Using the Iron Man suit, Tony headed back to the Tower to prepare for the arrival of the others. Throughout the meeting he had been steadily texting back and forth with Darcy, the two of them having decided to call an emergency meeting of the Sassy Sub Club (so he was the only one who called them that, Tony was determined that it would catch on eventually).
The ride back to the Tower was full of awkward. Natasha sat up front with Clint piloting, leaving Skye to sit in the back of the quinjet with Nikita, Captain America, and the Winter Soldier. Skye wasn't entirely sure what had gone down between Nikita and the Captain, but it was clear that she was royally pissed off at him.
Nikita had nothing to say as she boarded the quinjet, to anyone. She kept as much space between herself and Steve as possible. Her anger had burned itself out, leaving Nikita feeling empty and a little lost. For the first time since they bonded, the blankness of her affect accurately reflected the emotions he felt coming from her. That concerned Steve more than even her violent anger.
JARVIS' voice filled the Common Floor as they entered, "Miss Nikita, Miss Skye, and Mr. Barton - Sir has requested that you meet him in the penthouse."
Tony greeted them as they exited the elevator to the penthouse, instructing JARVIS to enact the 'Sassy Sub Club Protocol'. "What? It's a thing," he declared as Clint raised an eyebrow and Skye giggled. Minutes later Darcy herded Bruce out of the elevator, both dressed in sleepwear, and Tony introduced them to Skye as they all settled into the siting area. "Certain Doms have been pissing some of us off, so I've made the executive decision that we could all use some time in a 'Dom-free zone'. They can all just deal without us for a while."
"And they're all just going to be fine with that?" Bruce asked with a sidelong glance at Nikita, clearly referring to Steve.
Tony's smile took on a shark-like quality as he answered, "My house, My rules."
Darcy coaxed Nikita into the bathroom where she showered while the other girl chattered away. Nikita stood under the spray, letting the water wash away the dried sweat and blood that she had been carrying for most of the day. Clint's target practice had helped Nikita begin the process of calming and centering. Darcy's chatter was a reassuring presence filling the room and helping to draw her the rest of the way out of her head and back to herself. After her shower Nikita dressed in the tee shirt and sleep pants Darcy had brought for her, listening as the other girl explained that this was basically going to be a sub slumber party, and they joined the others. While the two of them had been in the bathroom, Tony, Skye and Clint had also changed into sweats.
Darcy had made a massive batch of Clint's favorite spicy caramel bacon popcorn, baked tons of chocolate chip cookies and brownies and ordered every kind of snack she could think of. Darcy had vetoed Tony's plans to get everyone drunk, the last thing they needed was to potentially set Nikita off again. So instead she had ordered carafes of different flavors of gourmet cocoa and a selection of herbal teas (mostly for Bruce).
They snacked and watched guilty pleasure movies: Last Action Hero, Dark Star, Flash Gordon, Beastmaster, Tango & Cash, Snakes on a Plane (anyone else think that guy looks like Fury?). Darcy pulled out a case of different colors of nail polish which she and Skye enthusiastically used to paint each others' toenails. The two of them then cajoled the guys into allowing their toenails to be painted as well, Tony of course didn't take much convincing once Darcy pulled out red and gold Iron Man colors.
Eventually, relaxed with laughter and copious amounts of chocolate, the conversation turned to Doms. Tony was the first to share. "I took my first collar in college, at MIT. I was 15 and got invited to a frat party. Before that I'd gone to boarding school where Doms and subs were strictly segregated. So I went to this party and a couple of Doms started flirting with me. They kept mixing me drinks and got me pretty hammered. I don't really remember much after that until I woke up with one hell of a hangover in a strange Dom's dorm room. It was Rhodey. Turns out he had spotted one of the guys spiking my drink with something and came to my rescue. After that he looked out for me and I tutored him. He gave me a collar to keep unwanted Doms away from me, but we never had a thing. I wore it all through college and we've been best friends ever since."
"So when did you and Pepper bond?" Darcy asked.
"Funny story, she actually worked for me for years before we bonded. It wasn't until after Afghanistan, when I needed her help to connect the leads of the arc reactor in my chest. She was almost literally holding my heart in her hands when we bonded," Tony answered with a smile.
"I ran away," said Bruce. "I bonded with Natasha when The Other Guy attacked her on the helicarrier. We were both pretty freaked out. We started getting closer after we both moved into the Tower, but when things started to get more serious I ran. But I came back. She's the only one that can make The Other Guy calm down and feel safe enough to go to sleep."
Darcy talked about bonding with James. How she had never really been accepted or loved until Jane became her best friend, like the big sister she never had and how Thor was like the best big brother ever. She related how Thor had given Bucky the Asgardian's version of a 'shovel talk' when they first bonded. "No one had ever needed me before. I know Jane and Thor and you all care about me, but James needs me."
"Well I let my first Dom, Miles, sweet talk me into joining the Rising Tide and infiltrating SHIELD to get access to their files" Skye confided with a self-depricating laugh. "The moment we were caught and things got sticky, he folded. Then there was Ward. He used to be part of our team. I thought maybe I had finally found a decent Dom, someone I could trust. He turned out to be HYDRA. He tried to kill Fitz and Simmons, kidnapped me and tried to force me to decrypt all of our files for him. For some reason Ward is obsessed with me, says he's in love with me. He keeps trying to force me into a collar no matter how many times I say no."
Clint and Nikita were looking at her with expressions of complete understanding.
"It's not all bad though," Skye continued. "We've formed a weird dysfunctional sort of family out of all this. I've never had a family, grew up in foster care, but Coulson and May are like having a Mom and Dad. A really scary Mom and Dad, but they're both pretty awesome. They look out for us - me, Fitz, and Simmons. They really value us as people, not just our skills, and May is training me to fight. Speaking of which, can you show me those moves you used on Tyler?" Skye asked Nikita.
"What moves?" asked Darcy.
Tony had JARVIS cue up the footage of Nikita kicking Tyler's ass, the AI thoughtfully editing out her breakdown. Darcy decided that she really wanted to learn those moves as well, so Nikita spent the next little while teaching both girls the sequence. They practiced with her and Clint until they had the movements down well enough to practice on their own.
As they settled back down Clint decided to share a little as well, not about his current Dom and family. His collar had remained wrapped around his wrist since he left the Tower yesterday. He liked Skye well enough so far, but he didn't know her well enough to trust her with that information. Instead he talked a bit about the orphanage, running away to join the circus, and being trained by the Dom Trick Shot to be a master marksman. How Trick had Dominated him, using his sub nature against him, turning Clint into a weapon. Clint looked directly at Nikita as he related killing on the orders of a Dom who had trained him from childhood. He shared a few smiles with Skye as he related getting captured by Coulson, how the older Dom had convinced him to become one of the 'good guys'. How Coulson had never tried to Dominate him, but had instead helped him find a firm foundation to build something new, just like he was now doing for Skye.
Their honesty made Nikita want to share something of herself with them. "My father was a Bratva enforcer, like me. His boss betrayed him, killed him and took me and my mother. He was my first kill. Volkov offered me a collar, to teach me how to fight. I chose Volkov, I chose to be a killer."
"And now you choose to be one of the 'good guys'," said Darcy. The girl had somehow snuggled herself up next to Nikita and was painting her toenails.
"You know you have a choice with Captain Rogers as well," commented Skye. "Coulson would gladly take you to work for SHIELD if you wanted."
"You don't have to be with him to stay here either," Tony added. "I can set up your own apartment in the Tower."
"I don't know what I want," Nikita said with a sigh. "What's worse is I don't know what he wants."
"He doesn't need a killer or a fighter, he has those all around him," observed Darcy. "He woke up to find everyone and everything he knew dead and gone. He has us now, and he got Bucky back. But I still think he's lonely."
"To us he was frozen for 70 years, for him it was a day" added Clint. "The guy stepped off of one battlefield and directly onto another. He has all these people needing him to be Captain America or Captain Rogers. I think he wants someone who just needs him to be a man, to be just Steve."
After that the evening wound down. One by one they each fell asleep in the pile of pillows, cushions, and blankets that had been built up on the floor.
The naked girl started to slowly pick herself up off the cold concrete floor. As she began to walk painfully out of the room, something caught her attention. She stopped, her gaze riveted on the folding knife in the pocket of a pair of pants on the floor. The girl knelt down and picked up the knife. She unfolded it, the sharp edge gleaming in the low light of the basement. The girl placed the knife edge to her wrist, pressing but not yet slicing, blood starting to well up. The girl lifted the knife from her arm, and turned to look at the man passed out on the bed.
She tiptoed over to the bed, snagging a shirt off the floor as she went. She knelt beside the bed, pressed the wadded up shirt over his mouth with her left hand and sliced his throat with the knife in her right. His eyes flew open, he tried to gasp, but she pressed the shirt harder, using both hands. He tried to struggle, but was too weakened by alcohol and blood loss. It took 20 seconds for him to die and the girl watched every second as the life left his eyes. She used the knife to saw the head off, slicing and cutting until she was covered in gore. She pulled on her discarded clothing, slipping the head into a pillowcase. Then she headed up out of the basement.
Nikita woke clutching her chest as her heart pounded and struggled to catch her breath. She looked around the room, remembering where she was. At a small movement she glanced over to the corner to see Clint reclining in an armchair in the corner, keeping watch, a glimmer of light reflecting off his eyes. Next to her Darcy grabbed hold of her hand, her thumb rubbing small circles on the back of it. The room filled with the soft sounds of her friends breathing, relaxed in a tangle of limbs. Nikita slowly relaxed again, her last thought before drifting back to sleep was that she wished Steve was there to hold her.