You Came Back

Darcy/Victor Creed

Tasertooth lol!

Theme song:

No Doubt - Don't Speak

With thanks to general zargon for prompting this one!

Kidnapped. Again. What even is my life? Darcy whined mentally... and a little bit verbally as the black-clad man carrying her banged her knee on the wall turning a corner.

"Hey, watch it, buster!" she said weakly. Her leg hurt like hell: she didn't think it was broken, but it had twisted horribly as she fell down a flight of stairs running for the safe room Stark had built under their super-duper new astronomical observatory and she'd felt something snap inside her knee with a white-hot spear of agony. Ligament or tendon, she thought gloomily. She'd screamed at Jane, standing at the door of the safe room, to get inside just as the men came clattering down the stairs, saw the agony and indecision on Jane's face as Erik slammed the door shut.

Darcy had blacked out with the pain in her leg as she tried to get up. Came to trussed up like a turkey in the back of a van... but there were only black-clad men around her, muttering in a guttural language she didn't recognise, and they sounded pissed, so Darcy hoped that meant Jane and Erik were safe.

The man carrying her only snorted and kept walking, but he didn't bang her leg again, so Darcy figured she'd call it a win. She sank back into her pain-filled haze, only coming back to alertness when she heard the clang of a heavy steel door.

It was a cell block, and a crude one, basically just rows of heavy steel bars set into concrete top and bottom, welded with cross-braces vertically every foot or so. At first Darcy thought there was no one else there, but as one of the cages was unlocked and she was plonked unceremoniously down on a thin mattress inside, she saw that there was a... thing in the next cage. Shaggy-haired, unkempt, it twisted around and stared at her, and she flinched back as she realised it was a man, dressed in rags, his eyes gleaming with a feral light. And then he opened his mouth to speak to the guards and she flinched back at the sight of his too-sharp, gleaming white canine teeth.

"Раз уж вы принесли мне этот лакомый кусочек, могли бы посадить её ко мне," Victor growled.

"Мечтать не вредно, мутант!" the men laughed crudely and left, slamming the cell door behind them.

Victor looked curiously at his new prison companion. Young and very pretty, a toothsome bit indeed with a lush figure and… very, very frightened deep blue eyes.

He wasn't a man for gentleness. If he'd ever known how, he'd long since forgotten. But he tried to be kind, to ease that terror in her eyes.

"I don't actually eat human flesh," he growled.

Darcy managed, somehow, to suppress a scream. No. No. This is a nightmare. That – that beast-man did not just say that. She clutched at her leg and said nothing.

Victor growled slightly to himself. "Do you understand me? You speak English?" She looked Western, considering her clothes, and he was pretty sure they were still in the Americas somewhere, although their captors were Kazakhstani.

If I don't speak, he'll never know. Darcy nodded slowly. She'd seen a movie once where the heroine pulled off this trick after finding out a villain was her soulmate… she put her tongue out, tapped it and shook her head.

"You're mute? Damn. I don't speak ASL."

She blinked, surprised that he sounded annoyed about that. Made some vaguely sign-language-ish signs with her hands and shrugged her shoulders, as though to indicate, it doesn't matter.

"I'm Victor. Victor Creed." He sniffed the air, stared hard at her. "You're hurt. I can smell your pain."

You can WHAT? Darcy had been rethinking her decision to pretend she was mute when he spoke quite pleasantly, hastily changed her mind yet again now. She pointed at her knee, mimed wrenching it.

"Huh. Nuthin' I can do for that." He paced his cell, growling to himself, didn't speak to her again.

It was a few hours later when the cell block's outer door opened again and two of the Kazakhs came back in. They each had a plastic cup of water and a bowl of soup, pushed them one at a time through the bars of the cells, the one at Victor's cell keeping a wary eye on him.

"The girl's hurt," Victor growled at them in Russian. "She can't walk. Get her some bandages for her leg and some fucking painkillers."

"You don't give the orders around here, mutant!" was his only reply, and then they left again.

Victor sighed. Looked at the girl, who was looking at the bowl and cup. "D'you think you can get over there?" he asked.

Darcy considered. Eventually, she pushed herself slowly off the mattress and tried to ease across the floor. The slightest movement was agony on her leg, though, and she stilled, tears pricking at her eyes.

"Okay. Stay there." Victor considered the problem. The bowl and cup in her cell was way too far away for him to reach. He sighed. He could go without food and water for a long time, but in her weakened state, this girl wouldn't last long. Picking up his own bowl and cup, he moved as close to her as he could and pushed them through the bars. They ended up less than a foot from her hand.

Darcy stared incredulously as Victor gave her his own portion. She shook her head and tried to push them back at him, provoking an absolutely terrifying growl. Petrified, she grabbed the cup and took a sip of the flat, faintly metallic-tasting water inside.

Victor nodded approvingly. Watched as the girl drank the water and ate the soup. She peered at him cautiously occasionally, still clearly terrified of him. At last she set the bowl down, tilted it to show him it was empty. He smiled, not showing his teeth.

"Good girl. You'll need your strength."

She stared at him for a few long moments, and then she put her finger to the cell floor and started moving it in the dust. Writing something.

DARCY

"Darcy? That's your name?"

She nodded and gave him a small smile. He nodded slowly.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Darcy."

Exhausted and frightened, Darcy watched for a little while as Victor paced his cell. He moved, she thought, more like a caged animal than a man, like a lion she'd seen once on a documentary about the world's worst zoos, silently pacing its territory, waiting for the opportunity to strike. Untameable.

Cold, she huddled on the mattress. There was no blanket, and the mattress was thin enough that the chill from the concrete floor seeped through the thin foam. There was no way to get warm, but eventually her pain and weariness overcame her consciousness and her senses slipped away.

Victor paused in his pacing, stared at Darcy. Her breathing had slowed, indicating sleep, but… she was shivering, and he suspected her state was closer to unconsciousness than sleep. Those bastards, didn't even give her a blanket. Why was she even here? She had some value as a hostage, a negotiating chip, he guessed. Well, she'd have no value to their captors if she died. No skin off his nose.

Except… there was some instinct deep inside him that couldn't let it happen. Not if he could do something to prevent it. With a deep sigh that might have sounded something like a growl, Victor knelt and reached through the bars to grab the edge of the mattress.

Darcy woke feeling surprisingly warm. Blinking her eyes slowly open as consciousness returned, she became slowly aware that there was something tight around her aching knee, and something very warm against her back, and even warmer over her stomach.

"Don't be alarmed, now," a gruff voice said very close to her ear. "Just didn't want ya to freeze to death."

She froze, and the very warm thing over her stomach moved away, revealing itself to be a man's bare, muscular arm.

Victor.

Slowly, she turned over, looked at him. She was lying up against the bars of the cage, and the shirt he'd been wearing slid away; he'd placed it between her back and the bars, then pressed himself up against the bars and held her, doing his best to share his body heat.

His eyes were a stormy grey-blue as he looked at her. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments before a sudden sound had Victor leaping to his feet, fingers curled into claws.

The guards were back. They looked at Darcy's untouched cup and bowl, snapped at Victor in Russian. He snapped back, his tone derisive, pointed at Darcy's leg. She looked down at it, wondering what the tight thing around her knee was, discovered it to be a strip of fabric she suspected he'd torn off his shirt.

There was more surly snarling in Russian and then the guards went away. To Darcy's enormous surprise, they returned a few minutes later with a blanket and some actual bandages, and one of them unlocked her cell and came in. Warily eyeing Victor, he grabbed the edge of her mattress and dragged it away from Victor's cell before crouching down to bandage Darcy's knee properly.

The other guard, who'd remained outside the cell, laughed and said something that Darcy suspected was crude from the tone, not to mention the suggestive gesture that accompanied the remark. The guard bandaging Darcy's knee looked at her breasts and started to smile.

Until Victor snarled.

The sound was horrifying, and both guards lurched back, faces paling. The one bandaging Darcy's leg snatched his hands away as though burned, they both glanced at each other – and then they fled, the cell door slamming behind them.

You are a very, very scary… thing. Darcy stared at Victor for a moment, and he stared back, before turning his back and starting to pace again. She looked down at her half-bandaged leg, sighed and took up the task herself.

"You're not pulling it tight enough," Victor growled after a moment. "Come here."

She hesitated before shuffling off the mattress and over to the bars. He reached through them and pulled the bandage a whole lot tighter, supporting her knee properly, and for the first time Darcy noticed that his fingers were clawed.

Don't scream don't speak just keep your mouth shut, Darcy…

She looked up at Victor once he'd finished tying the bandage tight, and he smiled at her, keeping his lips together to hide those horrifyingly sharp canine teeth, she realised. "You'll need an operation, maybe, once you're out of here," he said quietly. "But hopefully that will keep you together in the meantime."

She managed a small smile and a nod in return, and he went back to his pacing.

The guards were back in half an hour, this time with another man who Darcy hadn't seen before. He stepped up to Victor's cage and there was a lot of snarly Russian. She just sat quietly and watched, wondering what was going on, until the Important Bad Guy got just a little too heated and a little too close.

Darcy blinked and nearly missed it. Victor moved waaaay too fast, suddenly Important Bad Guy's neck was spouting blood, and the cell keys that had been hanging on his belt were in Victor's hand.

The other two guards pulled out their guns and started shooting, and Darcy immediately stopped watching and curled up into the tiniest little ball she could manage, praying she didn't get hit by any ricochets. There was a screech, snarling noises, more gunfire, screaming… and everything went quiet.

Slowly and very cautiously, Darcy lifted her head.

There was no sign of Victor. His cage door swung open, there were three very dead bodies on the ground, and more blood than Darcy had ever seen in her life. She looked away and tried not to vomit.

He just left me here, one part of her brain whispered.

Good! the more sensible part declared. Let's just hope he makes enough racket leaving that the authorities come to check the place out.

She stayed there for what seemed like forever, resolutely keeping her eyes away from the bodies and the blood.

What if no one comes? she thought suddenly. Oh God I'm going to end up gnawing on dead bodies to survive…

The outer cell block door creaked as it swung open, and Darcy looked up – into Victor's eyes.

He'd changed his clothes, into some of the guards' black commando gear, and washed his hands, made an effort to wash the blood off his face too. She still looked at him as though he was a monster, and Victor sighed, reaching out to unlock her cell door.

"Sorry I took a while. Wanted to make sure the place was safe before I came back for you, and then I was, well, kind of messy. Didn't want to give you nightmares."

Darcy blinked in astonishment as he came into the cell, stooped to pick her up and cradle her gently into his arms.

"You came back for me," she whispered wonderingly.

Victor's stride towards the door stuttered. He looked down at Darcy, his grey eyes wide, before resuming. "Had to, didn't I? I was never gonna find my soulmate if I got in the habit of leaving people behind." His arms tightened around her protectively. "Wouldn't ever leave you behind, Darcy. Not ever."

She let her head rest on his shoulder, oddly soothed by the musky, animal scent that rose from his skin. Her leg still hurt appallingly, and she felt horribly nauseous, but somehow, she was quite confident that everything was going to be fine.

xoxoxoxoxoxox

Darcy woke in a hospital bed, with Jane asleep in a chair behind her. For a few moments she thought that it had all been a dream, until she looked beyond Jane and saw Victor outside in the corridor.

Pacing.

She drifted back to sleep with a small smile on her face. Victor was standing guard outside her room, pacing.

Everything was just perfect.

Thank you once again to LenaAzarova for the Russian translations!

Раз уж вы принесли мне этот лакомый кусочек, могли бы посадить её ко мне – If you were going to bring me some fresh meat, you could at least have thrown it in with me

Мечтать не вредно, мутант! – In your dreams, mutant!

I have the terrible, TERRIBLE sinking feeling that I've created another Rumlow here. Live Schreiber is awfully sexy, though…