." He defended for what sounded like not the first time that night and even though she had no idea what the two of them were arguing about, Darcy still found herself halfway through an eye roll at his SHIELD issued rhetoric when she had to move quicker than she thought possible in what she was wearing and turned to place both her hands on Logan's chest, her forearms pressed to his stomach to halt his sudden advancement on her SHIELD security, rocking back on her heels at his abruptly stopped momentum from her touch. Darcy found herself mentally thanking Tony for all the times she had to place herself in the same position between him and whoever he had pissed off enough to warrant physical retribution, or they'd have a kebob-ed Agent Kyle on their hands and she just did not have time for that tonight on top of everything else. (Poor Seth seemed to be at the bottom of every one of her lists as of late.)
Darcy knew that realistically, she didn't really stand a chance in hell of stopping Logan if he really wanted to get at Seth, but he had stopped all the same, looking back down at her with fire in his eyes, though considerably less than that had been aimed at Seth a second earlier. He breathed harshly through his nose, the exhalations fluttering the hair on top of her head, his hands tense as they came to hold her upper arms to help steady her better against him, because, seriously, her heels were fucking high and she had drunk her fair share of Thor's Meade of Bad Consequence earlier that the extra support was appreciated if not altogether necessary.
"Right at this moment," Darcy said a little breathlessly and with a slight shake of her head, her fingers tightening on the leather of his jacket to make sure she had his full attention, "I could give less of a fuck about Seth's loose definition of what the truth is. I have something a little more pressing I would like to know." Darcy widened her eyes a little and watched as Logan visibly calmed himself down, his breathing slowing and hands loosening the grip they had on her arms as Darcy did the same to his coat, flattening her palms against him and feeling the rumble of his breaths and once again, Darcy felt her own heart calming along with him. She needed him back on track so that he could tell her what he had found out, not how much he was obviously pissed off at Seth, even though she wanted to know the why of that as well. It just wasn't the main objective right then and thankfully her security/driver/newly-discovered-to-be-a-douche-bag Seth was wisely remaining quiet after the solid she had just done for him.
"You're right," Logan said with a nod, throwing one more glare at Seth to make sure he kept his mouth shut over the top of her head, before his eyes returned to Darcy and swept her face, narrowing on her neck, his head tilting towards her a fraction more, nostrils flaring and Darcy couldn't even scrounge up the ire at having him check her pulse points, scent, and heartbeat like she normally would. It seemed like a pretty well thought out move considering how her heart had been thumping up a storm a few moments previously and her body must be just giving off wave after wave of anxiety. Seemingly satisfied that she wasn't about to go all Southern Belle and have a touch of the vapours on him, Logan took a deep breath, looked Darcy dead in the eye, tightened his hands on her once more and said in a low but clear voice, "Barney Barton, AKA Trickshot, Clint's brother. He's been the one following you."
Darcy's world just stopped; her focus dwindling down to the man in front of her as she let that truth bomb explode in her brain- its shrapnel cutting to pieces what she thought to be true and rocking her foundations. Her heart didn't start beating a harsh tattoo in her chest again though, like she had expected it to at the revelation of who was following her; rather it seemed to be sinking down to her shoes, the sick feeling from earlier settling in her stomach as she stared up at Logan's face, a tiny frown furrowing between her brows.
Because that...that was not what she had been expecting to hear; not that she actually had a Blue's fucking clue who it was going to be- but it most definitely was not that, not him, never him.
It just wasn't possible.
'Barney Barton, AKA Trickshot, Clint's brother. He's been the one following you,' was playing on a loop in her head as she tried to make sense of it and finding that she really couldn't. Because that just couldn't be the case. And she could believe a hell of a lot. She had jumped on board with the whole Thor Thing pretty fucking quickly when he rocked up in New Mexico and freaked her out. But this?
The more she replayed what had been said, the less sense it made to her and boy, was she trying to make it make sense. She could decipher the scrawl that Jane claimed to be her scientific research, or whatever chicken scratch Clint reduced to when he couldn't be bothered to hold a writing utensil like a grown up during mission reports (and Phil needed an extra set of eyes to confirm that 'yes, he has in fact written he was responsible for the borrowing, not theft, Phil- he says he intends to give back one of Queen Elizabeth II's prized corgis and that he'll return it when he sees her next, and 'no, Phil, I was not aware that he was friends with the reigning Queen of England, you should probably ask Tash about that and maybe make sure that he's feeding it more than pizza like the last dog he 'borrowed'. This one is royalty, after all.') But this- this just would not align right in her mind.
"No," Darcy said after a few long and tense moments of Logan and Seth just staring at her, her voice wavering slightly as she pushed herself away from Logan a step, even though he didn't release her and she didn't want him to. She kept her palms on his sternum, grounding her as her mind spun madly on, "no, you see," she said again a breathy laugh escaping her, "that can't be right." Darcy forced out as she firmly shook her head and said decisively, "He's dead. Clint told me that he was dead." Her voice becoming stronger, her eyes leaving Logan's after a moment, not being able to look at the certainty there when she knew that he was wrong, that he had to be wrong.
She looked over his shoulder, not seeing the rows and rows of cars in front of her as she searched her mind. Darcy thought back to the nights she and Clint had spent together discussing their families and life before an alien had popped down to visit New Mexico; just the two of them, on the sofa, in bed, up high on a roof somewhere, wherever Clint felt comfortable enough to open up, because God knew that location didn't bother Darcy when important talks were taking place, as proven by her sleuthing sit-rep in a billionaire's garage with an AI standing guard for her.
She thought back on how he would tell her of the older brother he had survived through hell with in a violently abusive home, with an even bigger drunk for a father than Darcy had and a mother who did nothing to protect her children or herself.
The brother who had taken the safest path available to him with Clint by his side by joining the circus when their parents died in an accident the two of them had survived, and entered the life of carny living and crime after escaping the shitty foster care system they were thrust into. Learning how to use a bow like Clint, just not as well, which was still really fucking well compared to anyone else.
The brother who had then gone straight, joined the army and then gone onto join a government agency, just like Clint. But Barney had not stayed that way like his younger brother had, because Barney hadn't had his own Nat, Coulson or Fury to keep him on the straight and narrow. How he'd fallen into old and bad habits and gone rogue, taking all the skills and training with him that he'd learned being a government issued weapon-the hand to hand, weapon and subterfuge training, all helping in his criminal enterprising and effectively becoming an enemy of the state.
The brother that Clint had faced off against more than once over the years on opposite sides of the moral and legal spectrum and how the younger brother had always come out on top, only compounding whatever resentment the elder sibling had and exacerbating his crazy; and there was just so much crazy to exacerbate there.
And then, finally, how that older brother had died a few years back with the two of them hating each other after way too many years of bad blood, backstabbing and attempted homicides on someone's part in particular and it was safe to say that that someone wasn't one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. But that hadn't stopped said hero being devastated by the death of the only remaining blood relation he had left.
'Barney Barton, AKA Trickshot, Clint's brother. He's been the one following you.'
Darcy analysed every time they had spoken of his supposedly deceased brother and tried to look for signs of deception, with the skills Nat had taught her, on Clint's part in his stories- shifty eyes, tense body language, strange speaking or breathing patterns, anything and everything that would indicate a lie and she came up with absolutely nothing.
Clint hadn't lied to her. Darcy knew that to be 100% true, even with all of his SHIELD training, deception was not something that Clint was overly adept at, which was why his undercover missions usually fell within the realms of back up for Tash to get her lie on, instead.
Darcy looked back at Logan then, eyes watery. She studied his face as she blinked away her tears, and though she could see no signs of Logan lying to her either, nor could she think of a reason that he would want to, what he said could not be the truth. Unless...unless Clint had only told her what he knew to be fact, not what he thought to be the truth, like Seth had reasoned earlier, where Clint all along suspected his brother to be alive and just chose to go with the lie, or maybe he really, truly believed his brother to be dead. There had been a funeral and she'd seen the death certificate herself when she had organised all of Clint's woefully stored important documentation. There had been a grieving process for fuck's sake, Tash had told her all about it in heart-wrenching detail when Clint had disappeared on the anniversary of Barney's death and Darcy had gotten worried when she couldn't get a hold of him. "He was supposed to be dead." She finally whispered, brokenly and mostly to herself, as if a reminder, even though her voice was starting to show signs of her doubt, an acceptance of what she'd been told lingering beneath her words.
"Darcy," Logan said quietly, "in this life how often do the dead actually stay dead?" He asked rhetorically and Darcy let out a loud and shaky exhale that she refused to characterize as a sob, because apparently the answer was fucking never anymore.
Darcy took another step away from Logan, her hands dropping from his chest, making him let go of her arms, which he seemed reluctant to do but let it happen anyway seeming to know that she desperately needed the space at that moment, and she walked over to the car that Seth had driven her in that day, the sound of her heels echoing off the walls, ignoring the man himself even though she could feel his eyes on her retreating figure.
She just needed a moment, to sort and sift, to process and percolate on what she had been told.
Darcy put her hands onto the cooling hood of the car, leaning forward at the waist, her head hanging, hair hiding her face as she stared down at her shoes, rocking her body a little on one heel as the other stayed firmly on the concrete and fought back her tears, regulating her breathing with controlled inhales through her nose and exhales out of pouted lips which helped with the nauseous feeling that had settled in to stay.
She needed to keep herself under control; she could not lose it; not when she needed to get this fuck-fest sorted out.
This was what she wanted, after all, she wanted to know who it was following her, she couldn't just peace out because she didn't like who it turned out to be, or rather she couldn't believe who it turned out to be; even though there was a voice in the back of her head getting louder and louder, insisting that she actually did believe it. That stranger things had happened in the world, and to her personally (Hello Dark Elves, you creepy fucks), than someone turning out not to be dead (Hello Agent Phil 'not dead' Coulson), that the break up, Clint's behaviour towards Natasha, Phil being squirrely back at SHIELD and everything else made a lot more fucking sense if you added one Barney Barton to the mix, she just didn't want it to.
The implications of it, the emotional fall out, were just too big to comprehend if it was true.
She couldn't even begin to fathom how much that this had fucked with Clint's mind, because Jesus her heart just hurt for him thinking about it, so she couldn't risk thinking on it further unless she really wanted to have a breakdown. She was going to have to wait until she had a better time to deal (i.e. when she was on her own and not being stared at by a couple of amateur Nancy Drews or had a party that she needed to be cognizant for) but that she also knew enough from what Clint had told her, what Nat had alluded to, and her own JARVIS aided snooping, to know that Charles Bernard Barton, otherwise known as Barney, AKA Trickshot (Dickhead, much better moniker for the man in her opinion of what she'd found out, had more names than Sean Combs, Prince and Snoop Dogg combined) was one dangerous person and that was not something she should, or could, talk herself around; she knew too much.
Which meant that denial was not her friend, not then, anyway, and she needed to stop her brain being a stubborn bitch and face what she had been told. Because this was bad, like, it was really fucking bad and it didn't stop being bad or being true because her head was trying to reject what was an actuality compared to what she had been previously told in what, she supposed, was good faith. After all, she didn't subscribe to the SHIELD thinking of there being a difference between known facts and thought-to-be-truths.
Darcy bit the inside of her cheek at the terrifying realisation that she had a psycho gunning for her, hard enough to leave a ridge when she released it and she was just so fucking close to being done with everything, especially after the past few days. She was seriously considering asking Sif to let her bum a ride to Asgard with her, so she could live the rest of her days over the rainbow (bridge) and maybe have a go on Fandral like he'd been offering for so long. It seemed like a pretty good plan to her, and, as far as she knew, Fandral was an only child, so history had less of a risk of repeating itself.
And that wasn't even denial talking, if anything it was close to acceptance, accepting the fact that she didn't want to have to deal with this and that she did have options to get the fuck out of dodge if she so pleased.
Just as she was mentally patting herself on the back for learning from her mistakes and coming to terms with the fact that she would have to wear corsets far more than she normally would like outside of sexy-times, Pepper enforced sartorial choices, or Halloween dress up, a little voice piped up in the back of her head again that she wasn't too far enough gone to resent yet.
'Darcy Lewis does a lot of things, but she does not run when things get hard; she stays and she fights and she succeeds. That is who you are and that is who you will always be.'
Phil's voice echoed in her mind, reminding her of what her new outlook on life was supposed to be when facing her problems, this problem specifically, actually.
But that was before, before she found out just how fucked this whole situation truly was. Random Stalker Guy she could have probably handled, Up Close and Very Personal Stalker Guy, not so much.
Darcy closed her eyes tightly then, folding her lips between her teeth and biting, her hands pressed harder down onto the car as she twisted her neck, her head weaving in the air, not sure if she was trying to shake the memory of Phil's advice away or having it coat her mind and force her back to the reality of what she should do and not the fantasy of what she could do.
But even as she was having little flashbulbs of Asgardian living she knew that she wasn't serious, she knew what she had to do, she just had to buck up and fucking do it.
But before she believed it fully, before she let herself accept it unconditionally, before she went from 99 to 100% all in, she was going to need evidence and to get that she was going to have to talk to the two warring messes still blessedly silent a few feet away and there was really no time like the present for her nightmare to become a reality.
Darcy pushed herself upright from the car slowly, bring her hands to her hair, running them through Sif's carefully constructed 'do, snagging on pins that were keeping her curls in place and not really giving a shit, she had more important things to worry about than how she looked at that moment. She then bought her fingers underneath her eyes to wipe at the tears that hadn't fallen, head tilting back so she could stare at the florescent lights above, hands leaving her face as she took another deep, centring breath and vigorously shook them out at her sides, her bracelet making a melodic, calming, tinkling, other worldly sound as the star shards clinked together.
Tilting her head back down, chin high, Darcy spun on the balls of her feet and took in the men in front of her who had obviously been staring at her throughout her mental acrobatics, clenching her jaw and rolling her shoulders back in preparation; she walked back to them with measured steps and narrowed her eyes.
"Are you sure?" She asked quietly, "Are you sure that it's really Barney Barton?"At their nods Darcy grimaced, rolling her neck and going for broke. "And this isn't you playing the 'that was a lie, this is actually the truth, look how much worse your life could have been' game?" She tried once more, hopefully, her voice full of faked playfulness that vaguely covered the lump that was forming in her throat. "'Cause I gotta tell you that is a good one, if 'good one' means 'you're an asshole for making that shit up and you should be reminded that I'm bosom buddies with an alien God who can fuck your shit up on request'."
"Sorry, kid." Logan said after a moment of consideration, dashing Darcy's hopes and dreams with two softly but gruffly spoken words.
"Fuck." Darcy said under her breath and through clenched teeth. She then closed her eyes, rolled her lips between her teeth, biting down again and blew a breath through her nose. Opening her eyes and releasing her mouth Darcy shook her head a little at the men in front of her. "Everything," Darcy started strongly but still wavering slightly with anxiousness and a healthy dose of fear, "I need to know everything and I need to know it right now." She demanded.
"No," Seth said and Darcy looked to him sharply and she didn't even try to attempt to rein in Logan when he started to loom over the young agent. 'Maybe he needed to be clawed', Darcy thought, as she scowled at him, 'that might teach him to stop being such a raging douche'. "Now what you need to do is talk to Barton."
"Are seriously still playing that fucking tune?" Logan growled as he took what seemed to be a protective stance in front of Darcy from Seth, shielding her from his utter bullshit.
"This is Agent Barton's op; he should be in charge of who knows what and when." Seth declared and Darcy would have laughed if she one: had the emotional capacity for levity at that moment and two: wasn't about to beat him to death with her shoe that she was pretty sure that was one of the major selling points for the ultra high, ultra pointy stiletto when Maria gifted them to her.
"This is not an op, Agent Kyle," Darcy bit out as she took a step so she was at Logan's shoulder instead of behind him, their arms brushing, her fear and anxiety morphing into slowly simmering anger and determination only bolstered from the heat Logan was exuding through his leather jacket and into her bare arms, as she then realised how cold she actually had been, "this is my fucking life and even though over the past three weeks it has proven itself to be an unmitigated disaster area, it is still my life and I have every right to know whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want to know it and I sure as fuck to do not need your or Agent Barton's permission for that." She seethed, chest rising and falling with her temper, his loyalty to Clint going past 'a little annoying' to full blown murder inducing.
"Fine, it may not be an op," Seth conceded, seemingly unconcerned by Darcy's wrath, which just proved to piss her off more. Actual alien Gods quaked in their capes when she got on a rage roll and this baby Agent couldn't even muster up a wince? Asshole. "But it's also Agent Barton's life and he should be the one to disclose the details as he sees fit. It is his brother, after all."
That had her stopping in her tracks for a moment, the reminder that the perpetrator was Clint's family making her take a breath. "Agent Barton had his chance to 'disclose the details' as he saw fit," Darcy said as she tried her hardest to control her temper, "for weeks he's had his chance, now it's up to me to find out whatever I can from whatever source I can, I may not know or understand why he didn't just tell me this himself but that doesn't mean that just because I now know the basics that I'm just going to trust him to fill in the blanks." She said defiantly, because as fucking if was she just going to trust that Clint was going to be Mr Honesty now that she knew what was going on, she was going to need some serious truth bombs in her arsenal to make sure that Hawkeye remained sincere when she had her whatever with him later.
"But-" Seth tried again but was cut off by a threatening step forward and a distinct 'snkkt' of claws from Logan.
"Shut up," Logan growled, "If you ain't going to be helpful, then leave, I know everything you do and if I miss anything, I'll just call up Barnes." Logan stated and Darcy scrunched her brows as she looked up at the back of Logan's head, her anger momentarily forgotten in favour of curiosity.
"Wait, what?" Darcy asked as she took a step forward, her hand finding Logan's forearm in an indication to sheath his claws again. "Bucky?" Darcy asked and Logan nodded as his claws disappeared, his eyes not leaving Seth's face.
"Yeah, seems like asshole here didn't feel like being completely honest earlier during his silent interrogation." He accused and Darcy frown deepened as she looked back at Seth who was looking all too impassive for Darcy's liking, at what he was being charged with.
"And what does that mean?" She asked, her voice dangerously low, her words coming out slowly.
"Barton's puppy here wasn't the only person that he told of his brother being a not-dead-creep and dick-face here knew it." Logan informed her as he glanced down at Darcy from the corner of his eye waiting for her reaction and oh did he get one.
"Douche-baggery!" Darcy breathed indignantly, her fingers twitching as her foot lifted off the floor a little bit, her body encouraging her to shoe-shiv Seth where he stood. "I asked you if anyone else knew and you shook your lying pin head!"
"I didn't lie," Seth said again, blandly, "like I said earlier, I told you what I knew to be facts, not what I thought to be the truth."
Instead of getting sucked into that rabbit hole of SHIELD double speak again, Darcy pushed though with a shake of her head, "And what does Bucky have to do with this?" When Seth continued to be the Speak No Evil Monkey, Logan stepped in regaining Darcy's attention to fill in the blanks.
"Hawkeye told Coulson's old Bus team, Barnes specifically; everything as soon as he found out his brother was alive and had it out for you, even before he told this asshole." Logan said with a dismissive tilt of his head in Seth's direction. "They've been stationed in New York for six weeks making sure that you're safe while looking into Trickshot and whatever he's up to. They've also been making sure that Pepper, Doc Foster and the rest of the Avengers' less than defensively able friends are protected just in case Trickshot decides to become even less stable than he already is." Darcy let out a relieved breath that she hadn't even realised she needed to take when she heard that, at least she wasn't endangering anyone else by just being her. "Asshole here was told to go to them if something happened and he needed help protecting you and they were under strict orders to extract you if they felt you were at too much risk."
"Oh my God," Darcy groaned as she threw her head back and clenched her fists before fixing her glare back on Seth. "Why do I believe anything you SHIELD shit heads tell me?" she asked rhetorically as she resolutely decided to act as though he didn't exist until she absolutely had to.
First it was Clint and then Fury, Phil and Maria being a bag of dicks and now an entire Bus of people jumping on the 'let's lie to Darcy about something that directly affects her' plan; which was the worst plan ever and Darcy's been around at hour 38 of science shenanigans when all Tony can suggest is making a Hulk Man suit, 'it's Hulk in an Iron Man suit, Lewis, just imagine what he could do, 'yeah, but, isn't it like a hat on a hat? One cool thing on another,' 'Exactly, and that is makes it awesome!' 'Hulk can do enough damage as is, Tony, adding repulsors would be overkill, just ask Harlem,' 'I'm a Billionaire, Lewis, I'd pay for the damages,' 'Ok, that's it you've gone too far I'm getting Pepper.' And if Nat ended up lying to her she was just never going to talk to any SHIELD personnel ever again, which admittedly shrunk her group of friends significantly, but whatever, fewer birthdays she had to have JARVIS remember for her. And who the hell needed flesh bag friends when she had JARV on her side, anyway?
"I didn't know that they knew about someone following you or that they knew who it was and I didn't find it pertinent to speculate on it when my mission was to protect you at all costs; that was my sole focus as it always is when I'm your security." Seth specified and Darcy just stared at him, her eyes wide, chest tightening as she felt the sincerity of his sentiment eating away some of the anger that she felt towards him for being a lying jackhole, before an unsettling thought occurred to her, redirecting her thoughts away from forgiving Seth and she turned to Logan in question.
"Do you think that Coulson knew?" Darcy asked her voice smaller than before, her indignation at SHIELD letting way for the fear that Phil had lied to her again and the sickening realisation that there was a very good chance that he had. "I mean, they are his old team, they could have told him and I know that he likes to keep tabs on them, I doubt they could have kept that the Bus was in New York for this long without him knowing."
"I don't know, kid," Logan said gruffly, "when we told him that someone was following you, his scent was surprise, anger and a little bit of fear but that could mean anything and Barnes didn't mention about Coulson knowing. That's going to be a question for him." he shrugged making Darcy nod sadly in return. It was just another conversation that was on a long list of ones that she didn't want to have.
"If he did know and didn't tell you he probably had a good reason for it." Seth chimed in and Darcy glowered at him in response because even if she was on the road to forgiving him, she was getting a little sick of the one man SHIELD cheer section making itself known.
"Seriously, why do I bother?" Darcy's asked in mono-tone, because inflection wasn't going to get her anywhere with this asshole.
"I think you've learnt your lesson on that one now, kid." Logan said with a quirked eyebrow in her direction.
"Yeah, no fucking shit." Darcy griped as she shook her head, "No wonder Jemma was acting weirder than her normal British-ness allowed for when she Skyped from the Bus. She can't lie for shit and if she knew about this, which she obviously did, because Barnes can't keep things from his girlfriend -it's one of Jemma's rules for their relationship- then all that talking about cactus phosphorescent testing makes a lot more sense from the none than it actually did. Especially as she would always bring it up when I asked when she was crash-landing in New York so we could hang. And now I've found out that they've been here all along. Assholes. I bet that's not even a thing, cactus phosphorescent, she was just throwing science words at me; she knows it all becomes white noise to me after a while, overexposure to my nerd trio. Ugh, omissions and avoidance using bio-chem is just low." And then Darcy shot Logan a look that had him frowning, because it was decidedly not a nice look.
"What's with the face? I didn't shout science shit at you until you blacked out." He asked and Darcy narrowed her eyes at him.
"This face is the face of someone remembering that you didn't tell me the whole truth at lunch." Darcy said and Logan narrowed his own eyes right back, but Darcy just shook her head instead of engaging in that staring contest, he had super healing, itchy eyes wouldn't bother him, "And that is something for us to discuss at a later time, like when I don't need to be told about what else you know."
After a moment longer of staring at her Logan shook his head and said, "Other than what I said about the Bus team knowing, that's pretty much it, they don't know any more. I was trying to contact the Cajun to see if he could get his cards to tell me something when asshole slipped up and mentioned something about the Bus running everything and it wasn't hard to puzzle together after that. The team have been looking for him ever since, but the guy is a slippery fuck and can get underground faster than anything only to surface to taunt-"
"And take pictures." Darcy said, thinking back to the surveillance she had been under. "Are you seriously telling me that when he was getting all snap happy, none of them could track him? Not even Skye?" She asked incredulously, sure Darcy could hack a lot of government Agencies and make super badass fake ID's on the fly, but even she knew that she had nothing on what Skye could do with a laptop and Wi-Fi.
"He's good, Darce; the science nerds even used those Dwarves/drone things and couldn't get a location he stayed in long enough to see where he goes after following you." Darcy frowned at that one.
"What do you mean after he follows me? If they've been keeping an eye on me why didn't they just swoop in and take him then?" She asked, confusion more than evident in her tone and also not a small amount of wariness at what SHIELD were cooking up possibly at her expense. It's not like it would be the first time that day that she would have found out she was part of some SHIELD machinations.
"Counter intelligence." Seth supplied before Logan could answer. At Darcy's widened eyes of question, Seth carried on. "SHIELD 101," he shrugged, "watch the watchers, you learn more that way, picking him up straight away takes away an avenue of investigation, like if he's working alone or if he has a team or if he has a boss. Just because you take Trickshot out of play doesn't mean the danger to you has passed. If there are others involved they could just send someone else in his stead."
In light of how decidedly unhelpful Seth had been for the past little while Darcy wasn't feeling overly charitable in her thanks, so she just gave him a small chin thrust of gratitude in acknowledgement as Logan spoke again.
"Barnes said that Hawkeye doesn't think that Trickshot would try to grab you without him there and that the best way for them to figure out what his brother was planning was to figure out what game he was playing, seems as if Barton is playing by his brother's rules until he can figure them out and beat him at his own game; and as Hawkeye has always won in the past, I'm inclined to go with it." Logan said.
"Yeah, playing games with crazy people always works out so well for the sane side. Have you seen Saw? I don't want to have to chop my own foot off to try and beat this guy." Darcy said and that had Logan turning to look into Darcy's eyes, grasping her shoulders, his thumbs resting on her clavicles.
"Whatever games are being played he won't get you, Darcy, and he sure as hell won't hurt you. I won't let him." Logan said it like a promise that had Darcy smiling up at him sadly.
"The Bus has been looking for him for nearly two months and they have nothing that JARVIS couldn't find in a few hours." She lamented, feeling a little hopeless, but Logan shook his head as he loosened his grip on her.
"That was before I could give them what I knew." Logan said and Darcy raised an eyebrow in askance as he released her completely after skimming his hands down her arms to her wrists.
"What do you mean what you could give them? You've known someone's been following me for as long as I have and who it is for not that much longer than me." She said doubtfully, tilting her head a little.
"Do you remember in Coulson's office at SHIELD HQ when I said that I recognised the scent of whoever this fucker was, but it was off? But that I knew it from some bad shit that had happened recently?" Logan asked.
"Yeah, of course, it made you all growl-y," Darcy nodded as she frowned, questions popping up in her head. "But why didn't you know who he was as soon as you smelled him? You obviously know who Trickshot is."
"Yeah, I know who Trickshot is, but I've never met him, I've only ever met Hawkeye and that is why he smelled familiar but I couldn't pin him down." At Darcy's frown deepening he clarified. "Families share some similar scents, shared DNA especially of siblings of the same sex can smell the same but different. And considering that I and every other fucker thought he was dead he didn't occur to me as a suspect, now it all makes sense."
"Glad it does to somebody." Darcy grumbled, ignoring Logan's huff of laughter. "What bad shit have you super smelled connected him to?" Darcy asked with not a little trepidation, because if Wolverine thinks its bad then it's worse than what she could think, and Logan immediately sobering confirmed it for her before she got an explanation.
"That's what the Bus team has now that they didn't have before, for the past year and a half ,that we know of, children from all over the world have been taken, some from their homes, others from schools or off the streets and sold, all by the same person." Logan said gravely, the anger evident in his suddenly cold eyes that matched how her insides felt.
"And when you say children, you mean kids with the X-gene and when you say sold, you mean into labs or slavery and when you say by the same person, you mean Barney Barton." Darcy filled in what he wasn't herself a sick feeling overtaking her at what she'd just deduced. It was not at all uncommon for that to happen to X-Kids so it wasn't a huge mental leap to take.
"Yes." Logan said succinctly.
"And I imagine that the influx of kids that you've had recently, that the job offer you made to me alluded to have been rescued from what Trickshot got them into." Darcy said, aware that Seth was right there but trusting that he wouldn't know what she was chatting about and Logan nodded.
"Yes." He repeated, not wanting to go into any more detail with their audience either.
"Kind of puts it into perspective how shitty this guy is when stalking his brother's girlfriend is the lesser of his crimes." Darcy said as she rubbed her hands together, her skin feeling like it was crawling. "And how does that even help the Bus to find him?" Darcy asked as she tried to tamp down on the nausea that her stalker and the man she loves brother is a child trafficker produces; shit just keeps getting better the more she learns.
"It gives a woman like Skye a hell of a lot. I give her the time, dates and places of where the kids were taken that we have him attached to and she can plot where he's been, if there are aliases he's used more than once, bank accounts used and money transfers made, safe houses stayed in, anything to try and backtrack where he's been that might help tell us where he would go now. Even the people that we caught with the kidnapped kids couldn't give us anything on Trickshot; it was all done on wire transfer and drop points. Word of mouth, all the way. No direct contact. He was smart."
"But that doesn't bother him now, now he wants to be seen. The question is why." Seth said and Logan nodded at him.
"And if we find out that, if we find him then we can find where those other kids are, the ones that haven't found their way to Westchester yet." Darcy said quietly her mind racing.
"And stop him from following through on whatever plans he has for you." Logan agreed.
"That would be nice." Darcy said with a wry smile. "So that's the plan? Have Skye and the Bus people look into where he's been and keep an eye on me for when he makes his move?" Logan immediately shook his head.
"No, like I said, Skye will look for patterns but you are no way in hell playing bait. It makes no sense to get you taken as well as those kids. What you're going to do is talk to Clint and get him to tell us everything that he knows so we can figure out what he wants and strategize a way to get his brother into X-Men custody for questioning and then be put into a deep dark hole for kidnapping, child trafficking and being an all around twisted fuck who follows young women without their knowledge."
"And when you say questioning you mean so that Jean can invade his tiny little mind?" Darcy asked, liking the idea immensely. Jean could do that politely and with the dexterity of a doctor, tidying as she goes to lessen the pain that can occur from having your mind read, or she can bulldoze in, wreak havoc finding what she wants and leave you stuck in your own head with no means of escape.
"You know me well, but Wheels and Storm will probably want the old fashioned way given a whirl first; if that proves as ineffective as we all know it will, then Jeanie can have her fun." Logan said his voice as wistful as Darcy imagined it could get.
"Do you think he's working with a team or has a boss that he's working for? Is that why you haven't called in your team?" Darcy asked but Logan was already shaking his head before she finished speaking.
"No, I don't, and Charles agreed with me when I told him on the way here. I think that the reason that Trickshot has been so hard to track is because this has been a one man operation, no outliers or loose threads to expose him. We both think that the safest bet is to get more intel to make sure that he has no failsafes in place that could put people, particularly you, in danger before we bring him in, though. Just because I think that he's not working with anyone doesn't mean he's not; Better safe than sorry." Logan said with a shrug and Darcy quirked an eyebrow.
"Wolverine is being cautious and looking before he leaps?" Darcy teased as she lent the back of her hand against his brow, jokingly checking his temperature. "Are you sure you're feeling quite alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, kid, you're a fucking comedian." Logan groused as he grasped her hand and put it back to her side. "Now that Hawkeye's back things should start making a lot more sense with his two cents added, we just need to bring him into the fold and get this shit show sorted before anyone else gets hurt." Logan said giving her a pointed look.
"Well, I'm talking to Clint...whenever," Darcy said blinking her eyes wide, "I literally walked into him earlier and he seemed pretty adamant on speaking to me." She put up a hand at Logan's scowl, shaking her head, her hair pins really starting to get on her nerves as they scraped her scalp after she had disturbed their careful placement earlier. "Nat and I handled it, he pushed but we pushed harder. I'll ask him to come tomorrow morning to my new place and we'll have it all out before you get there by lunch and then we can all share and share alike as a big group of crime fighting badasses to take down the only remaining blood relative that Clint has to make sure that he can't traumatise a whole generation of X-Kids." Darcy said a little bitterly at how very fucked this situation was.
"As good a plan as any, kid." Logan said and Darcy sighed heavily in response.
"Things will stop feeling like such a mess when we converge right?" Darcy asked as she waffled her fingers to show what she thought coming together looked like and squeezing her hands tightly in front of her face.
"It probably won't feel any less of a mess but it will be less of one. Everyone will be on the same page with the same information and it will all become clearer." Logan promised and it actually made Darcy feel a little bit better. One of her Gramma's old sayings coming to mind; 'sometimes you have to make a mess to clear a mess.'
"And that's it, right? That's all you know, nothing else is going to come back and bite us in the ass because we didn't think that it was the right time to share?" Darcy asked as she finally acknowledged Seth who just shrugged.
"Even I know more than I did a few hours ago, what I know you now know." Seth said and Darcy pursed her lips as she narrowed her eyes in vague accusation.
"But not what you suspect, right?" Darcy questioned and Seth's lip quirked.
"You're catching on to how this whole SHIELD intelligence thing works." Seth quipped.
"Isn't that an oxymoron?" Darcy said and smiled sweetly back at him, receiving a bland Coulson-esque smirk in response that nearly made Darcy grimace; only Phil could do that and not seem like a total creep, it would seem. "What about you? Anything else I should, need, or, want to know?" She asked Logan and he looked down at her for a moment before seemingly coming to a decision and turning to Seth.
"Go tell Barnes that we told Darcy, hopefully that will get Doc Simmons off his back. I doubt having his girlfriend telling him that he was wrong and that she was right about lying to Darcy for two months is helping him to keep his Russian programming under control. And ask them if they have anything new for us to check before we have to get Darce and Widow home later tonight." Seth just tipped his head as he headed to the garage's office, taking out his phone. As soon as Logan was sure that Seth was out of earshot he turned back to Darcy with a frown that made a sense of foreboding settle over her.
"What?" She asked slowly, "Things cannot be any worse than what has already been said." At his continued frown Darcy looked to the floor and whined. "Oh my God things are worse than what's already been said." Looking up with a grimace Darcy shook her head in a way that told Logan to carry on as she rolled her hand in the air.
"Magneto." Logan said grimly and Darcy winced; it was the only appropriate response when hearing that name.
"What about him?" Darcy asked warily, bracing for the blow she was sure was to come.
"He's been looking for the person taking these kids too and he won't look before he leaps, Darce, he won't care about collateral damage, all he'll care about is taking Trickshot out so he can't keep selling X-Kids to labs and then getting out of him where all the others are, and if he finds out about Trickshot's obsession with you, I have no doubt that he will use you in whatever way he sees fit to get what he wants. That's why I mentioned him at lunch today because the kids that we can't save are being taken into his child army. So we need to get to Trickshot before him so that we find the locations of all the other children he's taken before Magneto can, otherwise Lehnsherr is going to have a lot of indoctrinated weapons at his disposal." Logan explained and Darcy put a hand flat upon the top of her head as she looked up at him.
"Jesus fuck, Logan." Darcy hissed. "Fucking Magneto, are you kidding me?" She looked at him aghast, because this was just fucking fantastic.
"I know, Darcy, that's why I'm telling you now." Logan said urgently, trying to get ahead of her impending panic attack, because Trickshot was one thing but Magneto was a complete fucking other. "Charles has already started whatever Charles does when it comes to Erik and hopefully that will buy us enough time to get things going on our end before Magneto even knows what's happening." Stepping closer to her Logan gently took the hand that she had on top of her head and gave it a squeeze. "Yes, this is problematic, "At Darcy's 'you fucking think' look Logan amended. "Fine, it's very problematic but nothing we can't handle, he doesn't even know about you yet."
"Logan you actually fought in WWII, you better than anybody should know that fighting a war on multiple fronts is never a good idea." Darcy reminded and now it was Logan's turn to give her a look.
"I don't overly remember much of that time period, Darce, but what I do know is that protecting you and finding Trickshot at the same time isn't exactly on the level with a global war."
"You're oversimplifying." Darcy accused as she shook free of him and turned to pace. She had just gotten used to the idea of Trickshot being involved and now Magneto was all up in her business as inadvertently as it was. He may not be after her yet but his pursuit of Clint's brother was just another factor that she did not want to have to deal with.
"Not really and you're over exaggerating," Logan shot back, "Between The Avengers that know, Coulson and his SHIELD people, and The X-Men I think that we have things pretty well in hand and if things do start to get hinky there is always the Fantastic Four and the rest of The Avengers along with Thor's other Godly friends." Grabbing her forearm to stop her agitated pacing, Logan bought Darcy to a stop and her side into his front, looking down into her eyes with all the seriousness he could muster. "I told you earlier that Trickshot wouldn't hurt you and now I'm telling you that neither will Magneto."
"How can you be sure? And no offense, Logan, but you're literally a human puppet for that man if you get close enough. How can you protect me, and yourself, from him?" Darcy asked quietly. Magneto was scary shit at the best of times and this sure as shit wasn't that good of a time.
"Because I've gone up against him before and won and your safety is what this started with and that is what it's going to continue to be about, nothing is more important than that, that's how I'm sure." Logan assured as his hand tightened on her arm.
"But that's not all this is about anymore," Darcy protested as she thought of all the kids that had been taken.
"No it's not," Logan easily acquiesced, "But my involvement with finding those missing children has never been in the finding but the rescuing. Sure I can track, but only if I have a starting point. I leave all that stuff to Charles, Jean, Big Blue and the Cajun. I'm here for you."
Darcy just looked up at Logan for a long few moments, not blinking as she gauged the truth of what he was saying and saw nothing but. He really believed that they could do this and even if Darcy wasn't fully convinced as yet, she could take comfort in his certainty for a time. Turning her body into his, Darcy put the arm that wasn't being held by him and fisted it in the back of his leather coat and laid her cheek on his chest, relaxing into him when he bought his other hand up and cupped the nape of her neck, smoothing his thumb over the delicate skin.
"Thank you," Darcy said only slightly above a whisper but knowing he could hear her.
"Always, kid." Logan nodded against the top of her head as he held her.
They stayed like that for a little while and Darcy was beyond glad that she had him on her side. They had always been friends; as soon as they met she enjoyed his bluntness, his flirty-ness and the fact that even though his life had not been the kindest and that he could still be rude and abrupt he still had the capacity to care for those other than himself. She also had a healthy respect for his abilities and what he could do with them, in that he reminded her of Bruce in that way, there was something inside of him that could be triggered and violence could occur but they didn't use it against those unless they deserved it; other than for shits and giggles that is. But he was a good man with bad boy tendencies and she responded to that, how else could she love Tony Stark as much as she did and only occasionally wish him harm? Now that had only deepened with them facing this new threat against her as he had been the only one to be honest with her through out...well almost.
Pulling back slightly Darcy looked up at him with slightly narrowed eyes and Logan smirked as his hand left her neck and went to her shoulder. "I take it that this is a later time?" He asked and Darcy scowl-pouted.
"You omitted." Darcy accused but not with even half of what she had felt when she had found out that he had not told her everything whilst talking to Maria, Steve and Nat at her party, "Today at lunch when I asked you whether or not the X-Men job offer was the 'more' Fury alluded to, you said that it was, when you knew that it wasn't, you knew that The Avengers were getting screwed and that I was getting shafted and not in the fun way." Logan blinked at her for half a second before he shook his head.
"No," he disagreed, "I told you my whole truth, Darce, the X-Men's whole truth; that just didn't happen to be what SHIELD's truth was."
"Oh, you tricky little bitch," Darcy accused as she shook her head, the pins she had loosened when she ran her fingers through her hair earlier irritating her scalp. "You let me believe that Fury didn't have any more cards up his sleeve, and that 'my whole truth' crap is just as bad as his 'I told you what I knew to be facts, not what I thought to be the truth'," Darcy recited in a deep, mocking tone, throwing Seth a scathing look as he talked quietly into his phone, "Actually, no, it's worse because you were purposefully withholding. You lied." She stated when she looked back at Logan and Logan blew an irritated breath out of his nose.
"And you'd know all about that wouldn't you?" He retorted hotly and Darcy visibly winced and cringed back a step, releasing the grip on his jacket and out of his hold on her, "Keeping your relationship and break up a secret from everyone, stalker details away from Coulson and god knows what else. If I was to go around spilling everyone's secrets, Darcy, you would be royally fucked. Not every secret should be revealed by everyone that knows them, because they aren't theirs to tell, that's what makes a secret a secret. And fucking hell, I sound like a goddamned teenage girl." At Darcy's wounded look Logan reined himself back in, running a rough hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't've-"Logan started but Darcy cut him off with a quick shake of her head.
"No," Darcy said quietly, "The truth hurts after all; not that I would really know that because Jesus Christ I rarely ever tell it any more. And that's how I do know all about it and look how well that has worked for me, standing in an underground garage talking about my secret ex boyfriends' brother stalking me, who also turns out to be a child trafficker and all around bad guy, and having the leader of the mislead homo-sapiens-superior butting in, whilst my going away party goes on upstairs without me because I lied to each and every one of my friends for nearly a year." Darcy shook her head as she felt her eyes sting. "But like I said earlier to Seth, right in this very garage, I'm done with secrets and I am especially done with lies and I need you to be done with them with me. Please, Logan."
After a long moment of staring at her that was making Darcy feel increasingly twitchier, Logan nodded his head and Darcy let out a relieved breath. "Ok, from now on I will tell you the truth. But, Darcy, doing what we do, there will be times that I have to keep things from you- not only for your own good, but the good of others. But I can promise you that I will tell you when that's what I have to do." And Darcy felt her heart clench which Logan definitely noticed. Fucking feral senses.
"What?" He asked with a worried tone.
"Clint promised me that. When we first started dating I struggled with all the secrecy our relationship entailed and about him not being able to tell me about his day because of SHIELD protocols, not that he ever really cared much about them but when it came to other agents safety he followed them to the letter and he told me that he would share everything that he could and everything that he couldn't probably wasn't that interesting anyway." Darcy let out a slightly wet cough and swallowed back the tears clogging her throat. "And everything else not SHIELD related I already knew because even though we were keeping secrets from everybody else, we didn't do that to each other. And look how that turned out for us." Darcy croaked as she looked down at the floor for composure.
"He meant it when he said it, Darcy," Logan said quietly and Darcy raised her head quickly, looking him in the eyes, her vision still blurry.
"How do you know that?" She asked just as quietly as he had reassured her.
"Because it took his psycho brother coming back from the dead for him to end things with you, to break his promise, and as I have some experience with psycho brothers showing up to cause trouble, I think you can trust my judgement." He fairly reasoned, his eyes going a bit distant at the mention of Sabretooth.
"We don't know that's why he broke up with me." Darcy objected and the look Logan gave her would have made her laugh at any other time because he knew that she was just being stubborn now.
"It's a safe bet to make; men don't break up with women like you for anything less." He said making Darcy's cheeks flush. As a silence fell over them again, this one slightly thicker with tension than the other but neither person wanting to comment on it, the only sound being the florescent lights overhead and the soft drone of Seth on the phone, Logan cleared his throat and Darcy looked at him with blessedly clear eyes. "How did you even find out about SHIELD backroom deals with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four? I thought that Coulson was going to explain what happened when the Avengers went to HQ on Monday." Logan asked as he changed the subject and Darcy let gratefully him.
"Steve cornered Maria upstairs, he wouldn't give in and then she wouldn't back down and everything came out into the open." Darcy shook her head with a small smile, "It was a great party conversation, having two people go at each other's throats and me having a total emotional crisis in the middle of it all."
"Wow, your Avengers sure know how to party and show a girl a good time." Logan teased and Darcy actually let out a little laugh.
"What, you think that you and your X-Men could do a better job?" Darcy asked and Logan grinned as they fell back into their superficial flirtation.
"I know that this X-Man could." He promised, making Darcy bite her lower lip on a smile as she looked at her shoes with a shake of her head.
Just as she was about to open her mouth and respond in kind, she had a thought. "What about Coulson?" she asked and Logan frowned.
"What about him?" He asked, perplexed, and Darcy shrugged.
"I said I was done with secrets and this Trickshot/Magneto thing feels like a secret if I don't tell him now I know." She said quietly and Logan nodded slowly in understanding.
"You did say that, but you made a good point earlier about making the party go smoothly. I'll call him after we've dropped you home and fill him in. I think you've got enough on your plate right now, without Coulson going after Barton with a cocktail umbrella." Logan said making Darcy snort at the imagery. "The same goes for Widow, too, shit can wait until you get home. There are enough people who know that can keep things going until they can be told." He assured her and Darcy released a long breath in relief; she really wanted to be secret free but there was only so much that she could handle in such a short expanse of time.
At that moment, Seth ended his phone call and walked his way back towards them with purpose.
"We have to get back to the Bus," He said as he retrieved his keys from his pocket and pressed the fob to unlock the car. "Skye says she might have something for you to check out but we need to leave now." Looking at Darcy he gave her a serious look. "I get that you're not my biggest fan right now and that you really don't trust me too much, but I need you to get over that, because all I have been doing is following my orders and that is to keep you as safe as I can, and I intend to keep doing that. I like you, Darcy, you're a good person and I don't feel great about keeping things from you, but I did what I had to do and now I need you to do what you have to do to keep safe and that is to call me when you need to leave, so that I can ensure you get home safely." He narrowed his eyes at her in speculation and asked. "Can you do that?"
Looking at him with a critical eye, Darcy thought about it- seriously thought about it. Yes, he had lied and yes, he was a SHIELD drone and she was relearning that they could not be trusted, but he was Clint's choice to keep her safe, Nat had helped train him, Phil hand left her in his custody, Maria vouched for him, he had also never put her in harm's way, he had always kept her safe and he was promising to carry on the trend. So, nodding her head Darcy said, "Yes, I can do that, I'll call you when Nat and I are ready to leave."
Giving her a short nod Seth turned his attention back to Logan. "We need to leave, now." He said as he turned on his heel to his car.
Nodding Logan looked at Darcy. "I'll tell you what we find out when we come pick you up," Logan assured her and Darcy smiled.
"If you can," She qualified on his earlier promise.
"If I can," He agreed, growling when Seth blared his horn behind him. "What I won't promise is that he won't come back with puncture marks this time; kid's working on my last fucking nerve."
"And I won't ask you to," Darcy said as she gave him a small shove in the direction of his motorbike. "Now go," she urged, but Logan grabbed the hand that had pressed into his chest. Looking up at him raised brows Darcy smiled. "What?"
"It's going to be ok, Darce."
Nodding at him Darcy said, "Not if you don't get going, May really does not like to be kept waiting."
"No, she doesn't." Logan smirked and Darcy narrowed her eyes at him, her own smirk developing at the corners of her lip as he let her hand go with a squeeze and backed away towards his bike.
"Oh, there is so a story there," Darcy called after him as he swung his leg and settled on the seat.
"There's always a story, Darce." He called over his shoulder as the bike revved to life and he started to follow Seth up the ramp and out to the street above.
"I'll find out what it is." Darcy yelled at his retreating back and Logan lifted a hand from his handles and shot her a two finger salute goodbye making Darcy laugh. Watching the underground garage entrance close Darcy stared at where she had last seen the bike's light for a few more moments, her smile waning at what the rest of her night entailed, as she looked up at the ceiling. "Hey, J, my love, would my continued absence from the party be noticeable if I took a few more minutes before I go back up?" She asked, tiredly.
"Lady Sif and Prince Thor have engaged in an arm wrestling match and Sir is taking bets and trying to get the Hulk to make an appearance against the winner; it is safe to say that the party goers are very well distracted, I shall inform you if that changes." JARVIS said and Darcy felt some of the tension in her shoulders lessen at his voice. AI or not, that guy was her bro and he had her back.
"Thanks." Darcy said up to the ceiling as she made her way to the bank of elevators behind her, the one with private access opening for her before she was even within ten feet. Making her way into the car, Darcy went to the back wall, leaning her shoulder against the cool metal and pulled her shoes off one at a time, her feet flexing in relief against the hard, flat floor after being elevated for so long, the doors closing almost soundlessly behind her.
"Would you like me to have the elevator arrive at the penthouse floor and be put on lockdown until you feel ready to go back to your party, Miss Darcy? That way if your absence begins to be any more noticeable your return will be hastened by proximity." JARVIS offered levelly and Darcy sighed gratefully.
"That would be awesome, do that, please." Darcy said as she rested her back against the elevator wall, one hand holding her shoes, the other smoothing her skirt against the back of her thighs as she sat on the floor, her legs stretched in front of her, crossed at the ankle, the black sparkly nail polish on her toes glittering as she felt the ascent to the top floor and the eventual bumped stop of its destination.
Hearing the low whir of the elevator going into lockdown, the lights dimming, Darcy closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the metal wall. She was tired. The day that had started better than any had the last few weeks was proving to end off worse and it was draining; the ups and downs too much to take when she needed to be on the level for those she had kept things from for so long, all of whom were waiting for her. Dropping her chin to her chest, Darcy winced at the tug, pull and dig of her hair grips digging into her scalp again. Finally having enough, sending a silent apology to Sif, Darcy set about removing the pins from her hair and then connecting them daisy chain style to keep from losing them. It was a mindless task and as she really didn't feel like thinking it was the perfect distraction. She was about two thirds through her hair disassembly, when she heard the familiar sound of the elevator reengaging, making her frown. Tilting her head and opening her mouth to ask JARVIS what was up, she shut it abruptly as the doors opened and revealed one of only a few people that could override JARVIS and her eyes narrowed at the silhouetted form of Phil Coulson.
"We need to talk." He said after a moments silence, just staring at each other and Darcy wanted to laugh; because that worked out so well for her the last time someone said that to her in an elevator. Coulson then stepped into the car and the doors slid closed behind him, shutting him in with her and all Darcy could think was there went her mindless respite from reality and from the look on his face she wasn't going to enjoy the talk he wanted to have.
'Well, damn,' Darcy thought, 'this night just keeps on getting better.'