Her alarm was going off. How annoying, considering it was Saturday and she didn't have to be up for training till later in that afternoon. Darcy tired to ignore it and settle back down to sleep. The snippets of the dream she'd be having skirted her mind with extremely disturbing images. With any luck, she'd drift to a more mentally refreshing place this time.
If only her alarm would stop screaming at her. It was giving her a headache. It seemed to take every ounce of will power she had to lift her arm, which felt like it was dipped in layers of lead instead of a light tee shirt. Only when she went to grab her phone to snooze the damn thing, she found her fingers sinking in to something extremely cold and after a few seconds, trails of icy water trickled down her fingers.
That was enough to startle her back to semi-awake. She wasn't in her room and that nightmare hadn't been a dream.
"Darcy!'
In the distance, someone was calling for her. The voice was deep and masculine. The events of the last twenty-four hours flooded back to focus. The person calling for her was probably Coluson coming to scrape her out of the snowdrift she'd been bitch slapped in to. That was good, that meant by some miracle Coluson was still alive.
Ice started to worm it's way down her neck in the tender exposed area between her jacket and her shirt. Funny, she probably had a concussion if not a broken spine and all she could think about was how uncomfortable that cold wetness was against her back.
Darcy had been thrown like a rag doll end over end and lucky her, she still managed to land on her head before the momentum flipped her on to her back.
The pounding in her head was getting worse and she thought this might be a good time to get up and access the situation. Only, when she tired to move little warning alarms shot through her body, confirming that she was down for the count. That thought ignited panic that fought its way through the pain, catching up with her rapid heartbeat and keeping pace. She was hurt. Really hurt.
That voice kept calling for her and she desperately wanted to answer but like the nightmare she often had where her screams had no sound, her voice had turned traitor.
Traitor…The words burned a path through her emotions and oddly, that helped clear her mind. Anger was no morphine but damn, if it didn't take the edge off the pain.
They had been betrayed.
~.~
Seven months earlier.
It was a Thursday. Snow was falling, the wind was blowing and the sky was overcast with the promise of snow, snow and more snow. When Coluson had said, "secret recruiting mission' Darcy had immediately thought warm, exotic, exciting!
Not so much.
Her second day on the job found her in Kansas, stuck in a small and extremely dirty motel as a storm raged outside. It was a shockingly ordinary scene, one that could have been plucked right out from any of her family vacations.
The ride to Topeka had been a bit awkward at least for Darcy. She found herself seated in a white Ford Taurus as Coluson flipped through the channels, trying to hone in on a station that could cut through the static of the boonies. After a full cycle through the stations, he gave up with a sigh and settled back behind the wheel.
The car itself was a tragedy. Apparently Coluson took his 'secret' missions seriously and had picked a ride that was just the right shade of ugly and beat up that it was forgettable. At least the interior was clean and the seats comfortable.
The two didn't exchange many words that first day as they drove out of Colorado. Darcy, for her part, didn't want to question her sudden change in occupation least it be recanted and Coluson, well she assumed he probably didn't have too much to say in general.
When she finally couldn't take the silence anymore, she asked why, on her second day of work she was headed out on a top-secret mission instead of to an HR department to fill out W2's and watch horrible movies on sexual harassment in the work place, Coluson had actually smiled. Turns out that training in SHEILD, at least for the human non-super powered employees, was done eighty-five percent hands-on and very little in formal training.
"Too much of what we do is 'need to know' basis." Coluson explained. "Look at it this way. Let's say I stick you in a classroom, debriefed you on all the things we're likely going to run in to and gave you advance combat training. That would take at least a year to get the basics down. Then, I get you in the field and you either panic and became a liability or you decide that the benefits of the dark side are too tempting to pass up and you defect taking all that training and knowledge with you."
"That would suck for you guys."
"Yeah, it would. So here's how we're going to do this - You don't have any military training which is not common for a SHIELD agent and you're not specialized enough to qualify for our intelligence branch. Since you're an unconventional recruit, your training is going to match that.
First, we'll cut your teeth on a few recruiting missions, see how you adapt to being on the field, get you use to the pressure, let you follow my lead. In between those, we'll tempter it with plenty of combat training. On the weekends, you'll be in a classroom seeing if those programming skills of yours have any real world applications. Does any part of that sound unreasonable to you?" He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
She lifted her hands in a pacifying motion. "So far so good. When do I get my own black suit?"
"You don't. What you're wearing is fine."
Darcy cringed at that. There hadn't been time to pack. Coluson promised all of her stuff was already on the way to SHIELD headquarters. All she was allowed to take was what she had on, which having been recruited on a Friday, meant jeans with a lovely red shirt. She swore she caught Coluson fighting back a smile.
"So, what happened to your last partner?" She asked before she could stop. Mentally, she kicked herself. Nothing like adding to the tension by asking about what was probably a sore subject. To her amazement, Coluson arched an eyebrow and chuckled.
"He got folded in to a division of CIA intelligence. He turned out to be an extremely gifted in practical theory of astrophysics."
"Oh." Darcy said, caught off guard. "That wasn't really the soul baring answer I thought you'd give."
"You think he got killed in action and I'm haunted by a past I can't let go?"
"Maybe."
"You have got to lay off the comics. No, it happens a lot with field agents. SHEILD isn't shy about reassigning agents when they could be of more use elsewhere. You'll come to find we're flexible – we have to be."
Darcy looked out the window, watching the endless white scenery slip by. "That must suck for you. Spending all that time with someone, training them only to have them leave for a better job as soon as they get useful."
His tone was decidedly less humored when he answered. "Well, sometimes they do die."
~.~
Later that night, once they had settled in to their adjoining rooms, a Coluson let himself in, carrying a small black hand case with him.
"I have a gift for you." He said, clicking open the case that revealed a small, hand held gun tucked away inside.
She carefully took the gun from him. Darcy was immediately struck by how small it was. It fix easily in her palm with room to spare.
"What is this? Like some amazingly powerful yet small package of death?" She asked.
"No, that's purely for show, it's a .22. The best that's going to do is make a loud noise that will hopefully attract an agent that has a real gun."
"Wait, wait, let me get this straight – you're giving me the gun equivalent to a rape whistle?"
Coluson nodded, tilting his head towards the holster on the back of the chair, indicating she should put it on. "Once you spend a few more hours on the firing range, I might let you have a better gun."
"This is because I couldn't remember how to tell if the safety was on when you asked if I had combat training."
"Do you remember now?"
Darcy flipped the little gun over in her hand, locating the tiny switch by the back of the trigger. The top part of the switch had a red dot and the rest was the same gun metal gray as the rest of the weapon. "Um.. Red means it's not going to fire? Like red means stop?"
Looking up at her partner, she could tell he was sorely tempted to grab the small gun from her hands.
~.~
The trailer park they ended up at was only slightly less impressive than the motel they had stayed in. It was early morning and all was silent.
"This is were our recruit lives?" Darcy asked with open disbelief.
Coluson shrugged and took a sip out of his coffee cup, eyes roaming over the dilapidated mobile home. He had insisted on stopping to get a box of donuts as well but hadn't touched any of them yet. Darcy had a hunch he bought it only to tease her because she had commented about 'stereotypes' when they rolled up to the Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. It was admittedly hard to tell what was really going on in that head of his. Coluson seemed to only have one expression and that was mildly amused.
"Here's what we know. This is the home of one 'Henry Camp'. Former Master Sergeant in the Army dishonorably discharged. Did a few years in Rykers Prison before making parole last month. Our local office started picking up traces of Asgardian radiation coming from this trailer park."
"Asgardian?" Darcy asked, "As in "Asgard" where Thor is from?"
"Exactly. Objects and people from there give off a faint residual radiation that we became aware of after studying Thor's hammer. The signal becomes stronger when they use what we'll call 'magic' for lack of a better term."
"This Henry guy is from Asgard?"
"No he's not. We're here to find out how he came to give off that signature and if possible, bring him in for debriefing to see the extent of his ablatives, if any."
"Ok, sounds easy." Darcy tipped her nearly empty coffee cup to her new partner. "Let's go get him."
~.~
Things had gone poorly. Maybe the ford Taurus looked at home in the trailer park and she had to admit, she fit in pretty good all causal Friday and a borrowed coat that was a size too small – But Coluson, even wearing a heavy snow jacket that covered his serious business suit, walked in a no nonsense manner that screamed 'law'.
She had to admit she was impressed that Henry Camp even opened the door when they knocked. If she had been fresh out of jail and such an odd pair had come calling on her, she wouldn't have answered.
From the other side of the screen door, Henry's eyes wandered over Darcy before flicking to Coluson and staying fixed. He looked very ex-military, all buzz cut and biceps and the looked he fixed on her partner was openly suspicious.
"Yeah?" He gruffed out.
"Mr. Camp, Henry Camp? I'm here on behalf of Strategic Hazard Interve-'
Henry suddenly smashed open the door, the frame of it catching Coluson right in the face as it bent from the strength of Henry's push. There was a startled 'mmph!" and next thing she knew she was being shoved out of the way as Henry made a break for it.
~.~
Back in the car less than an hour later, the silence was subdued and slightly pissed, at least on Coluson's half of vehicle. On Darcy's side, she was practically bouncing between the exhilaration of adrenaline and joining Coluson in his anger. Only, she would bet they were not angry for the same reasons.
"He's getting away." She pointed out. "We need to go after him!"
Coluson's good eye glared at her, the other hidden and was likely turning all shades of black under the compress he was holding against it. "Not our job."
"It's totally our job! The bad guy is getting away! We're good guys! We don't let them get away!" She retorted, scandalized.
The older agent sighed, using his free hand to type away at a data pad sitting in his lap. "That isn't our job. It's not our department. I'm filing a report now. Don't worry, it won't take them long to send one of the Avengers. I believe Vision is the closest."
"But I don't get why if we still have a chance of capturing him, we don't go after him! We're right here!" She pointed enthusiastically towards the far end of the park, where one Henry Camp had leapt over the barbwire fencing with ease and vanished in to the snowy fields beyond.
Coluson reached behind her seat, fishing around for something and a second later, his hand returned holding a cold glazed donut. "Henry has become more of a threat than we can deal with. One critical part of our job is understanding when to call in the heroes and letting them do theirs. Think you can handle that?"
She begrudgingly took the offered donut, biting through the flakey glaze as he reached back and grabbed another for himself. "I could have caught him."
"Not a chance." Coluson retorted.
They ate in silence - one that was slightly more comfortable than it had been yesterday but still miles away from easy.