"I will return tonight." Loki promised, kissing her forehead.

"You'd better." Darcy grumbled, she still wasn't entirely happy about him leaving but figured if he was serious about catching this Thanos guy then he probably should attend to the actual work there was to be done. Or he'd better because otherwise there was no reason for him to have taken over Earth.

He disappeared.

A moment later she heard the lock on the door click.

Oh yay, I can leave the room, she thought before two figures burst in and ran towards her.

"Matt?" She asked as arms were flung around her, having recognised him. She hadn't had time to look at the other so pulled back from the curtain of black hair that blocked her face. "Priya?"

"You're okay..." Matt muttered. "You're actually okay."

He looked exactly the same as he had last time she'd seen him. Same impish looks and curly black hair. Same clear olive skin. No lines or marks or haunted look in his eyes.

How could he look exactly the same when she felt like she'd aged so much?

Goddamit, it wasn't fair.

"Yeah of course I'm okay." She said smiling, she'd been worried for the both of them too. "We thought..." Priya shook her head as she trailed off. She looked the same too only she was wearing a SHIELD jumpsuit rather than a dress. Was she always so tiny? She made Darcy feel massive. Hopefully she wouldn't hug her again, Darcy was afraid she might snap.

"We thought something might have happened." Matt finished for her.

Darcy grinned at him. "As if anything could happen to me with those awesome self-defence skills you taught me."

"And yet you went straight to throwing a shoe at Loki..." Matt joked.

"Yeah well, it was instinctual." Darcy replied, trying not to smile.

"And instead you've been living with the avengers?" He asked.

"Is Captain America really that hot in real life?" Priya asked.

Matt turned to glare at her and she shrugged innocently. Matt tuned back to Darcy. "Well is he?" He said almost curiously.

"Most definitely." Darcy said.

"God I'm jealous." Priya said.

"Me too." Matt admitted.

"So uh..." Darcy started awkwardly. "How have things been around here?"

Priya and Matt exchanged a glance then turned back to her, almost perfectly synchronised. Darcy felt like they were debating telling her something.

"Darcy," Matt said carefully. "We know everything."

"What?" Darcy frowned. As if Loki would actually share all that stuff with someone... She wondered what he was talking about.

"Loki told us why he's actually here." Priya added.

"Which is?" Darcy questioned, feigning ignorance.

"The Thanos stuff." Matt said.

"Holy shit he actually told you that?" Darcy asked, mouth gaping in shock.

"Yeah, well, we were shocked too." Matt said.

Priya pulled a face at him. "Shocked?" She repeated. "Talk about an understatement. Look Darcy, I know he's your boyfriend and everything-"

"He's not." Darcy corrected automatically before flushing in embarrassment. "I mean it's complicated."

"Either way I know you...anyway he's scary as fuck, okay? It was terrifying." Priya said. "You don't know what it was like here when it first happened. All these Asgardians showed up and demanded we surrendered our weapons and stuff."

"And that worked?" Darcy asked, shocked. She was more under the impression that SHIELD would fight to the last man rather than surrender.

"Some people tried to fight back." Matt said in a voice filled with an intense morbidity that Darcy had never heard it inflected with before. "They...let's just say they didn't make it out alive."

"Who?" Darcy said at once, fearing for the people she knew back in New Mexico.

"No one you know." Matt said. "Dan's boyfriend, my old Supervising Officer...It wasn't too many people. Most had the good sense to surrender."

"So there are guards everywhere and then Loki starts strutting down the halls straight into Fury's office and how he knew he was at the New Mexico base I do not know-"

"Heimdall." Darcy explained. "He's kind of an all-seeing all-hearing sentry."

Darcy would have to ask Loki how he got Heimdall to his side because from what he'd told her, Heimdall had turned against him even when he was the rightful king, before his more psychopathic acts. God, did she know how to pick guys or what?

"Right so Fury surrenders on behalf of SHIELD and they do that video thing I assume you saw and then everyone was given orders." Priya rushed to explain. "Quell resistance before it starts and all that stuff and then we're told he wants to see us."

"What?" Darcy asked. None of this was making any sense. Why would Loki do that?

"We were as confused as you." Matt said. "But it's not like we could refuse."

"He said that he believed we would try to reach you and you know, stop him finding you." Priya said. "So he told us why so that we'd help him find you. He thought you might try to contact us."

"Loki said that?" Darcy asked sceptically.

"Not in quite so many words." Matt added, smirking slightly. "It was a little more aggressive and a lot more threatening."

Darcy sighed. "Well that sounds more like him."

"And we asked around," Priya said. "Apparently he just demanded to be shown anyone known to be friends with you. It's not like he explicitly remembered us."

"Ahh." Darcy said, it was starting to make sense now. "So...what did he say about Thanos?"

"That he was some ultra God that wanted to kill you." Matt said, actually smiling this time. "I wondered how you'd managed to piss him off."

"Believe me," Darcy said. "This is so not my fault."

That made sense. Loki wouldn't exactly parade the fact he'd been tortured by Thanos. She only knew because he'd let it slip by accident.

"So what happened?" Matt asked. "How did you get out? Because we swarmed Stark Tower pretty quickly. Well obviously we know you drove away but give us details."

"Sorry kids," Darcy said with a grin. "That's classified."

They both began protesting and Darcy smiled more.

"Whatever," Priya said at last, looking at Matt. "Just wait until Loki starts asking for the details."

"He actually hasn't mentioned it." Darcy said.

"That's weird." Matt said. "Anyway, I take it from the fact we were only just allowed to unlock the door that Loki hasn't shown you around?"

"Just a bit to prove he was telling the truth." Darcy said. "And he just zapped us out for that."

"Well I'd love to stick around but I have to get back to work so I'll leave you two to it." Priya said, nodding goodbye to Darcy and quickly kissing Matt.

"Right let's go." Matt said. He led Darcy out of her room. They were in a plain corridor with more rooms lining the sides.

"What's in there?" She asked, nodding to them.

"More bedrooms." Matt said. "It was designed for high ranking prisoners. They're all empty."

"So I'm a high ranking prisoner?" Darcy asked.

"I'd say as girlfriend of the current King of Earth that counts as pretty high ranking, yeah." Matt said, grinning.

"A prisoner?" She repeated.

"Formerly." Matt replied.

"Great let's get out of this building then." Darcy smirked.

"Haha." Matt deadpanned.

"So semi-prisoner then?" Darcy asked.

"Seems accurate." Matt said.

"Where are we, anyway?" Darcy asked.

Matt narrowed his eyes at her. She held hers up in surrender and tried not to laugh. "Not trying to escape," She said, still finding it weird that anyone cared about her enough to worry about her not being contained in a building. "I'm just genuinely curious as to our geographical location."

Matt hesitated for a moment. "I probably shouldn't tell you," He said in what Darcy recognised as his I-am-going-to-regret-this voice. "South Dakota. Just outside of Pierre."

"South Dakota?" Darcy asked. She'd been hoping it wouldn't be some Southern state where she could be separated by hundreds of miles of fields before she reached civilisation. It seemed the kind of isolated place Loki would choose. Mountains instead of fields was much worse. Then again they were just outside of the capital which was good. "Thank God it's summer."

"Well it's a good thing you aren't going outside." Matt said. "You'd probably die at the sight of rain."

"Excuse you, I've seen rain before." Darcy protested.

"Yeah how often exactly does it rain in New Mexico?"

"Dude I'm from Connecticut." Darcy said, jokingly knocking on his head to see if he had a brain in there. "You want rain? We've got buckets up there."

"Fair enough." Matt said, shaking his head. "God I've missed you."

"Jesus did you just say something nice? Are you feeling okay?" Darcy asked with mock concern.

"Don't get used to it." Matt muttered. "Okay," He put on a tour guide voice. "If you walk through here you will find our IT base where all your nerdy programming buddies hang out now that you have surpassed us lowly mortals with your computing skills."

Darcy couldn't really argue against that. It was surprisingly easy to master computers if you had months to do nothing but.

He carried on walking. "So that's where they fix the systems and make sure everything runs right." He said gesturing to the room they'd just passed. "And here's where they develop new programs and systems."

Darcy listened to the rest in a kind of vague haze, listening out only for important stuff she might need to know. On the whole all she'd really learnt was that -with the exception of her room- the base was pretty similar to New Mexico. And London. Apparently SHIELD just had a default base design.

"...where they design each member of staff's daily schedule and rotas." Matt said as they passed a different office on a different floor.

"Really?" Darcy asked, suddenly interested.

"Yeah," He said as she walked up to one of the spare computers. No one in the office payed her much attention. That definitely wouldn't have happened in the old SHIELD. Maybe people just didn't care now that Loki was in charge. He didn't exactly inspire much in the way of loyalty. "Speaking of, while we're here I'm just going to tell them that I'm with you for the next hour or so."

"Okay." Darcy said, concealing the grin that threatened to spread across her face. It was more than she had hoped for. She started tapping on the computer. It required a log in but she hadn't spent months mastering hacking to let something like that stop her.

Within seconds she had all the schedules up.

She started rapidly scanning it but realised how many names and jobs there were on there and knew it was hopeless to search manually.

She hit the search button instead, biting her lip as she wondered what it could be.

Black Widow.

She typed in tentatively. No results. Her fingers hovered tentatively over the keys.

Natasha Romanoff.

Nothing. She checked anxiously over her shoulder in case Matt was there. If he saw what she was doing then best case scenario he'd help her...and then end up getting fired though more likely he'd be sentenced for treason. Worst case he would stop her and tell Loki.

Prisoner.

She typed, being purposefully vague. This time there were results and Darcy couldn't stop herself from grinning this time as she saw that a Dr Mark Jacobson had the job of sedating Prisoner 17652 and 17653 every other hour.

That had to be Romanoff and Barton. Thank God they were in the same building.

She quickly closed all the windows and leant back against the computer casually just as Matt turned to her.

"Come on I'll show you the cafeteria next." He said.

It took just over an hour for him to show her everything and by then her plan was sorted in her head. It was rushed and she wasn't the best at creating plans anyway so it would rely on a great deal of luck.

"I'll hopefully see you tomorrow." Matt said as he dropped her back off at her room.

"Yeah." She said. If Loki lets me have visitors, she thought silently because even if it all went successfully there was no way he wouldn't find out.

Well there was no point delaying it. She sighed. She was going to be in sooo much trouble...

She slipped back out of the door and started down the hall. Thankfully it was all fairly simply set out so it was unlikely that she'd get lost.

She'd been walking for about a minute when she saw a guard in the hall. Perfect.

"Hi." She said, grinning.

He frowned at her. "You're that girl..."

"Yep that's me." She said. "I'm allowed out my room now."

"I've heard." He was looking at her with disgust. Unfortunately it was a look she'd gotten used to after it got out that she was sleeping with Loki. She hadn't cared, the sex had been more than worth a few dirty looks.

"Yeah so anyway," She said, gesturing down the hall with her left hand while her right carefully reached for his belt. He followed her left hand. "I was looking for the cafeteria. It's just down there isn't it?"

She slipped his pass into her sleeve.

"Yeah to the end of the hall then take a left." He said, like it took effort to talk to her.

"Thanks." She said, walking away before he could notice it was gone, taking special care to walk at a normal pace.

Somehow the guard's unpleasant demeanour made it all easier.

She got into the lift at the end of the hall and pressed the button for the third floor, her heart beating loudly in her chest. Christ, what was she doing?

The doors opened and she hurried out into the thankfully deserted corridors. Matt had shown her where the weapons room was but she wasn't headed there because the security on it was ridiculous. They had minor weapons closets on all floors. Less variety but a lot easier to access. Darcy had chosen this floor because it housed the people searching for Thanos which didn't require much in the way of security.

If this works, she thought as she made her way to the right door, I'm a genius.

She bit her lip, checking down the corridors. No one there.

She waved the security pass in front of the door. It clicked open. She scurried through before anyone could see her.

Oh Loki, you seriously need better security.

The room was about as long as she was with racks of weapons hanging on the sides. She went to a box which contained stun guns. Not quite a taser but close enough.

She shoved two in her pockets.

She was about to leave when she realised that if Clint and Natasha were going to make it back to the others they'd probably need weapons.

There were no bows and arrows, unfortunately and she could hardly walk down the corridors with machine guns.

She sighed and placed one of her stun guns back into the box and replaced the space with a pistol after triple checking that the safety was on.

She shoved two more down the sides of her boots and though the pockets in her jumper were too small to put a gun in, she did have enough for some magazine clips.

In the end she carried the stun gun, keeping her arms crossed so that no one would be able to see it.

Matt hadn't shown her the cells. He'd just gestured to the Floor One button which required a security pass and told her that's where they were.

Darcy waved the stolen pass in the elevator slot and felt it slowly descend down. As her heart beat accelerated, the lift seemed to get slower.

Eventually it clicked open.

She raised the stun gun. If she was caught down here she'd already be in trouble so it didn't really matter if they saw the gun.

The cells were numbered, immediately in front of her was number 11. To her right the numbers increased and to her left they decreased.

The SHIELD's main prison was The Fridge so this was normally only used for temporary prisoners. Apparently Loki just wanted to keep a personal eye on Natasha and Clint.

The schedule said they were in cells 19 and 20 though she couldn't remember which one each was in.

She headed in the right direction. As she turned the corner a guard looked up. This guy could have made mountains look small.

He scowled in her direction. "Hey, you're not supposed to-"

Darcy pulled the stun gun out and fired without even consciously aiming. The beam hit his chest and Darcy jumped in shock that she'd actually managed to hit him. Admittedly he'd been about twenty feet away and a rather large target but she was still surprised.

He hit the ground with a thud that seemed to echo through the whole building.

She started running in the direction of the cells, worried she might be too late.

She reached the doors. She'd been expecting the doctor who was supposed to drug them to be here with a key to their cells but he was nowhere in sight. She bit her lip.

What was she supposed to do now?

"What is-?" A confused voice said. Darcy snapped her head to face back down the corridor where a middle aged, overweight man in a white lab coat was staring at the guard on the floor.

Darcy turned and fired. The bolt missed and the man looked up in horror.

And without waiting, he sprinted in the opposite direction.

"Shit." Darcy muttered as she ran after him.

She couldn't let him raise the alarm. Thank God he was overweight and Steve had made her run laps.

She rounded the corner to see that he wasn't even that far away.

"Sorry." She said, pointing the stun gun at him. She squeezed the trigger and he fell to the floor, twitching slightly.

She ran up to him. He'd been holding the key in his hand, thank The Lord. He also held a box which presumably held the drug he'd been about to inject into her friends.

She picked it up without really knowing why and retreated back to the cell.

She slid the key into the lock of cell 19 and let out a sigh of relief as it clicked.

The cell was tiny with a single light and no windows. Taking up most of the room was a white plastic bed to which Clint was strapped. He was unconscious.

"Clint," She whispered, walking over to him. He was breathing, his chest pushing against the leather he wore. She shook his shoulder. "Clint." She hissed again.

He started fidgeting. She untied the straps while muttering his name. "Clint wake up."

The straps untied she shook his shoulder a bit more aggressively. Still just vague fidgeting.

She winced at what she was about to do but raised her hand anyway.

"Clint!" She said loudly as her hand cracked across his face.

His eyes shot open.

"Darcy?" He asked, an immediate crease forming between his eyes. "Where's Tasha?"

"The cell next door." Darcy replied.

He jolted up but swayed precariously. Darcy reached out to steady him.

"Careful," She said. "You've been kept sedated for a while."

"What on?" He asked, rubbing his forehead.

"Umm well it's in here, one second." She said, clicking the box open. Inside was an array of chemicals. Apparently the doctor had been planning on mixing it here. "Oh shit I don't know."

"Give it here," Clint said reaching out for it. She passed it to him. "Oh yeah, I recognise it. Has to be mixed just before being injected. Any earlier and it's ineffective. Antidote's pretty simple."

And with an almost inhuman speed he mixed a few vials and injected it into his forearm. Darcy watched in a mixture of shock and awe.

"It's not my first time." Clint smirked. He picked up the other syringe and filled it with the same mix. "Now let's get Tash."

He stood up and walked out the door, his stance aggressive.

"Here," Darcy said, handing him the key.

He unlocked the door to the cell and walked over to Natasha who was strapped down just like he had been but fidgeting a bit more.

"Tash," He said gently.

"What?" She asked rapidly, eyes bursting open. Darcy set to work unstrapping her as clint injected the serum.

Natasha swung round on the bed, blinking furiously. "Well, it's not too bad." She said, tentatively flexing an arm.

"Better than that time in Rio." Clint replied.

Natasha grimaced. "God that was nasty."

"We have to go." Darcy said, already worried that they'd spent too much time there.

"Which way?" Clint asked.

"Umm I don't know." She said, trying not to blush. "My friend mentioned a garage so I thought you could get a car or something-"

"Which base is this?" Clint interrupted.

"Umm Pierre, South Dakota."

He looked to Natasha who was glancing up like she was trying to remember something. "Yeah I know where it is." She said, nodding.

"Oh wait, I almost forgot." Darcy pulled the guns and magazine clips onto the bed. "It was all I could get."

They reached out for the weapons immediately. "This is great." Natasha said.

"We've worked on much less." Clint added.

"Anyway we need to go." Darcy said.

Before she could even register what was happening, Romanoff and Barton were out the door and it was all Darcy could do to keep up.

They sprinted back down the hall, past the bodies of the guards.

They had guns in their hands so Darcy pulled her stun gun out, just because it made her feel a bit safer.

"I need a card." Romanoff said, stopping at a door.

"Here." Darcy passed forward the guard's ID.

Natasha slipped it through the slot and the door opened onto a dimly lit stairway which Darcy soon found herself sprinting down. She was soon nursing a stitch in her side. Clint and Natasha were fast.

The stairs emptied into a hallway which soon joined another staircase, this time going up. By this point Darcy was clutching at a stitch in her side.

They went through another labyrinth of corridors. Every time a guard appeared, they fell with a bullet in them before Darcy had even registered that they were there. Clint and Natasha were a team, working with each other without even talking, never shooting at the same guard like they knew which one the other would go for.

Darcy also noticed that none of them shot fatally. They aimed for shoulders and legs. Enough to incapacitate but not kill. Presumably because they knew they were acting on Loki's orders.

At last they burst into a lit garage where Matt said the employees parked. Presumably he hadn't shown her because it was a way out.
Clint nodded at a motorbike.

"No, we can only fit us on there. We need something bigger." Natasha said.

"Oh yeah," Clint flashed Darcy a smile. "Forgot you were here. Not used to more than just us."

"I'm not going." Darcy said.

"What?" Natasha demanded as Clint gave her a look of concern.

"I'm not going." Darcy repeated. "It's just you two. You have to get out and find the others. I have to stay."

"Look, if Loki's threatened you we can-" Natasha started.

"It's not that!" Darcy protested. There was no way they wouldn't have noticed by now. Not with all the shot guards. They needed to go. "Look, I don't have time to explain just trust me on this."

Natasha stared at her. Darcy could practically see the gears of her mind turning. "Fine." She relented. "But I have contacts here. If he hurts you, we're coming to get you whether you like it or not."

"Okay." Darcy agreed. "But you need to go."

"Well I'll see you soon. Hopefully." Natasha said.

"Thanks for getting us out." Clint added.

They ran to the motorbike. Clint first and Natasha facing backwards, guns in both hands.

They started to pull away. "And good luck with Loki. After he finds out about this, I think you'll need it." Natasha called.

Darcy sighed. If only she could convince herself Natasha's words weren't true.


Chapter title from Breaking And Entering by Tonight Alive. If this makes no sense you may blame it on the ridiculously early flight I was on this morning. Anyway I am back now so hopefully will have lots of time for writing. Thanks for reading and reviewing.