She was slowly becoming more physically numb by the day, though her emotions were still functioning all too well. Especially fear.
Here in the dark she let herself be scared; fear was a tolerable torture as long as her body remained numb to the pain. She was sure they didn't know she treasured the times they'd actually leave her alone to shiver and whimper, her nervous system shaking out the stress of what they'd done to her. These moments were everything to her. The reprieve from pain for even a moment of time in which no new hurt was inflicted on her. Time passed without consequence. It was just space, like everything else, and she just had to exist in it, and wait.
Because maybe together, the complete lack of mental and physical ability to feel anything at all would finally make it all stop. And she would finally be in a place of existence where she could stop feeling the hurt and the pain and the loneliness.
She hoped the fear was gone too, when the time came to die. Hoped it would come as a relief to be put out of her misery. Feelings tasted like ash in her throat, sadness morphing into anger at herself for still being capable of thought
Try as she might to stop it, her mind still worked. She did not want to dwell on these memories, the kind of things you'd shove deep down into your subconscious if they came to you in nightmares. This was nothing she should ever have had to face. No-one should.
There, in the back of her mind, constant and silent; a secret voice inside kept whispering to her that she was going to die here.
They were going to kill her. No one would come for her.
She was alone.
The first-aid-trained part of her mind insisted that hypothermia was a very real and serious possibility, something she tried desperately to deny. Her captors didn't seem bothered by it at all, but Darcy knew that when limbs began feeling permanently numb, it was the first sign. She'd learned all about it during her obsession with the show Everest last month that she'd made Jane watch with her, both going back and forth from complete awe to complete dismay that anyone in their right mind would even attempt such a dangerous feat, knowing that death was not only a possibility, but a likely outcome, and these people still chose to go. And the majority - the majority - of them died.
The symptoms weighed heavily on Darcy's mind, and she pictured pain like that mountain; she had not chosen to climb it, but she would live or die at its will nonetheless. She was already showing signs of slurred speech, the inability to complete full thought processes… there was pain in her heart and chest, and a numbness that followed the constant shivering and tingling and burning sensations in her hands and feet.
And that tiny whisper would once again make itself present, thoughts of wishing for it to all just… end. It had crossed her mind once or twice, no... several times now in the past few… days? Weeks?
She didn't know how long she'd been kept here.
But she would think on it for long moments at a time. For it all to just go away. That she wanted to die in those moments.
She'd wanted it. She'd begged for it.
And then she'd just let go, body slack with nothing left to give, and just sob her heart out, not out of hurt or pain, but out of pure anger and sheer frustration. How dare her brain think such things?
How dare it? When she had no way of following through?
All the ways she might die here - infection, bleeding out, shock - were terrifyingly slow and drawn out. The thought of being afraid and tormented while death took her, or dying in a moment where she was begging and pleading for death to free her from the pain and agony, was too much to bear.
She didn't want to die wanting death.
She didn't want to die.
She'd always prayed that death would come to her swiftly, in her old age, in her sleep. No pain, no suffering. It's what she had wanted. She'd thought about it on plenty of nights.. When she would silently talk to God, laying in her bed before sleep took her for the night, and pray for those around her, and the ongoings in her life to keep going in her absence. She would pray for beauty and for brilliance, for humor and for deep relationships. She would pray for the hurt and the weak and the hungry.
She would pray for those kittens she'd found on the side of the street that one afternoon and after attempting to smuggle them into the tower, Tony had magically suddenly shown up out of nowhere (thanks, JARVIS) and forced her to take them to the local animal shelter. "No. No cats. This is a cat-free tower." And he'd pointed towards the door, a serious look on his face. And because she was living in his tower, she acquiesced. She still held it against him in small moments, but she'd then pray for the ability to forgive him and his wrongdoings against those kittens too.
And when she was done with that, her prayers would turn to begging - pleading to God to allow her to die as an old woman in her sleep, not knowing what was happening. That she not know harm, or hurt. That she would find love.
These were the things she talked to God about in secret.
But here in the dark, where prayer seemed pointless, the thing that she kept buried the deepest inside was the thought of just giving up.
She felt naive, holding on to the hope that they would come.
Because they hadn't. And it had been a long time now.
As quickly as the thought entered her mind, she would shove it down hard, pissed as hell at herself for allowing the thought to even cross her mind in the first place.
Oh God, please let them come for me.
They would. She knew it.
They would come for her - she believed it wholeheartedly.
There was no way they wouldn't come. They loved her. She loved them.
She told herself this over and over again. She had to believe, she had to hope. There was nothing else.
She had nothing else.
But…with each passing day when they still hadn't shown, hadn't come for her, and with her tormentors growing more vicious by the day, those whispers of doubt grew louder and stronger. The terrible fear that maybe they wouldn't come for her… it broke her down, and little by little, she began to believe they would not.
The seed of doubt had been planted, and there was nothing she could do but watch it grow.
Those awful, ugly thoughts became harder to shove down deep.
Still, she held on fiercely for rescue. Or at least the idea of rescue. Darcy was a fighter, she wouldn't give up.
Natasha had told her so, playfully once, when she'd snuck up around her and Darcy had swung a frying pan at Natasha's head in fright - a reflex she hadn't known she had. Luckily, Natasha was the most beautiful spy ninja kickass that ever lived, and had easily ducked out of the way, laughing as if it were all great fun. But she'd lifted an eyebrow of approval and had told Darcy she was a fighter, a small, yet serious grin on her face.
Darcy had played it off, but she'd secretly danced around in joy from that comment for days following.
She couldn't give up. She had to remain strong.
She kept this mantra running through her mind constantly, both in the quiet pauses when they would finally leave her alone for a little while, or during the terrible moments when she would cry out and scream in terror and pain, writhing and desperate for it to all just stop. And she would tell herself the same thing, over and over again.
Stay strong, Darcy. Stay strong. Don't think about it. Ignore it. They don't matter. Keep fighting. Stay strong. Don't let them get to you.
How long had she been here?
The last few days, they had finally gotten to her, their torment reaching new heights, her body surviving more than she could mentally hold on to, and she had felt herself break on the inside.
Like a whip, like a thunderclap - it hit her physically, the break. The single moment when she realized she wasn't brave anymore, and she began to believe they weren't going to come for her. Her strong mental blocks had finally collapsed, a heap of bricks crumbled on the ground instead of the wall they'd been before.
And she'd cried. She'd absolutely wept. She'd heaved, and gasped, fat, ugly, angry tears, had coursed down her cheeks, and she'd been unable to even wipe them away.
So much more than the frightened tears of those first few days when they mostly left her alone. No, this time she'd really, truly lost it, losing all hope, left all alone, tied up and cold.
...
The things those men had done to her.
...
No one would ever know.
She didn't think she could ever tell, even if someone did come for her. Even if she actually were ever rescued. What could she possibly say, if it came to that?
They aren't coming for you, the voice whispered again.
God, her skin burned, it itched and it ached. At times it was all she could think about, the constant itching, the agony of not being able to scratch and scratch. She wanted to tear her hair out, and would have done if only she could move.
She wanted to scream, but she didn't, she couldn't, out of fear of what it would cause them to then do. They would come back if she screamed. They would open that door, and pain would follow.
She had become terrified of that door, and what lay behind it.
They would drag her out, kicking and screaming, by the chains, by her hair, by her broken leg; it mattered little to them.
She kept silent as best she could, refusing to give them the enjoyment they got from her suffering. But holding that silence meant tension in her chest tightening until she was gasping for breath in the dark.
Blinking hard, she felt her tears burn as they spilled down her cheeks, the salt irritating the blisters and cuts as they rolled down her skin.
The room was practically pitch black, the only exception being the small square window at the very top of the cell on the right hand corner. Darcy could see it in her side-eye if she turned her head to the extreme, but doing so caused such agony to her neck and shoulders that she just glanced that way every so often, a safety net of sorts, if only to see the outside sky. It was never sunny, the room was never bright, but it also didn't rain constantly either.
She blinked again, eyes straining to focus on something, anything in the dark, but there was not much she could see. Nighttime, then, she thought. No light meant the sun had gone down fully for the evening and it was going to get colder for the next eight to twelve hours.
When there was light that filtered in, it always seemed foreboding, cloudy and muddled, and rarely was it anything as bright as sunshine. It looked about 2 foot square, as far as Darcy could figure from down here, and if she was free of these chains and had any strength or energy left, hadn't been bruised and beaten and worse...she still wouldn't have been able to shimmy up the concrete wall high enough to reach it.
But the window was there, and the thought of outside being present eased some tension in her body somehow. An opening, the possibility of freedom, life. It represented hope to her, that it was there every time she was brought back to the cell. It had become a relief to see, an old friend, a welcome peace. The knowledge that the pain and suffering was going to pause at least for a little while. The light it let in was muddy, but safer than the brightness that lay beyond the door.
They would bring her back here, slam the door closed behind her, and she could breathe again. Her breath and her body were shaky and unbalanced, but they were safe as her captors walked away. Closed doors meant she was intact for the time being.
...
Breathing, however, had become a very serious issue. 'Shaky' didn't begin to cover it, and Darcy battled for breath in her current bound position. The wheezing and rattling in her chest had been ongoing for the last several days, worsening each cold night. It was bad.
She needed a doctor.
It was as if something heavy was seated across her chest, pressing tightly against her. Even bound in a seated position as she was now, she gasped for breath like she was drowning, an unknown force pulling her down. It felt like gravity itself had tied a hangman's knot around her lungs and throat, tightening each day until the act of breathing exhausted her in every conscious moment.
Each breath took every ounce of her remaining will. To inhale and exhale shallowly and slowly, trying not to wake the rattling infection in her lungs. When she breathed too hard, she shook with deep, wet coughs that made her choke and gag, cough up… something horrible, and she was glad she couldn't see it. Pain came with it, shocking her as it cut through her chest.
She longed to clutch at her chest where the rattling made it ache, to see if the pressure would relieve any of it. But they'd tied her hands behind her this time, and that mixed with the collar around her neck tied only a few inches from the wall kept her head facing forwards. Her body sagged towards the cold ground, the collar dug into her neck, and her bound hands pushed her chest forward, straining it further.
It felt like it was getting colder. She wasn't sure anymore if it was the air coming in through the tiny window that was actually getting colder, or if the loss of blood had become too great and finally lowered her temperature too far, possibly leading to hypothermia. It terrified her to think she might be experiencing the beginnings of it.
Her heart hurt worst when she panicked, the wild drumming of it leaving her certain she was on the precipice of heart failure. But it kept pumping. Erratically at times, but life continued to pump through her veins.
She couldn't decide if that was good or bad.
She felt around her, or at least tried to with her bloody and broken fingertips. Her smashed hands tried and failed to map the edges of the hard metal cuffs that bound her so tightly. As painful as it was, if she reached out just enough, she could trace the lines in the cement blocks that made up the wall behind her, cold, and impenetrable. Knowledge is power, she thought to herself, and she would take any scrap of either.
The cuffs hung heavy on her wrists, feeling almost like a part of her now. They'd come up with these, and the matching collar, some days into her captivity. She couldn't picture herself like this, shackled and chained, couldn't process what they'd put her through. The memory replayed in her mind, fragments of detail burning vividly. She worked to push it down, the knowledge of when these weights were added to her. But her memories were all she had here, and they repeated until she couldn't deny it any more.
They had stared at her for too long, with their creepy grins and narrowed eyes. They'd enjoyed watching her become more and more frightened before they even laid a hand on her. She hadn't learned yet that stillness and silence would serve her better than instinctual terror.
It physically pained her, her chest burned, to remember that particular day when they'd decided to hold her down, struggling and desperate to get away, and weld the metal cuffs and collar to her body. They'd treated her like a feral animal, held by the scruff of the neck. She could still smell her burning flesh, and it made her gag to remember.
The weight of the metal, the bright sparks of the welding torch,, the dirty rag they'd shoved into her mouth to gag her and keep her screaming to a minimum…
She hadn't once lost consciousness.
She remembered every single, horrific moment.
...
They used the bindings to tie her in a terrible new position every time. At their whim she was held down, or hung high from her cold, bloody wrists, toes barely able to touch the floor to keep her bones from breaking.
She was there long enough to go mercifully numb, sometimes, from the lack of blood and the shock. Then, when they yanked her down and bound her hands behind her, or beneath her, the prickling pain of blood rushing back into her fingers was a wave of agony, and all she could do was scream.
And they would laugh as she writhed around in agony, getting off on her grunts of pain, her muffled shrieks and tears.
She was tied too closely to the wall this time, particularly by the neck. The more painful the position, the less peace she had from her other external and internal injuries. She couldn't believe how long she'd lasted thus far, if she was honest with herself. Some of the things they had done to her, she'd been sure would kill her. Every time she regained consciousness, the injuries were not nearly as bad as she expected. The downside, of course, was that the better she held up under their treatment, the more they pushed her past what she thought her limits were.
She survived. She persevered. She would awaken healed where she could have sworn she'd been stabbed. Hallucinations must have set in deeply, and she shook with fear at being unable to tell the difference between reality and fiction.
She was going insane, then. On top of dying.
Maybe she was having nightmares within a nightmare, hallucinating more horror than she had actually experienced.
Again and again.
How else could she explain it? She'd experienced torture that had left its physical mark, only to wake up, sticky with dried blood but little to no wound. Had her body simply become oversensitive all this time? She really thought it would have been the other way around - that she would have built up some physical immunity to the pain to help block it out in some way…but no. It felt fresh each time.
And she felt the multiple coats of dried blood to her skin as if she'd dunked herself in a mud bath, gotten out, let it dry and crack and crumble, only to jump back in.
But it wasn't mud. She knew the deep iron scent of blood, and she remembered the wounds. But now that pain was a memory, and only the blood was left.
She didn't think she was imagining it. But what did she know? She was insane and alone.
And why? What had she done to be kidnapped in the first place?
She'd cried in the beginning, out of her mind with fear, her clothes soaked through, wet and cold. They'd tortured her for information, and when they realized she didn't know much about any of the Avengers other than their personal preferences, had moved on to spite. Now it seemed like they had a new intent behind them, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could hold on.
"What's your name?" they'd shouted at her, repeatedly. "Tell us your real name!" And she had told them, over and over, the same thing. Darcy. Darcy Lewis. Darcy Lewis. No matter how many times she said it, shouted it, cried it out - they continued to beat her every time she answered the question. Who else was she supposed to be? Hearing her name from her own lips made her cringe now, and when one of her tormentors said it, she flinched away.
She'd finally broken down and cried, "Who do you want me to be? I'll be that person!" She'd never forget the sneers she received that day, and the brutal punishment that followed.
It had made her hate her name.
...
They'd taken her, done their terrible things to her, and shackled her back to the wall in her cell.
She was able to shift her body around a little bit before the chain connecting to her collar went taut. Gripped by a desperate urge, she pushed away from the wall with all her might, throwing her shoulders into the move. She'd tried this before, countless times. All it did was leave her choking, the cold metal jerking her to a stop and pressing into her bloody neck to cut off her air. She eased back to catch her breath, and pulled on the chains attached to her wrists. She was too weak to even lift them. They wouldn't budge from the floor, let alone where they were anchored in the wall.
At least they had left her sitting down this time. Bare-assed on an icy wet floor wasn't the most comfortable feeling, but she knew they could do much worse if the mood struck them.
After one session when she had done something to particularly displease them, they'd hung her from her wrists so high that she could barely touch the ground. She'd stretched out, able to press up just enough from her big toes to gain a few moments reprieve from the agony in her wrists. Then her muscles protested the strain, her toes lost their grip, and she swung in agony for as long as it took her to regain her tenuous contact with the ground.
That had been the day the shooting pains had begun, all the way down her arm and neck and leg. Those pains were a constant misery, and didn't fade into the background like the cuts and bruises did when she could avoid bumping them. Stinging lightning under her skin. Probably nerve damage. The numbness in her hands was further evidence of this. She couldn't get it out of her mind.
She still told herself, they will come. They won't have forgotten you - they are out looking right now. They are coming for you, Darcy. Stay strong. Be brave. Don't lose hope. It will all be over soon.
Her lower lip trembled. Her mind recited the words like the prayers she had made at the start, but she didn't believe them any more. Except that it would definitely be over soon. One way or another.
The effort of trying to pull away from the wall had opened wounds on her neck, old infections and new scabs alike. The two halves of the collar connected at the side with what felt like huge bolts, and the heads of them dug into her shoulders when her head lolled to the side, The seams of it pinched and bit at her neck, just as the cuffs did on her half-numb wrists. She could smell - almost taste - the metallic bitterness of it in the air. Or maybe that was the blood.
After they'd first attached them, she'd felt something coursing down her neck, down her back and shoulders. At first, she'd thought water was dripping from the ceiling and running down her back. It was warm, though, and she hadn't felt warmth of any kind since her kidnapping. The realization that it wasn't water, but blood - her blood - had frightened her in a whole new way.
Blood. The word echoed through her body, her mind, the sheer inability to acknowledge that she was just…bleeding. Bleeding out. Every movement made her wounds worse, brought a fresh flood of warmth that cooled and dried and left her weaker.
Here, now, in this relatively easy position, she did her best to imitate a statue. She knew she had to stop moving, but she shook so constantly now. From cold, from fright, from malnutrition, from dehydration, from infection, or from blood loss. Hell, maybe all of them at once. She couldn't make herself stop.
Was this shock? Was she in shock? Going into shock?
The chain clinked against the wall suddenly, and she twisted violently, instinctively away from it, waking more pain. Her chattering teeth shook her body, and the shakes inflamed her nausea. How she hadn't cracked a tooth or choked on her own vomit yet was a wonder.
Her left arm hurt, badly, and she turned her head before she could stop herself. It was pointless trying to see anything in the darkness, and all she got for her trouble was a sharp pain from her blistered neck, and more blood.
Fuck. Fuck everything.
But the moon was bright this night and she could gradually see a little better than usual.
She wished they hadn't broken her glasses. One of the goons had shattered them when he backhanded her face, and she was glad that none of the glass had cut her eyes.
See, there were silver linings. She had to just find them to focus on them.
Her neck was definitely bleeding again. She cursed internally as she felt the slow seep of blood run down her front, covering her chest and stomach like a scene from a horror movie. What was that one again with the girl at the prom? Carrie? She'd never enjoyed horror films and this reality was the exact reason why. Blood is gross. Making a spectacle of it for entertainment even more so.
As her eyes adjusted, she could see tiny dots of blood on her left bicep.
If she squinted hard enough against the dark, she thought she could make out two, no…make that three needle pricks in her arm where little dots of blood had dried. The I.V. had gone into her hand, and they'd have taken blood from there or from her elbow, so they must have injected her with something. What had they given her? When? She couldn't remember. Had she blacked out?
Dizziness washed over her, and her vision blurred. She felt like she had with that terrible ear infection last year. Lying in bed with the spins, worse than the most drunken sleep she'd ever experienced, eyes closed and unmoving, stomach betraying her by believing her body was spiraling instead of laying still. It was weird to feel that now, because she hadn't even been moving. She couldn't move if she tried. So why did it feel like she was on one of those playground sit-n-spins lying down and watching the sky go round and round? It was different though. Her eyes couldn't decide if the walls were moving or she was, but she felt...off. Was this delirium? Did she have a fever?
The churning of her stomach intensified. She was going to be sick. Which was very bad because she hadn't had food in such a long time, and she didn't want to lose whatever it was that was in her that was keeping her alive. Can you vomit things you've ingested from an I.V?
They had to come for her. She could wait. Stay strong, Darcy. Stay strong.
Her head pounded and her shoulders stayed in tight anxious knots. She was breathing too quickly, in shallow pants, and oh, it hurt so badly to breathe.
She was afraid to sleep. She was afraid to stay awake.
Time didn't mean what it used to. Hours, minutes, even days had no meaning. Each period of consciousness lingered, and then kept going, until it could have been an afternoon or a week. She marked their passage by her pleas and prayers and tears. The pain and thirst were constant, punctuated by the worsening breathing and each new wound. She couldn't tell time, but she knew she was running out of it.
Darcy was exhausted, lost, and alone. She faced forwards again, her mangled neck protesting, and scrunched up her face as she tried to remember what had happened. From the beginning.
Somewhere, in the distance, something exploded.