Chapter Text
Darcy approached the cafe with her ear buds in, humming along to music only she could hear… had she been able to hear music and not the dulcet tones of her SO.
“He’s tucked up against the window,” Agent Sitwell said quietly in her left ear. “That’ll make it harder; you’ll have to hide what you’re doing from the people in the cafe as well as those on the patio and anyone passing randomly on the street on foot or in a vehicle.”
It was ten seventeen on a Wednesday morning. The traffic was minimal, the sidewalks were essentially empty, and the only other person on the patio was a middle-aged woman with a pittie at her feet begging for bits of whole grain foccatia smothered in goat cheese and olives. Darcy had once watched a dog devour a squashed frog three days dead on the driveway so in the over all scheme of things, foccatia, goat cheese, and olives was no big.
Her contact had his bright blue puffy coat unzipped, pretending, like most New Yorkers, that a warm, sunny March 19th with no ridges of frozen slush in sight meant it was spring. Under the coat, he wore a purple and blue argyll sweater vest over a yellow checked shirt, over brown corduroy trousers, and, although she couldn’t see them, she had no doubt he had neon sneakers on his feet. At some point, he’d clearly decided to adopt the Koothrappali fashion ethic in spite of the fact he was a chemist and Koothrappali was an astrophysicist. The Big Bang Theory had a lot to answer for.
He was drinking a coffee from a sixteen ounce mug and eating a gluten free, goji berry muffin. Darcy recognized the muffin – and the foccatia – from her two previous trips to the cafe where she’d choked back a gluten free ancia berry muffin and a whole grain, soy cheese pizza respectively, and had to be talked down from going over the counter to shoot the cook.
“Healthy food doesn’t have to taste like a Birkenstock,” she muttered behind the cover of her mug.
“That’s no reason to shoot the cook.”
“The coffee sucks.”
“Still not a reason.”
“He has a man bun.”
“I have a clear shot, Sitwell.”
“Barton, get off this channel. You are not a part of this op!”
Darcy wasn’t sure why she needed the cover of a sniper during the “who me? I’m no stranger suddenly appearing for an information drop, I eat here all the time” set-up nor, for that matter, was she happy about the reason for a sniper during a simple information drop. Logically, if SHIELD was sending in a junior agent, the information to be dropped wasn’t worth killing over. On the hand, logic often had surprisingly little to do with maintaining world security. Still, if she had to have a sniper, she’d have definitely preferred Clint. How did Agent Grant Ward shoot with that stick shoved so far up his ass? And speaking of Agent Ward…
“Agent Sitwell, sir, the woman approaching from the north is a suspected AIM enforcer.”
“Are you sure?”
“She has a… distinctive profile, sir.”
“Fuck me. Keep an eye on her, Ward. Carry on, Lewis. Let’s see what she does before we scrub.”
The inside of the cafe smelled of carob, chicory, and cumin. Approaching the counter, Darcy searched the display cases for anything that might be edible. Carob brownies were an affront to chocolate but looked like her best bet until she spotted the yogurt parfait, something Man-bun wouldn’t have had a hand in preparing. Spooned into a tall, fluted dish, it actually looked appetizing.
Sixteen ounce coffee – yes, it was terrible coffee but caffeinated was caffeinated – parfait, eye roll from the server, and a tray and she was ready to head outside and help keep the world safe from mad science. Who knew working for Jane would be so useful? Though, to be fair, while Jane was frequently cranky, she’d never crossed the line to mad. Tony was definitely straddling it and Bruce was one of the sanest people she’d ever met.
“Suspected AIM enforcer has crossed the road and has situated herself at a newspaper box giving her a direct line of sight to the patio.”
How did Ward make that sound pompous?
“Seems AIM is keeping an eye on Dr. Hurst.” Sitwell hummed to himself for a moment as Darcy delayed, loading her tray with unbleached napkins, and the last remaining plastic spoon. It looked as though it had been used and washed multiple times. She suspected regular clientele brought their own cutlery. At least her shots were up to date. Three cheers for SHIELD medical. “He might actually have something worthwhile to share this time. Think you can still cover the pick-up, Lewis? I don’t want either you or Dr. Hurst in danger.”
“Sir, if Agent Lewis is made...”
“Planning on being made, Lewis?”
Shifting the tray to her left hand, Darcy coughed twice into her right elbow.
“There you go then. Let’s do this.”
***
“...then asked him if he was going to use the rest of his honey, called him a selfish prick when he told me to go away, and switched the drives before I stomped back to my table.” Darcy dropped into her chair and winced at the number of accumulated emails.
“That seems a little anti-climatic,” Skye muttered sitting on the corner of Darcy’s desk.
“I know, right? You had visions of the parfait and the coffee going flying and mixing into a caffeinated and active bacteria puddle in his crotch, didn’t you?”
“Not in those exact words,” Skye admitted, “as I try to never think of active bacteria and crotch in the same sentence, but, yeah.”
“If it helps, the woman with the pittie gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up.” She frowned at the changes to Agent Coulson’s schedule. He’d delayed his meeting with R&D in order to meet with an Agent John Garrett, but it was going to have to be delayed again if Garrett stayed any longer.
Skye tapped the top of her monitor to get her attention. “Problem?”
It wasn’t like the boss to lose track of time, but things came up even for Agent Coulson. “Just the usual; not enough hours in the day.”
“So what happened with the enforcer?”
“She watched me drink my coffee and play Words With Friends.”
“You told me you hated the coffee.”
“This time, it tasted like triumph. The whole operation was a piece of gluten free, natural fats, high fibre, tastes like sawdust cake. I didn’t even have to get the girls out.”
Skye opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally settled on, “So you’re officially a field agent now?”
“No, she has field agent status, which she requires in order to work with the Avengers, but she isn’t an active field agent.”
Darcy sighed. She really hated it when agents ninjaed into her space. Okay sure, she didn’t actually have walls just a five foot high line of filing cabinets separating her from the cubicle farm of junior agents, but it was the principle of the thing. “Agent Ward. What brings you here?”
He smiled and she wondered how many of his perfect teeth were caps. The job – or more specifically fists and boots and the butt end of high caliber weapons – tended to knock things loose and field agents made frequent use of SHIELD’s excellent dental plan. And a little less use of SHIELD’s excellent mental health plan than warranted. “You need to be more concise during debriefing,” he said earnestly, as though he were helping her out.
Fortunately, Darcy recognized asshole when she saw it. He intended to shake her confidence, put her on the defensive. Please, she lived in the same building as Tony Stark who still occasionally called her Agent Boobs – but mostly just to piss off Steve. It’d take more than a tactless non-sequitur to put her off her game. She returned his smile. “You didn’t answer the question.”
After a long moment, while Darcy maintained her smile and it’s threat level, he shrugged. “I’m meeting Agent Garrett.”
Curiouser and curiouser. What were the odds that an agent who’d just provided cover for her field trial would be in her office waiting to meet with the agent who was in her boss’ office disrupting her boss’ schedule? The schedule she was behind on because of said field trial. There were no coincidences in the spy game and Ward looked like a player.
And speaking of being a player.
His smile softened and dimples appeared as he held out his hand toward Skye. “Grant Ward. You are…?”
“Skye.” She shot Darcy a quick look as she took his hand. Darcy shrugged. She knew nothing about the man. Yet.
“Just Skye? Like Cher or Madonna?”
“Or any number of people this millennium.”
“You’re an agent?”
“Tech support.”
He looked deep into her eyes. “Couldn’t do it without you guys.”
Her brows dipped in and she pulled her hand free. “You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Do you have enough clearance to be here?”
“Do you?”
“Level seven.” His tone straddled the line between statement of fact and humble brag.
Skye frowned, clearly doing the same math as Darcy. “So you were what, twelve when you started?”
Good question. Ward couldn’t be more than thirty. Although it was possible he looked younger than he was. In which case hitting on Skye, who was two years younger than Darcy, bordered on pre-Afghanistan-Tony-Stark levels of creepy.
Seemed Skye thought so too. “Well, this has been educational, but I gotta get back to the basement, see you later.”
“I’d love to.” He sounded besotted.
Darcy rolled her eyes. “She was talking to me, dude. She just met you.”
“I’d still like to see her later.” Ward leaned out around the row of filing cabinets that made up Darcy’s outer wall and watched Skye walk through the cubicle farm of junior agents.
In a just world, Clint would be in the vents and he’d put an arrow in Ward’s ass. Since he was in Vermont running a group of junior agents through an obstacle course Darcy’d heard described as the 8th level of Hell, it was up to her. “Hey, numbnuts! Stop looking at her a piece of meat.”
“I wasn’t...” He looked flustered. “I guess I was, but...” It was kind of adorable the way he stared down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. Even more adorable when he looked up at her, with his dark Bambi eyes. “Don’t tell her.”
If a man Ward’s age looked adorable, he was doing it on purpose. “Say please.”
“What?”
“Say, please, don’t tell her. That way it sounds like you’re making a request instead of giving a command.” She spread her hands. “Flies. Honey. Vinegar.”
“I don’t...”
Whatever he didn’t got cut off by Coulson’s door opening and, just for a second, his whole expression changed. She hadn’t quite figured out why it looked familiar by the time it changed back to his usual frown or less usual slightly supercilious hint of a smile. She spun her chair to see the cause.
Darcy didn’t like Senior Agent John Garret on sight, with his fake good ol’ boy expression and his throwing off the boss’ schedule. When he opened his mouth, she liked him even less.
“Well, aren’t you a dangerous little thing.”
Just behind Garret’s left shoulder, the boss shook his head and she stopped reaching for her taser.
Having made his entirely taserable observation, Garret ignored her. “Phil, do you know my… Well, he’s not mine anymore is he? Long past the need for an SO.”
The possessive grip he had on Ward’s arm contradicted what he was saying as far as Darcy was concerned.
“Anyway, Agent Coulson this is Agent Grant Ward. Best scores in infiltration since Romanoff.”
Ward squared his shoulders and held out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“Agent Ward.” As the handshake ended he added, in the pleasantly mild tone that had smarter people running for cover, “My right hand is fine. The injury was on the left.”
“Of course.” Ward raised both of his. “I didn’t want to hurt… uh, disrupt healing.”
“Not a chance of that,” Garret said jovially. “Phil’s almost back to his old self, aren’t you, Phil?” As he raised his hand for a hearty back slap, and Darcy considered rolling her deck chair over his foot to stop him, the boss stepped neatly out of range to glance down at her monitor.
“I have a meeting to get to ten minutes ago, John, so...”
“Of course! Busy man. Fury’s one good eye. Glad you could spare the time to catch up, Phil. I’m sorry we lost touch.” To his credit, he did sound sorry. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“You should tell Agent Lewis about Tokyo in ninety-seven.”
“No, I shouldn’t.”
Garret’s laugh, like the rest of him, was just a little too. “Maybe not. That might not be a light you want her to see you in. I’ll be in New York for a while, so I’m going to work on that boring, old married fart thing you’ve got going, Phil. Let’s not be strangers.”
She heard fabric rustle as, behind her, Coulson spread his hands. “Let’s not.”
With a jaunty wave, Garret headed out into the cubicle farm. “Ward, come on.”
“Agents.” Ward nodded in their direction and hurried after Garret, falling into step just behind his left shoulder.
“Poop with knives,” Coulson said quietly.
“Boss?”
“Something AD Hill said once.”
“About Agent Garret?”
“About Agent Ward.”
Darcy made a non-committal sound, adding, “And yet, the best infiltration scores since Romanoff.”
“Thoughts Agent Lewis?”
“I’m curious about what Agent Garret was trying to sell you. Only salesmen and funeral directors use the name of the person they’re talking to that much. Also, the last time I heard someone say come on in just that way, they were talking to a Doberman and that Doberman was able to go from goofy hound to rip-your-throat-out with a fingersnap.” Darcy’d loved that dog as much as she’d hated the shitheel who’d owned it.
Coulson was so perfectly still, so perfectly quiet, someone else might’ve turned to check he was still there. Darcy, however, was familiar with the myth of Orpheus and wasn’t falling for it. The boss had come back from the dead once, she wasn’t chancing a second go round.
“I need time to prep for the meeting on Turkestan. I want you to go to R&D in my place.”
Okay, they were changing the subject. “R&D wants you to look at a new weapon.”
“I want you to look at it for me. Record the presentation. Take notes. Put together a report.”
“You trust my judgement.”
“I trust your ability to put together a report.”
This time the silence extended for so long, Darcy couldn’t help herself. When she turned, the space behind her was empty and the boss’ door shut. “And then poof...” She kissed her gathered fingertips then threw them open. “...he’s gone. I’m working for Kazer Sozay. Which,” she said to the plush Hulk on the corner of her desk, “explains a lot.”
***
“...up the three steps at the end of the hall, turn right on the landing, and enter the second door to the left.”
“Thanks J-man. I couldn’t have found the place without you. Hope I didn’t take you away from anything important.
“It was my pleasure, Agent Lewis, and, as it happened, I had errands to run in the building.”
Darcy was under standing orders to report any incidents she might run across of Tony trying to hack into SHIELD. However no one had said anything about reporting Jarvis’ presence, just Tony’s, and while 99% of the people who knew about him thought Jarvis was merely a very intelligent system, Agent Coulson lived in the tower and knew better. Which lead her to think that while he might not have given explicit permission, the boss wasn’t exactly adverse to Jarvis poking around. The only question was why.
The second door to the left opened into a small lab set up for – Darcy swept a calculating gaze over the equipment – two people. Jane’s lab had been set up for the idiosyncrasies of a single person. So had Tony’s. And Bruce’s. This wasn’t. Given the equipment she could identify, one of them was an engineer and the other was…
Not an engineer.
“Who are you then?”
“Fitz! I’m sorry...” A slender, dark-haired scientist with the cutest accent Darcy’d ever heard, moved past her curly haired companion, accent less cute more fuzzy, and crossed the lab. “...we don’t get many random visitors in here. Can I help you?”
“Agent Coulson got caught up saving the world so he sent me. I’m Darcy Lewis, Agent Lewis, his PA.”
“Jemma Simmons. Oh, um, Doctor Simmons.” She pushed a strand of hair back off her face and half turned. “This is Leo Fitz.”
“Also doctor,” the young man added, settling onto a stool and rolling his eyes. “Do you have any idea why you’re here?”
“Existentially? Or specifically?”
He huffed out a disdainful breath. “Specifically.”
Darcy flipped up a finger. “You’ve developed a new weapon.” A second finger. “Clearly innovative enough that you need a highly placed senior agent to sign off on it who’s open minded enough to approve putty arrows, wrist-mounted wire-free tasers, an extreme Frisbee, a giant green rage monster, and Tony Stark.” A third finger. “Or SHIELD in its finite and surprisingly conservative fiscal wisdom is going to cut your funding.” She folded the first and third finger down. “Did I miss anything?”
Both scientists stared at her, wide-eyed. Then Dr. Simmons snickered and Dr. Fitz burst into laughter.
“I’m sorry,” he said standing and walking over, hand out. “We had a bugger of a time getting on Agent Coulson’s schedule and I thought you were going to, you know, blow us off.”
He had a strong grip and a sweet smile. “Dr. Fitz...”
“Fitz. Just Fitz.”
“Jemma.”
Darcy turned to find Jemma also holding out her hand. Her fingers were warm and slightly dusted with powder as though she’d just pulled off a pair of latex gloves. “Darcy. And Agent Coulson had been looking forward to your demo for the last two days. Unfortunately, Agent Garrett...”
“John Garrett?”
“You know him?”
Jemma frowned. “Not exactly, but he came by yesterday.”
“Didn’t have a reason,” Fitz added, returning to his stool. “Just stood around and talked at us. Asked a bunch of stupid questions. He called it catching up with what the New York office was up to, I called it wasting our time. Jemma had to threaten him to get him to leave.”
“I didn’t threaten him!” Jemma protested, arms folded. “I merely asked if he’d been vaccinated against viral conjunctivitis.”
“While opening a petri dish,” Fitz pointed out grinning broadly.
“Pink eye? Is there a vaccine?” Darcy asked when Jemma nodded.
She smiled and reminded Darcy suddenly of Jane telling the pizza delivery guy that if he touched anything in the lab it would leave a DNA trace and the aliens would find him and probe him. “There’s no exclusive vaccine, although there are a few that offer protection against that family of viruses. Garrett didn’t know that though.” Still smiling, she rolled her eyes. “I very much doubt he even knew it was pink eye.”
“Point to me.”
They called the weapon the Night-Night gun.
“I named it,” Fitz told her grinning proudly. “We have prototypes of both a rifle and a pistol.”
Darcy cocked her head and studied the weapons. They were shiny. That was cool. “So they’re tranquilizer guns, right?”
“Well, yes,” Jemma began.
Fitz cut her off. Or intersected with what she was about to say, Darcy wasn’t sure which. “But it is to the tranquilizer gun what the Macbook Pro is to a Commodore 64.”
“I don’t what a Commodore 64 is.”
“You don’t… Never mind.” He raised the pistol. “Unlike tranquilizer guns, which use compressed air propulsion limiting even the rifles to a seventy-five to a hundred meter range at best, this has the range of the standard 9mm. The handgun holds eight dendrotoxin tranquilizer...”
“A class of presynaptic neurotoxins produced by mamba snakes that block particular subtypes of voltage-gated potassium channels in neurons,” Jemma interjected.
“….non-lethal bullets that break up under the subcutaneous tissue,” Fitz continued. “...and deliver a tiny amount of concentrated dendrotoxin, incapacitating the target long enough for them to be secured.”
“With no harmful side effects,” Jemma finished.
Fitz raised the handgun, aimed...
“Wait.” Unless under direct attack, shooting anything inside the building off of the range – where anything covered spitballs to APMs – meant form WP7 – the longest, most complex of the WP forms – and a possible disciplinary action. Darcy had a stack of WP7s partially filled out in her desk waiting for the next time Clint got bored. When the action seemed to be inevitable, the least she could do was expedite the paperwork. Realizing both scientists were waiting for her to continue she asked, “What are you going to shoot?”
“That block of ballistic gel.” Jemma pointed to a cube of translucent, flesh-toned rubber. “We have it wired to register force and depth of impact as well as amount and rate of dendrotoxin released.”
“You can’t tranquilize a block of gel.”
“Well, no but...”
“Have you tested it on an actual human person?”
“Our analysis,” Fitz began.
Jemma cut him off. “We couldn’t convince any of the junior agents to participate.”
“You don’t convince junior agents,” Darcy sighed. “You just shoot them. Is it safe?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Jemma told her. “We’ve run over a hundred...”
“One hundred and thirty-seven,” Fitz put in.
“...simulations.”
“Okay.” Darcy set her phone and her tablet on the edge of the stainless steel worktable. “So shoot me.”
“What?”
“You’ve run one hundred and thirty-seven simulations and I guarantee that Agent Coulson saw the data before he agreed to this meeting. Now he needs to know if it works in real life. Simulations don’t mean as much as one actual unconscious volunteer. So I volunteer.”
Fitz grinned. “For tribute?”
“He loves the books.” Jemma sighed and crossed her arms. “Thought Peta was miscast. Please, I’m begging you, don’t ask him about it.”
“I think you’d be more concerned about the total lack of chemistry, Jemma”
“And yet, I’m not.”
Darcy tuned out the well worn argument, shrugged out of her sweater, unbuttoned her cuffs, and unbuckled her belt.
“What are you doing?” Fitz had taken an apprehensive step back. That was so cute.
“If training with Natasha has taught me anything, it’s taught me that hitting the ground hurts a lot less in comfortable clothes.”
“You train with the Black Widow?” Jemma squeaked as Fitz stared, mouth open.
“Not so much with,” Darcy admitted, “as trained by. Which mostly involves having my ass handed to me. Which would be more embarrassing except I watched her take down Steve. Which was actually pretty hot. What?”
Fitz’s eyes were wide. “Steve.”
“Captain America,” Jemma expanded. “You’re that Darcy Lewis.”
“Do you think you could get us a look at his shield? It’s vibranium!”
Okay. That was a new reaction. “He’s pretty protective of it, but he might be willing to drop by.”
“That would be excellent.” Fitz pressed his clutched hands over his heart. “Truly excellent. When? No, that’s not important. Whenever he can, that would good. But if he could do it soon, that would be even better.”
“I suppose I can’t take tissue samples...” Jemma looked hopeful. Then crushed. Self-crushed, Darcy noted. “No, of course not. Never mind. Fitz.” She nodded toward the handgun. “I’m sure Agent Lewis has other things she’d like to get done this afternoon so, as she’ll be out for about twenty minutes, we should do this.” Smiling a little sadly, clearly still thinking of the tissue samples she couldn’t take, Jemma pushed an office chair toward Darcy. “No reason why you can’t be shot sitting down.”
“Should I take off my blouse?”
Fitz made an adorable choking sound.
Jemma rolled her eyes. “You’re fine. If we can’t shoot through fabric, we have a bigger problem than the unfortunate fact...” She raised her voice slightly. “...that my partner is a twelve year old boy.”
“Am not,” Fitz muttered. His back against the far wall, he raised the Night-Night Gun then lowered it again. “Is Captain America going to mad about this? Because I don’t think I want Captain America mad at me.”
Darcy thought about that for a moment as she got comfortable. “It was my idea,” she decided at last. “If he’s mad at anyone, he’ll be mad at me. And I can work around that.”
“Yeah, you’ll probably just have sex with him.” Fitz’s eyes widened and he clapped his hand over his mouth. “I said that out loud didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did,” Jemma sighed and stuck a pad to each of Darcy’s temples.
Blushing deeply, Fitz shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’re not wrong.” Darcy grinned and watched his blush deepen.
“Just so you know, the impact is going to hurt,” Jemma said, attaching one last pad to Darcy’s chest, just in under the open vee of her blouse.
“How much?”
“Bruising at the site. Possibly a sizable edema.”
“Captain America can kiss it better.” Darcy winked at Fitz.
Who buried his face in his hands. “Please stop. I really am sorry.”
“Will it hurt enough to get out of running an obstacle course next Tuesday? Clint promised mud. He seemed terrifyingly excited about it.”
“Probably not.”
“Damn.”
“All right, Fitz, she’s ready. You are ready?”
“I’m ready.” She glanced at the red dot on her upper arm and took a deep breath.
It felt like being punched by Natasha with a tack protruding between her fingers. Or by a cut-rate Wolverine. Darcy blinked as she slid forward, a sudden shift in gravity tipping her out of the chair. Oh... floor.
And that was her last thought for a while.