.
.
Chapter 6
.
.
.
Despite all she's been through since New Mexico, there are few moments in the past year wherein Darcy has felt like a legitimate badass. She's been competent. She's been a great assistant. And as far as understanding physics goes, she's definitely exceeded expectations, Harry Potter style. But today, for the very beginning of the attack at least, Darcy feels like she could possibly be a badass.
"Perimeter breach," Some wounded agent's voice crackles over Fury's communicator, just after the sounds of gunfire and shouting break out in the halls, and an explosion rocks the building from somewhere below them.
"Oh, you think?" Tony's already stepping into his armor as they purposely file out of the briefing room, shouting at no one in particular, "STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP!"
"Winter Soldier spotted," Maria Hill's creepily steady voice follows on the coms, "Heading for the armory."
"Do not engage!" Fury gave a meaningful nod to Steve, whose expression had smoothed into his mission-leader-face, "Cap, might have to adjust your original plan for getting at your buddy."
"Yessir. Hawkeye, Widow, with me," He motions to the two of them, who'd also suddenly become the versions of themselves who kicked ass and saved the world on a regular basis. Steve turns to Darcy, giving her the briefest of kisses, eyes fixed on hers for a quick moment. "Stay safe."
"You first," She whispers back, and then they were going opposite directions. Captain America down through the Tower to potentially beat up his best friend, Darcy into the thick of the gunfire.
.
.
.
The glassy, glowing eyes of the shooters are downright creepifying, to everyone. "Like fighting fucking ghosts," Wolverine growls at Darcy's back, and she hears the edge of unease to the big man's voice. From their briefing, Darcy's aware that the girl who's gone missing from the Institute is something of a daughter-figure to the gruff bastard. He's searching every face they bring down, but ninety percent of them look to be your cliché henchmen types, only much, much more competent. Worse, though, are the few who look perfectly normal, eyes clear, and intent on killing them. Whoever brought them together, apparently all some needed was the promise of a paycheck and quality mayhem to sign over their guns.
Darcy's glad she threw the bullet-proof vest on over her uniform suit.
Logan, meanwhile, is riddled with holes that just keep healing over. "Yanno, you think I'd be used to that," She shouts, as the two of them move through the halls back to back, Kurt -bamfing- around them, moving up toward the labs. That's Darcy's post, she's been informed. Because she's a scientist first now, and a SHIELD agent second, thus, her gun protects the labs. "But you scab over a lot faster than Steve."
"One of the all natural parts, darlin', that's why," Wolverine winks, turning and taking down a huge Eastern-European looking brute, claws going up through the chin, "Sick of that boy-scout yet? Cause my offer from Halloween still stands."
"I like boy-scouts, Wolvie," Darcy maintains, as Kurt catches an assassin, with fashion taste similar to Nat's, in a dynamite sleeper hold, "Only room for so much snark in my relationships." He busts out laughing, while engaging in bloody violence, and Darcy thinks that yeah, he totally would have been her type, pre-Steve anyway.
"Yeah? Well..." Logan's words die though, when a figure darts across the hall in front of them, full-tilt. She's a blur of black, yellow and pink, but he seems to recognize her instantly. "JUBES!" He shouts, taking a step forward, and then looking back, torn for a moment.
"Go!" Kurt urges him, "Ve'll make it to ze lab." Logan nods once, fixing Darcy with a steady stare, before diving into a run after Jubilee.
"Good luck, hairy!" Darcy calls after him, making Kurt chuckle. "Right, we've got a couple more floors..." Just then, her comm starts buzzing, Betty Ross' voice crackling to life.
"We need more people in the labs!" She calls, voice even, yet highly alarmed, and Darcy could hear Jane shouting something in the background. Her heart seems to freeze, as the transmission begins to break up, "...Someone...glass, crystal forming...Foster..." And then it cuts out all together. Thor and Tony's voices follow from somewhere, but Darcy is already looking to Kurt.
"Think you can get us there faster?"
"Hold on," He takes her arm, and the two of them began flickering through the halls.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Steve's become pretty quick with his uniform. He thought, once, about doing as Superman, the whole wearing it under his everyday clothes thing. But considering how little his suit breathes, that just seems like it would be really uncomfortable over the course of the day. Sometimes he wishes he could wave a hammer and summon it, like Thor, that would be ideal. Instead, he's just gotten fast. Nothing absorbs the bullets and the death rays quite like it, stars and stripes notwithstanding.
"What've we got, Jarvis?" Steve calls, lifting his shield to reflect the bullets coming towards him and Natasha. From somewhere above them, an arrow takes out the shooter.
"Multiple floors breached. I've sealed the living quarters though. They're holding," Steve breathes a sigh of relief, even though Darcy is in the midst of the fighting. Since the last attack on the Tower, Tony had devised for the whole upper floors to go panic room on command. Not very practical for the rest of the working Tower, but, at least his dog was all right, "Codename Winter Soldier is in the armory still. He appears to be placing explosives."
"That won't negate the use of blast doors upstairs at all," Clint's voice issues from above. Steve runs faster.
When they reach the open armory doors and the dead agents outside, Steve slows, frown deepening. The two men were put down by a shot to the head each, perfect aim. Captain America steels himself before moving forward, Natasha slipping from his side, as planned, like a silent shadow.
The rows of lockers and Stark prototypes are silent, but for a tinkering somewhere ahead, that someone isn't even bothering to hide. His shield held aloft, Steve moves between the piles of tech, holding it on faith that Clint and Nat are where they're supposed to be, as they don't make a sound. Finally, turning a corner, he finds his quarry leaning over a large red trunk, facing away from him, a sizable rifle slung across his back.
"Bucky!" Steve can't help calling out, and The Winter Soldier whirls, gun in his hands, scope on his best friend.
"...Captain America," James Barnes grins behind the trigger, the eyes in his black mask clear and unclouded. He doesn't look much older, but his hair is longer, and even touched with gray in places. But even with half his face hidden by the eye mask, Steve knows it's him. He'd know him anywhere.
"...Who the hell is Bucky?"
"You are," Natasha drops down from one of the nearby gun lockers, landing soft and silent behind him. Steve watches, shield loose in his hands as Bucky takes in The Black Widow, gun raised but jaw gone slack.
"...I didn't want to believe it, but here you are," His voice goes rough, looking her over, "...What've they done with you, Nat?"
"Made me remember," She reaches toward him, as if to touch his shoulder, but his eyes narrow sharply. All at once, many things happen. He pulls the trigger, Natasha dodges, Steve's shield knocks the rifle out of his hands and a well-aimed tranquilizer hits The Winter Soldier square in the neck, dropping him like a bag of rocks. Cap kneels by him immediately, pushing back his cowl and rubbing a gloved hand over his face.
"...His eyes weren't glowing," He swallows, looking to Nat, as Hawkeye joins them on the floor, shouldering his bow, "His mind isn't under anyone's control..."
"That's because it was scrubbed clean a long time ago," Widow pats his shoulder, "Let's get him somewhere secure..."
She's cut off by the sound of Darcy screaming for Jane over Steve's com.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Jane Foster might be brilliant, and she might be able to decently fire a gun now, but she isn't a SHIELD agent. As such, she knows well the protocol for her, Betty and Erik, and their interns when the Tower is compromised. Secure the equipment, and get the hell up to the penthouses and their shiny new blast doors. That had been the plan. Things didn't quite go as planned, though.
She, Betty and their intern Simon were the only ones in the upper lab, with the Foster Generator, when Stark Tower was attacked. The calculations they were testing that day had the machine all warmed up, and as the alarms started going off, both Jane and Betty were blurs in the office, turning knobs and typing in codes to shut it down, and fast. You just don't leave a wormhole generator on when you leave the house.
"Simon, get the hell out of here, tell Erik we're five minutes behind you," Jane barks and the skinny, bespectacled PhD-to-be hesitates only a moment, before nodding and sprinting for the stairwell. Betty smirks, smacking her monitor a few times as she scrambles to power things down.
"That'll be Bruce," She breathes, as a distant roar echoes up through the building, "Too close, whoever's here they're working their way up fast."
"We're faster," Jane says with conviction, grabbing her glock from her purse and shoving it into the back of her jeans. As she speaks, however, a chill blows through the lab, and looking toward the glass doors, Jane notes that some sort of crystal is forming over all, almost moving like ice, and it's already sealed them inside the lab.
"What in the world..." Betty trails off, jumping up and moving to the wall, touching the hard substance. Despite the cold in the room, Jane can see, as Betty knocks on the wall, that it isn't actually ice that's closing them in, but some kind of crystal. "...Any ideas?"
"Not the foggiest," Jane stares for a moment, until a movement in the corner of her eye makes her turn, looking toward the center of the now closed-in room. Black, gaseous smoke is threading, moving, taking the shape of a cloaked figure, something bright red and shining dangling from its wrist. The chill in the room gets harsher, and Jane can feel her teeth chattering, only half from fear.
"The machine," A deep, unfamiliar, growling male voice issues from somewhere under the dark, shifting cowl, "Turn it on."
.
.
.
.
.
.
"What in the fuck..." Darcy trails off, as she and Kurt are stopped in their progress upwards by a cluster of clear, whitish crystals blocking up the stairwell. Kurt tries to teleport through it to the other side, which they can see clearly, but it's no dice. She's just about to call for reinforcements, when Thor and Shadowcat appear at her elbow, one with a hammer, one with the ability to walk through walls. "Communications are off for us," Darcy breathes, "You?"
"I cannot reach her, no," Thor growls, spinning Mjolnir in his hand, and then bringing it down onto the strange crystal. It cracks, but just barely. Kitty can't even get a pinky through it. "What is this magic?" Thor hisses, bringing his hammer down again, cracking it further. It was making progress on the substance, but again, not fast enough to give any of them satisfaction. Below them, the gunfire was dying out, replaced by a thunderous footfall pounding its way upwards. "My friend!" Thor calls out, just as the Hulk makes his appearance, and Darcy swallows hard.
She knows Bruce. She knows that once, when she'd almost died, The Hulk had saved her life. She's still never, in her conscious memory, faced his alter ego in person. He seems fine enough, trudging up to them, just...really, really big and green. He eyes the crystal for a long moment, before looking at Darcy directly.
"Betty?" He asks, in his booming voice. Darcy nods.
"Yes. Betty is through there." She says clearly. And then leaps out of the way as a giant green fist blasts its way through the strange substance.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"No." Jane says evenly, lifting her chin, not letting her eyes leave the figure before her. He takes form slowly, details becoming clearer the more she looks. He wears a flowing, blackish, greyish cloak, which is always somewhat blurry along the edges, and his face isn't ever seen. A glass vial hangs from his arm, and all Jane can think of is a reliquary, the kind used by the most committed of mediums, only his is actually swirling with red clouds behind the glass.
"I must...go home..." His voice echoes, urgent now, "The deceiver led me here, and then closed...DESTROYED! ...the Bifrost behind him. I must...go home." Jane licks her lips, nodding. She can work with this.
"If Loki abandoned you here," She says, evenly, "Thor will gladly see you home. You needn't do this by force, and his way is far more accurate than mine. Please..."
"The Odinson will never see me home," The voice replied, amused, the hand raising. As if in some needless show of power, he sends a bolt of lightening crackling through the closed-off lab. Jane shouts, as it strikes one of the computers near Betty, sending a shock through her, that has the poor woman crumbling to the ground, twitching.
"I seek to claim. I failed once, in this very place. I will not again. The warriors on Midgard. The Warriors Three. The remaining Fiercest of the Chitauri. They will be mine. And I will claim all worlds. With this," He waves a reverent hand over Jane's life work, and she growls back.
"...Over my dead body," She hisses, drawing her gun with one hand, and reaching into her machine with the other. She and Betty are cut off, there are no heroes coming fast enough, and her machine is still humming, warming up behind her.
Distantly, she finds herself eternally thankful for the idiocy of super villains, and their habit of babbling on about their intent. She yanks a panel out of the generator, throwing it down to smash on the floor, crushing it under her boot for good measure.
Her life's work, shattered, as she fires her gun.
The figure raises his arm, defensively, and as such the bullet shatteres the glass reliquary on his arm. He screeches, hissing, raising his other hand and sending a blast of red, fiery energy at the slender, fierce scientist.
She catches the blast square in the chest, dimly aware of the nearby wall shattering, the figure dissipating as it does in a rage, and Darcy's voice, screaming her name.
Jane Foster's last thought in this world is of the swirling of the universe, as a steady, strong arm carried her across the cosmos, to a shining paradise he called home...
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hulk destroys the crystal barriers in two mighty swings. Darcy charges forward, hurried on by Nightcrawler and his ability to spirit her forward to the furthest plane in sight. She's just in time to see the barriers around the upstairs lab crackle and fall to pieces, a shadow spirited away, and Jane's limp form falling to the floor.
"JANE!" Darcy screams, leaping away from Kurt and toward her friend. She's vaguely aware that Betty is nearby, her chest rising and falling, and looking back to her best friend, as Darcy takes her head in her lap, there's no such movement.
No breath. No heartbeat.
Darcy's chest starts seizing, her breath unable to move through her lungs. There's no pulse. Jane is dead. Jane's dead. Jane. Dead.
"NO!" Darcy isn't aware that her com is on as she screams, clutching the body close, shaking her, her face crumbling. Jane can't be dead. Jane is too strong. Her best friend, Jane. Too smart. Jane, who came to her parents' house for Hanukkah, 2011.
Jane, whom Darcy wanted to be when she grew up.
Jane, who was supposed to marry Thor and have his half-alien babies and live happily ever after and...
"NO!" She screams again, as a pair of strong arms drag her away from the body. Steve's arms, she registers, distantly, by the color of the uniform, "She can't! She shot it, and...She can't!"
"Darcy, she's gone," He whispers to her, his voice cracking. There's blood on his uniform, she sees. He fought his way up. He was down in the armory, and fought all the way up to her, to them...
A roar tears through Stark Tower, then, and it doesn't belong to the Hulk. The God of Thunder is gathering up his lovers' body, and yelling to the heavens, which are exploding in lightening.
Darcy wishes she had that power, to let loose how she feels, digging her nails into Steve's arms, dissolving into sobs.
.
.
.
.
.
.