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Avengers - The One with the Less-Than-Heroics
Title: The One with the Less-Than-Heroics
Genre: Mostly Gen, Background Jane/Thor, Darcy & Jane Friendship
Rating: PG-13 for violence & language
Length: ~4,100 words
Warnings: Mugging, violence against women, language
Synopsis: Her quick assessment of the situation showed that in no way did it not suck.
Author's Notes: Written as a challenge to create a Darcy that is neither a woobie nor a Mary Sue-ish superhero, but rather just someone who got caught up in the whole mess that is the Avengers' universe.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Darcy's first coherent thought was an emphatic, "Ouch." Her second coherent thought involved far more profanity at a far greater volume and she gave in to that one.
Her body ached, her head throbbed, the familiar weight of her bag was gone from her shoulder, and she was currently laying in what smelled like an abandoned alleyway in New York City. She was never getting that smell out of her clothing. Given that she had been wearing her favorite sweater at the time? She was pissed.
Her third thought was to remember that she had been with Jane when this all went down. She looked around frantically for her friend/boss, vision blurry from more than just the loss of her glasses. She heard a grunt, followed by a familiar voice demanding, "I said give it back!" and sighed and tried to scramble to her feet.
Now Jane was known to be a bit of a scrap fighter, at least in her own mind if no one else's - when asked, she just strongly implied her undergrad years were filled with more than a single night of late night drinking gone wrong and Darcy herself had seen Jane get both into and out of various scrapes usually caused by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. That said, hustling for pool at a backwater bar in New Mexico where the bouncers knew you by name was far different than taking on muggers in the back alleys of New York.
Not that Darcy was at all surprised to find Jane doing just that one dumpster down from her current location.
She did a quick assessment of the situation as she approached and found that in no way did it not suck. There were three big guys, one little Jane, and a decidedly missing bag with its reassuring and odds-evening taser in it. The dumpster was overflowing with crap though and she was so going to need like a tetanus shot and more when she was done but the important thing was to get Jane and her the hell out of there in relatively one piece and then to both cancel their credit cards and talk Erik into buying them a lot of alcohol to make up for their shit of a night.
She grabbed something somewhat heavy and somewhat large and somewhat swung at the two guys caging Jane in and shouted, "Run!" Jane, of course, listened about as well as she always did and first tried to grab her bag back which completely undid any opening Darcy just provided.
Jane fought/dodged one while the other two now focused their attention on Darcy and, wow, did that suck. It took about a single try for one of the guys to get her makeshift weapon away and then the next thing she knew she was pressed up against a brick wall with some asshole's hand at her throat. She tried to knee him someplace sensitive and possibly life changing, but he simply shifted so his forearm was now pressed against her neck and his formerly free hand pressed against her tights-covered knee and she was going to bathe in hand sanitizer when all was said and done, she just knew it.
The guy got a knife from his friend and she was fairly certain Jane was in a similar situation on the other side of the alley from her right up until the guy with some truly horrible breath ordered, "Tell your friend to just hand over the purse and walk away."
She studied his face for a moment because she liked her nightmares nice and detailed, and then pretended that she simply couldn't talk with his arm like that, not that it truly was that much of a lie. He eased up slightly, all accommodating like, and Darcy took the chance to yell, "Somebody fucking help us!"
She heard Jane join in her single woman chorus and the alleyway echoed with their voices, or at least she thought it did for a moment before the only echo she heard was that of her head hitting the brick wall behind her. "Now, why did you have to go and do that? Now there's witnesses..." the guy whined, as in actually whined, but she took it to mean that, at the very least, someone from one of the neighboring streets had peered in at the goings on.
She was tempted to tell the idiot that there were already witnesses, what with Jane and her already seeing their faces, but bit off the words before they could form on her tongue and give them ideas like making sure said existing witnesses were not alive to give full descriptions and such. Instead, she focused on the hope that whatever other witnesses there were had a fricken phone amongst them and were actually fucking using it.
"We need to go!" one of the others yelled, and he sounded like the one nearest to Jane.
The guy holding her glared for a moment before reluctantly agreeing, "Grab the stuff and make sure they don't follow. Better yet, make sure they don't talk until we're long gone."
Darcy decided like hell that was going to happen and realized that maybe she wasn't thinking quite as clearly as she should as it was just stuff, really, just material things even if they were her material things and she really rather liked them. The guy still held her in a way that meant she really couldn't go in with a knee again, but only one hand was busy trying to pull his arm away so she wormed her other hand forward and grabbed on to what she hoped were not just his keys in his pocket and squeezed.
The resulting scream was incredibly satisfying. The resulting backhand not-so-much. He had let go of her though when she careened towards the ground and she took advantage of the fact by using every bit of Lewis Lung Power she had to shout, "Thor, get your intergalactic ass down here now!"
The guy who had held her was still down, but already grabbing for his dropped knife. The other guys looked like they were torn between helping him and cutting their losses and running off with the few prizes they had managed to win. The second guy tugged at the third guy and they both tugged at the first guy and tried to pull him to his feet. People were starting to gather at one end of the alley, no doubt finally hearing the ruckus and Darcy rather hoped someone had the place of mind to call the cops because, now that she thought about it, she didn't even remember if Thor was on the planet and she rather blamed her aching head for not reasoning that out earlier.
The guy who had held her managed to push at her again and her shoulder collided with the wall around the time she heard him growl something about finishing her and she heard his friend tell him it wasn't worth it and her vision was starting to go black around the edges when she heard a new voice agree that, really, no, it wasn't.
She really wanted to pass out but there were new noises that sounded suspiciously like the baddies getting their asses handed to them and that was something she would love to see if she could just focus her eyes enough to do so. She tried to push herself up, but what little she could see of the world tilted on its axis and her body rather vetoed the decision anyway and so she collapsed back into the muck and waited for someone to win and hopefully not be the assholes with the knife.
The noises stopped around the time she thought she just couldn't keep her eyes open for much longer and then there were new noises and hand that was no doubt trying to be gentle pressed against her face but, considering her face was likely a giant bruise at the point, or was going to be, it just really hurt instead. She was going to open her eyes, really she was, but found fingers prying one open instead, the dim light of the alley way too bright for her to handle just about now.
"Come on, Miss, try to stay with us," one of the new voices cajoled and she decided she was definitely seeing things because there was no way Captain Fucking America just stopped a mugging on her behalf.
She may have possibly said something along those lines as Captain Fucking America just looked all sheepish and grinned almost shyly but, most importantly, released her damn eyelid so she could try that whole consciousness thing in her own again. He turned his head to look at someone or something behind him and asked, "Do we have any names yet?"
There was movement a few feet away and a different voice replied, "Oh, I'm sure we can think of a few names for assholes who attack two unarmed women on the streets of New York at sundown.... Wait, were you taking the guys we hit or the women?"
"The women, Tony," came what sounded like a long suffering reply from the man before her. She was not going to call him Captain America, really she was not, because that would mean that any Tony with him was likely to be Tony Fucking Stark and that was too surreal for even her imagination right about now.
The Tony That Really Hopefully Was Not Stark muttered something about checking their bags, which she took to mean had been recovered and/or scattered across the alley, but yet another voice interrupted him to say, "Aw, shit. No need to check them unless you want to see just how unarmed they really were and, shit, this is really a bad night."
Darcy looked upwards and caught the eye of someone who looked vaguely familiar and pretty decently built from her Guys in Suits Stealing Her iPod days and he crouched down beside her and offered a winced, "Miss Lewis?" She tried to focus her eyes but that really wasn't happening right now and the guy seemed to get it and called to his cohorts, "There should be a pair of glasses laying around; try to see if they're in one piece?"
"What, are these like protégés of yours? Less-than-trained, less-than-super spies?" the one who so was not Tony Stark asked.
"No," the vaguely familiar guy replied as shook his head. Now it was his turn to call over his shoulder and he asked, "Nat, confirm?"
A distinctly female voice replied, "Confirmed, I have one Jane Foster over here, which means..."
"I have one Darcy Lewis over here," he finished for her. He winced, again, and then there was either some sort of superhero ESP thing going on or they were giving each other looks she didn't quite catch because built guy sighed heavily and explained, "Guys, meet Thor's girlfriend and Thor's girlfriend's best friend and why they hell were we not notified of their arrival and why they hell weren't they tracked?"
"If you mean the annoying stalker guys in boring suits, we lost them after the baggage claim," Darcy helpfully supplied. Knowing they were SHIELD-assigned made her question the quality of the organization as a whole, but she knew better than to say that out loud given that she was probably surrounded by their agents or some sort of super spy recording devices. She let her head loll against the brick instead because, yeah, full body sanitation was definitely in her future anyway. "Jane lied to Thor about what day she was coming so she could surprise him." She paused and considered and added, "Which means this is really technically all her fault."
"It is not!" came the expected reply from somewhere beyond the gathered grouping of world-renowned heroes.
"It totally is," Darcy insisted to the guy in front of her, careful to keep her voice quiet enough not to carry through the growing commotion around her. She tried to offer a smile to let him know she was kidding, but the movement really made her lip hurt and so she reached to touch it gingerly, not liking how puffy it felt not to mention the fact her fingers came away red with what she knew to be her own blood. "Ouch," she sighed, wondering what kind of contaminates she just put into her own body.
"Let's see if we can get you some ice for that," the guy that hopefully wasn't Captain America offered and rose to apparently go do just that. That was good, really, because she doubted anyone would say no to him. Before he left, he clapped the slightly familiar guy on the shoulder and said, "If you already know her, perhaps it's best you stay with her and keep her calm."
"What am I, a dog?" she grumbled, earning a grin for her troubles and a significant downgrade of her opinion of certain American icons. She narrowed her eyes at the man in front of her and tried to place him but really and truly could not. Never one for beating around the bush, she asked, "How do we supposedly know each other anyway?"
He offered his hand and explained, "Clint Barton. I was part of the New Mexico team when Thor first arrived."
She remembered less of him from then than she did of seeing the more recent reports of him and the various other Avengers on the news and snapped her fingers, finally placing him. "The one with the bow and arrows?"
"That'd be me," he agreed, easy and amiable and letting his hand fall back across his knee. The alley resonated with a crash and a burst of light and he jumped to his feet and pulled a weapon that she hadn't even known was there and it was really kind of cool in a hot kind of way and she would totally appreciate it more if she wasn't sitting in muck in a back alley of New York. "Damn it, Thor," he gripped soon enough, the gun slipping back into its hiding place as if it never existed in the first place.
"Hey, Big Guy!" Darcy greeted with a halfhearted wave in his general direction. She wasn't hurt that he didn't immediately check on her because he would have some serious explaining to do to Jane if he did, and instead listened to his familiar rumble as he demanded to know what happened and then the even more familiar tones of Jane's reply. This was, of course, followed by a chorus of voices trying to convince him not to off the baddies who were some place Darcy still did not know where but apparently corralled and under control.
One voice was louder than the others, or at least more insistent, and with the Barton guy out of the way Darcy could see Jane lift an arm out towards Thor who immediately stopped seeking blood vengeance or some such thing and wrapped her in an embrace instead.
With the help of her apparent minder, Darcy pulled herself to her feet because she knew what was coming and it was best to be prepared. Sure enough, Thor half-led and half-carried Jane over to her side and then it was bear hugs all around. She was filthy, Jane was filthy, and Thor was as pristine as ever and she resolutely did not cry, it was just that her eyes were itchy from all the crap and dust around her and she would swear to that even as she gripped onto Jane for dear life.
There was an argument over which was needed more: medical treatment, police statements, or food, and food and cleanliness won out because Thor was a firm believer that a full stomach was a happy stomach was a happy camper. A truncated report was given to the cops with a promise to be available for follow up questions, and they were ushered from the grime and out into the light. Tony Actual Stark advised them that he had requested their belongings moved from the hotel to "his place" which might have been that fancy tower she saw in the tabloids but she was too busy holding a giant wad of cloth-wrapped ice to her face and trying to figure out where her damn bag was because that was what started this whole thing in the first place and if she had to wait to get it from evidence lock-up she was going to be pissed. Plus possibly arrested for the taser because she wasn't positive about New York's laws. Or New Mexico's for that matter, but that hadn't stopped her before.
A redhead with a voice that matched what she heard earlier handed her her stuff with a knowing look and a barely heard, "You should upgrade. I can help if Stark doesn't do it himself," and finally, finally she felt like there was a chance of things going right again. She had her bag, she had her Jane, and she had her trusty taser - the rest could be sorted and possibly bitched about later.
There was talk of food from a place called Gino's, and also talk of how most of them had been headed there anyway when the attack occurred as it was within walking distance of where they were now. Apparently the place was legendary and didn't actually deliver but made an exception when Tony Fucking Stark requested it. More importantly, there was talk of soap and water and possibly something alcoholic once the soap and water were liberally applied.
The redhead showed her to a guest room to wash up that was roughly the size of her parents' entire house. She learned the woman's name was Natasha, which meant she had now met all of the Avengers save for one and there was something she never thought she'd be able to list on her resume. She probably would have been more impressed if she had been more coherent, or possibly not since few things beat out befriending and tasering an alien version of a Norse god. There was a vague promise of her clothing coming soon or at least something she should be able to fit into and then she was left alone in a bathroom bigger than her old dorm room and she closed the door behind her and took a moment to simply breathe.
She put her hands down on a marble counter that probably cost more than her first car and dared to look up and into the mirror that lined an entire wall of the room. Her vision was still less than stellar due to the fact that, when Captain Fricken America found her glasses they had been pretty much shattered, but she saw enough to make her want to wince. Her hair was a knotted mess, her sweater and skirt stained in a variety of colors and textures, and her tights shredded worse than what she used to wear during her brief punker/grunge stage a few years back. Her shoes were in one piece aside from needing a good scrubbing, but her face had definitely seen better days. Her bottom lip was split with her lipstick smeared across a cheek that was already red and swollen and her mascara had left black splotches under her eyes, highlighted by random specks of grime. There was a thin line along her hairline that was still debating whether or not it was going to bleed and she honestly didn't know if it was from her glasses, the asphalt, or the brick wall.
She thought of what had happened and knew it could be worse even though she knew she never wanted to go through it in the first place let alone to go through it again for a comparison of suckage. She thought of how at least she wasn't alone as Jane had been there as well and then she thought of how Jane was probably three rooms over having her hair washed by Thor if not already moved on to something more intimate and then she thought of how she was alone in a huge room with all the amenities except for a best friend.
Somehow that of all things set her off and she let herself sob ugly heaving sobs and truly and utterly destroy the last of her mascara and resisted the urge to find something heavy and tossable to smash into the damn mirror because she really could not stand to see herself in this state right about now. She tried to run her fingers through her hair to at least try to get something about herself in order, but found them tangled in the strands and caught on things she didn't even want to try to identify, which just set her off even more. She had moved on to wondering if she could text her parents to have them overnight her Mr. Fluffy from his spot on the shelf in the room they still kept for her when she heard the door snick open and it scared the shit out of her and she reached for the taser that was once again nowhere to be found and she was surrounded by nothing more lethal than a full bottle of shampoo with a follow up of conditioner.
And it was Jane. Wonderful, beautiful, sopping wet in a borrowed robe, Jane. And she whispered soothing words of everything being okay and how the bad guys got the snot beat out of them by Natasha and how Stark had a full bar and how someone named Bruce who may or may not have been a doctor and may or may not have been the guy that turned big and green on tv wanted to make sure she didn't need stitches and did she mention the full bar because it was totally calling both their names?
She pulled back and saw that Jane was just as blotchy from crying as she was and her hair wasn't even fully combed and she may need to wash again just from touching Darcy and she didn't even look like she minded in the least. "Thank you," she sniffed.
Jane just offered her a small smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear like her mom used to, which revealed skinned and bruised knuckles and told a bit of her side of the story. "Get washed up?" she suggested.
Darcy nodded and sighed, "Yeah, can't keep superheroes waiting," even though she really mainly just wanted to get the alley out of her hair.
"Screw the superheroes, I want food and booze and not necessarily in that order," Jane scoffed. She pushed Darcy towards the shower but notably did not leave. She hopped up to sit on the counter and dug a comb out of her pocket to start to work on her tangles and was simply there.
The knowledge that she wasn't alone went a long way, a lot farther than she wanted to admit to even herself, and Darcy reluctantly schlepped off to clean up. Jane kept up idle conversation the whole time, describing in detail what Natasha and the one called Clint did to the muggers and just how much she was going to burn the outfit she had been wearing, and Darcy let the words wash over her like the steaming hot water and debated not texting her parents after all.
And later, after food and shots of something both smooth and burning that made Dr. Bruce frown and fuss about head wounds and laying down in sheets with a thread count higher than she could currently calculate and some fancy computer system promising to keep watch for her and keeping the lights at a nice, brighter-than-abandoned-alleyway level, she thought that maybe, possibly, she could make it through the night on her own.
Around three when sleep still didn't come despite the vast amounts of alcohol in her system, she debated giving up and going back out to the open and shared area to see if anyone was around to watch bad tv with or even play some mind-numbing game or, hell, paint toenails - she really didn't care so long as it didn't involve visions of men with bad breath and knives. Instead, there was a knock on her door and Jane came in, spare pillow and blanket in hand. She climbed up onto the huge bed and flopped against the mattress and announced, "Thor promised to keep watch. Or possibly to vanquish our enemies. I didn't ask for details."
And with a chuckle that definitely wasn't a sob, and the knowledge that Jane wouldn't call her on it even if it was, Darcy finally drifted off to sleep.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Mostly Gen, Background Jane/Thor, Darcy & Jane Friendship
Rating: PG-13 for violence & language
Length: ~4,100 words
Warnings: Mugging, violence against women, language
Synopsis: Her quick assessment of the situation showed that in no way did it not suck.
Author's Notes: Written as a challenge to create a Darcy that is neither a woobie nor a Mary Sue-ish superhero, but rather just someone who got caught up in the whole mess that is the Avengers' universe.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Darcy's first coherent thought was an emphatic, "Ouch." Her second coherent thought involved far more profanity at a far greater volume and she gave in to that one.
Her body ached, her head throbbed, the familiar weight of her bag was gone from her shoulder, and she was currently laying in what smelled like an abandoned alleyway in New York City. She was never getting that smell out of her clothing. Given that she had been wearing her favorite sweater at the time? She was pissed.
Her third thought was to remember that she had been with Jane when this all went down. She looked around frantically for her friend/boss, vision blurry from more than just the loss of her glasses. She heard a grunt, followed by a familiar voice demanding, "I said give it back!" and sighed and tried to scramble to her feet.
Now Jane was known to be a bit of a scrap fighter, at least in her own mind if no one else's - when asked, she just strongly implied her undergrad years were filled with more than a single night of late night drinking gone wrong and Darcy herself had seen Jane get both into and out of various scrapes usually caused by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. That said, hustling for pool at a backwater bar in New Mexico where the bouncers knew you by name was far different than taking on muggers in the back alleys of New York.
Not that Darcy was at all surprised to find Jane doing just that one dumpster down from her current location.
She did a quick assessment of the situation as she approached and found that in no way did it not suck. There were three big guys, one little Jane, and a decidedly missing bag with its reassuring and odds-evening taser in it. The dumpster was overflowing with crap though and she was so going to need like a tetanus shot and more when she was done but the important thing was to get Jane and her the hell out of there in relatively one piece and then to both cancel their credit cards and talk Erik into buying them a lot of alcohol to make up for their shit of a night.
She grabbed something somewhat heavy and somewhat large and somewhat swung at the two guys caging Jane in and shouted, "Run!" Jane, of course, listened about as well as she always did and first tried to grab her bag back which completely undid any opening Darcy just provided.
Jane fought/dodged one while the other two now focused their attention on Darcy and, wow, did that suck. It took about a single try for one of the guys to get her makeshift weapon away and then the next thing she knew she was pressed up against a brick wall with some asshole's hand at her throat. She tried to knee him someplace sensitive and possibly life changing, but he simply shifted so his forearm was now pressed against her neck and his formerly free hand pressed against her tights-covered knee and she was going to bathe in hand sanitizer when all was said and done, she just knew it.
The guy got a knife from his friend and she was fairly certain Jane was in a similar situation on the other side of the alley from her right up until the guy with some truly horrible breath ordered, "Tell your friend to just hand over the purse and walk away."
She studied his face for a moment because she liked her nightmares nice and detailed, and then pretended that she simply couldn't talk with his arm like that, not that it truly was that much of a lie. He eased up slightly, all accommodating like, and Darcy took the chance to yell, "Somebody fucking help us!"
She heard Jane join in her single woman chorus and the alleyway echoed with their voices, or at least she thought it did for a moment before the only echo she heard was that of her head hitting the brick wall behind her. "Now, why did you have to go and do that? Now there's witnesses..." the guy whined, as in actually whined, but she took it to mean that, at the very least, someone from one of the neighboring streets had peered in at the goings on.
She was tempted to tell the idiot that there were already witnesses, what with Jane and her already seeing their faces, but bit off the words before they could form on her tongue and give them ideas like making sure said existing witnesses were not alive to give full descriptions and such. Instead, she focused on the hope that whatever other witnesses there were had a fricken phone amongst them and were actually fucking using it.
"We need to go!" one of the others yelled, and he sounded like the one nearest to Jane.
The guy holding her glared for a moment before reluctantly agreeing, "Grab the stuff and make sure they don't follow. Better yet, make sure they don't talk until we're long gone."
Darcy decided like hell that was going to happen and realized that maybe she wasn't thinking quite as clearly as she should as it was just stuff, really, just material things even if they were her material things and she really rather liked them. The guy still held her in a way that meant she really couldn't go in with a knee again, but only one hand was busy trying to pull his arm away so she wormed her other hand forward and grabbed on to what she hoped were not just his keys in his pocket and squeezed.
The resulting scream was incredibly satisfying. The resulting backhand not-so-much. He had let go of her though when she careened towards the ground and she took advantage of the fact by using every bit of Lewis Lung Power she had to shout, "Thor, get your intergalactic ass down here now!"
The guy who had held her was still down, but already grabbing for his dropped knife. The other guys looked like they were torn between helping him and cutting their losses and running off with the few prizes they had managed to win. The second guy tugged at the third guy and they both tugged at the first guy and tried to pull him to his feet. People were starting to gather at one end of the alley, no doubt finally hearing the ruckus and Darcy rather hoped someone had the place of mind to call the cops because, now that she thought about it, she didn't even remember if Thor was on the planet and she rather blamed her aching head for not reasoning that out earlier.
The guy who had held her managed to push at her again and her shoulder collided with the wall around the time she heard him growl something about finishing her and she heard his friend tell him it wasn't worth it and her vision was starting to go black around the edges when she heard a new voice agree that, really, no, it wasn't.
She really wanted to pass out but there were new noises that sounded suspiciously like the baddies getting their asses handed to them and that was something she would love to see if she could just focus her eyes enough to do so. She tried to push herself up, but what little she could see of the world tilted on its axis and her body rather vetoed the decision anyway and so she collapsed back into the muck and waited for someone to win and hopefully not be the assholes with the knife.
The noises stopped around the time she thought she just couldn't keep her eyes open for much longer and then there were new noises and hand that was no doubt trying to be gentle pressed against her face but, considering her face was likely a giant bruise at the point, or was going to be, it just really hurt instead. She was going to open her eyes, really she was, but found fingers prying one open instead, the dim light of the alley way too bright for her to handle just about now.
"Come on, Miss, try to stay with us," one of the new voices cajoled and she decided she was definitely seeing things because there was no way Captain Fucking America just stopped a mugging on her behalf.
She may have possibly said something along those lines as Captain Fucking America just looked all sheepish and grinned almost shyly but, most importantly, released her damn eyelid so she could try that whole consciousness thing in her own again. He turned his head to look at someone or something behind him and asked, "Do we have any names yet?"
There was movement a few feet away and a different voice replied, "Oh, I'm sure we can think of a few names for assholes who attack two unarmed women on the streets of New York at sundown.... Wait, were you taking the guys we hit or the women?"
"The women, Tony," came what sounded like a long suffering reply from the man before her. She was not going to call him Captain America, really she was not, because that would mean that any Tony with him was likely to be Tony Fucking Stark and that was too surreal for even her imagination right about now.
The Tony That Really Hopefully Was Not Stark muttered something about checking their bags, which she took to mean had been recovered and/or scattered across the alley, but yet another voice interrupted him to say, "Aw, shit. No need to check them unless you want to see just how unarmed they really were and, shit, this is really a bad night."
Darcy looked upwards and caught the eye of someone who looked vaguely familiar and pretty decently built from her Guys in Suits Stealing Her iPod days and he crouched down beside her and offered a winced, "Miss Lewis?" She tried to focus her eyes but that really wasn't happening right now and the guy seemed to get it and called to his cohorts, "There should be a pair of glasses laying around; try to see if they're in one piece?"
"What, are these like protégés of yours? Less-than-trained, less-than-super spies?" the one who so was not Tony Stark asked.
"No," the vaguely familiar guy replied as shook his head. Now it was his turn to call over his shoulder and he asked, "Nat, confirm?"
A distinctly female voice replied, "Confirmed, I have one Jane Foster over here, which means..."
"I have one Darcy Lewis over here," he finished for her. He winced, again, and then there was either some sort of superhero ESP thing going on or they were giving each other looks she didn't quite catch because built guy sighed heavily and explained, "Guys, meet Thor's girlfriend and Thor's girlfriend's best friend and why they hell were we not notified of their arrival and why they hell weren't they tracked?"
"If you mean the annoying stalker guys in boring suits, we lost them after the baggage claim," Darcy helpfully supplied. Knowing they were SHIELD-assigned made her question the quality of the organization as a whole, but she knew better than to say that out loud given that she was probably surrounded by their agents or some sort of super spy recording devices. She let her head loll against the brick instead because, yeah, full body sanitation was definitely in her future anyway. "Jane lied to Thor about what day she was coming so she could surprise him." She paused and considered and added, "Which means this is really technically all her fault."
"It is not!" came the expected reply from somewhere beyond the gathered grouping of world-renowned heroes.
"It totally is," Darcy insisted to the guy in front of her, careful to keep her voice quiet enough not to carry through the growing commotion around her. She tried to offer a smile to let him know she was kidding, but the movement really made her lip hurt and so she reached to touch it gingerly, not liking how puffy it felt not to mention the fact her fingers came away red with what she knew to be her own blood. "Ouch," she sighed, wondering what kind of contaminates she just put into her own body.
"Let's see if we can get you some ice for that," the guy that hopefully wasn't Captain America offered and rose to apparently go do just that. That was good, really, because she doubted anyone would say no to him. Before he left, he clapped the slightly familiar guy on the shoulder and said, "If you already know her, perhaps it's best you stay with her and keep her calm."
"What am I, a dog?" she grumbled, earning a grin for her troubles and a significant downgrade of her opinion of certain American icons. She narrowed her eyes at the man in front of her and tried to place him but really and truly could not. Never one for beating around the bush, she asked, "How do we supposedly know each other anyway?"
He offered his hand and explained, "Clint Barton. I was part of the New Mexico team when Thor first arrived."
She remembered less of him from then than she did of seeing the more recent reports of him and the various other Avengers on the news and snapped her fingers, finally placing him. "The one with the bow and arrows?"
"That'd be me," he agreed, easy and amiable and letting his hand fall back across his knee. The alley resonated with a crash and a burst of light and he jumped to his feet and pulled a weapon that she hadn't even known was there and it was really kind of cool in a hot kind of way and she would totally appreciate it more if she wasn't sitting in muck in a back alley of New York. "Damn it, Thor," he gripped soon enough, the gun slipping back into its hiding place as if it never existed in the first place.
"Hey, Big Guy!" Darcy greeted with a halfhearted wave in his general direction. She wasn't hurt that he didn't immediately check on her because he would have some serious explaining to do to Jane if he did, and instead listened to his familiar rumble as he demanded to know what happened and then the even more familiar tones of Jane's reply. This was, of course, followed by a chorus of voices trying to convince him not to off the baddies who were some place Darcy still did not know where but apparently corralled and under control.
One voice was louder than the others, or at least more insistent, and with the Barton guy out of the way Darcy could see Jane lift an arm out towards Thor who immediately stopped seeking blood vengeance or some such thing and wrapped her in an embrace instead.
With the help of her apparent minder, Darcy pulled herself to her feet because she knew what was coming and it was best to be prepared. Sure enough, Thor half-led and half-carried Jane over to her side and then it was bear hugs all around. She was filthy, Jane was filthy, and Thor was as pristine as ever and she resolutely did not cry, it was just that her eyes were itchy from all the crap and dust around her and she would swear to that even as she gripped onto Jane for dear life.
There was an argument over which was needed more: medical treatment, police statements, or food, and food and cleanliness won out because Thor was a firm believer that a full stomach was a happy stomach was a happy camper. A truncated report was given to the cops with a promise to be available for follow up questions, and they were ushered from the grime and out into the light. Tony Actual Stark advised them that he had requested their belongings moved from the hotel to "his place" which might have been that fancy tower she saw in the tabloids but she was too busy holding a giant wad of cloth-wrapped ice to her face and trying to figure out where her damn bag was because that was what started this whole thing in the first place and if she had to wait to get it from evidence lock-up she was going to be pissed. Plus possibly arrested for the taser because she wasn't positive about New York's laws. Or New Mexico's for that matter, but that hadn't stopped her before.
A redhead with a voice that matched what she heard earlier handed her her stuff with a knowing look and a barely heard, "You should upgrade. I can help if Stark doesn't do it himself," and finally, finally she felt like there was a chance of things going right again. She had her bag, she had her Jane, and she had her trusty taser - the rest could be sorted and possibly bitched about later.
There was talk of food from a place called Gino's, and also talk of how most of them had been headed there anyway when the attack occurred as it was within walking distance of where they were now. Apparently the place was legendary and didn't actually deliver but made an exception when Tony Fucking Stark requested it. More importantly, there was talk of soap and water and possibly something alcoholic once the soap and water were liberally applied.
The redhead showed her to a guest room to wash up that was roughly the size of her parents' entire house. She learned the woman's name was Natasha, which meant she had now met all of the Avengers save for one and there was something she never thought she'd be able to list on her resume. She probably would have been more impressed if she had been more coherent, or possibly not since few things beat out befriending and tasering an alien version of a Norse god. There was a vague promise of her clothing coming soon or at least something she should be able to fit into and then she was left alone in a bathroom bigger than her old dorm room and she closed the door behind her and took a moment to simply breathe.
She put her hands down on a marble counter that probably cost more than her first car and dared to look up and into the mirror that lined an entire wall of the room. Her vision was still less than stellar due to the fact that, when Captain Fricken America found her glasses they had been pretty much shattered, but she saw enough to make her want to wince. Her hair was a knotted mess, her sweater and skirt stained in a variety of colors and textures, and her tights shredded worse than what she used to wear during her brief punker/grunge stage a few years back. Her shoes were in one piece aside from needing a good scrubbing, but her face had definitely seen better days. Her bottom lip was split with her lipstick smeared across a cheek that was already red and swollen and her mascara had left black splotches under her eyes, highlighted by random specks of grime. There was a thin line along her hairline that was still debating whether or not it was going to bleed and she honestly didn't know if it was from her glasses, the asphalt, or the brick wall.
She thought of what had happened and knew it could be worse even though she knew she never wanted to go through it in the first place let alone to go through it again for a comparison of suckage. She thought of how at least she wasn't alone as Jane had been there as well and then she thought of how Jane was probably three rooms over having her hair washed by Thor if not already moved on to something more intimate and then she thought of how she was alone in a huge room with all the amenities except for a best friend.
Somehow that of all things set her off and she let herself sob ugly heaving sobs and truly and utterly destroy the last of her mascara and resisted the urge to find something heavy and tossable to smash into the damn mirror because she really could not stand to see herself in this state right about now. She tried to run her fingers through her hair to at least try to get something about herself in order, but found them tangled in the strands and caught on things she didn't even want to try to identify, which just set her off even more. She had moved on to wondering if she could text her parents to have them overnight her Mr. Fluffy from his spot on the shelf in the room they still kept for her when she heard the door snick open and it scared the shit out of her and she reached for the taser that was once again nowhere to be found and she was surrounded by nothing more lethal than a full bottle of shampoo with a follow up of conditioner.
And it was Jane. Wonderful, beautiful, sopping wet in a borrowed robe, Jane. And she whispered soothing words of everything being okay and how the bad guys got the snot beat out of them by Natasha and how Stark had a full bar and how someone named Bruce who may or may not have been a doctor and may or may not have been the guy that turned big and green on tv wanted to make sure she didn't need stitches and did she mention the full bar because it was totally calling both their names?
She pulled back and saw that Jane was just as blotchy from crying as she was and her hair wasn't even fully combed and she may need to wash again just from touching Darcy and she didn't even look like she minded in the least. "Thank you," she sniffed.
Jane just offered her a small smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear like her mom used to, which revealed skinned and bruised knuckles and told a bit of her side of the story. "Get washed up?" she suggested.
Darcy nodded and sighed, "Yeah, can't keep superheroes waiting," even though she really mainly just wanted to get the alley out of her hair.
"Screw the superheroes, I want food and booze and not necessarily in that order," Jane scoffed. She pushed Darcy towards the shower but notably did not leave. She hopped up to sit on the counter and dug a comb out of her pocket to start to work on her tangles and was simply there.
The knowledge that she wasn't alone went a long way, a lot farther than she wanted to admit to even herself, and Darcy reluctantly schlepped off to clean up. Jane kept up idle conversation the whole time, describing in detail what Natasha and the one called Clint did to the muggers and just how much she was going to burn the outfit she had been wearing, and Darcy let the words wash over her like the steaming hot water and debated not texting her parents after all.
And later, after food and shots of something both smooth and burning that made Dr. Bruce frown and fuss about head wounds and laying down in sheets with a thread count higher than she could currently calculate and some fancy computer system promising to keep watch for her and keeping the lights at a nice, brighter-than-abandoned-alleyway level, she thought that maybe, possibly, she could make it through the night on her own.
Around three when sleep still didn't come despite the vast amounts of alcohol in her system, she debated giving up and going back out to the open and shared area to see if anyone was around to watch bad tv with or even play some mind-numbing game or, hell, paint toenails - she really didn't care so long as it didn't involve visions of men with bad breath and knives. Instead, there was a knock on her door and Jane came in, spare pillow and blanket in hand. She climbed up onto the huge bed and flopped against the mattress and announced, "Thor promised to keep watch. Or possibly to vanquish our enemies. I didn't ask for details."
And with a chuckle that definitely wasn't a sob, and the knowledge that Jane wouldn't call her on it even if it was, Darcy finally drifted off to sleep.
End.
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