Chapter 20: Safe and Sound

Summary: Please. Don't kill me.

Notes: Whew. So why is it, that when I say I'll have time to post another chapter, a thousand things seem to come up and then I can't? I'm really sorry, guys, for the delay. But here we are, I'm posting a new one and all I can say is: please, please don't kill me. You guys know I won't leave you in despair, so have faith that I'm not out to ruin your day with this chapter, but I'm warning you ahead of time, and PLEASE DON'T KILL ME. You know, the night is darkest and all that... Chapter title taken from the song by Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars, property of Big Machine Records. Some other references here that I in no way claim to own, including Star Trek and Marvel, as well as a song by The Hives that I won't mention or it'll totally give the game away. Anyway. I'll just...leave this here.

It was a quiet night. Darcy had a hard time wrapping her head around a tracker small enough to pass through the blood stream, but since her life was a comic book, she tried to shove it to the back of her mind. She was distantly aware that she was in some form of shock, but wasn't sure what to do with it. She was pretty sure it wasn't grief—not yet. Although, really, in all fairness, what was there to grieve about? Her circumstances hadn't much changed.

She was somewhere on the edge of super-soldier status, but neither was she quite here nor there.

She was still married to a wonderful man, issues or no.

She was still incapable of having his children, not that it mattered much.

She had what perhaps amounted to a new skill set regarding her dose of Extremis.

Nothing much had changed.

Except for the fact that she was physically capable of leveling a building—and all the souls unfortunate enough to be in or around it—simply by standing in a room. And it wasn't even something she could control.

She felt vaguely like a drone, controlled by someone else, sitting at a computer and swearing at their joystick, while she jumped but missed the stars for extra points.

So it was a vacant sort of night; the sort of night where she sat and tried to think as little as she could.

She drifted in a couple hours later, just as the afternoon was heating up, expecting to find Bucky curled on the couch with a book; but he was pacing, slowly, in front of the windows, and his hair was lank from all the running of his hands through it he'd been doing. A nervous tic she'd recognized fairly early in their relationship.

The apartment was otherwise empty.

Steve and Natasha had gone on a drive out to get away from everyone's crazy shenanigans—Clint and Sam had started a ridiculous prank war the afternoon before, descending on lunch with water guns and spraying everyone in the attempt to decimate each other—so they had the place to themselves.

He jumped slightly as she shut the door behind her.

"You hungry?" Bucky asked quietly into the silence as they stood, looking at each other.

She shook her head. "No."

A pause, and she was just focused enough to hear the worry in his voice. "You sure?" he pressed. "There's pasta up in the cabinet."

But she shook her head. Not even his cooking could tempt her now.

He didn't eat either, she noticed. He did make her tea, though, and she drank it quietly in a chair by the windows, her book in her lap. She was grateful for the space he gave her most of the time, but now she wasn't sure whether or not she wanted him close, and she didn't know how to ask him to figure it out for her. He hovered in that way he had, not making it obvious that he was doing any hovering, puttering around, cleaning and tidying like a fucking impressive husband, before tucking into one side of the couch with Legends of Shannara. She quirked an eyebrow at his broad reading taste but didn't comment. His presence was comforting, if nothing else.

She eventually realized she wasn't going to be able to focus on her book and got lost staring out the window, bored and unsettled at the same time. She watched the sun trace the late afternoon, then the evening, then dip below the tree line in a pretty display of refracted light, the sky burning pink, before cooling to a peaceful purple, then a dark, bruising night blue as it disappeared at the horizon, off to brighten someone else's doorstep.

She jumped when he settled his hands very gently on her shoulders and leaned over her. "Why don't you come to bed, hm?" he murmured, pressing a tender kiss to the space just behind her ear.

She swallowed, coming to as though out of a fog, and looked around. The room was dark, but for a small lamp he must've left lit along the book case. Blinking, she twisted to find him in pajama bottoms, loose and sexy, no shirt, his hair swept back from his face in a small knot, and damp. When did he get up and take a shower? "I…" she started, lamely, before petering out.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "You've been out here a while. Come to bed, hm?"

She cleared her throat. "How long were you…?"

A small smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "Waiting for you in there? About an hour. I missed you—the shower was lonely without you. It's late."

She glanced at the clock. After eleven. "Oh, shit…" She rubbed at her eyes, suddenly realizing how exhausted she was all at once. "I know reading makes you sleepy, you should've just gone to bed without me…"

That same soft look. "Didn't want to." He came around the front of the chair and scooped her up before she could get her wits totally about her. "Come on. Upsy-daisy."

"Jamie—"

"You've been staring out the window for hours, practically catatonic. You're scaring me a little. I'm done giving you your space." He smirked and she saw his eyes crinkle in the dim dark. "Also, the bed was too cold without you."

She yawned and set her head against his shoulder. "Glad to know I'm not the only one with attachment issues."

A full-blown Bucky Barnes smile, mega-watt in the dark. "Oh, I've got a list of issues as long as your arm, babe, if you want 'em."

She was already drifting a little in the gentle movement of his gait. Part of her sleepy brain pondered that he could walk so softly and still maintain that strut of his. "Isn't that what 'I do' means?"

He laughed softly as they moved into the bedroom. "Never thought of it quite that way before, but I suppose you're right."

She hummed as he set her amidst the soft, jersey sheets. "Mm. Thanks. You've got great legs. Anyone ever tell you that?"

His husky chuckle drifted out of the darkness of her lazy eyelids, cleared by the small lamp lit on his side of the bed. She vaguely noted that even away from home, they'd ended up on their respective sides—oh hell, they had sides at all. "You know, funnily enough, you're the first."

She sighed contentedly and was just aware enough to think of sitting up and tugging off her clothes, starting with her shirt. "Mm—hmm. They're nice, your thighs in particular. That CCTV footage of you and Steve-O in that overpass fight is seriously flattering to your figure. You've got the whole 'murder strut' thing down to an art form, babe. Climbing off of cars and all that…" Her elbow caught on the collar of her t-shirt and she tugged, scowling.

The bed dipped as he joined her and reached over to untangle her arms. He pulled it off with a wry smirk. "'Murder strut'? So I'm given to assume you think footage of me going on a rampage with automatic weaponry is somehow sexually attractive?" Even in her sleepy haze, she could hear the incredulity in his voice—maybe a touch of disgust.

"I dunno what that says about me, but yeah."

He sighed and stood, the bed straightening as he slid his hands beneath the covers to take the waistband of her leggings. "Darcy…" He started pulling them off, his left hand nice and warm on her thigh.

"I dunno, maybe the determined capability you displayed—even with no memory or emotion—speaks to my instinctive, evolutionary drive to find a mate with the ability to provide and protect—hey, don't be getting hands-y, Barnes, watch where you're grabbing…" she mumbled as she unhooked her bra behind her back.

He snorted. "'Evolutionary drive', huh? I don't think you're quite as sleepy as you seem, Lewis."

She sighed. "Hmph. Don't call me that. I'm getting rid of that as soon as we're back in the jurisdiction of the Manhattan City Clerk's office."

He pulled off her leggings and folded them, set them aside, and went around the bed.

She flopped back. "Dunno why it took me so long to realize the unexpected advantage of marrying you—I get to change my name. Woohoo."

He shook his head, smirking as he went through the top drawer of the dresser. "Ah, and the truth comes out—you didn't marry me for my mind." He withdrew a t-shirt.

"Is that one of yours?" she asked, watching him.

"One of yours."

She shook her head. "Want one of yours." She held out her hand. "Pretty please."

Chuckling, he switched drawers and pulled out a gray v-neck. "Why?"

She sighed. "Smells like you."

He shut the drawer and came back. "Oh?"

She nodded and took the t-shirt. "Mm. You smell good."

He couldn't help but laugh as she tugged it over her head and got it backwards in her daze.

"Like clean boy."

"Here, ya train wreck." He turned the shirt around. "What, exactly, does 'clean boy' smell like?"

She shrugged. "Dunno, but it's nice. Soapy."

He snorted and pulled the shirt down over her torso. "Well, I'll stop buying Polo Black, then, shall I?"

Polo? Where had he been hiding that? So that was what it was… She settled back against the pillow with a heavy sigh, thinking that she owed Ralph Lauren a debt of gratitude. "Mm, sure."

He chuckled again and shook his head. "My little mess, Darcy Lewis."

"Jane," she added. "Darcy Jane Lewis. Appropriate, I guess."

He went around the bed and slid under the covers, reaching over to click off the light and plunging them into full darkness. "Yes, Darcy Jane. I know."

"You're so patient with me," she murmured.

"No more than you are with me," he said.

She snuggled in and looked at him across the pillows. "You know, it's fitting, really."

"What is?"

She sighed again. "You're a mess. And I'm a mess. What are we gonna do? Be messes together?"

He looped his metal arm around her waist and tugged her closer. "That was my goal. I dunno about you." He pulled her up against him and sighed. "That's better."

"I guess we could be messes together—though I sorta figured you'd straighten me out a little."

He ran his hand up the middle of her back, then back down again, his metal palm warm on her butt. "I never said I was capable of straightening you out. Don't project your ideas on me, missy."

She gave a sleepy giggle against his collar bone. "Oops. Sorry."

They settled into content quiet.

He waited for her breathing to change, signaling to him that she'd finally fallen asleep.

Instead, she spoke into the darkness. "What are we gonna do?" And she sounded quite awake and aware, her voice timid, but direct for the first time in the conversation.

He swallowed, finally facing what they'd been dancing around. Was it that he'd turned off the light? Things like this weren't as scary when you couldn't see them plainly, all their sharp edges and hard angles. "I don't know, dollface."

"I mean, I'll admit, I was pretty fucked up when I came into this relationship. Look how long it took me to let you take the reins on some things. I had no idea I was such a control freak."

"You were fine," he reassured her.

But she kept going. "And they broke me anyway. And now I've…I've got extra pieces, Jamie."

He sighed, letting his head drop back on the pillow and hoping the strain of panic in her voice smoothed itself out. "Yeah, they clutter things up."

"What if Killian just spends the rest of his life skipping around and sticking bombs in places and waiting for me to show up so he can hit a button from three hundred miles away and watch us blow up, like the fucking coyote from Looney Tunes?! I mean, I'm a detonator, Jamie."

He took a deep breath. "Banner and Stark will figure it out, sweetheart."

She nuzzled his shoulder, hiding. "And you always call me 'sweetheart', 'cause you're so old-fashioned."

He snorted. "I'm not old-fashioned, I'm just old, Darcy."

"I'm tired of being scared. I was scared of Thor and I was scared of Loki's monsters, and the Dark Elves. And I was scared of you, and then Luk—"

"Me?" he cut in. "You were scared of me?" He spoke carefully, and quietly, but all that did was tell her how much hurt the idea caused him.

She flinched. "No, no. That's not what I meant."

"I'm pretty sure that's what you just said, that you were scared of me."

She growled softly in frustration and nudged his sternum with her forehead. "No, no. Not of you, but…" She chewed on her lip for a moment.

A strange, but concentrated pain was pinging in his chest and he didn't know what to do with it, the twisting of his throat, throbbing, the idea that she was afraid of him at any point, ever, when she'd always insisted—

"Scared of how I felt about you," she whispered then, her voice soft and vulnerable. "You terrified me, Jamie."

He was knocked silent by this confession.

She hesitated.

"Because of who I was—what I was."

"No, because of who you weren't," she murmured. "What you weren't. You weren't a killer, you were just a prisoner of war. And it…it scared me that I could feel that way about someone so…fragile."

Not the word he'd have chosen to apply to his alter ego. He'd gotten her into a sharing mood—somewhere, deep down, those were his favorites.

"You were so fragile, Jamie. And I didn't want to project onto you, and I didn't want to manipulate you or influence you, and I didn't want to make you feel pressured, or like you owed me anything, and…and it terrified me that in doing so, you'd someday…be okay. And not need me. And I'd already opened myself up to you and that you'd leave me with this you-shaped wound in my chest, even though Tony says I didn't let you in, that you stole your way in and that I let you stay, and—"

"You're babbling, Darcy," he gently cut in. "Just calm down."

She stared into his eyes for a long moment in the dark, her gaze wide and raw. "I dunno if Tony's right, but I felt exposed. I'd gone into it to try and make you okay again, but I hadn't really considered what that would mean for me. And now here we are."

He braced himself. "You regret it?" It came out much softer and weaker than he intended.

She shook her head with a tiny smile. "How can you ask that? No. I wouldn't trade you for anything. You're mine."

He reached up to run his fingers through her hair, his heart aching.

And then they were tangled together, mouths searching, hands seeking, until they were folded together in a blind rush. She hitched her calves around his hips, imploring him.

"Wait," he murmured, his face pressed to her throat. "If we do this, we'll never finish this conversation." He eased back from her.

She moaned a complaint. "Jamie…"

"You know I'm right. Fear shouldn't lead to…sex." Even with them. He separated them, gently, extricating himself from the circle of her soft, tempting body.

She swallowed, so loudly he heard it. "I'm just tired of being afraid."

He frowned, his heart throbbing as he settled beside her on one elbow. God, he hadn't been prepared for the odd juxtaposition of being head over heels for someone—the boundless joy mired in the awful protective melancholy. "But you're not afraid of…this…anymore. Are you?"

She sighed. "No, but... I dunno. I'm just tired. I'm so tired." She let her eyes slide shut.

He flinched. "You sound like me."

She looked up at him again.

"I don't like that you sound like me. You should never sound like me."

She ran her hand up his metal arm, her skin sliding with a soft sound across the intricate metal plates as she smiled. "You're rubbing off on me, Barnes."

It had been a long time since his heart had skipped, but it did then, her half-joking phrase ricocheting around until his horror had eclipsed it.

She fell asleep not long after, her face deceptively peaceful all tucked in beside him, her hand still on his metal forearm.

Very gently, he eased out of bed. For a long time, he sat at the foot, watching her sleep. Finally, he retrieved a t-shirt from the drawer and set out, easing the door shut behind him. He paced the halls for a long time, wandering directionless, his mind turning over everything and nothing at once, so tangled were his thoughts.

He eventually found himself at Tony's shop and wondered if he'd subconsciously come here on his own. For some reason, he found solace in Tony's tinkering, his irreverent humor, so out-of-place in a family like theirs, so deceptively careless. If there was one thing about Tony he'd learned that he often wondered if other people saw, it was that Tony Stark's fault wasn't in being careless—it was in caring too much.

It was empty and dark within.

Suddenly exhausted, he went in without turning the light on and sat down in one of Stark's shop chairs, a bucket seat of soft, supple black leather, and sighed, leaning his head back against the top of the chair. "God damn it," he murmured as he sat in the dark.

He wasn't sure how long he was there. Long enough to drift half asleep. He was woken when the light blasted on around him in the room.

Tony shuffled in, then jumped about a foot. "Jesus Christ, Barnes!" he gasped, jerking back.

Bucky blinked, his eyes adjusting. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

"Sitting in here in the goddamn dark," he muttered, shaking his head as he straightened his pajama pants. They brushed the floor at his bare feet as he ambled in, rubbing at his eyes. "You couldn't sleep either?"

Bucky shrugged.

The inventor skirted around him and booted up his computer.

Up early are we, Sir? JARVIS offered.

Tony ignored the quip. "Short Stack alright?"

He shrugged again. "I guess."

His brow furrowed. "You guess? That doesn't sound like you."

He pulled his fingers through his hair. "She's asleep."

Tony shrugged. "Well, there's that, anyway." He eyed him over his monitor. "And why aren't you doing the same? I mean, don't get me wrong, I know you're just as much of an insomniac as I am, but, all the same, you look dead on your feet."

He moved to shrug again, but for some reason, he found words coming out of his mouth, all on their own. "Something she said…"

Tony sat down heavily in the chair at his computer and took up the wireless ergonomic mouse. "And what was that?"

He sighed. "That she's tired of being scared. And tired of being tired."

An eyebrow went up. "And that's…a disturbing thing for her to say?"

Bucky gave him a look. "No, but joking that I'm rubbing off on her disturbs me a little."

The other eyebrow joined the first and for a moment, Tony Stark was silent. "Ah. Yeah. I gotcha."

Bitterness crept out from where he usually was so good at keeping it stashed. "Yeah, well, that makes one of you, then."

But Tony's reply wasn't quite what he was expecting. "Yeah, sometimes I'm not entirely sure just how aware you are of that."

"You mean the way everyone flinches when I walk by like I'm about to create an international incident?" he snapped. "Don't worry, Tony. They hardwired me to notice everything. I'm very aware. One international incident is more than enough for me."

Tony was silent for a long moment.

"Sorry," Bucky murmured, slumping further into the chair.

"No, no, kid. Get it all out."

"Never mind that I walk around like that all the time, in my own head. Never mind that I usually feel like a ticking time bomb, like I'm two steps away from a trigger that'll remove the barrier between him and me. Sometimes I'm not even sure where I end and he begins. But we all should just get outta Barnes way in case he decides to go on a killing spree." He huffed, aware that he was rambling, but unable to really stop the torrent. "I told her. I told her to just walk the other way, Stark. But she's so fucking stubborn. And now look."

Tony nodded, letting him vent. James Barnes, it was becoming clear, was a typical bottler. Kept things locked down so tight they suffocated him. Tony could relate—after all, he was the best of them.

"They can look at me like I'm unstable, they can run the other direction, I don't care. They want to treat me like a pariah, like I'm a fucking leper, like it's only a matter of time until I kill you all, I don't. Care. But I care when they start looking at her the same way, like she's insane just for sitting next to me, like she's some—"

"I think the word you're looking for is 'whore'."

He huffed again, letting his head tip. "I told her I wasn't good for her. I guess I should've been crueler. Maybe it would've pushed her away, and we wouldn't be in this mess, and she wouldn't be talking about how I've rubbed off on her."

Tony blinked. "She really said that?"

Bucky took a deep, deep breath, trying to smooth everything inside him out, but it little good. "She was joking. She was trying to make light, trying to make me feel better. But it made it worse—which is really saying something."

Tony nodded.

"She's been looking like me lately. That's killing me a little, Stark."

"What do you—"

"I'm aware of my own reflection, Tony," he cut in. "I know I look like a goddamn ghost, alright? But she's not supposed to look like that. She's not supposed to look gaunt and hollow, and haunted. She's not supposed to be so used to being scared that it ceases to matter aside from the pesky side effect of the exhaustion it brings on. She's not supposed to have my dirty fingerprints all over her!"

Tony, a little cowed by the heavy onslaught—and a bit surprised to realize the feeling—just sat looking at him, unsure what to say, or if he was supposed to say anything at all.

He snorted, humorlessly, and shook his head. "She'd fucking kill me if she could hear me right now."

Tony hemmed, then hawed, then nodded.

"How naïve have you gotta be to convince yourself you're out of the woods?"

Tony winced, something in his chest pinching. "Buck—"

"I didn't think I was running, anymore, but now it looks like all I've been doing the past two years is sprinting clean in the other direction. I let everyone be terrified of me, thought they'd get it out of their systems, but…"

Swallowing, Tony leaned forward. "But…?"

"They were right." He chuckled, and shook his head, like it was the world's funniest joke. "I couldn't see past her." Gotcha.

Tony finally managed to come unstuck as he clicked around, checking the security cams. "Buck, you just said it yourself—you tried to tell her, and even though I disagree with that—"

"With what?"

He sighed. "You're outta the woods, kid. That's the nature of this line of work. The branches keep pulling you back in. That's not your fault, Buck." He did a double-take as he checked the camera for the hallway just outside and saw Jane Foster paused just at the doorway. She stood frozen, listening raptly.

"I know," Bucky murmured, unblinking as he stared across the room. "I know. I didn't jump out of that train. And I didn't ask to have my arm sawed off. And I didn't ask to be brainwashed, or manipulated, I didn't decide to put my gun to all those heads. I know. I know that, Stark." He turned his head and looked at him, then, square in the face.

Tony jerked in surprise as their eyes met and he saw the wet glaze in Bucky's.

"I know that. But I don't feel it. I don't feel that when I look at you, every day, and see your father's face. You look just like him. It's eerie. I don't feel it when you speak and all I can hear are your mother's cries for mercy. You know how that feels?"

Tony nodded.

"Do you? You know how it feels to not know your own mind? To be shoved to the side and into a tiny cell while they stuff someone else in? You know what it feels like to be a prisoner in your own head? You know what it feels like when no one hears you screaming?"

Tony couldn't look away, his eyes locked onto the Winter Soldier's; they were, after all, the Winter Soldier's eyes, or what they would've looked like, then, if someone had bothered to notice. Motion on the screen was the only thing that pulled his gaze down, and he watched as Jane sat down heavily on the floor of the hallway, her face slack in shock and something akin to grief.

"I suppose you do know what dawning horror feels like, though, don't you? Realizing your best friend has been selling weapons of mass destruction to the enemy the whole time, fueling terrorism for years, while you happily went about your life."

It was an old pain, now, and Tony didn't wince. He just gave him a steady look, and nodded. "It's nothing like what you went through."

"Sometimes I wake up and I get it reversed. Like I'm still dreaming. Like she's not real, she's just an elaborate figment that they can snatch away." He finally looked down into his lap, at his worrying hands, and a tear dropping silently down onto his wrist. "They did that, you know. Once in a while, they'd feed me a dream to keep me submissive when they wrenched it away—they had all the power."

He sounded hollow. "I should've tried harder to push her away. I was selfish."

In the hallway, Jane pressed her hand to her mouth in a silent gasp. Tony shook his head. "You were human, Buck."

"Now she's hopelessly tangled in this, in me. There's nowhere to go, Tony. I know that better than anyone. There is no way out—only a way further in. It'll suck the life out of her, Tony."

"Darcy's tough. You know that, she's strong. She's got you."

Bucky chuckled, just once, and the laughter didn't reach his face. "If I can't keep her safe, who can?"

Tony took a breath. "You went in blind, Bucky. That wasn't your fault. They would've gotten to her anyway, and you know that."

He nodded. "She's a big girl. She made up her own mind. That doesn't make it any easier to watch her disintegrate."

Jane let her head tip back against the wall, listening.

"She's not—"

"Can't you see it, Stark?" he interrupted. "She's losing pieces of herself, a little at a time." His voice broke. "I thought I was at least a few decades on the other side of being that naïve, that's all." He shook his head. "She looks at me and she just sees this hero, and I'm…I'm not." He shook his head. "I'm the farthest thing from a hero, Tony. She trusts me so blindly, she thinks…" He snorted. "She thinks she married James Barnes." He chuckled, and it was the most empty, awful sound Tony thought he'd heard in a long time, teetering somewhere entirely too close to a sob. "She thinks she married James Barnes just because that's the name the government decided to let me keep."

Tony looked at him, long and hard. "So who'd she marry, then?"

Bucky's voice hardened into a sharp, whispered edge, raw and ragged. "I don't know." Another tear slipped silently down his face. "I don't know, Stark."

Tony wondered if he even realized he was weeping. "Bucky. This is just doubt. You're exhausted. You had some less-than-stellar news this morning, with Bruce's test results, but this is just self-doubt. Nothing more. Go and sleep. Sleep it off. You'll be clearer-headed in the morning." He stood and crossed the room to him. "We'll figure this out. You know how we operate. We're a team. No man left behind. That hasn't changed, and that includes Darcy."

But it wasn't clear he'd been heard. "I wanna take her place."

Something pricked in Tony's heart and started to bleed. "I know, kid. So do I."

"She doesn't need this. She's had it bad enough. Her father's a prick. She lost Maria, she's practically lost Wanda, Jane thinks she's an idiot—and for what?!"

Tony sighed, glancing down to find Jane flinching and covering her face with her hands. "At risk of sounding like a hopeless romantic, for love, kid. For you. She made that choice and she's okay with it. She doesn't need support from them. She's got us." His voice hardened, and he took a chance, frustrated and heartbroken, and did something hindsight told him may have been slightly on the side of stupid. He shoved the Winter Soldier back into the seat, forcing him to look up at him. "Go upstairs, kid. Pull yourself together. You're exhausted and this isn't you talking. You've been awake for hours, probably days, and you're panicking. I know you, kid, I know you well enough to know you're more level-headed than this. So go upstairs. Lay down next to your girl. And sleep."

For a long moment, Bucky stared up at the inventor, unblinking. Finally, he swallowed, nodded, and stood, blinking rapidly as he attempted to draw his thoughts inward again. "Sorry."

Tony squeezed his shoulder and shook him a little. "No need. Go on." He gave him a little shove and shadowed him as he went on his way, steadier with each step, until he'd disappeared up the stairs. "Night, Buck." Heaving a heavy sigh, he shook his head and pulled a hand down his face. Then he went down the hall, to the next lab over, where Jane Foster was perched—suspiciously short of breath—behind her computer. Which was turned off.

Very casually, he approached, until he was right in front of her.

She watched him, eyes wide, every single step.

He leaned down in front of her, his expression darkening enough that he knew he might be in trouble with Thor later, but couldn't quite bring himself to correct. "Eyes open now, Foster?" he snarled.

She flinched.

"One word of that. To anyoneincluding Darcy—and you better run and hide behind your Norse Ken doll. Got it?" He stalked back out.

"Tony—" she called after him.

He stopped in the doorway.

She chewed on her lip. "Is he…okay…?"

"You sure you care enough to find out, now?" Tony snorted, once, and shook his head. "Foster, he ain't been okay since about 1944. Any other stupid questions?"

((()))

They waited on pins and needles for days.

But nothing happened.

Darcy retreated into herself a little deeper.

Jane attempted to reach out again, one afternoon, while Bruce looked her over under some complicated scanning machine, but was soundly ignored.

Bucky continued sparring with the guys, his focus razor sharp, hard enough that the others gave each other worried looks and Steve finally mentioned it to Tony, who shrugged like it was nothing, only to subsequently watch the soldier even closer than before.

Scott Lang joked that it wasn't really sparring anymore around SHIELD, but an emotional outlet.

No one laughed.

Hank Pym showed up with his daughter at one point with a sensitive mission for the former tech engineer, studiously avoided Tony, and the three of them left late that night. Tony rolled his eyes but let the slight go. Clint went further upstate with Laura and the kids.

Darcy retreated a little further.

Natasha tried making conversation a few times, but even she could get nothing out of her.

On one exciting occasion, just outside the lab a few days later, Maria made the mistake of baiting her and was punched in the throat for her troubles.

No one offered assistance to Hill as she staggered off, clutching her windpipe.

Tony even went so far as to give his adoptive daughter a round of applause.

"See, I told you we didn't need to work on that right hook," Bucky praised her.

She merely continued into the lab. "Anything?" she asked. "What is this—day seven?"

Bruce nodded from the corner. "It's been a week, yes."

"They haven't found anything," Stark added. He looked less than pleased. "And I can't keep contracting them to look around. They've got other rich idiots to order them around."

Darcy slumped in a chair. "So they're done? That's it?"

Tony shrugged. "That's it, kiddo."

She scowled. "So…now what? You guys head back while I hide here, or what?"

"Darce…" Bucky put in, but left out the obvious chastisement for flippant bitterness—they all heard it and he wasn't about to preach on something he knew well.

"No one's hiding," Tony put in, pushing off the counter. "We'll pack up tonight and start heading back. Think maybe we'll skip the Quinjets and just road trip it and—"

He stopped as a loud beeping started up.

Bruce jerked. "What's that?"

Tony frowned and went over to a computer terminal. "Proximity alert."

Darcy, who didn't seem alarmed in the slightest, sighed. "Shouldn't that be making more of a sproing-y, Star Trek-y noise?"

Tony ignored her, hitting buttons onscreen before swiping right and the holo-display flashed in the middle of the room, over the worktable. The three men circled it. "Sure, we can work on that later, Lewis."

She huffed. "Would everyone please stop calling me that? It's making my skin crawl."

Bruce straightened his glasses. "I don't see a bogey."

Tony's frown tightened. "JARVIS, expand view."

Of course, Sir. The screen reacted, shifting to a wider, satellite view.

"What the fuck?" Tony muttered, squinting.

If I may, Sir, the threat does not appear self-actuated, the butler elaborated.

"The fuck does that mean?" Darcy snapped, sitting up jerkily.

But JARVIS was calm as ever. It does not appear to be a threat external to the estate, he answered, and she vaguely noted that he left off naming her. She'd snapped at him a few days prior that if he couldn't call her Barnes by legal designation, then he could just fucking not call her anything.

He'd been notably quiet to her ever since.

"So, it's…internal?" Bucky finally spoke, slowly.

Darcy froze.

Three pairs of eyes flicked in her direction.

She was pinned there as the three main men in her life stared at her with looks of dubious intent. Ice shot down her spine.

The screen flickered, once, twice, then went snowy, like an old-school analogue TV.

And there was Aldrich Killian, smiling, like Scar in the fucking Lion King movie that Darcy had hated since she'd first seen it. He didn't giggle or even move much in what appeared to be an earlier recording.

He just smiled. "And they all fall down," he murmured.

Then the speakers on Tony's state-of-the-art sound system were blaring, and so loudly that it actually, physically hurt. Darcy winced, cupping her hands over her ears as a familiar song roared.

Tony's face collapsed into a look of pure, icy terror.

"Tick, tick, tick—BOOM!"

"GO!" he shouted over it, gesturing wildly for the lab door.

She could barely move she was so entirely disoriented by the assault on her senses.

But Bucky grabbed her, his metal hand painful around her wrist, and was tugging her down the hall, face set in that familiar Winter Soldier scowl.

"Tony—!" she shouted, trying to twist in his grip to see back.

Bruce was standing there, at the window, eyes shut, looking suspiciously like he was trying to focus.

Tony appeared in the doorway. "GO!" he repeated. "Don't worry, I'll suit u—"

The blast was unlike anything Darcy had ever experienced in her entire life. She was thrown forward off her feet, Bucky's hands at her back. They were tossed around like ragdolls, her limbs wildly out of her control, a disquieting sensation all in itself.

And the heat.

Darcy had never felt anything like it, a heat so intense, so much more intense than she would've thought even an explosion of such magnitude would be capable of producing.

She couldn't even cry out, that heat, and the force of the blast sucking all the air from her lungs, zero gravity, and she choked in midair, clutching desperately at her throat.

Just as she was able to gasp in something raw and acrid, they slammed into the earth and the air was knocked out of her all over again. She floundered for an awful, aching moment, eyes wide as her brain cried out for oxygen.

Bucky slammed into her—hard—painfully hard, and she coughed as his arms came up over her head. "Don't move!" he yelled over the din as debris rained down on them, trailing smoke and flames.

How was it still so loud?! Her ears were ringing.

She couldn't have moved even if she'd wanted to, if she'd had the strength—damn, she forgot, sometimes, just how heavy Jamie was. She sheltered under him, gasping for breath.

But every breath she took was a burning cinder in her lungs, bitter and brimstone.

And then it hit her—the building had just exploded.

Struggling, she wriggled until she could see around Bucky's elbow, and could only stare in dawning horror.

The bomb hadn't been planted at Avengers Tower.

Manhattan had never been in any danger.

It had all been an elaborate trap.

A good half of the complex was a fireball, black smoke rising from the fresh ruins.

The lab floors.

The workshops.

The equipment storage.

All the most flammable stuff.

Quickly turning to ash.

Because of her.

"Jamie…" she said, but her voice was a rough, gravel murmur, and, for once, he didn't hear her over the din of hungry flames. They shot wild over the complex, red, orange, yellow, angry and insistent on having their way. "Jamie…" She coughed, then started to struggle again.

One careless shift of his arm, and he had her pinned. "Stay down," he called, his Winter Soldier voice brooking no argument.

She saw a green shape streak across the tiny shape of his elbow that she could see through, rushing the complex with an animal bellow.

Bruce.

No, not Bruce.

The Other Guy.

And another, horrible, horrible thought finally rang in her skull.

There was green.

But no red.

"Where's Tony?" she asked, but her voice was too low again. "Tony!" she tried again, hearing the terror in her own words. "Where's Tony?!" She genuinely began to struggle against him then, pushing at him with everything she had.

"Darcy…" was all he said, his voice low and resigned.

Her full name.

He never used her full name…

"Jamie, where's Tony?!" She shoved, hard, at his body, adrenaline coursing through her in a rushing push—

And he was shoved aside, hard.

He stared at her, his wide eyes finally drawn from the blaze.

She looked wildly around, dragging herself stiffly to her feet.

It wasn't just them; there were others standing around, some crouched and coughing.

Jane was sitting back on the grass, ash on her face, staring vacantly at the burning lab floors, probably counting all the machines she'd just lost, all the homemade tools she'd relied on for so long.

Thor, beside her, was hefting his hammer, looking like he was preparing to go in.

Hill was doubled over and coughing, hard, clutching her throat.

Beside her, Sam stood with a hand at her back.

Wanda huddled at his feet.

Steve and Natasha were both on the ground, conscious and breathing, but clutching each other as they watched the horror with pale, slack faces.

All Darcy could think was 'Thank God they'd been on the upper floor.'

Bucky stood and took a step forward.

She grabbed at his shoulder. "Where's Tony?!"

He spun, without a word, and took up her arm. He dragged her a few yards to their left and stopped in front of Thor. "Keep her here," he said—

And was gone, jogging toward the inferno at a quick clip.

She stared after him, her mouth slack.

Steve fell in behind him.

Sam frowned, looking like he wanted to follow, but just then, Maria fell to the ground entirely, still coughing violently, and he returned his attention to her.

Thor's large hand closed around her wrist. "Forgive me, Darcy," he murmured, his voice low.

"Thor—" she started, tugging against his hopeless grip.

"James will do what he can. Your safety, however, is paramount."

Anger boiled up, then, out of nowhere, and she gave him a death glare, wrenching at his grip with everything she had.

She wasn't sure if it was her new abilities rising to the fore, or some sort of surprise on Thor's part—

But her wrist came free.

She wasn't thinking on it too hard, though; she was plunging forward into the smoke, running desperately into the blazing ruins of the estate, Bucky and Steve just hazy blurs in the near distance before her.

She'd be damned if she was going to stand there and wait for the superheroes to get back when this shit had been her fault to begin wi—

Oh, God, this was all her fault.

She coughed, jerking to a horrified stop, raising a hand to wave futilely at the thick, acrid smoke drifting in the air.

What had she done?

She'd literally blown all her friends—who was she kidding? They were her family—sky high. For a long moment, she stood frozen in sheer terror.

She'd never forgive herself if something happened to any of them, if something had happened to Tony.

Oh, God. Tony.

She could do this part later, the hating herself.

The other half of the complex was still standing—albeit barely—and her two boys were working their way through the rubble toward it, determined and strong. Once, Steve stumbled as a piece of stonework gave way, but Bucky snatched at his arm with his lightning grip and held him steady, pulling him up to him on the ledge.

Darcy followed, cursing under her breath as she hobbled up after them in her slip-on Keds, no longer white, but streaked gray and black. She coughed again, and yanked a hand through her hair, smoothing it out of her face.

It was a minefield of rough rock, molten plastic, and bits of things that had once been recognizable.

Someone's Starkphone, singed, blown, and cracked open on one end.

The frame of a headboard.

Half a motorbike. Ugh, Tony's beautiful Ducati.

Oh, God, the flipped, hollowed out remains of the Audi R8 Spyder.

She patted her back pocket.

That might've been her fucking Starkphone, damn it.

Her eyes were stinging, mixing with the tears she couldn't manage to hold back, and she imagined herself looking like some model in a post-apocalyptic themed ad for mascara, with streaks down her face, tragically beautiful as she sulked at the camera.

Sniffling, she wiped at her face with the back of her hand, coming over a ridge of concrete to find Steve and Bucky crouched not too far ahead, pulling at absolute boulders like they weighed nothing at all.

She gasped, then coughed again, her chest burning, as she catapulted down the embankment, stumbling and catching herself.

"I thought I fucking told you to stay there," Bucky positively snapped, not even looking up as he pushed a human-sized rock aside.

She didn't argue; nor did she shrink away. His bark was ten times worse than his bite, especially with her. For what had happened to him, he really suffered from the rather opposite side effect of being remarkably slow to anger.

"Got him," Steve spoke up. "He's down there."

Bucky angled his gaze down into the rock.

Darcy clambered desperately forward.

There he was. Tony was tucked beneath the next hunk of rock, a bleeding gash along his forehead and another—deeper one—along the opposite cheekbone.

"Tony—"

"Hold this—I'll get him," Bucky said, his voice low. "We've gotta hurry. Killian's not one to let the job go half-finished and he knows Tony's too smart for him."

Steve pulled the boulder up and aside. "Watch his neck, keep his back straight if you can."

"I remember '42 first aid, Stevie, don't worry." With a gentleness the average person would be surprised to find in him, Bucky pulled Tony free and cradled his body against him.

Darcy swallowed thickly. "Jamie, I—"

But he snatched her up in his iron grip before she could voice her guilt and yanked her close, his voice low and positively vicious with passionate resolve. "Don't. Don't you fucking dare. He did this to you, do you understand me?" he snapped. His eyes were all Winter Soldier, and she had to work not to flinch away from the bright blue of the determination she saw there.

Shocked speechless, she stared up at him for a long moment.

"Now go." He released her.

She wobbled, unsteady at his rare show of such intense feeling. But his hand was at her back and his voice softened. "Go, baby doll."

Swallowing again, she started back down the embankment, her Keds reliable against the rough rubble.

But as they came back up over the ridge, their luck ran out.

A second blast sent the rubble up and out in an arc, throwing her into the air. Darcy felt like a tiny child's toy, picked up and thrown about as she was slammed back into the ground—or what substituted for it now.

She cried out in surprise and pain as stone cut into her cheek, but she didn't have time to react as she was buried. It felt like forever that stone fell, rocks pelting down, large and small, to completely obscure her.

((()))

She came to not long after to the distant sounds of panicked yelling.

It took her a moment to identify the shrieking of Pepper and had the vague notion that she must've been called back by someone from her business meeting in Manhattan.

Slowly, she was able to crawl out of her hidey hole, surprised in some corner of her mind that she was both calm and fortunate enough to have a way out. She picked her way up as quickly as she could, shoving rocks out of her way, small boulders that now seemed perfectly heavy.

Shock was setting in, her brain in survival mode, not allowing itself to think overmuch on anything that wasn't designed to keep her breathing in and out.

When she found Tony, though, by some miracle, the tether snapped clean.

Gasping back sobs, she tugged on his exposed arm until his body was freed from the rubble, revealing a huge, threatening looking gash in his temple. "Tony…" she pleaded breathlessly. "Boss Man, you still with me?" With a shaking hand, she pressed her fingers to his throat and felt it: a pulse. Unsteady and weak, but there.

Unsure of herself, she started patting him down, desperately seeking further injuries, the sort that would kill in quick order.

When she found nothing else, she had to assume the damage was to his bashed up head.

She was crying now, totally out of control, tears streaming silently down her face, accompanied only by her panicked gasps. She cupped his face, relaxed in unconsciousness. "Boss Man…?" She bit her lip, concentrating, sure that she could still pull out that strange ability she'd stumbled across last summer, and heal him, no matter what Bruce had said about her white blood cells. "Tony…"

Terrified and weeping, she pressed her forehead to his, trying to hold back the sobs cramping her throat as she pushed out with whatever it was that had worked on him that fateful day in the lab. "C'mon, Boss Man." She would never forgive herself if something happened to him because of her.

A rippling sensation began in her belly, like a pebble in a puddle, soft at first, before growing and widening in an arcing wave of sensation, akin to a blast of fiery heat on a bitter winter afternoon. Grabbing onto it with everything she had, she clung and rode it out, letting it take her.

Pain. Pain filled her then, all at once, and so very hard she shouted it out before biting it back on her tongue, still clinging to it with her whole consciousness.

Her blood was rushing, her heart was pounding in her ears, and with a strange echo. With a cold start, she realized it wasn't an echo—it was Tony's heart, working to match hers until it had caught in one breath, two breaths.

They beat in time—

And Tony gasped himself awake, eyes wide as he jerked, his strong, mechanic's hands clenching around Darcy's wrists. "Short Stack?" he asked, and his voice was ragged and desert-dry.

She sat back to give him room to breathe as relief flooded her, sweeping in to fill her where the pain had swept out, and she laughed wetly, tears continuing to stream down her face. "Hey, Boss Man," she murmured, breathless and dizzy with effort.

He stared around with huge, shocked eyes, then latched his gaze back on her. "What did you do, Short Stack?"

She flinched. "Not really sure…"

He blinked, then blinked again, taking in their surroundings as he sat up. But, like typical Tony, he didn't say much on the current chaos, and just said, "I feel like I could run a marathon…" Then he scowled, grabbing her and tugging her close. "Just don't do that again, alright, kid?"

"Are you alright?"

Tony sneered. "Don't skirt the question, Short Stack. Don't waste whatever it is you've got on a washed-up billionaire, you hear me?"

Still trying to clear her lightheadedness, she sighed. "Tony—"

But there was a shout, then, a wordless yell, and they both turned to look.

Out of the smoke came Steve, at a bit of a distance, his shape contorted and bloodied.

The shock and relief melting like ice cubes in a stove, Darcy stilled as she stared at his approaching form. His body wasn't contorted at all—he was carrying someone, and with quite the effort, it looked like.

She jerked to standing, then tipped into Tony, who had struggled up beside her, as her head spun.

Something…something wasn't right. Something about him wasn't right.

She stared as he approached, unable to process the scene he made, Bucky in his arms, limp and heavy, and Steve—

Face shamelessly streaked with tears.

The air completely left her lungs, but she couldn't move. She was rooted to the spot as he stumbled up and laid his best friend out on the rough surface of the rubble beneath them.

"What, he got lazy, Rogers?" Tony snapped, trying to push off his own panic with grim humor, but no one missed the thin ribbon of it in his voice.

Darcy's knees folded weakly and she knelt at his side, hands shaking as she reached out to trace the vicious gash along his left temple. "Jamie…" she whispered, her voice dying in her throat.

"What happened?!" Tony insisted.

But Steve was barely there, his eyes glazed, and it didn't appear he was even aware that he was crying. "We were thrown apart in the second blast. I…I found him…under…under a…" And that was all he said.

Darcy pressed her fingers to his throat, but found nothing. She jerked her hand back, staring at his slack face, so peaceful, like he was asleep. Her heart began to pound double-time, but it was only half computing, raw disbelief staggering her breathing.

"There's nothing, Darcy…" Steve murmured. "…His head…"

She shook her head, the thought barely piercing, and leaned down over him, cupping his face. "Jamie…? Jamie…" She pressed her fingers against his collar again, searching for any jerk that might be a pulse, slid her hands desperately down, pressing her palms for a heartbeat.

But there was nothing, and she saw with terrible fear the awful gash on his forehead was accompanied by a large, mean contusion along the base of his skull, oozing dark, oxygen rich blood. Fatal, surely. It taunted her.

And the Winter Soldier was totally still, against the odds that he would be the one to pay the price for her new abilities.

She could hardly breathe, horror seeping into her in icy pinpricks, like sleet on a nasty Manhattan winter day, pelting against your face as you tried to see where you were going. "Jamie…"

But Tony was much more aware than either of them. "Tip his chin back," he suddenly instructed. "Open his airway."

She jerked back as he pushed himself past her, all business. The inventor had clearly excelled at emergency training at some point or other and Darcy could only stare vacantly as he applied CPR, thinking that it seemed so pointless on a super soldier.

He didn't need CPR. He needed—

Her face wet again with tears she couldn't remember shedding, she shoved him none-too-gently out of the way, and clutched at his face. "Jamie." Her hands shook and a tear fell onto his cheekbone. "C'mon, Jamie. Not like this," she pleaded, her voice trembling. She tugged and pulled, searching deep for the thing she'd somehow reached, somehow harnessed only moments before on Tony.

To her horror, she found it wasn't there, wasn't where she'd left it.

She gasped with the effort, pressing her face against his metal shoulder. "Jamie, baby…"

"Darcy…" Tony's voice, soft and gentle. "Darcy, I don't think you've got anything left, baby…"

Her head started to spin, and her heart was tap dancing in her chest, but she pushed past it, pushed past the pain. "C'mon, Jamie…not like this…" she murmured, ignoring her audience, determined to find the dark, ugly thing that had taken up residence inside her, to wrench it free from where it had buried itself, deeper than before. It was down deeper than before, that's all, she just had to.

She just had to push herself a little harder to find it.

She shut her eyes, clutching Bucky's t-shirt.

Nothing.

She was hollow, bled dry.

She tried again, her vision darkening at the corners, going hazy as her consciousness shuttered uncertainly. "God damn it. Jamie, please. Jamie," she pleaded, her beseeching finally grasping her until she sobbed.

Steve's hand on her shoulder.

"What the hell happened?!" Natasha, her voice thin and raw.

No one answered her.

Pain. Again. Awful, inescapable pain, of such she'd never experienced before, so hard and all-consuming that it was all she could do to remain conscious.

It erupted in her heart, tugging her down, flush against Bucky's unmoving chest and her vision went dim. "Jamie…" she begged.

"Someone stop her!" Bruce shouted, less monstrous growl, more mousy scientist. "She'll drain herself dry!"

She heard him perfectly well, but she was caught in the undertow, and she found, somewhere in her mind, that she didn't really care if she drowned. She just rode the crest of the wave.

And the world shrank and fell away into darkness.