Trigger Warning: next handful of chapters will include Hydra related physical/psychological violence/duress. I try not to be graphic or anything. But still.

See end for Author's Note.

The Hydra Chapters: Memento

Darcy Lewis would be okay. Maybe not today or the next day. Okay...to be real...not any time in the foreseeable future. Things are pretty fucking dim in the present moment. But she would be because she had no choice about it. She'd be okay because she had to be. Plain and simple.

The room she was in was spartan and grey. There was a bed pressed against a concrete wall, with rough white sheets and a metal frame. Darcy was on the cold concrete floor, back to the wall, head lulled to the side, pressed against the unforgiving metal bed. Her knees were drawn to her chest. Her fingers, ice cold. Her toes, tingling painfully from the lack of circulation. Her eyes were shut tight against the buzzing fluorescence that kept the room lit no matter the time of day.

In the intermediary, the time between now and when Darcy would be okay, there would be months and years full of self-doubt, self-contempt, paranoia, and silence. So much goddamn silence. She would withdraw. Remove herself from an impossible world in the name of self-preservation. In the name of healing. And in shame too. Because honestly where do you even begin? There are some things you just can't say out loud. There are some things that are so world altering and so incredibly fragile, that to voice them out loud is to watch them die in the air as you do. Some things we go through alone and we hold to us tightly like armor. Protecting our pain. Maintaining it. Cultivating it. Sometimes the things we endure, the things we survive, they stay with us. Sometimes we want them to. The people who love us, in their best efforts to help us heal, deny us that pain. They try to talk it away or pretend its not there. They want us to be the way we were. But the way we were is usually insufficient for the challenges life throws our way.

Where would Darcy even begin anyway? Explaining this to someone. Where would you begin? If you had to tell someone your story, could you truly nail down the right way to start it? To tell it? Who to tell it to?

Darcy was dreaming. She was dreaming of a rooftop in Queens. There was no ground beneath her, but she was not falling. She was being lifted. High up onto the next rooftop by Steve's strong and steady hand. Does her story begin here? On a rooftop with Steve and Bucky. With secrets and betrayal and the absence of words when she turns her back in anger to leave them behind. Was this the decision that led to all the rest? This led to a cell and Hydra and god knows what else in the days or weeks or possibly forever to come. But was it Point A, or just somewhere in the middle of a story that had already begun?

She'd passed out not too long after they'd dumped her in her cell. It was kind of funny really. The Darcy of the past, the one who tased Thor and saved London from Dark Elves with absolutely no regard for self-preservation or architecture or anything like that really... that Darcy would have been up and fighting. Her body would have recalled instantaneously all the exercises Clint had drilled into her brain and given them hell. That Darcy would probably gotten herself killed early on, the current Darcy would say. Because the current Darcy was being afflicted by something that had taken her sort of off guard. Exhaustion.

She was bone tired. Once her body had become accustomed to the terror of being in a murder van full of murder goons, it had slumped. Her breathing had become shallow. And even though her eyes stayed open, wide and desperate, trying to see through the fabric of the bag on her head, they burned with the need for sleep.

She had listened desperately for a sign of who she was with or where they were going to no avail. She had counted their steps and kept track of their turns as they trekked through the building she was being held in. But after 25 steps, climbing three stairs, five steps, door, right turn, 50 steps, left turn... numbers and turns and stairs all blurred together and none of it made sense to her anymore. She had no idea where she was, how to get out, how many there were. Nothing.

In her dreams, Steve's hand pulling her from one roof to another had turned into Bucky's as he slid a glass of ice-cold water toward her and told her to count her sips. And then he was gripping her shoulders, looking at her with those incredulous eyes. Those warm, teasing, stupid eyes. And he was telling her to put on her best dress so they could take her out on the town.

She should have stayed on the roof. Darcy's eyes felt like they were glued closed. But she was awake. Kind of. She was in the in between. Sounds filtered through. Shadows too. People marched past the windowed door to her cell. If her eyes were open, she would see their shoulders and heads as they did. Guards stood watch as though she were a flight risk. As if she were someone more qualified than a beginner self-defense trainee, pop-tart wielding lab manager. They would come in and check on her every once in a while. Nudging her foot and calling her name to get her to wake up but with little result. Her eyes stubbornly stayed closed. They had done it just moments ago. The guards. And the door had clicked closed behind them when they were done. They'd gone back to standing at attention.

She had no idea how long she'd been there. How often they'd checked. Time had become impossibly fluid in the state she was in.

Disoriented even in sleep, her eyelids fluttered, and she was running. They were so close behind her as she shoved her way through the busy city streets that she could feel their shadows reaching out to brush her spine, to grab her, to jerk her back. But just up ahead was the man, the agent, from before. He was running toward her, and she was running toward him. And the man behind her almost had her by the hair. Almost snatched her backwards. But this time the agent got to her first. His hand held tightly onto hers, pulled her to safety in an unyielding grip.

An unyielding grip that turned into a firm handshake. And Darcy was standing in the common area of Avenger's Tower, staring in awe for the first time at the Black Widow who stood before her in a pair of sweats and a hoodie with an acne patch on her nose. Natasha Romanov was shaking her hand. Natasha Romanov was shaking her hand. Welcoming her to the tower. And Darcy wanted to be her friend. And she knew that Natasha knew that's exactly what she was thinking because the Black Widow knew everything about everyone. And Darcy was okay with that. Which Natasha knew too, but this time because Darcy told her so.

The door had opened again at some point during Darcy's dreaming. Something had clattered to the ground by her feet. And the door had snapped shut once more. But that's not what made Darcy's spine stiffen. That's not what drew her lips into a frown. Something in her gut was telling her to wake the fuck up. Was telling her that someone was still in the room with her. Watching her. It was her own voice screaming at her to open her eyes.

When they snapped open, she sucked in a breath and choked on it from the nearness of the person who had been watching her. His eyes were mere inches from her own and she drew back in fear and shock. Scrambled away from the sharp green gaze that followed her with its usual brand of boredom and curiosity. Like a cat watching a half dead mouse realize its fate, Loki quirked his head to the side and sat back on his haunches. He watched the mortal girl press herself harder against the concrete wall behind her, her tired eyes blown wide in shock. He waited patiently until she evened out her breathing and relaxed back out of the panicked position that she'd thrown herself in.

"You have found yourself in quite the predicament, haven't you mortal?"

When he grinned, it was wide and full of teeth. It was a trickster's grin. And Darcy couldn't quite explain the emotions that coursed through her. After the alarm had worn down, and the recognition had set in, she felt...was that... it couldn't have been relief. But she thought that maybe it was. She wanted to laugh. And then cry. And that felt cliché so she was a little annoyed too. Resting between them, on the cold concrete floor, was a small shimmering pin in the shape of a stupid little snake. That horrible magical thing. She had dumped it in an alley in a fit of resentment toward the people in her life. Fed up with constantly being jerked around, followed without her consent, out of control. That little pin, that had attached itself to her and refused to let her go, had found her once again.

She watched as Loki's spectre conjured a great leather pub chair. The same chair he had conjured when he'd pretended to be her therapist what felt like a lifetime ago. In his lap, his hands rested primly over a copy of the Picture of Dorian Gray. But he was studying her, not his book. Trying to read the mix of thoughts and emotions passing through her eyes.

She watched him watch her and settled on just feeling whatever it was she was feeling. It wasn't worth the mental gymnastics to try to make sense of it. Sometimes, against all reason, the things that once posed the biggest threats to us become a source of comfort. The things that once held the power to destroy our realities and worlds, to strip us of all sense of security, that left us raw...sometimes their familiarity becomes the only thing that makes sense, becomes the closest thing to security that we have. Outwardly Darcy just stared back at Loki, fighting that ever pervading sense of tiredness that weighed her down. Inwardly she had to laugh. Loki's fucked up brand of sociopathy was like a balm in this situation.

For better or for worse, he was a reminder. A memento of all she had survived and endured in the past. He was the harm that never quite reached her. And with him came the memory of all those she had come to love and trust along the way. With Loki came Thor. And Jane. Frigga and Siff and Volstagg and Brunhilde. With Loki came Heimdall on his great dais in a far away sky.

At the thought of the god with his golden eyes, she felt her throat constrict and burn. Her chest bubbling with desperation. He could see her. He knew where she was. Despite Loki's gaze, Darcy forced her eyes to close themselves tightly. It was as if her body knew that sometimes you have to look away to get through it unscathed. Her brow scrunched up as she called out to Heimdall in her head. If she had spoken his name out loud it would have broken like a prayer. And then like a bucket of ice water washing over her she recalled his words to her in another life and another world.

"I will be with you, every step of the way," He had said with an air of finality. "And still, you will venture forth without me."

Could he have meant that even now? Could he have known this would happen to her? Had Heimdall been warning her that there was even more to come after the Valley of the Crystals?

"The Norns work in mysterious ways," She'd overheard him say to Siff that night while she slept on in that great marble room. She realizes now after so much time has passed that he, who could see everything all the time, knew Darcy had woken up. Heimdall knew she wasn't sleeping when he said what he did to Siff that night. "I believe there is more to come...things have only just begun for the girl."

Her eyes dropped down to her wrist. Still wrapped in the warm metal band that kept her scars hidden from the outside world. She wondered why they'd left it on. And wondered still how long until they pried it off. Wondered how long until they saw the runes carved into her skin, and realized she had more ties to Asgard than Jane. She looked from her wrist to Loki, who had gotten bored with her and gone back to reading.

"Will you help me?" She croaked out, her voice rough from fear and sleep.

He flipped a page, quirked an eyebrow. Didn't bother look up.

"No," he said blithely. "I don't think I will."

"Please," she said. "Loki. As long as I'm stuck in here so are you."

"And if you die in here, I will be freed."

"From me, maybe. From Hydra. But what then? How does being free of me serve you? How will your subconscious mind escape from your cell on Asgard if I die?"

He spared her an impatient glance, trying to go back to reading but having lost his focus at her statement of the obvious. She'd been a bothersome thing since the beginning. But he too could not ignore the truth behind her words. The truth he'd been trying to work around since he'd reappeared in this sad little cage they shoved her in.

"What would you have me do then, mortal?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?" she croaked out, face flushed red in indignance. "You're the mother loving god of chaos you dweeb. You're a goddamn prince. You've been in thousands of years' worth of battles right alongside Thor. Are you seriously asking the 20 something college dropout with like minimal self defense skills how the fuck we should get out of this situation?"

Both of his eyebrows shot up at her words.

"I don't know what a dweeb is. But I assure you I am not it."

Darcy just groaned, leaned back miserably against her wall, and closed her eyes. Everything hurt and Loki would never help her. Not really. He was far more likely to watch her suffer, take notes and offer advice to the goons when the time came for whatever Hydra had planned for her. She didn't bother to tell him that she was going back to sleep. Just pulled her knees back in close to her chest and hugged them tightly with tense arms. She took a few deep breaths that did nothing really to calm her down and decided that so long as she stayed in this corner right here nothing could harm her. She was staking a claim on her safety. And it started and ended with her back pressed in exactly this way, against this exact wall. The Avengers would just have to find her before her muscles went into atrophy. Her stomach bottomed out once again at the reminder of home. But despite the fear in her gut, and the sadness in her chest, at whatever was to come, Darcy felt a small tingling in her spine at Loki's presence. At least she wasn't alone.

Some time passed. How much was hard to tell for one person who passed that time in the state between wakefulness and sleep, and another who had lived too long to care about mere minutes and hours. It had become arbitrary to them both at some point and there was really no purpose in dwelling on it.

"Quiet your grumbling," Loki droned out in annoyance. "I am trying to read."

His voice pulled Darcy from her self-imposed sleep of survival. Her eyes bleary as she tried to process what he meant. She hadn't been grumbling, she thought right before her stomach let out a miserable growl. Oh.

She was starving. She smacked her lips together. And thirsty too. Once realized, it was impossible to ignore.

She eyeballed the tray that had been dropped in front of her by the guards.

The meal Hydra had supplied her with consisted of a brownish grey mystery casserole, a slice of plain white bread and a sealed snack bag of sliced apples. Next to the tray was an open bottle of water, with something cloudy floating around in it. She rolled her eyes, denying herself her nerves, they hadn't even bothered to hide their tampering. She would not be drinking that. But even as the thought crossed her mind, Darcy's mouth flared with a sudden desperate desire to drink the whole thing down, drugs be damned. Panicked at her body's mutiny, Darcy lashed out. She watched, torn, as the water glugged out of the bottle and onto the floor, spreading out too far to puddle, freeing her from her own temptation.

Her stomach protested loudly, and Loki let out another aggravated sigh. She ignored him but reached for the slice of bread. Just the thought of eating it made her dehydrated teeth hurt. And she was suddenly frozen with anxiety. Trapped in her mind, and her weakening body. Trapped in a cell. Trapped in her stupid little corner and suddenly unable to move anything but her hands as she tore the slice into tiny little pieces and let them fall into her lap and onto the ground. Darcy watched the bread drink up the water around her feet from somewhere in the back of her head. She was dissociating. Watching it all happen from farther away than usual. She felt like she was suspended somewhere behind herself, watching things play out. Witnessing her own suffering like someone would view an animal as it cowered in a cage.

Darcy reached for the bag of apples. Thinking maybe the fruit would help quench her thirst. But after a few tugs on the plastic, she realized her hands wouldn't cooperate. More than that, they were shaking. She hadn't noticed before. She could barely grip enough to pull the plastic apart. Frustrated, she brought a shaky hand up to brush her hair back out of her face and settled on tearing the plastic open with her nails. But she was startled to realize that her nails were broken. She'd always kept them naturally long and clean. It had been one of the few luxuries she could afford herself through the struggle years with Jane...a nail file and some polish. But the nail on her right index finger had chipped down to an impossible length. It was more likely to grow back into her skin than it was to grow back normally. There was a jagged edge on her right thumb that made her stomach churn. And the nail on her left index finger was still long, but even the slightest amount of pressure would bend it back awkwardly. And most of her nails, if not all of them, she thought absently, had something dingy, flaky, caked underneath them.

Her mind flashed briefly to the wet, stubbly feeling of her fingers making contact with a man's face. Digging in. And dragging. She recalled a muffled curse, but she couldn't see. Everything was dark behind the fabric that covered her head. Then a sturdy grip on her from behind, and she was fumbled roughly into a seat. The van began to move.

In her cell, Darcy's body seized. She dropped the apples. Scrambled back. Frantically, she pressed herself into her corner. Back to the wall, temple to the bed frame. She closed her eyes and her body caved back into merciful exhaustion. Her heart pounded a bruise into her rib cage. Her breath came out in rapid puffs of cold air. Her eyelids sealed themselves tight. And once more she succumbed to her dreams. Her rapid heartbeat belonged instead to a little orange kitten. Her rapid breathing became his as he worked his way through a nap. He laid, curled up, on her chest. And everything was completely fine. She would be okay.

Loki watched discreetly as the girl tried and failed to open her food. Unwilling to engage her further, the prince maintained an air of engrossment in his novel. He watched her shake and freeze and panic. He watched her retreat and succumb to exhaustion like a switch had been flipped in her brain.

It was a curious thing. Her reaction to her own frailty. He couldn't say he'd seen many people Asgardian or Midgardian, sleep themselves through their own kidnapping. It was...he wanted to say intriguing but frankly it was more disappointing than anything else. He wanted to toy with the mortal. Not watch her sleep.

Still, the grumbling of her unfed belly would continue to vex him if they were to continue as they were. He stood easily from where he lounged in his leather chair and moved toward the offending package. He'd open the flimsy thing. She would eat. And he would at least be able to read in peaceable silence until the girl either died or broke free. The matter of his own freedom would come to him in time. No need to rely on the girl. She was nothing to him.

Loki shook his head, aggravated with the mortal his magic had so callously tied him to. He stooped down and made to pick up the apples. But...failed. He paused. Grabbed for the bag again. And stuttered back a step as his hand passed right through the offending fruit and then through the floor beneath them. He blinked, horrified. Tried again. And failed.

This couldn't be.

He looked from his hand to the hungry, thirsty, pathetic excuse for a living being in the corner and back to his hand. He'd not been this intangible since he was a boy. It had been centuries since his magic had been so weak, so undisciplined. Just a short time ago, when his pin had latched onto the girl in Avenger's Tower of all places, they'd fought. He had been able to grab onto her as she attacked him. Even as his spectre multiplied to attack her from behind, his grip had been firm.

He reached out to shake the mortal awake. To make her pay for her involvement in this betrayal. But his hand passed through her too.

He drew back. He stood and paced. And then to the sound of the guards turning the locks on her cell door, he disappeared entirely. Vanished as though he had never been there at all. In his place, on the cold hard concrete floor, still wet with spilled water, lay a small glimmering snake pin.

It would easily have been noticeable if the guards had bothered to look down. As it was, their boots missed it by mere centimeters as they marched past it to assess the girl. They studied Darcy and the puddle of water. The torn bits of bread. And they decided quite vocally that they'd had enough of her sleeping. That they'd had enough of leaving her alone. It was time for Darcy Lewis to wake up. And it was time for her to stay that way.

Author's Note: This story is still very much in progress. In May, around the time of the last update, I went through a loss and got a new job all at the same time. Suffered some writer's block as a result. But for the last seven months kept doing my best to write this chapter. Two weeks ago (I literally cannot even make this shit up) I was maybe an hour away from being done. I wasn't in love with this chapter but I thought it was written well enough all things considered...when the document crashed and I lost the entire thing. Tried everything, it's gone and can't be recovered. Because I'm lazy..I never backed it up. I am in the process of rewriting the entire thing and trying to accept it'll never be what it was lol. My solution to that problem is the Hydra Chapters. Small chapters that try to not only accomplish, but improve, what I originally had written...but without taking another seven months to do it. Hope you guys enjoy and bare with me.

Another small thing..I haven't gone back to edit and make it more clear.. But the person pretending to be Bucky was just Loki. I'll go back and make that clear when the Hydra Chapters are done.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy! Feedback is always welcome.