I struggled through this a bit guys. So be gentle! I'll have some notes at the end for anyone who might like to read the writer-y process-y things I ramble about.
Thanks for patience and encouragement as always :)
Ian's eyes were blown out in fear, Bucky's gun pressed to the back of his neck. His gaze begged her to do something to save him for certain death.
The words to knock Bucky out were on the tip of her tongue. He'd had clearly gone off the rails. It was lack of sleep or stress of the situation that turned his defenses on overload. It could have even been petty jealousy. Maybe she was grasping at straws for that last reason, but she didn't want to believe that something had truly flipped within Bucky and he'd turned into something else.
It would only take a single breath and a few syllables and he would pass out. Assuming that she could get the words out before Bucky got a shot off, and then…what? Grab Ian and run? But to where? She'd call Rogers and tell him that his friend had lost his mind and tried to kill them?
Ian's hands shook out in the air at his sides, in a vein attempt to show surrender.
"Don't move," Bucky growled. "Darcy."
She stopped cold, not even realizing that she'd picked her foot up to take a step.
Her tongue pressed against her teeth and she was about to deliver the verbal knock out, but the look in his eyes made her stop and reconsider.
The initial shock of seeing him holding her ex at gunpoint wore off just enough that she was able to better observe the situation and him. His eyes didn't hold anger or rage or the cold disinterest of a machine on a mission. Fear, was what she saw. Paralyzing fear. The kind that would drive anyone to the edge.
"Bucky," she used the calmest voice she could muster. "What's going on?"
"He's Hydra."
Darcy shook her head. "What? No—"
"What's Hydra—I don't—" Ian flinched when Bucky shifted the gun against his head.
"It would be better if you didn't speak."
Ian squeezed his eyes shut, terrified and sweating. He didn't know what Hydra was. Ian didn't have the kind of security clearance one would need to know that an evil Nazi science club was still active and at large, one of its former projects currently threatening to shoot him.
"Bucky, why do you think Ian is Hydra?"
Bucky lowered the gun, but only so he could grab Ian and twist him around so they were face to face. Bucky glared down at Ian, daring him to try something, holding onto his neck and craning it so Darcy could see.
"These markings on his neck? Do you see them?" Darcy took a couple steps closer and notices a circle of red dots on the back of Ian's neck, just under his hairline. "It's an injection wound. A toxology screen would show that he's been pumped full of Datura—a serum Hydra uses to control people."
A layer of confusion settled on top of Ian's panic. "I—" He tried to speak and then stopped himself remembering Bucky's warning.
"What is it, Ian?" Darcy asked, giving Bucky a look that said to let him speak.
"I don't know anything about any injection. I haven't had any injections, I think I'd remember."
"That's the point of the serum," Bucky continued, speaking through clenched teeth. "You don't remember. They inject you and you're at their will. They can command you to do whatever they want and you'll never remember receiving the order or carrying it out."
Darcy stepped forward so she was right behind Ian. If Bucky shot him, there was a chance she could get hurt, too.
"He isn't Hydra, Bucky," she reasoned. "Please, put down the gun." Bucky's grip shifted against the gun, the plates in his arm whirring and shifting in the tense silence. Darcy could see he remained unconvinced that they weren't in danger. She stood her ground.
"Look, I promised to never say the words to you unless it was absolutely necessary, unless you turned into someone dangerous, and I can see right now that isn't what is going on. But you aren't giving me a whole lot of choices right now, Bucky. Either lower the gun or I'll have to make you, and I really, really don't want to do that."
A long fearful moment of consideration stretched before them, with Darcy counting her breaths, praying that Bucky didn't just decide to shoot him instead. It was an unspoken third option.
A sharp, Russian curse, fell from Bucky's mouth as he moved the gun away from Ian.
Darcy's whole body sunk in relief.
She relaxed a moment to soon.
With super soldier speed, Bucky's metal arm swept up and down. Darcy cried out as the hit landed. A knock to his head hard enough that the poor boy dropped like a rock and passed out cold.
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Bucky could see the anger in Darcy's eyes, but it was easy to ignore. It wasn't anywhere near the level of rage currently erupting inside of him.
They were en route back to the Quinjet. It was unsafe to stay at Selvig's any longer, not if Ian was a Hydra recon tool. Their easy escape led him to the conclusion that they weren't under constant surveillance, but there was no telling when an agent might be around to check on his chrage.
Darcy had grabbed the pieces of Selvig's research she thought might be important while Bucky made a call to Steve to update him on the new information. Natasha, also listening in, informed him that they would have a few London based SHIELD agents keep an eye on the place in case anyone came to poke around.
The logistics of getting out of the city were a little more cumbersome now that they were a group of three and one was unconscious. Bucky was forced to leave the bike on the London streets. They located Boothby's card, and Bucky spilled the unconscious boy into the back seat, taking the wheel, with Darcy in the passenger seat refusing to look at or speak to him.
Again, it was easy to ignore her anger, when he was concentrating so hard on his own. His brain couldn't decide which bad situation to focus on. The fact that Boothby was involved with Hydra, the fact that Hydra was involved in this situation to begin with, or the fact that Darcy was in even more danger than they originally realized.
His instincts screamed to kill and dump the kid, then take them back to New York. It was cowardly; he'd be the first to admit it. He was supposed to be a soldier, a fighter. He should aim to meet the enemy head on and take them out without pity. But looking that the girl sitting next to him, as angry as she was with him at the moment, he wanted to be something more than just a fighter or a killer. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to protect.
It was the same feeling that had stopped Bucky from killing Steve on the highway all those months ago.
You know him.
He's important.
Protect this.
They ditched the car and Bucky loaded Ian into the jet, still ignoring Darcy's disapproving huffs and frowns when he shackled the young man to a cot. JARVIS set a course for Scotland, where they could hide out, far away from where Hydra might already be tailing them.
"Sergeant Barnes," JARVIS said. "Before we take off, may I suggest running a full scan on Mr. Boothby, to locate any possible interior tracking devices."
"Interior tracking devices?" Darcy questioned.
"Hydra may have planted trackers in him, while he was under the influence of their drugs," he explained.
Darcy gave a curt nod and Bucky gave JARVIS the affirmative to run the scans. They were given the clear and Bucky took off for the next remote location, while Darcy continued to seethe, and watch over her passed out friend.
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SHIELD intelligence worked fast. It had only been an hour after Bucky's check in and Steve was already receiving reports from Hill and Natasha that linked Hydra to the attacks at Berkley. He sat at one of the tables in Tony's workshop—the only place he trusted that he wasn't being watched—and read through the files Natasha brought.
"How did we miss this before?" He questioned.
"Sometimes all it takes is a small piece of the puzzle to reveal the entire picture," Natasha replied.
"Or someone is giving us pieces, because we're not getting it fast enough."
Natasha's lip curled up. "You're getting better at this Rogers."
Steve rolled his eyes. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"The Mr. Miyagi mysterious kung-fu teacher thing," he said. "The one where you just give me cryptic responses like you always know more than I do."
Instead of looking chastised, Natasha appeared amused, which was only more frustrating. "Mr. Miyagi? Sounds like someone's been working on that movie list from Sam?"
"It takes my mind off things."
"I only do it because of course I know more than you, Steve."
Steve let out an irritated breath. There was no point in trying to convince Natasha to just be frank with him. He still wasn't great at the espionage part of the job. That was all her, though Barton seemed to be able to play the game just as well sometimes. Steve just had to trust she would fill him in on anything that could mean life or death. Now that Hydra was involved, it seemed they were quickly approaching that line.
"Hydra started as a science division," Natasha said. "It makes sense that they would be interested in our scientists, especially when ours are closer to the recent alien incidents. Foster is directly involved with Thor, most likely privy to knowledge the rest of us aren't, and Selvig was directly involved with Loki and the Tesseract."
"They tried to kill Foster in California. That doesn't make sense."
"Taking out the competition?" Natasha suggested. "Or…they weren't trying to kill Foster. Maybe the mission was to take out the bodyguards and then grab Jane and Darcy."
His brow furrowed. The simple mission he'd sent Bucky and Lewis on, was becoming more complicated by the second. He stood, flipping the file closed. "I'm calling him back."
Natasha followed him toward the door. "Don't you think they should stay on Selvig's trail?"
"There is no trail. Not right now. Bucky said Lewis isn't sure where Selvig could have gone; they have no leads to keep looking for him. We'll need to get someone else on this that can track him down. Then we can send in a team to retrieve them if he's still alive."
"Barnes is a capable tracker. The lead hasn't gone cold—when the intern wakes up they can question—"
"They're coming back to New York, Romanoff. End of discussion." Steve pushed past her and headed toward the elevators. "I'm not risking two civilians getting killed or captured for the sake of this mission."
"You mean you're not risking your best friend for the sake of this mission."
Steve stalled just before the elevator, watching the Black Widow's reflection disappear and reappear behind him as the doors opened and closed. He moved his head and tossed a warning look at her from the corner of his eye.
"Come on, Steve," she reasoned. "You're letting your emotions drive your decisions. I thought you were getting better at this."
He spun on his heel and charged back to her. Steve didn't normally use his height and build to intimidate, especially when it came to Natasha, but this was one of the rare moments that her secretive antics and teasing jabs stopped being amusing and started pissing him off.
"I'm sorry if I'm not as unfeeling as the Black Widow when it comes to what we do," he snapped. "No, I don't want to send Bucky into a situation that involves Hydra. I've tried to keep him away from anything involving them since he came back."
"Bucky isn't the center of the world, Rogers, there are more important things going on and unfortunately, he'll have a role to play. He can't play it if he keeps running. None of us can. Something is going on here. First Bucky showing up, Fury disappearing, the Samaritan…don't you see it?"
Steve regarded her suspiciously. Again he had that feeling that she wasn't being one hundred percent transparent with him. "What aren't you telling me?"
"I'm telling you exactly what you need to hear," was her cryptic reply.
Steve bit his lip, holding back the urge to snap in frustration. "They have twenty four hours to get a fresh lead, then they are reporting back to New York."
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Rain had begun to fall over the green, lush countryside. Darcy could hear thunder rolling outside of the Quinjet. It was a sound that had always calmed her down as a kid. Lightening made her nervous, thunder made her feel brave. Perhaps that was why she'd gotten on so well with Thor.
Ian had been unconscious for over an hour. He was still laying down, handcuffed to one of the med-bay cots, dead to the world. Darcy had found a corner of the jet to carve out some semblance of privacy while she tried not to be so mad. She pulled out the things she'd taken from Erik's apartment in haste, things that seemed important. She hoped she hadn't missed something that could have been valuable to their search.
Without much else to do, she began cataloguing Erik's data from the journals she took. Erik had a short hand code, the same as Jane. They were both old fashioned like that. Darcy had learned to decipher their weird chicken scratch when she'd first taken the intern gig.
Bucky was in the cockpit. She could here him talking with Rogers, reporting in on the status of their mission, as she translated dates and locations and weather reports from Erik's writing. It sounded like an argument ensued, Bucky's words were quick and short, his voice firm, but she couldn't hear enough to make out what was being discussed.
When she heard silence, she assumed the call had ended, and decided to stop being a stubborn asshat. They'd cooled off in their separate corners of the proverbial ring and now it was time to talk.
Her anger over how he'd handled the whole situation with Ian had ebbed, especially when she realized she was more afraid than angry. She didn't love that he'd threatened to shoot him or hit him over the head, but she was willing to step back and figure out what the hell was going through his mind before she flipped out again.
She found him sitting in the pilot's chair, watching the rain fall.
He'd pulled his hair back, tying it off at the nape of his neck. Her eyes caught the faint scar there, one that was very similar to Ian's injection scars. Without making the conscious decision to touch him, her fingers brushed against his skin, feeling the small lift where the scars were. He tensed and she stilled, before snatching her hand away, realizing the intimacy implied behind the contact.
"The KGB and Germany did experiments using drugs to control their soldiers, before they discovered more efficient ways to manipulate the mind."
He didn't look at her as she took the co-pilot seat next to him, lounging back and draping one leg over the side of the arm. "That's why you recognized what was going on with Ian. They did it to you, too."
"The drug irritates the skin and leaves a mark," he told her. Darcy recalled the way Ian had been scratching at his neck since he arrived. Bucky must have noticed and put two and two together. "It's worse the more times they use the injection site. His might fade in a decade or so, if he's only been injected a few times."
Darcy turned her head to the window, not wanting to intimidate him by staring, but she kept watch out of the corner of her eye.
"I'd wake up at checkpoints, no memory of how I got there, blood on my hands, bruises I didn't remember getting. They'd inject me, give me orders, and I'd carry them out until the drug wore off every time. It could see the evidence of the nightmares plain as day, but I couldn't ever remember them. I had no willpower under the influence, I did anything and everything I was told without question or hesitation."
Once again, Darcy's heart broke for her friend. A thousand feelings of hurt and anger boiled down into a single encompassing thought: he didn't deserve any of it.
"Hydra can go fuck themselves," Darcy muttered.
"That's one way of putting it," he replied.
"What I don't get," Darcy continued. "Is why they're so invested in my love life. I mean, Ian was going on about how confused he was over our break up, and I'm guessing he was drugged into dumping me. But I don't get why."
"They're after you," Bucky said. "They're after all of you. Selvig, Foster, even him," he nodded in the direction of where Ian was sleeping. Explaining the new information Steve had reported from SHIELD intelligence. "They'll use whatever methods they can to draw you out."
"Well they're in for a rude surprise if they ever capture me, I'm just a lab assistant. And not even a good one. I don't know anything about science."
"I was just a sniper. A guy from Brooklyn," he said, with the saddest look Darcy had ever seen. "I'm sorry. About all of this."
"Are you kidding me? I'm the one that dragged you into this…needing to look for Erik. Dealing with Hydra is the last thing you need to worry about. If I had known…" He wasn't looking at her. He wasn't listening to her. Darcy moved, crouching low in front of his knees, wedging herself into what little space there was in front of his chair.
"Hey," she said, taking his hand—the metal one—and forcing him to look down at her eyes. "This isn't your fault. Not at all. Okay? If you're right, and Hydra is trying to get to Jane or Erik through me, that is definitely not your fault."
His head listed to the side as he listened to her words, his eyes studying her face. "You were about to say the words, back there in the apartment. The ones I taught you. But you hesitated."
"Yeah, I—uhh—"
"Why did you stop yourself?"
"It's not the first time I've been in a room where you were holding someone at gun point," she grinned, hoping to make light, but he wasn't smiling. "Your eyes." That seemed to confuse him even more. "Remember the first time we met? You were holding up a gun and you were angry, trying to protect yourself. And that night with the knife? You're looked furious, but there was a robotic kind of thing going on with your face. Like you were trying to be intimidating and scary but weren't really feeling it."
"And earlier?"
"You looked afraid. Even in your files that the Samaritan dug up and the footage of you in your armor on the highway with Steve, you never looked afraid. You always looked…intimidating, determined, cold, but here was no actual emotion. You never…you never looked afraid of what was going on or what you were about to do. I don't think The Asset or The Winter Soldier or whoever you were knew how to feel fear."
"I was afraid," he admitted, his voice quiet. "I was scared for you, doll. So scared. I was scared that kid in there was going to reveal himself as an agent, turn around, and kill you. I was imagining the twelve million ways you could get hurt in less than three seconds. I was waiting for other Hydra agents to bust their way in and tear us apart. I was trying to think of how I could get us out of there, keep you safe, take you away and hide you because I can't even think about you getting hurt or I just-"
He bit his lip hard, cutting off his own tirade.
Darcy's heart crashed against her chest and she swallowed against the emotion lodged in her throat. "Damn, Barnes. I think you've said more in the past ten minutes than you have in the past year."
Bucky stole his hand away from her grasp and moved to cup her cheeks between his palms, guiding her up as he stood from the pilot's chair. Darcy didn't dare breathe as he looked down into her eyes. She was absolutely certain that he could see everything she didn't want him to see. All the things she thought about him, all the feelings she felt-feelings that she didn't even know if she should be feeling. Was it okay to fall in love with him?
It was a stupid question.
Darcy was already there. She'd crash landed into love for this man a long, long time ago. In spite of the fact that he was broken, that his past dictated so much of his future, that he'd pretty much shut her down already…she still…
She was an idiot. And she was praying to any deity that might be listening that he couldn't tell.
His thumb brushed across her cheekbone and she watched his lips fall open.
Please kiss me, she thought. Just once. She'd never ask for anything again as long as she lived. She stop complaining to Jane about science lectures and would never mention her lost iPod ever again.
"If things were different…" he whispered, his face close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips with every word he spoke. "Fuck it."
This was it.
He squeezed his eyes shut and Darcy braced herself, making sure she was alert and aware, and prepared to commit every moment of what was about to happen to memory. Something told her that Bucky was letting himself steal a single moment, letting them have something for the briefest of seconds, before putting his tentative feelings back in the box and that box up on a shelf to collect dust.
Thunder rolled over them and it in no way drowned out the way her own heart pounded in her ears.
She let her eyes fall shut as his body pressed closer to hers and dared to draw in a single, short breath just before…
"Hello…? Is anywhere there…?"
Ian.
The tinny echo of his voice bounced from the back of the jet to where they stood in the cockpit.
Bucky moved back before his lips made contact with hers. He was still looking at her, the heat and resolution gone from his blue eyes, replaced with regret. They missed their stolen moment and now it was gone, forever, never to be seen again.
Bucky dropped his hands from her face and retreated. She could practically see him putting their missed moment in a box, just as she thought, as he turned from her. Darcy tried not to feel like he was taking the entire world with him as he walked away.
Time for notes!
There's so much happening plot wise in this story! There's basically two stories sort of interweaving. I love the challenge of writing intricate plots. It's a little difficult in fic, because you don't often have a chance to go back and edit yourself or toss out things that aren't working or retroactively snip threads. I worry that sometimes I get boring and confusing...so if you're feeling that while reading...I promise I'm doing my best to make everything make sense!
Also, I really love slow burns. The more I write fic, the slower my slow burns gets haha I try not to be too slow, because I realize that fic is a little indulgent and we wanna get to the good stuff. I also realized that I've written about 60,000 words and not even a kiss. I'd love to hear your opinions on slow burns if you feel like leaving a comment!
Finally, Datura. It's a real thing. I fudged the science and history a little bit. Watched a really good documentary on Vice about the drug and it's some scary shit! I also read a small bit on some Nazi mind control experiments and the drug (or one of it's derivative forms) were used. Please excuse my stretch of science and history!
Thank you all for reading, commenting, kudo-ing and all that! It means a lot!
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