Possible trigger ahead - panic attacks are mentioned.
Darcy's actually taken a lunch break for once, heading to Starkbucks for something warm, going the long way around to avoid the labs. Sean hasn't texted her since Friday. She doesn't see that situation changing.
Her quiet meal doesn't last long.
"Sean doesn't have a soulmark," Nat begins, sliding into a seat opposite Darcy.
She stops chewing her wrap to gape. "You know this how?"
"What, like it's hard?" Nat replies in a dead-on Valley Girl accent. She's right—all employee files contain identifying marks. Darcy has no business looking in those files, but that never stopped Nat.
"I regret introducing you to classic cinema," Darcy says.
"You're missing the point. He doesn't have a mark, so he doesn't have a soulmate out there. If you dated him, there's no danger of him meeting the one and leaving."
No wonder Sean had been so willing to fall for her. He wasn't waiting for a soulmate who was never going to materialize. He was free to love whoever he wanted…even if he didn't know if it was ever going to last. Maybe it made him a little desperate, too.
"Is there anyone who didn't witness that conversation?"
"Just me and Barnes. He follows you more than you know."
"I'm aware of that now. And I know you think you're helping, but what you're suggesting is seriously unfair to Sean. He might not have a soulmate, but there'll be someone better for him than me. I will only bring crushing misery."
"Are you so sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Starting a relationship while I'm in love with someone else is guaranteed to doom it to failure."
Nat's eyebrow twitches in surprise.
"You hadn't figured that out?" Darcy asks.
"I knew things were heading that way."
"Things have reached their destination. So I won't be doing that to Sean, but I don't think I have to keep dating people to discourage Bucky either. He's got the message."
Nat doesn't ask why Darcy's so sure about that. "Phase three, then?"
"I don't even know what phase three is."
"Getting your resume in order and feeding me cupcakes so I drop hints in Pepper's direction about how you'd be a fabulous addition to the New York office."
Darcy sighs. "Not just yet—I think that's phase four. Phase three is finding Brock Rumlow and wiping him from the face of the earth."
Phase three is easier said than done. Nat drops in and out of the facility. She's tracked down Rumlow's decoy, but found only a decaying corpse.
When she returns with the bad news, Darcy is already following another lead.
"Agent Sanchez mentioned that she thought he had some kind of mask covering his mouth when she saw him on surveillance footage." She pulls up a file on her screen. "That got me thinking. It wasn't just his skin that got burned." She points at the relevant sections of his medical notes, retrieved by IT and interpreted into something Darcy could understand by Helen. "He suffered lung damage due to smoke inhalation and Helen thinks he needs some kind of ventilation. There's no way he could stay active without it."
"So the mask is helping him breathe."
"He's gone a little Darth Vader, yeah. Plus, he must be getting regular medical attention somehow, because putting stress on his lungs will make them deteriorate. He probably needs oxygen when he's not on the move."
"We find who made the mask, we find who's treating him, we've got him. No more chasing shadows." Nat's smile is vicious. "I assumed the mask was there to hide the scars and his identity. Good catch."
A small team is set up to crawl through the leaked SHIELD/Hydra data, searching for the names of medical professionals and anyone with a biology background who could do what Rumlow needed. A handful are working in the facility and ruled out, the rest are ranked according to whether they'd ever had occasion to come into contact with Rumlow, and how capable they are. Field agents are dispatched to locate them and observe. Meanwhile, another list is compiled of doctors with the relevant specialisms.
Darcy's the first one to realize there's a pulmonologist missing from D.C. It's the city Rumlow was treated in after the Triskelion was destroyed, though not by this doctor—that was a team of Hydra-infiltrated people in the nearest hospital. The pulmonologist, Dr Simons, hasn't been seen since around the time Rumlow vanished from the ward he'd been checked into.
Nat's off like a shot, leaving Darcy to try to follow the long-since-cold trail electronically. She feeds information as she gets it to Nat—a possible sighting on grainy footage, the purchase of medical supplies on a fraudulent credit card, noise complaints about a supposedly empty apartment which used to house a dentist's office.
It all helps keep her mind off the fact that the people in the labs definitely don't think she's the cool girl anymore. She doesn't get friendly smiles and head nods when she swings by, and the only people who talk to her are Jane, Erik and Helen. Everyone else has decided she thought she was too good for Sean, even though he fought her corner and let people know it was a soulmate thing—or so Helen tells her.
She doesn't go to the admin common room much nowadays. It would upset her more, but the six month mark is coming up and if she can just ensure Rumlow's out of the picture, she can get out of here. She'll make new friends.
She doesn't hear from Nat from three days, until the woman herself turns up in her office first thing in the morning.
"I have all but visual confirmation of where he's hiding."
Darcy lets out a breathless "Where?"
"A bank vault in D.C."
Darcy sees her doubt reflected on Nat's face. "Rumlow never left D.C.?"
"The vault has tunnels leading in and out of it, added after the bank above closed. It means Rumlow can move around without being seen, or even have supplies brought in by other operatives. I think he's got the doctor down there. It would explain the spikes in electricity usage—there shouldn't be any at all if the building's empty."
"I don't know. He could have decided it was easier to stay put and hide, rather than run. But have you considered this could be him leading us to where he wants us to go?"
"I have. I almost convinced myself to go in there alone, but we have only rough schematics of the tunnels. Even if this is another misdirection, I'd expect it to be booby-trapped."
"So we go in, but we don't go in blind."
They bring Steve and Maria for a full ops meeting, in a conference room with the touchscreen panel between them all.
"Can we use tech to map the tunnels before we go in?" Darcy asks.
"We have developed further some older SHIELD prototypes which should work," says one of the guys from R&D. "They're remote controlled cameras which can fly, but they're small enough to avoid detection. If they follow to the roofline, they can use radar to give us a full 3D image, as well as send us a feed so we can look for potential traps."
"Good," says Maria. "We don't want Rumlow spooked before we arrive, though, so make sure they stick to the tunnels. The vault itself we've got the blueprint for. Do we know how far they extend?"
Nat swipes across the map on the table to a point a few blocks away, zooming into a corner building. "This is the best entrance, in the basement of what was once a bar but is now a vacant store, though I know there are other ways in. It looks like they embellished on an old Prohibition system, which purposely had multiple exit points. The vault spur is a more recent addition, but there could be others."
Maria nodded. "Then the more complete a picture we can have, the better. We don't want any blind spots. We assume this is a trap, and not the kind where they're waiting to ambush us. When can you get those cameras in?"
"They're ready to go, we only need to get them to D.C."
"Nat, you're in charge of the team completing recon. Take whoever you need."
Darcy left behind in mission control on surveillance. She checks all the feeds for the street with Nat's preferred entrance over the previous 24 hours, and when she's given them the all clear, the team head in. Darcy's job is to make sure no one sneaks up on them while they're down there.
It takes a full afternoon, but they have a pretty solid lay of the land when they're done. Nat returns to the conference room with the results.
"Here's the quickest route to take to the vault." She maps it with her finger on top of the rendering done during the afternoon. "There are three tunnels which intersect and they lead out here, here and here. We need to sweep these tunnels first before we head into the vault."
"I suggest we send Vision down to trigger any traps," Maria says. "Even if we didn't see them, it doesn't mean they aren't there. He's impervious to most things which would kill the rest of us."
"Agreed," says Steve. "And I should be the first one in after that. If there's poison gas we haven't picked up on, it'll do me the least damage and give us the chance to evacuate."
"Thor too," Nat chimes in. "You shouldn't go in alone."
"We also need sentries guarding the spurs while we tackle the vault," Maria continues. "Since this is all happening underground, there doesn't seem much use for Wilson, Barnes or Barton on rooftops."
Darcy watches the hesitation flicker over Steve's face. He doesn't want Bucky down there, not if they are going to come face to face with Rumlow, but to admit to any kind of worry might get Bucky yanked off the team. "Only after we've done a full sweep en masse."
Maria nods, and the rest of the mission is arranged: contingency plan after contingency plan. It's not beyond Hydra to spring something truly unforeseen and hideous on them, but they have the best team going. Tony and Bruce won't be joining them, but neither considers themselves a full time Avenger, and tunnels aren't their ideal territory. Vision will return from his initial sweep to bring up the rear with Wanda and Rhodey, ensuring no one can get the drop on them from behind.
Darcy treks to the quinjet launchpad to wave them off, something she wouldn't normally do, but Steve needs the sounding board as he retreats from the conference room.
"I don't like one bit of this," he admits. "I wouldn't put it past him to have laced the buildings above with explosives and drop them on our heads."
"The good news is, I think most of you would survive that," says Darcy, and she's not sure if it's as comforting as she intends. "Vision definitely will, and he'd be the one tripping any switches."
Bucky is waiting at the foot of the quinjet ramp, his back ramrod straight. Despite being perfectly still, Darcy can sense a nervous energy fizzing around him. She'd offer a comforting hug, except every inch of him seems to have a weapon attached to it, and that's just the ones she can see.
"Listen, you've all got this, and I've got your backs," she says. "Also, this isn't in the official mission plan, but if you happen to put Rumlow out of his misery, no one's going to weep over it."
"Quite right," says Thor, lifting Mjolnir high. "Let us go crush another of Hydra's heads beneath our heels!"
There's a collective rolling of eyes as they head up the ramp. Darcy doesn't wait for the jet to lift off, power walking back to the ops room and her station.
They land the jet in an empty parking lot a few streets away and stick to alleyways to reach the empty store. Dusk is falling, but it's not going to make a lot of difference to the mission. It doesn't even make Darcy's job harder, because she can switch to infra-red and pick up body heat signatures. She keeps a firm eye on Bucky's tracker, a blue spot amongst the red currently clustered in the basement. They have three separate people monitoring Vision as he does his sweep, all scrutinizing the footage he beams back to them directly from his eyes. Once that sweep is complete, the entire team storms into the tunnels, working in pairs and trios to ensure they're clear.
The 'all clear' message comes in from everyone, and Darcy concentrates once more on Bucky, now left alone at one end of a tunnel. She gets a visual from the little cameras swooping around, and he's still once more, but it's a different kind of stillness. There's no nervousness, just pure focus, his hand steady as he aims his gun down the dark tunnel.
Something's different in the next sighting. He's trembling. He's switched the weapon to his left hand, which is as steady as ever, but his right hand is tapping against his thigh, and sweat is beaded on his forehead. She knows it's not the temperature down there causing that.
She takes control of the camera, sending it cautiously closer, not wanting to spook him. He isn't moving, but even in the dark she can see the whites of his eyes. He's lost in his head.
She turns on her mic. "Bucky?" It's not how she's meant to address him during a mission, but she's going for the gentle approach. He doesn't respond, but in her earpiece there's a flurry of activity from inside the vault itself.
"It's clear," Steve announces. "No sign of Rumlow, but the doctor's here."
"He's been dead a while," says Nat.
They're all on edge now, knowing Rumlow's led them here on purpose, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Bucky?" Darcy tries again. He shudders at the sound of her voice, then turns and begins walking up the tunnel, towards the vault. "Bucky, you need to get back in position." When he ignores her, she opens a channel to Steve. "Bucky's heading towards you. He's not good."
There's silence, but she can hear the rustling of movement as the people in the vault shift positions. When Steve speaks, it's not to her. "Do not shoot him. Let me handle him."
They all think Bucky's been triggered, that somehow down here Rumlow has got to him. But nothing Darcy saw or heard could account for that.
She's watching two camera feeds: a rear view of Bucky heading towards the vault, and the tense team inside, their focus on the tunnel entrance. Bucky's stride isn't purposeful, it's hesitant steps, like he's still lost in his head. "Steve, I don't think he's the soldier. It's something else."
It's obvious the moment Bucky steps into the vault that she's right. He stares around the room in horror, drops his gun, then backs up against the wall, fingers lacing into his hair and tugging hard. He's groaning, long and low, but the heaving in his chest warns of an impending panic attack.
"Get him out of there, Steve," Darcy yells, but Steve's already in motion. Sam has come running too, and they're torn between calming him down or getting him moving. It's Steve who makes the call to remove him from the vault, lifting him in his arms and sprinting away.
The rest of the team have the pair encircled, moving quickly to make sure there's no ambush ahead. From what Sam's saying, by the time they reach the quinjet it's become a full-blown panic attack, but the change of location should help calm in.
"This was deliberate," Darcy says to Nat. "Something happened down there and Rumlow knew. He led us there just to trigger Bucky. Bastard."
Nat's response is a string of Russian curse words—or what Darcy assumes are curse words. "A bullet is too good for him," she says when she finally switches back to English. "I'd like to see how long he lasts without his mask."
"Just get Bucky home."
Darcy wants to head straight to the landing pad and wait, but Maria intercepts her before she leaves, taking her to a quiet corner.
"I knew you and Barnes were friendly," she begins, arms folded, and Darcy wants the ground to swallow her. She's probably sabotaged everything she's been working towards. "I didn't realize how close. I can't sanction you being a handler for someone you're involved with."
"We—we're not involved," Darcy says quietly, like it makes any difference.
"Not yet." There's something akin to pity in her expression after Darcy's reply. "Look, I'm not going to discipline you. You did your job tonight, and you did it well, but I can't have you working future missions with Barnes on them."
Darcy lets out a long breath in relief. "I understand." She does. She's known this could happen all along. Maria doesn't know the worst of it—if she did, she'd have no choice but to discipline Darcy.
Maria lets her go, and Darcy arrives at the pad in time for the jet to land, watching the ramp lower with trepidation. She sees legs first, Steve not even waiting for the ramp to stop moving before he's stomping down it. Bucky's next to him, Steve's hand on his shoulder. He's upright and moving under his own steam, which is a blessing, even if he looks ashen. He's been stripped down, all the Kevlar and weapons removed, so on his upper half he only wears a tank top.
She doesn't run to him, but it doesn't matter. Steve comes to a standstill a few feet away from her, and Bucky…doesn't. He walks right up to her, grabs her and pulls her to him, arms like a vice around her, burying his face in her hair.
It knocks the wind out of her, being pressed so suddenly and so tightly into his torso, but she doesn't complain. She can still feel the panicky, thready edge to his breathing as his chest moves against hers. Bucky needs this comfort.
She raises her eyes to where Steve is waiting, hovering beside them. He shakes his head at whatever question he sees in her gaze, and rests his hand back on Bucky's shoulder.
"Let's get you inside," he says. Bucky's grip on Darcy loosens, and she takes the opportunity to worm her way out of his embrace, though she's careful not to lose contact with him. They move, leaving the rest of the team to head to debrief, and all the while Bucky has a hand on her arm, or resting on her back, or his arm round her waist. She's his anchor to the world, keeping him from sinking back into his head and whatever hell he found there.
She only realizes that she's never actually been in Bucky's quarters when she settles onto the sofa next to him. They're the same layout as hers, but far more spartan.
Steve doesn't sit down. "I need to go report in. Will you..?"
"Yeah, I'll stay," she replies. Bucky still hasn't spoken, and she's rubbing up and down his arm soothingly.
"Call me if he gets worse, or if his breathing picks up, that button—" he points to one in a panel on the wall "—calls the med team in. He didn't want to go to them, but don't let him talk you out of it if he needs them."
She nods understanding, and Steve dithers for another minute before leaving. Bucky's gaze is fixed on the carpet, but his eyelids keep dipping. Now the adrenaline is working its way out of his system, he looks exhausted.
"Maybe you should try and sleep," she suggests. He nods, but when she rises, intending to lead him to the bedroom, he stops her with an arm over her knees. Instead, he leans back into the sofa cushions, pulling her with him so she's tucked into his side. There's a blanket slung over the back, which she tugs down to wrap around them. She'll nap with him, until Steve comes back.
She keeps her breathing slow and steady, hoping he'll match it, and drifts off in his arms.