Own Nothing
Darcy worked busily at her at her office desk for the third day in the row, food delivered to her office, coffee delivered every hour on the hour. She only left for bathroom breaks and to shower in the mornings. She hadn't bothered to even go for her morning jogs since the new arrivals, seeing that Blue was so happy with her new sisters and Owen had to train them as a group again. So she worked, she prepared for the new arrivals of S.H.I.E.L.D agents for the ER island that were arriving soon, and for the InHumans that were to follow after them. Tony and Pepper had finished setting up the schooling and scholarship funds for them.
She was also busy working with Claire setting up the labs and the sanctuaries, getting them ready for the first round of animals for the Earth Revival Project. So Darcy slept on her couch, work in her office, sent Tanner or Taylor to run around the Park to check things out when they needed to be checked on. She had just sent Tanner out to check on the Ferry that came in with potential new employees for them to go through and to interview. They were already vetted and interviewed by SI now they had to go through the same processed here and Darcy honestly felt like her head was swimming.
"Miss Darcy." F.R.I. D.A.Y spoke. "You have someone here to see you."
Darcy sighed and held her head in her hands. "I don't want to see anyone today, like at all. Thank you."
"But we came all this way." Natasha stated from her doorway.
Darcy looked up shock as she felt her headache go away. "My office is a mess." Was the first thing out of her mouth.
Natasha smirked as her eyes danced around. "You've been living in it."
Darcy nodded as she stood up and walked over hugged the taller woman. "Wait." She froze and pulled away. "What do you mean we? Who is we?"
"Don't worry about it, tell me about this spy problem you think you have?" Nat's eyes darkened as she stared down at her.
Darcy nodded and walked over to the couch. "When we went after Dr. Wu, he said he knew about the Raptors, that he knew that we created new ones. So I thought about it, it had to be someone in the labs. Or someone who had access to them." She rubbed her forehead. "So I ran the Nightcrawler protocol. And I ran everyone."
"Even your Father and Fiancé?" Natasha asked and she held up Darcy's hand with the ring.
"I trust Dad and I trust Owen. Honestly Nat, if there is one thing Owen loves more than me, it's Blue and the Raptors. It's all the dinosaurs. He'd do anything to protect them. He wouldn't betray what we're doing, helping these animals, there's no profit from it." Darcy looked at her. "I ran them because I didn't want people to say that I was playing favorites. I know that they're clean. Just like I know most of the others are too. But it's better to be safe than sorry. Okay."
"It is." Natasha stated solemnly. "You did the right thing."
"Then why do I feel so bad?" Darcy cried as she stared up at her friend. "I feel so angry and so upset that someone is hurting what we are trying to do here and I feel bad because I'm worried that me trying to find the person, trying to weasel them out is going to tear a hole in our relationship because I keep things from him."
Natasha stared at her in silence, letting the younger girl cry in her arms. "You cannot save the world yourself." She whispered to her.
"You make it look so easy." Darcy whispered back. "I want to be just like the Black Widow."
Natasha smirked as she ran her fingers through Darcy's hair. "Sometimes I don't even want to be the Black Widow." She waited until Darcy's crying calmed down. "I will find your spy and I will get what they know."
"Thank you." Darcy laid her head on her shoulder.
"No one will hurt you, I promise." Natasha kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"Did you make that same threat to Owen?"
"He will not see me coming if he hurts you."
"Aw." Darcy blinked as she stared up at the two taller men. "So this is what she meant by 'we'." She nodded to them. "I'm Darcy."
"Scott Lang, Ant-Man." He smiled at her as he shook her hand.
"Ant-Man?" Darcy repeated. "Well then, I'm Raptor-Girl. I have an army of Raptor children." She smiled at him.
Scott blinked and laughed. "Oh that's funny, because we're in Jurassic World."
"No she's serious." Sam stated from beside him, arms crossed. Scott looked at him unsure. "The oldest one is name Blue. I don't know the other names yet."
Darcy beamed up at Sam. "You are getting my Emails."
"Girl we just talk last week." Sam looked at her. "I helped you bring home three sleeping Raptors." He smiled at her. "Where's your new boy?" He nodded down to her left hand. "That's new."
She held it up for him to look at. "It is." She smirked at Scott. "My trusty side-kick Raptor Ranger Rick is checking up on the other Paddocks around the Park. His official name if HOS Owen Grady. He most likely will be back soon, you can wait for him, or you can have someone take you on a tour?" Her head set beeped. "Darcy." She pulled her hand away from Sam and pushed the button to talk to the headset. "On it." She sighed and shrugged. "I have to run guys. But give me five minutes and I'll send one of our tour guides, Kathleen, down here to show you all around. An exclusive tour." She winked at them and ran off.
"So you really think she has a Raptor army?" Scott asked Sam as he watched her leave. "Because that's kind of hot.
"She does. I've seen her with them." Sam stated. "And her boy and just has deadly, he was the one to save Jurassic World." Sam stated as he gave Scott a look.
"Oh." Scott stated as turned to Sam. "So they're perfect for each other."
"Yeah." He clapped his hand on his friend's shoulder. "They're kind of are."
"Hi, I'm Kathleen, I'm here to take you on your tour." A tall redhead stated with a bright smile.
"Alright Director Coulson, we'll see you when you return, have a safe flight." Darcy smiled over the phone. "You too, good-bye." She hung up the phone and wrote something in her notes before she closed the file and stood up and filed it away for safekeeping. "F.R.I.D.A.Y. Director Coulson, marked to return to ER after he finishes his business elsewhere. S.H.I.E.L.D has already begun construction on the Island to meet their needs."
"Yes Miss."
"Claire Dearing already moved into her apartment earlier this week, the last of her things brought in, her assistant hired and contract signed." She made a noted of it in the file on her desk. "Office employees hired and ready to move in once security staff are trained for main part of the Island, labs have the samples from the governments, and have begun the testing portion of the experiments." She made another note as she spoke out loud for F.R.I.D.A.Y. "We should be expecting our first batch of animals for the project in the next two months if progress continues." She looked up to see Natasha enter her office and sit down on her couch. Darcy wrote a note in the file. "Animals include Panthera pardus orientalis, the Amur Leopard; Diceros bicornis, the Black Rhino;Gorilla gorilla diehli, Cross River Gorilla; and A lion in honor the Zimbabwe's Cecil." She sighed and finished the note before she closed the file and stood up to file it away in the filing cabinet.
She closed the door and heard the lock set into place before she looked over at Natasha. "How did it go?" She asked her friend.
"I found your rat." She smirked as she looked at her. "You had several actually, for different people."
"That's disheartening." Darcy sighed as she rested her head on the cold surface of the filing cabinet. "What now?"
"Now. Now they work for us." Natasha stated.
Darcy looked at her. "Who were they?"
"The list was sent to your phone. No one in your inner circle."
Darcy walked over to her desk and looked at her phone at the names and frowned. "She serves my coffee every morning, my waitress at the restaurant, three of these are Owen's guys." She set the phone down and pinched her nose. "We've vetted these guys, they passed all the tests, and we monitor everything. How do we have this many spies?"
"Some of them are for countries that didn't sign on for the project. They wanted to see how well it would do, how well you will do first." Natasha stated.
Darcy's heart stopped as she looked at her window where ER would be across the ocean. "Natasha I have to tell you something, but you can't tell anyone else." She whispered. "Not Steve, Pepper, Tony. Or Clint." Her voice shook.
Natasha stood up and in a second she was in front of her. "What is it?"
"F.R.I.D.A.Y. Walls and Door. I want complete privacy, nothing in or out." Darcy stated."
"Yes Miss. Phones and Coms as well?"
"Yes. Until I say." Darcy nodded.
"What is it?" Natasha asked sternly.
"Phil Coulson is alive." Darcy whispered as she ran her fingers through her hair. "And instead of having an extra Avenger base underneath ER, I'm helping him build an S.H.I.E.L.D base. Except I told Pepper and Tony it was for the new director. It is. It's for Coulson. He's the new director. And I told them it's for the gifted people, because S.H.I.E.L.D wants a placed to keep them. But it's not for gifted, it's for InHumans, a mixture of human and an alien ran called the Kree and I told Coulson he could build his secret base there with his team because no one would be looking there. It's safe. And I put Claire Dearing in charge of the actual animal and maintains the people part while Agent Skye and Coulson and their team handles the Inhuman part." Darcy inhaled deeply.
Natasha stared at her for a minute. "Where you going to tell anyone?"
"T-N-T knows because they're my right hand, Owen knows, because he's Owen. Lowery knows. Because he's my eyes. But no one else really knows the full pictures that isn't on ER now."
Nat nodded and stepped back. "I always figured Coulson to still be alive."
"You're not mad?" Darcy asked her.
"You're only one person Darcy, you weren't groomed for this position and you certainly didn't ask for this. It's a lot to take but you're handling it well." She smiled at Darcy. "Just keep breathing."
"But what do we do about the other Island? How are they getting passed our process?"
"Let me worry about that." Natasha smirked at her.
It was almost a week of Darcy living in her office, she had gone home when Owen was out to grab a new set of clothes and went back before he knew she had returned. But he had had enough. He showed up at her office door to see her at her desk with a tissue box and her cup coffee as she went over paperwork. "You look like shit."
Darcy coughed as she reached for a new tissue. "Thank you." She sneezed into the Kleenex. "What's up?" She asked, her voice sounding hoarse and grainy from being stopped up.
He looked around her office, he could see a new bag of clothes in the closest and frowned. "So you did come back the other day, I didn't make up the dirty clothes in the laundry basket."
"Nope." She continued to work while he talked, holding the tissue to her nose. "The ER labs are almost are at a break through with their progress, and our eggs are going to hatch any week now, so I want to get ahead on this paperwork so we can more help."
"Did you find the spy?" Owen asked her.
Darcy stopped and set her pen down as she looked up. "What?" She blink up at him. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm pretty sure that's why you're avoiding me." He stated. "Because you had to run your Nighcrawler protocol. That's what I heard you call it, before you cried yourself to sleep." His face softened. "Why didn't you come to me?"
"Because it wasn't you." She wiped her nose of the snot, now she didn't know if it was from her head cold or from crying. Because she knew she was crying now. She tossed the used tissue away and grabbed a new one. "I didn't want to play favorites Owen. If you were awake to hear that, then you knew that I ran Dad too. And when the report went to Natasha for her to go over, she would see that I covered my bases." She grabbed a new tissue and wiped her wet eyes and blew her nose. "I knew you couldn't do it, that you wouldn't in no way hurt your Raptors." She looked up at him. "You wouldn't hurt them and I like to believe, I hope to believe in what we're doing here, protecting these animals, giving them a voice is something that you can believe in and not some cheap thrill that the previous owners did. So no, I don't think you were the spy Owen Grady." She grabbed another tissue to blow her nose. "That wasn't the reason I was avoiding you."
He moved closer to stand in front of her. "Then why have you been avoiding me? Darcy?" He moved her chair around and then knelt down in front her, gentle as if not to scare off a wild animal.
"Because I have been having nightmares." Her voice shook. "For as long as I can remember and I can't sleep. And they're getting worse. I have been drinking eight or nine cups of coffee every day just to function and that's barely getting me by. And I don't need everyone's crap about my caffeine intake when it's the only thing keeping me going around here. I have gone against aliens, HYDRA agents and Raptors." She sighed. "And I've been thrown into this mess and I don't know what to do, I was an assistant and everyone expect me to know what to do and all I do to not have a panic attack is just breath and pray to god that this will work because we're almost up and running and I'm so scared." She cried. "And when Wu put me in the Paddock with the Raptors and let them loose on me, I had no idea if I would survive, or die. God, I knew I was going to die, but I had to bullshit as much as I could until someone came for me. I wanted you to come for me so bad. Owen but you were so far away." She hung her head and sob.
"Hey, hey." He wrapped her arms around her. "It's going to be okay."
"When he told me about the eggs, he knew about them, I began to worry about how he knew, so I waited until you were asleep and ran the protocol. I was so scared. Natasha came and told me that we have over five spies. But she flipped them, now of them in my inner circle. But I was so scared."
"Who are they?" He asked her.
"No." Darcy pulled away and shook her head. "The less people who know the better."
"Okay, I trust. But Darcy, I need to you start telling me other things." He stated. "We're going to a family soon. A real one." He looked at her. He placed a hand on her head. "You're running a fever."
"I'm fine." She swatted his hand away.
He gave her an even stare. "Darcy, you're over worked, you need to take care of yourself. It's time to get some rest."
She sighed. "Fine." She looked away and then back at him. "Okay."
"First let's get you to Medical to get you checked out then home for some rest."
"You are the most over protective Raptor Husband."
He smiled and kissed her forehead. "I'm staking my claim." He reached over and closed the file she was working on. "Come on F.R.I.D.A.Y. will lock up tight for you and keep it locked until you're better."
"Yes Sir." The AI stated overhead.
"There. We're all set." He helped Darcy up and grabbed her bag with her clothes to put in the jeep later and walked her to medical for the meds.