The morning dawned grey and dreary looking, even from the heights of Stark Tower, which usually produced magnificent views of the city. Darcy stood in her little personal kitchen, an empty cereal bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, as she stared out the window at all the wet. Some people found rain soothing, refreshing, rejuvenating even. Darcy found it flat out depressing. She wrinkled her nose at it, and turned to put her dishes in the sink to be dealt with later.
"JARVIS, can you tell me where Jean Grey is?" Darcy asked, rooting around the various dining chairs she never used for her comfy sweater. There were quite a few jackets and sweaters tossed carelessly over them, so it took her a bit.
"She may be found in the common lounge on level forty-three," JARVIS replied.
Darcy nodded to herself, plucking the black hoodie she'd been hunting for out from under several others. "Can you also tell Jane that I'll be in the lab later than usual today?"
"Of course."
She pulled the hoodie over her head and grimaced when it caught on her ponytail. With the rain, having her hair tied back was a must. Her curls looked cute and stylish on dry days, on wet days she resembled Jane when she had plugged the modified Speedotron* into the wrong socket and it discharged.
She was rooting around under the chairs for her Chucks when JARVIS spoke again,
"Doctor Foster is most displeased with you."
"She'll get over it, I'm sure," Darcy grunted, shoving her foot into one sneaker while balancing on her other foot.
"Perhaps you might try untying the laces," JARVIS suggested.
"Nonsense," she grunted again, pulling on the canvas until the heel of her foot slid into place. "I've got this."
JARVIS made a sceptical sound, but he changed the subject all the same. "Doctor Foster is concerned about the timeline for her project."
Darcy paused. "Yeah…that could be a problem. Tell her that we'll talk about it later today?"
"You might speak to Doctor Foster about this yourself," JARVIS said, his voice still deceptively pleasant. "A novel concept, I'm sure."
"You are a true master of sass, JARVIS, but no can do," Darcy told him, "she'd guilt me into going down to the lab right away." Once both feet were securely in her shoes, she reached for her phone on the counter, tucking it into the pouch of her sweater.
"Might I ask where you're going, Miss Darcy?"
"You can ask but I don't—Oh, crap." She spun on her heel and marched back into her room, heading straight for her over flowing bookshelf. "Where the hell is it?"
"I might be of assistance if you tell me what it is that you seek?"
She crouched down and started shifting around paperbacks and hardcovers alike. Darcy had more than one bookshelf, but the one in her bedroom consisted of her personal favourites, and it was overflowing. "The Fellowship of the Ring," she told JARVIS.
"Second shelf from the top, three books in from the right hand side," he said instantly.
Darcy blinked for a second and looked up before she slowly stood and followed his directions. Sure enough, her old paperback was there, wedged in between Son of the Shadows and Things Fall Apart**. "How did you know where it was?" she asked. There was no rhyme or reason to her shelving; a fact that drove Jane up the wall.
"I scanned my memory banks for the last time your bookshelf had been accessed and referenced it against the day you unpacked your books," JARVIS promptly replied.
"You have cameras in my room!?" Darcy's voice jumped an octave on the last word. "Wait, stupid question, of course you do, you're watching me right now, aren't you?"
"That is correct."
"Where?" Darcy demanded, turning around and looking up at each of the corners of her room. There was no obvious CCTV camera in sight, naturally.
"The light fixtures, Miss Darcy."
She turned and directed her glare appropriately. "Do you watch me in the bathroom too?"
"All non-relevant personal footage is immediately deleted."
"That's not an answer," Darcy pointed out.
JARVIS hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "While I do not actively watch any of the Tower's occupants during personal moments, recordings are made nonetheless. I review these recordings and either store or delete them as necessary."
"So, yes is the answer," Darcy said, sarcasm laden in her tone. "You've seen me naked."
"If it makes you feel any better, Miss Darcy, I am programmed to understand human emotions, such a lust and desire, but I am not capable of feeling them myself," JARVIS told her in his typical dispassionate voice. That didn't really matter to Darcy, though.
She threw up her hands and made an 'ick' sound. "Okay, okay enough. I'm going to try to pretend that this conversation never happened," she told him. "Innocence is bliss," she muttered to herself.
"As you wish, Miss Darcy. May I conclude, by your choice of reading material, that you are planning a visit with Sergeant Barnes?"
"You can conclude all you want," Darcy retorted, heading for the door again, "just don't tell Jane or Jean Grey where I am. You owe me that much for pervving on me all these months."
"I do not—" JARVIS began but Darcy cut him off.
"Semantics, J!"
"I disagree," he said, rather shortly, but fell silent nonetheless.
Darcy left her apartment and headed for the elevator, which opened before she had a chance to call for it, and started moving before she pressed any buttons. She supposed it might be a tad creepy, living in a place where your every move was not only recorded, but could also be anticipated. She knew that when the elevator stopped that it would be on the floor that James' room was on.
"J, you promise to only use your powers for good, right?" she asked suddenly, breaking the silence of the elevator.
"I am programmed to understand morality and make decisions based on the modern concept of them, however, I may be overruled at any time by Sir."
"That's comforting," Darcy said dryly.
"Sir may make questionable decisions regarding his personal life, however, he is what most would define as a 'good man' should they know him as I do."
Darcy was a bit taken aback by the heartfelt tone. "I thought you said you didn't experience human emotions?"
"You misunderstood, Miss Darcy. I do not experience human emotions such as lust, or physical desire. Similarly, I do not feel pain the way that you do."
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened, but Darcy didn't move from within. "What do you mean, you don't feel pain the way I do?"
"I do not have a physical body, Miss Darcy."
"But do you feel emotions?" she clarified. "Happiness, anger, frustration…love?"
"I am capable of understanding and experiencing most human emotions," he said simply.
"You understand emotions," Darcy repeated slowly, "but do you feel them, JARVIS?"
Again, he hesitated for a moment before he answered. "Yes, Miss Darcy, I feel."
It didn't really make sense, but his admission made Darcy happy, and she reached out to touch the wall of the elevator with one hand. "I'm glad, JARVIS," she told him earnestly. She glanced up at the lights in the elevator and smiled. "And thank you."
"For what, Miss Darcy?"
She shrugged, a small smile playing about her lips. "Everything."
"You are welcome, Miss Darcy."
She patted the wall once, and then stepped out of the elevator, making her way down the hall to James' room.
He was pacing the length of it when she arrived, looking like a caged animal waiting for its moment to strike, to make a bid for freedom, and Darcy hesitated before her hand touched the doorknob.
"Miss Darcy, I must advise you that Captain Rogers is not on the premises," JARVIS said, the volume of his voice much lower than usual, perhaps in consideration of how James reacted to his voice previously.
"Well, promise me you'll avenge me if he squashes me," she said with false bravado.
"I am not an Avenger," JARVIS reminded her.
"Yeah, well, sick Stark on him, then." Without waiting for a reply, Darcy opened the door and stepped inside, half expecting to be flung aside as he made good his escape. Her heart fluttered in her chest and adrenaline surged through her veins as she took him in, standing stock-still and staring at her with unblinking eyes.
"James?"
His head tilted to the side slightly, but he gave no indication that he understood or recognised her. A shiver raced down her spine at the blank look in his blue eyes, and the almost inhuman way he seemed to contemplate her. There was a complete lack of emotion on his face, and yet she instinctively knew that she was being assessed. Every hair on her body stood on edge as an instinct long buried by evolution and the development of civilizations reared its head.
Swallowing against the fear in her gut, she raised the book in her hand. "I thought maybe we could keep reading?" she asked, her voice shaking slightly. "This is my copy, Steve took his back to his—"
She didn't see him move, not even a blur as his body crossed the room. The last time he'd gone on the attack she had been able to see it, to almost anticipate it in the way that his body had tensed, but there was no warning this time. One second he was staring at her, unnerving her on the deepest of levels, and the next he was there in front of her, and that metal hand of his was wrapped around her throat.
Darcy tried to scream, but all that came out was a strangled gasp as her throat was constricted and her last bit of air was sucked in.
Her hands came up automatically; short nails scrabbling against the cool, slick metal of his hand to no effect. She kicked out, adrenaline surging through her veins and making her fight like a wild animal caught in a trap. His reach wasn't so long that he was kept at a safe distance from her, but though her feet landed blows on his shins and knees, it didn't seem to affect him at all. He was like a robot; staring at her calmly, without a hint of emotion, as he choked the life out of her.
Her panic welled like a balloon inside of her, feeling as though it might burst and take her along with it. She stopped thrashing and reached out, trying desperately to touch his skin with her own. If only she could reach him, she was sure she could make him let go—she strained forward, fingers splayed in desperation, but they stopped a hairs breadth away from the skin of his cheek.
The panic burst, surging through and out of her in a wave.
Pain lanced through her head and had she the breath for screaming, she would have. It felt to her as if someone had stuck a knife in her ear and angled it upwards. It was sudden and intense, but blessedly brief. In its wake there was a moment of relief, as if a pressure had been relieved after a very long time.
It was short lived.
Her lungs burned, the need for new air becoming desperate, and she lashed out again, flailing and thrashing in his grip. Her panic welled in her again, swelling to the point of explosion—and then everything began to move.
The lamp on the bedside table rattled and jumped across the wooden surface on which it rested, as if an earthquake was sending it dancing towards the edge. It fell, shattering on the linoleum tiles and drawing James' attention away from her. He turned his head slightly to look at it, before turning back to her, a very small frown between his brows.
The lamp was the catalyst. As one, everything around the room began moving. The unused hospital equipment jumped and fell over, the long poles clanging loudly on the floor. The bedside table shot forward, as if it had been ejected by a gun, and shattered against the wall next to her body, spraying them both with shards of wood. Still, he maintained his grip around her throat with that metal hand. Darcy's vision began to blur and the world around the edges grew dark. The chair that she sometimes sat in threw itself at them but James kicked out at it lightning quick, sending it flying back into another wall.
She felt her knees give out, and the muscles in her body relax as the loss of oxygen finally took its toll. She had burnt through her adrenaline, and now she had nothing left. All of her weight rested on his hand around her throat, further choking her, but she couldn't find the strength to get her feet under her. Her mind spun hazily, and she grasped desperately at her consciousness, trying to make sense of what was happening but it slipped through her fingers like sand.
Part of her realised that she was dying, but even that seemed like too difficult a concept to concentrate on.
She heard the screeching of metal against the floor dimly, as if a thick wall muffled it. Something slammed into James' back and Darcy watched him pitch forward in slow motion. He reached out instinctively to brace himself against the wall, his hand hitting the plaster right beside her head. He grit his teeth and pushed back against something, but Darcy couldn't see what it was. Her dimming focus was on the skin of his forearm, mere millimetres away from her. His metal hand restricted her movement as well as her airways, but she managed to turn, ever so slightly, and press her cheek to his skin.
Her consciousness exploded out of her body, racing through the skin-to-skin connection and their minds meshed together viciously. She felt his gasp as if it were her own, and then she was inside of his head. From his eyes she could see her face, skin red and eyes bulging horrifically, cheeks wet with tears that she couldn't remember shedding. Rage bubbled up inside of her. She refused to lie down and die for this man. A wordless scream emerged and Darcy lashed out at him, her intentions violent. She didn't know what she was doing, but it hardly mattered with how close their minds were. Her pain became his pain, her terror his terror.
He cried out, his grip slackening for a moment, and Darcy's body automatically sucked in a gulping breath of fresh air without conscious thought but the relief was, again, short lived.
With a vicious snarl, James fixed his gaze on her blotchy, swollen face and inside his mind, he screamed back. Full of terror, anger, and renewed determination, he reapplied his superhuman strength to her neck, intent on squeezing the life out of her. Various faces flickered through his thoughts, all of them looking horrifyingly like Darcy—their lives dimming in their eyes with a metal hand around their throat.
Darcy's determination faltered, her anger turning into a kind of sorrow she couldn't put name to. She tried to press her desperation upon him, begging silently with her emotions. Faces and memories flashes through her mind and into his, none of them concrete enough to make sense of but all of them carrying an emotion. Things she hardly thought mattered mixed with those she desperately adored; the sensation of soft fur under her fingers, the sound of Jane's chortling laughter, Eric's quiet smiles after a long day, the scent of coffee lingering in the air, the tingle in her nose right before she sneezed, her mother's soap and perfume scent, Steve's brilliantly blue eyes, her childhood friend Eliza, DUM-E's chirrup, the warmth of the sun on her face, the smell of her bed sheets, the sensation of sand underfoot, and the red of Natasha's hair; everything that came together to make her Darcy. She pressed it all and more at him as her mind dimmed and slowed.
She could hear her blood pounding in her ears. The burn, that desperate need for air, was terrifying beyond comprehension and she wanted to scrabble and claw at him but her limbs wouldn't obey any longer. She tried to pull herself away from it, withdrawing from her own pain; she fled to him in her mind. Darcy saw herself again from his eyes; tears streaking her cheeks, lips tinged blue, face splotchy from blood unable to circulate, and absolute terror in her eyes.
In that moment she wished that she'd never heard of James Barnes.
And then she fell.
The clamp around her throat released, but her legs were unable to hold her. She tumbled down, not registering the sharp pain as her unresisting knees hit the linoleum. The rest of her body followed, and she gasped shallowly, her lips against the floor. As if her lungs couldn't remember how to breathe, her chest stuttered and hiccupped, trying and failing to inflate.
A hand grabbed her roughly, pulling her over on to her back. She looked up at his face, out of focus and dark around the edges still.
"Darcy."
Her name, on his lips.
She knew then that she was well and truly dead.