"So Fury said he hasn't heard from you. I'm surprised." Darcy's voice cut easily through the room, startling Clint enough that he almost fell from where he was hanging in the rafters from his knees. "I'm going to assume you either haven't had time to talk with him or decided you don't care why he sent me to you."
Glancing down, he offered her a touch of a scowl. "Are you following me?"
"Dude, does it look like I'm following you?" countered Darcy, gesturing to the tank top and sweat pants she was wearing. "I'm here to work out, same as you. It is a gym after all."
She strode through the room as she spoke, approaching the human-shaped floor-mounted punching dummy he and Natasha used to practice their hand-to-hand. Well, when they weren't using each other. Sometimes, he wondered if they had a problem given their relationship seemed to be based on beating the crap out of each other.
"It's also almost midnight," pointed out Clint with a scowl, resuming the crunches he'd been doing upside down. "Most people are asleep at midnight."
Darcy just shrugged. "Maybe I can't sleep."
"So you're gonna come work out?" challenged Clint. "That sounds like a load of bull."
"Nervous energy," explained Darcy as she executed a particularly nice series of roundhouse kicks to the side of the dummy. "Gotta work it out some how and that Xbox combat game wasn't doing it tonight."
Both of Clint's eyebrows rose as he dropped back to the rest position again. "You're the one who keeps playing Street Fighter in the middle of the night?"
"That'd be me," confirmed Darcy as she switched to moving through a series of punches and kicks. "You sound surprised."
"I've been trying to find that culprit for a week," growled Clint. "You keep beating my high scores. I thought it was Tony!"
Darcy scoffed, turning to look up at Clint. "Please, Tony sucks at that game. For all his mechanical brilliance, he can't figure out the exact configuration to execute the moves. I actually caught him fiddling with the kinect in an attempt to improve it's range."
"Sounds like Tony," agreed Clint with a scowl. "It can be buggy, though."
She shrugged and spun suddenly to unleash another series of kicks and punches to her target. "I don't have much trouble, but I've logged a lot of hours with that thing, too. There's not much to do in Norway, and going outside is kinda a bad idea."
"It's not that bad," argued Clint with a shrug.
"Then clearly you were in a different part of Norway, because the place we were averaged at -20 degrees Fahrenheit during the day," countered Darcy. "And I'm not exactly a trained super-spy who here."
"That part I won't argue," muttered Clint as he curled himself up to grab the bar over his head and slide his legs down so he was hanging upright again.
"Eh, wouldn't want to be," replied Darcy, to Clint's surprise. He hadn't thought she'd heard him. "Super-spydom isn't as cool as everyone makes it out to be. It's actually a lot of blood, broken bones, and nearly dying. I'll pass."
Clint dropped to the ground and spun to look at the woman who was still beating the crap out of her punching bag. "You've been talking to 'Tasha." He had to admit, he felt a little betrayed by that. Fury wanted her to be some kind of strange therapist to him, so why was she talking to his partner? Trying to weasel more information out about him?
"Phil, actually," corrected Darcy. "He used to tell me what he could about ops and even brought home some reports on occasion for me to read. With all classified information blacked out, of course. It didn't sound fun." She threw one last punch and turned to face him, cocking her hip slightly. "It's part of why I went into poly sci actually, the hope that maybe someday people like you, Agent Romanov, and Phil wouldn't have to do as much dirty work."
"That's a dream," snorted Clint. "People don't work like that; they're always out for blood."
"Not gonna disagree," stated Darcy with a shrug. "That's why I'm applying for law school. International law is probably the closest I can get to making a difference. Well, without just nuking the hell out of everything that is."
Clint shrugged. "The Council tried to do that during the whole 'Battle of New York' thing, but only targeted New York."
"According to Steve, Hydra tried to do something similar back during World War II targeting major cities," cited Darcy as she turned back to the upright punching bag. "Thank god the man has a martyr complex."
"Yeah, world would be a little different now if he didn't," agreed Clint, eyes watching as Darcy went through another series of exercises. "You know, you'll get better if you spar with someone."
Darcy landed one last roundhouse and turned to face Clint, one eyebrow cocked. "I know. You volunteering?"
He shrugged a little, glancing at the clock. "Shouldn't you get back to bed?"
"I'm not sleeping again tonight," dismissed Darcy, her flippant tone almost overshadowing a touch of fear that leaked into her voice. Almost. "You?"
"Figured I'd try to get a few hours," replied Clint, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Shrugging, she moved to the mat and took up a starting position. "Maybe another time then. Don't want to keep you from your beauty rest."
Clint stood there a moment longer, watching her go through a series of moves that he guessed were basic karate or self-defense mixed with something else. "So what, no questions this time?"
Darcy dropped her foot to the mat and pulled the other one up beside it, turning to face him. "Tonight's not good for me. Plus, you look like hell. And I'm willing to guess I'm not the only one suffering from nightmare-based insomnia tonight. Either way, it's not a good time to start discussing what essentially qualifies as mind rape."
"Well, when you put it that way," grumbled Clint with a bit of a wince. He hadn't exactly thought about what happened to him like that, but it was an apt description. Which made the whole thing worse in the end.
"It's pretty much the truth though," reminded Darcy, her voice going soft. "I know you don't want to hear that, but it's true. And here's the thing: something like that? It ends. And when it ends, it leaves scars behind burned deeper than any caused by a physical injury."
Sighing, her eyes dropped to the back wall of the room. "Mind control, emotional abuse, mental torture and abuse, they're all more damaging than physical abuse or force could ever be because the person who's suffering from it doesn't know if it's their fault or their abusers fault. If their actions reflect any kind of a deeper urge on their end or if it's all on the person who hurt them."
Looking at him again, she met his eyes pointedly. The sense that she was probing his mind came back full-force. "And perhaps worst of all: it's hard to fight back against, sometimes even impossible, because you don't always realize when it's happening until everything is done. Then, you don't know why any of it happened. Or if everything you did was your fault or your abusers."
She took a deep breath, looking away again. This time, her eyes fell on the punching bag she was using before. "It's a hard thing to over-come, especially when you can't trust yourself to actually be yourself and not someone else's doll." Her eyes rose to his once more, determined and filled with belief in him for one reason or another; the emotion almost managed to hide the pain, knowledge, and hint of memory which hovered at the edge. "It can be done, however, there's always a time and a place for it. And a night when you've suffered a nightmare related to your mind-control isn't it. Just, trust me on that."
Clint stared at her for a moment, actually taking the time to look at her rather than just see there was someone there. He'd known she was young and that she was originally Foster's intern (now apparently Pepper's from what Thor had told him). What he wasn't sure anyone knew was that she'd already aged beyond her years. Before there had been hints of it in her tone, little clues in her comments. Statements like 'I've never been in your exact position but I can understand' held more truth coming from her than most witness accounts and classified government reports. Then there was the fact that Phil had apparently paid special attention to her, in the non-perverted way from the sounds of it. And Fury, too. Having their attention meant there was something special about her. And her words just now- her description of the thoughts that had been running through his head since they'd taken Loki down- spoke volumes about her life. Her experience. Somehow, someone had fucked with her in a way similar to how Loki had fucked with him.
"So you don't want to talk about me tonight," summarized Clint, careful to maintain eye contact with her. "Then tell me about yourself."
For a moment, she looked torn between bolting and accepting his offer. If what she'd faced was anything like what he had though, he couldn't blame her. So far, she hadn't pressed him for any information; all she'd done was talk with him a bit here and there. It was different from how every shrink and head doc he'd seen so far had handled him. Again, it spoke to her having a similar experience.
"Quid pour quo," offered Darcy finally, crossing her arms over her stomach. "I'm here to help you, not burden you with my own story. But, if you'll feel more comfortable, I'll show you my scars if you show me your cuts and bruises."
It was Clint's turn to pause as he considered her words. He had to admit, even having just meet Darcy, she made him want to talk a little. Not tell her everything of course, but get some of it off his chest. Talk about some of the things he didn't think even Natasha could understand. Some of the weight that was constantly pressing on his chest. "When I say stop, we stop."
"When either of us says stop, we stop," corrected Darcy. "The pain doesn't disappear, it just eases with time."
"Deal," agreed Clint, offering his hand to her.
She eyed the appendage for a moment, like she wasn't sure she wanted to touch him or not. It was the same reluctance he'd seen others show when dealing with him and he almost withdrew his hand completely. Maybe she was more scared of him than he thought. Those concerns were obliterated a second later though, when her palm came into contact with his, fingers wrapping uncertainly around his hand as if she wasn't used to touching other people in any context. Even if she was afraid of him, even a little, she was willing to push through it and give him a chance. "Deal."
Clint nodded and withdrew his hand quickly. If she didn't want to touch him, he wasn't going to prolong the contact. "I'm going to assume you still don't want to start tonight."
"No," confirmed Darcy. "Tomorrow. If you want, we can start tomorrow."
His feet shuffled slightly as he shifted his weight, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. "What time do you want to meet?"
Darcy shrugged, tucking her hand back across her torso. "I'll come find you at some point ."
"No prearranged time?" asked Clint, brow furrowing. He knew she wasn't a therapist or shrink, but didn't she at least feel the need to schedule this stuff?
"No point," explained Darcy. "Prearranged times get people in the habit of thinking they can only talk about things or only need to talk about them during a set period of time. The reality is that the scars left from mind-control can effect anyone at any time and they need to feel comfortable with that fact. More importantly, they need to be comfortable talking with someone about what happened whenever they feel the need to talk. I'm not a shrink and I won't pretend I am one. I'm definitely not going to do things I know won't help."
Clint blinked at her for a moment, not sure what to make of her explanation. Then, he nodded slowly and grabbed his towel from where he'd thrown it earlier. "I guess I'll see you sometime tomorrow then."
"Today," corrected Darcy, glancing at the clock. "It's past midnight. But yeah, you'll see me eventually."
"Right," muttered Clint. "Night then."
"Night," replied Darcy, turning back to the mat and retaking the starting position from earlier. Clint took a moment longer to look at her before turning to exit the gym.
He couldn't believe he'd actually agreed to talk with her, but he would say this: if there was anyone who had a snowballs chance of understanding what he'd been through, it was the girl he'd just left practicing martial arts in the gym at 1:00 am. And if she could help fix his head, actually help him get it back on straight, it was maybe worth trying.
