It took several moments for Darcy's breathing to even out, and it was only then that with closed eyes she turned back to the others, her hands rubbing down her face.
"I'm going to throw him through the bifrost and hope he ends up in a bilgsnipe's den." She peeked through her fingers at Jane's statement to find that her favorite lady-scientist had stood up sometime during the altercation and was leaning over her desk, fuming. With a glance around, Jane didn't appear to be the only other person one edge from what had just occurred either. Bruce had an expression of shocked outrage, and Darcy was worried that his skin might have been a shade closer to green that it was before. Tony stood stock still. His eyes were out of focus, and he wasn't saying anything, but she could practically feel the vibrations of anger and disgust running under his tense muscles.
"What?" Darcy asked, catching his attention and drawing his mind back from whatever dark place it had been wandering to. "Am I not hot enough to be secretly banging?" She meant to try to lighten the mood, goodness knows this amount of tension was bad for a group of mad scientists, but if anything Tony's face became even more grim.
"Don't even joke about that, Darcy."
Okay, he pulled out her legal name instead of some variation or nickname. Now was not the time to joke with Stark.
If Darcy were a weaker woman, she might have started tearing up, both from Steve's thoughtless accusations, as well as her gratitude over the anger on her behalf from the Scientists Three. She knew in her head that everyone was overly stressed due to the situation (Odin knows what kind of affect Loki's creepy alien scepter was having), and that Steve - normal, blushing 40s etiquette Steve - would never make such a blatant accusation of impropriety, even to someone like Tony Stark whose history didn't make said accusations any less credible. That, however, did not change the fact that it he did make that accusation, and she was gonna stay angry about it until he apologized to not only her but Tony as well - At least a hundred times each.
"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony spit out from between his clenched teeth. If possibly, he seemed more offended by the remark than Darcy had been, though she couldn't for the life of her guess why ('see Tony-used-to-be-a-playboy reasoning listed above'). They were close, but not that close. "I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."
Bruce hesitated before responding. "His comments were no doubt unnecessary," he muttered. "But we have to admit that the guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."
"What Loki has is an ACME dynamite kit," Tony huffed, not conceding his point. Whether that was from sheer stubbornness due to the whole it's-Steve-that-has-a-point thing or not was to be debated at a further time. "It's going to blow up in his face, and I'm going to be there when it does."
"And I'll read all about it," Banner responded, fiddling with a pen.
"Yeah, right." Darcy rolled her eyes, hopping up onto Jane's desk and marveling at how different the room looked from that new angle. "You'll probably be out playing sandbox with the spandex crowd as well. That whole 'Hulk smash' thing could be pretty useful in a sticky situation. I studied at Culver. I know the power that Jolly Green packs behind his punch" Bruce blanched at her frankness.
"She's right, you might be suiting up with the rest of us," Tony tilted his head back and to the side, eyeing Jane. "Though, probably not you Galileo. No offence."
The woman smirked, an expression on her face that seemed strange and alien to her assistant. "None taken, even if you're wrong."
"Ah, see," Bruce continued fidgeting, tapping the pen on his index finger while staring into space. "I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."
"That's what the spandex is for; to keep you from exposing yourself to people. It's nice and stretchy" Darcy winked at the scientist's adorable blush.
"You know," Tony coughed, clearly attempting to go in at it from a different angle in an effort to convince the quiet scientist. "I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart." He said it bluntly, pointing to the glowing mini-arc reactor in his chest, and Darcy had to swallow the sudden lump in her throat at the implication behind his words. "This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a… terrible privilege." She had the urge to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, maybe even lean in for a hug, but resisted, instead quietly keeping tabs on the conversation.
"But you can control it," Doctor Banner argued.
"Because I learned how," Tony countered.
"It's different," he sighed, his shoulders slumping in pre-emptive defeat. She had to wonder just how many ways he's actually tried and just how many people had actually been willing to help him. He reminded her a lot of what she'd read about pre-Pepper Tony, a man with so much talent but no control, whose abilities were beyond amazing but whose downward spiral seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Bruce turned to read the computer screen in an attempt to end the conversation, but Tony was having none of it and marched over. He slid the data aside with his finger to that the two of them could see each other face to face.
"Hey, I've read all about your accident," he stated bluntly. "That much gamma exposure should have killed you."
"So what you're saying is that the Hulk… the other guy… saved my life?" Dr. Banner scoffed lightly at the idea, clearly not viewing it the same way as Tony did ("He's not wrong", Darcy muttered). "That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"
Tony shrugged. "I guess we'll find out." He wandered back over to his computer, flipping through files that popped up on the holographic screen too fast for Darcy to keep track of without her glasses on.
"You might not like that."
"You just might."
"Do you think I can convince the pilot to stop by McDonald's real quick? I'd kill for some fries right about now." Darcy was sprawled across Jane's desk. She'd made a game of it at first, slowly inching her body across more and more of her boss' work space and waiting to see how long until she noticed. When she finally did take notice it was too late. Darcy had her head propped up on one end and her feet propped up on another. "It's not like you're using anything besides the computer," she'd argued when Jane had tried to shoo her away, and it was with a sigh of resignation that she began working around her quirky ex-intern. Really, Darcy was there simply due to the lack of comfortable chairs in the high tech lab (clearly, SHIELD only had the pacing kind of scientists who didn't need to sit for more than five minutes at as time). Darcy was tired,having stayed up for way too long through way too many exciting things. The adrenaline had run dry, and the excitement of being on a cool sci-fi airship had worn off. All Darcy wanted was some food and a nap.
Tony procured another bag of blueberries from his pocket and threw them when she voiced these thoughts, hitting Darcy on the cheek and causing her to flinch back and nearly roll off the table.
"There's only so much healthy food I can take before it kills me!" she snarked but kept the snack for later, shoving it up her sleeve with the intention of pulling it out of the blue at the most opportune moment (ie. when mocking Tony would have the most comedic effect).
"You're welcome," Tony shot back.
She stuck her tongue out, rolling off the desk and landing on her feet with only the slightest bit of vertigo. "You're super spy thing catch anything good yet? Discovered any naughty Captain America fanart that agent Ipod thief might have hid on the work server to drool over later?"
One of his eyebrows shot up. "Super spy thing?"
"Yeah, the thing you ninja-stuck to the computer over there while you thought no one was paying attention." She nodded her head to the computer in question. "I saw you put it there. You know I saw you put it there. You admitted as such to Good ol' Spangles, so don't play dumb with me, Tony. It's not a good look on you."
"Everything is a good look on me," he argued. "I'm a Stark. It's our defining trait." He sighed when she didn't look impressed at his obvious deflection, waving her over to an area of the room out of earshot from the others. "You're not gonna let this go, are you?" he asked as she joined him, the playfully sarcastic mood sombering to one of a more serious nature.
"You tell me." She crossed her arms and leaned against the glass wall, ignoring the irrational fear that she was just going to fall through the transparent material. "Everyone seems to think that I'm still just the random intern, but I'm stuck in this situation just as much as the rest of you. Need I remind you that I not only work for the Tony Stark, but I'm Shield Sister to the god of thunder. My boss is the interspecies lover to said god, and whatever is going in will directly affect her and thus me. Like you said, they're hiding secrets, and whatever you dig up I wanna know about."
"The difference is that you don't have the clearance level for this," he argued petulantly.
She scoffed. "Yeah, and you totally have the clearance level to hack their network against their knowledge."
She had him there but before she could bask in her victory and get him to fess up, the man of the hour strutted into the room, all black leather and a if-you-sass-me-no-one-will-find-your-body aura.
"What are you doing, Mr. Stark," Nick Fury growled angrily.
Tony turned away from Darcy and toward the angry pirate, making sure to take a step between them so as to block her from his view. "Uh… actually, been wondering the same thing about you."
"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract." Fury stalked over threateningly.
"We are," Bruce piped up, having been watching the interaction. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."
"And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." Suddenly, Tony's holo-monitor-thingy let out a bing and he sauntered over to the desk that it was housed in, already having an idea as to the what the notification was about. "By the way, what is Phase 2?"
Darcy jumped at the loud crash caused by Steve having appeared in the lab while no one was paying attention and dropping a Giant Ass Gun on the table near her.
"Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons." If steam could actually come out of someone's ears, and not just metaphorically, it would've been screaming like a hot tea kettle out of Steve's. The man looked absolutely livid over his apparent discovery. He glanced at Tony and a moment of understanding passed between the two them. They were allied in this for now. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow," he acknowledged Stark.
Fury himself looked like he was stuck somewhere between a rock and a hard place and Darcy took a sadistic pleasure in watching him try to crawl his way out of the borderline animosity seeping into the room that was directed toward him.
"Rogers," he scrambled. "We gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're-"
"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony cut him off, swiping across the computer screen to reveal plans for various weapons. "What were you lying?"
"I was wrong, director." Steve glowered at the man. "The world hasn't changed a bit."
At that moment, Thor and Natasha stepped into the lab, and Darcy found herself slightly scared to be around Doctor Banner for the first time as he caught sight of them.
"Did you know about this?" He asked agent Romanov.
"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" Darcy caught how she casually put her hand over the gun on her hip, the threat of action if he refused evident.
"I was in Calcutta," he said, as close to a sneer as the good doctor could get. "I was pretty well removed."
"Loki's manipulating you," the redhead tried to reason.
"And you've been doing what exactly." Darcy almost laughed at that, but the room was so tense that it felt like one wrong move would shatter it into chaos.
"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."
"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."
"Because of him," Fury cut in, pointing to Thor.
"Me?" The man in question looked stunned, like a puppy who'd gotten booped a little to roughly on the nose. His shock quickly turned to offence as the director continued.
"Last year earth has a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned." Darcy disagreed. She'd been there. Yeah, some shit blew up but the town was hardly 'leveled', as the director put it.
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor huffed, crossing his arms and causing the muscles to bulge in a contradictorily threatening way.
"But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched. They can't be controlled."
"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve piped in.
"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki it, and his allies," Thor huffed, standing at his full height but not moving otherwise. " It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."
"A higher form?" Jane's widened eyes were reflective of but a fraction of the amount of panic that shocked it's way through Darcy. She stared at the others, her gaze flitting back and forth through every tension filled face in the room. The earth was potentially threatened by a higher form of war, only Darcy suddenly felt the dread settle into the pit of her stomach at the thought that it was the infighting that was going to get to it first.
"You forced our hand." Fury ignored the side question from Jane and instead focusing on shoving the blame onto the Asgardian prince. "We had to come up with something."
"Nuclear deterrent," Tony sassed, losing his cool and stepping toward the man threateningly. "Because that always calms everything right down."
Fury glared at him but didn't back down. "Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?"
"Hey," Darcy interrupted, and suddenly all eyes were on her. "Tony fucking up until 4 years ago does not excuse you fucking up now. That's like saying someone robbing a bank excuses someone else's murder, and that shit doesn't hold up in court."
"What the hell is she doing in here?" Fury asked, and Darcy refused to believe he wasn't actually aware of her presence. He just didn't care until she called him out on his shit.
"I'm an assistant. I'm assisting."
"Well, someone assist her out of here," he called to the guards stationed in the hall.
Three voices rose up in protest: Jane, Thor, and Tony. Fury ignored all of them and Darcy once again found herself wishing she had her taser when one of said guards grabbed her roughly by the elbow and dragged her out of the lab and down the hall.
"Where are you taking me?" She hissed after a moment, stumbling to keep up with the no-named-thug's fast pace. She could still hear the fading sounds of arguing voices bouncing off the metal walls, though they were quickly fading. She might have imagined a Stand down, Stark before they muffled then disappeared completely.
"I am escorting you to a secure area where you will be allowed to wait until further notice."
"A cell," Darcy growled. She wasn't stupid, and what he just said was a whole lot of fancy words for bull shit. "You're taking me to a cell, aren't you?"
She didn't get her answer, however, because even before the guard could open his mouth to sent out a scathing reply, the whole Helicarrier shook and blast shockwaves sent the two flying into the nearby wall. Darcy was unconscious before she'd even hit the floor.
Despite the ensuing pandemonium across the helicarrier, that hall remained empty of any foot traffic for the duration of its siege. It wasn't until the Captain and Iron Man restarted the turbine, Natasha knocked some sense into Barton, and the Hulk wasn't green anymore that any footsteps echoed down the metal corridor. Vibrant blue eyes stared dispassionately at the impaled guard but caught on the limp frame of dark haired woman who, while bleeding from a couple purpling areas on her person, was still managing some shallow, rasping breath. Loki recognized the woman from the Gala, but more importantly he recognized the protective nature several of his adversaries appeared to adopt in her presence. A slightly unhinged smirk painted his face as a slight change wove its way into his plan, and with a surprisingly delicate touch he lifted the injured body from the floor and disappeared in a haze of smoke and magic.