Chapter Thirty-Seven: Go

Everyone was hesitant to break the silence. Fury had his hands on his hips, and the fact that he didn't have his signature trenchcoat on was enough to frazzle them in the first place. From the floor below, they heard Thor shout before a loud crash and crumble. "Found him," Bruce broke the tension with a light hearted observation. His brow furrowed as no one responded, but he'd expected that.

"What happened?" Barton asked finally with an inflection in his voice that implied the matter should be urgent, even if no one seemed to be treating it that way for fear of angering the big dog.

Fury gestured lazily to Darla, whose eyes opened wide as plates as the focus turned to her once more.

"She happened? What are you talking about?" Barton was irritated.

"She's the one who saw it on the cameras," Fury explained when Darla failed to speak up.

"Who even is this?" Tony pursed his lips in a way to imply he was trying to recognize her, but he wasn't. If he'd met her before, he didn't remember. That was usually true when it came to Darla. She tended to keep to herself. "She's got the uniform on. Or a really good costume. So she's an agent. Right?"

"If she saw it on the cameras, I'm guessing that yes, she works here. She clearly works here. Can we move on?" Barton tried desperately to get the conversation on track. They all waited patiently for more info-including Agent Cooper, who should have been providing it.

"Tell them what you told me," Fury urged.

Darla was certain she was having a heart attack. A panic attack, maybe. She was under attack. She was hired as a surveillance agent. Watch, listen, watch, listen, report. Fail to decide on a movie to watch before bed. Go to sleep, wake up, watch, listen…

Another exclamation and further sounds of destruction rang out from the floor below. "Someone deal with that!" Fury put both palms on the back of his head as though everything and everyone was hopeless.

Steve took it upon himself to head downstairs. As he went, he heard the small-framed girl begin to speak in slow, nervous sentences. Before he hit the stairway, he heard Barton sigh quite loudly.

On the floor below, Thor had knocked in three-fourths of the doors. It was clear no one was there, no workers or bystanders or damsels in distress. "Thor!" He shouted before the muscular man could swing his hammer again. Thor did not stop mid-swing as Cap had expected him to, but instead obliterated another door before running into the room and back out in a flash.

"I don't have my badge and I can't open any of these doors. Do you have your badge?" Thor asked in a panic as he moved to the next room. "Start on your end and meet me in the middle!" Another door went to heaven. "JANE!"

"Hey, whoa, take a step back," Steve suggested with his arms outstretched cautiously in a gesture of peace.

"Help me with this!" Thor commanded.

"What are you doing? Why are you yelling for Jane?"

"Darcy said she was in trouble...I heard her scream…" Another door joined its friends.

"Stop!" Steve shouted decisively. "She's not screaming now. If you heard her scream, she must still be alive, and you would still hear her. She would answer your calls. Something's happened, we need to-"

"You're damn right something's happened!" The hammer was pointed at Steve now.

"You know I don't mean to hurt you. And you know I didn't do this. Let me help you find her, she's not here." Thor snarled and mutilated the next room's entrance. Steve sighed and got out his badge to help check the rooms that remained. There were only six or seven. As he suspected, Jane was not in any of them. Thor was inconsolable and continued to insist on what he heard. "I believe you. Let us help." Thor did not calm down but agreed to come with him.

Once they rejoined the group, Darla was still speaking, but she seemed close to finished. "Then she disappeared," she rounded off her report. Everyone stared at her as though they expected more. "Like a magic trick," she explained further. Still staring. "Then I ran to Fury's office to tell him."

"Why didn't you just go over the radio?" Barton asked with a wave at his ear.

Darla sighed. "I don't have an earpiece. I didn't realize I was supposed to have one. I'm relatively new here." Relatively? Try brand-spanking new.

Barton rubbed his eyes and shook his head briefly as though trying to wake up from a bad dream. He looked at Steve and Thor. "Do you know why Jane left the room?"

"She had to help Darcy with something," Thor answered honestly, with a quick glance to Steve, knowing what it had been about. "Did you talk to her at all?"

"No," Steve answered, "I didn't speak to her or see her."

"Okay, then Darcy came by, right?" Barton asked. "What did she want?"

"She said that Jane was in danger and then I heard her scream so I left to help her," Thor explained.

"We didn't find her yet," Steve elaborated.

"And that needs to be our first priority!" Thor boomed with his index finger pointing around the group to make sure they understood.

"Finding Eve is our priority. Your brother has done something here. No doubt it's part of a greater plan," Fury observed. Thor looked angrier than he'd personally witnessed in the past and he worked to diffuse it. "And yes, finding Jane is of course a priority as well. Not only because she may know something about what happened, but she's a member of the team as well."

"Do not try to patronize me because you know I could rip your head off of your body. I'm strong but not foolish to compensate for it. I can tell when you're trying to pacify me like an alien child you're unsure how to speak to." Thor paused his rant to observe the group. "Where is Darcy?"

"She's not here," Fury stated. "Let's go to her room."

Darla stood awkwardly with her toes pointed in toward each other. "Can I go?" She asked in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

Fury stepped her way and took his jacket from her arms. She almost shook with how intimidated he made her feel. She just wanted to go sit at her station and decompress. "You're the only one who saw what happened, Cooper. You'll be with us until this is sorted out." He pushed his communicator. "Agent Stevens?"

"Yes, sir?" He came in right away.

"Agent Cooper is with me. Feel free to pull an agent off a lower priority service to assist you. We need all the eyes we can get. Oh," he shot Darla a brief glare, "and make sure they have an earpiece."

The group made their way down the hall to Darcy's room. Darla walked behind them by a few paces and found she couldn't remember how to walk normally. One foot in front of the other, right? That's not hard. What was she supposed to do with her arms? Something or nothing? Which was it? Barton turned back to make sure she was still with them and she stopped completely, pretending to have an itch on the back on her calf. He seemed to accept this after a brief hesitation and faced forward again.

Darcy's room was not far and Fury unlocked it with his keycard without knocking. The group piled inside and looked around before collectively shrugging their shoulders. Darcy heard them shuffle in and perked up. "Hey! Guys! I'm in the bathroom!" There was no response, so she pounded on the inside of the door. Still no answer.

Fury was by her bed looking like he'd fried up the last straw and eaten it. "Check the bathroom, I guess."

Thor knocked. "Darcy?" He called urgently and held his ear up to the door.

"Yes! I'm here!"

"Nothing," Thor said.

"What if she's in there but she's hurt?" Natasha offered. "Open the door very slowly."

Thor turned the knob, but the door wouldn't budge. "It's not locked, but it won't open."

Bruce chuckled. "What? Is something blocking it? Like there's an obstruction?"

"No," Thor answered.

"Then it is locked," Bruce nodded slowly.

"No," Thor demonstrated how he could turn the knob with no problem.

"Then there is something blocking it?" Bruce insisted, not being able to think of a scientific reason the door wouldn't open if it wasn't locked or blocked. Unless is was glued shut, but that seemed unlikely.

"No," Thor repeated to Bruce's dismay. Upon seeing him roll his eyes, Thor took matters into his own hands and plunged his hammer through the door to make a hold he could look through. Darcy nearly fainted as the weapon invaded her space with no warning-just above her head. She saw Thor's face through the hole as he peered in and smiled at him. However, his eyes wouldn't meet hers.

"Hey buddy!" She yelled and jumped up and down in front of him. It was like he was looking right through her. "I'm right here!" She shrieked.

"She's not here," Thor observed before turning away.

As the group left in search of a girl who was right in front of them, she pouted on the sink. "Motherfucking idiot has to make me invisible and inaudible. Just fantastic. Not like I even know what your dumb plan is anyway. What could I tell them? He was here. He pulled my hair. He took my form. Oh, actually, maybe I could tell them quite a bit. Okay, I get why you did it, but-no, actually, no. Oh I'm the God of Mischief I'll just ruin your life by making it so your friends can't see or hear you la-la-la. I bet Jane didn't even get to give Cap my number. Seriously, fuck everything about today."

Elsewhere

Loki and Eve had not left. They sat comfortably in her room as he shroud them from sight. Eve's heart was pounding as she watched the Avengers come into the room. It took her a minute to realize that they couldn't see the very people they were looking for. Fury had even kicked the bed while they were on it, making Eve jump slightly in surprise. Eventually they'd left and the two of them were all alone.

Eve was afraid to speak, unsure just how undercover they actually were.

"Don't worry, they can't hear us," Loki confirmed.

"Oh, good," Eve breathed, and now she was unclear where she should start.

"Where should we go?" Loki asked.

"Go…" she stated and let the word hang in the air. She knew what he was asking, but at the same time it perplexed her.

"Wherever you want," he promised with his slick, lying lips just behind her ear. He could be being genuine. He could mean it. How could she know?

"We need to have a conversation first," she requested plainly.

A/N:

Special shout out to ShellySadistic for helping me flesh out the events of these past two chapters, chapter 36 especially! 3