#or at least stay mildly true to the norse one because

[elarawritingtrash]

Fandom: Avengers (MCU) Crossover with X-Men

Written in 2015

Summary: Darcy was normal, even through the entire thing with Thor and then the other thing with Thor, and -- well, just overall. She’d always been normal. That was, at least, until her boyfriend turned out to be a traitorous Hydra !@#$%^.

Warnings: none? Possible implied dubious consent

‘ware of tense changes, for I have always been bad at keeping one continuous sense

The thing about Darcy Lewis’ life is that she’s never really mattered. Oh, don’t get her wrong, she knows she’s awesome – but it doesn’t matter what she thinks, it matters what everybody else thinks.

When Darcy was born, it was not only as the third child, but as the unexpected, unwanted third child. Her parents, stereotypically enough, had wanted two children, a girl and a boy, and they had gotten those children. Darcy showed up a couple of years later as a complete accident.

It’s not like her parents were terrible people or anything – they didn’t abuse her or even neglect her – but there was a distinct… lack of care. Her parents would still read her bedtime stories, still help her with her homework – but her accomplishments received mild, faked enthusiasm and a condescending, “That’s nice, dear,” rather than the excitement that either of her siblings’ achievements got.

It didn’t help that Darcy was easily bored, not the greatest at concentrating on most things – causing her grades to be average rather than great – and painfully uninterested in sports in addition to being somewhat uncoordinated. 

(“Who wants to spend hours chasing a ball across a field or trying to hit a ball with a stick?” Darcy argued, but nobody else seemed to agree.)

Darcy’s sister became a soccer player, and a good one at that, and her brother became a trauma surgeon, while Darcy… well, Darcy had always been indecisive. First, she decided that Biochemistry was the field for her – you know, help people, create the cure for cancer or something equally world-changing, become famous. Yeah, no. Biochemistry did not turn out to be as cool as Darcy thought. So she switched majors (and that was a fun conversation to have with her parents), figuring that if she couldn’t change the world in a medical way, she might as well try Mechanical Engineering, which also had cool, world-changing options. Alas, it was also a bust, and Darcy switched yet again, this time to Journalism, but that turned out to have way more writing class and literature requirements than Darcy had the patience for. Finally, she switched to Political Science. It wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t what Darcy had pictured herself doing, and it had plenty of dry, soul-sucking history and politics classes, but it wasn’t horrible. It was the best she’d found so far.

(Also her parents had decided that they weren’t going to pay her tuition to Culver anymore if she switched majors again. But that totally didn’t have anything to do with it.)

But then, it turned out that Darcy needed physical science credits to graduate. She had discovered already that she didn’t like physical science much, which was why she’d dropped all of those classes before finishing them. It was too late for her to get into any classes or clubs or anything that would fill her physical science requirements – except an internship. The problem, then, was that no scientist ever would want a political scientist for an intern. Except Dr. Jane Foster, who had no other applicants and thus had about as much choice in the matter as Darcy herself – that is to say, none.

So to New Mexico with Dr. Foster it was. Surprisingly, the internship wasn’t as bad as she’d expected – she was as unimportant as ever, but she’d expected that. Since she knew literally nothing about astrophysics, Darcy mostly stuck to cleaning up after Jane (who didn’t seem to care about much if it didn’t pertain to her work, and who had not, in fact, so much as noticed when her intern began inappropriately calling her by her first name), organizing files, making sure that everything got recorded somewhere and nothing got lost, putting together and helping keep together Jane’s random-metal-pieces-and-duct-tape machines, and occasionally reminding Jane to take breaks for food and sleep.

Actually, Darcy wasn’t entirely sure what, exactly, Jane was so intent on doing all the time considering that she never seemed to get anywhere, but then astrophysics was supposed to be mostly theoretical, which did not seem to be what Jane was attempting. There was a reason nobody else had applied, after all, and Darcy didn’t really care as long as she finished out the internship with the six credits she’d been promised.

It turned out, eventually, that Jane wasn’t as crazy as everybody thought, and also Norse mythology was correct (ish) and Darcy met an actual, true fax god, and also was at ground-zero for an alien attack. Darcy was so not prepared for this! Six college credits did not even come close to being worth it. Of course, Darcy, as always, didn’t matter. Jane mattered, a little, because of her work and because she and Thor totally hit it off (in a romantic way), but even she didn’t really affect much.

Still, even with the danger and Darcy’s position on the sidelines, it was really cool. The coolest thing that had ever happened to her, probably – how many people could say that they were there for one of the first alien sightings? Well, not Darcy, actually, because Creepy-Government-Agency-of-the-Jackbooted-Thugs (CGAJT for short. It was a work in progress) was very clear in their instructions that nobody else know details about it, but whatever.

Plus, during Thor’s brief stay on Earth, Darcy had apparently been brought through Jane’s barrier of professionalism from ‘intern with whom Jane shares a tiny living space’ to ‘girl friend with whom Jane shares a living space and is good for gossiping with’. It turned out that besides the obvious problem (Jane’s polyamorous love affair with her work and Thor), Jane was actually a pretty good friend.

(Also, Darcy and Thor got along surprisingly well, though not to the same extent that Jane and Thor did. Darcy’s enthusiastic, shameless personality got along well with Thor’s cheerful, shameless personality. It didn’t hurt that she’d tased him, surprisingly; he actually thought that it was hilarious and impressive and dubbed her his ‘Lightning Sister’. Darcy would be lying if she said she wasn’t pleased.)

Both of those were why, after Darcy’s internship was over and she’d graduated from Culver, she went back to working for Jane – this time as an assistant, rather than an intern, albeit still an unpaid one. Jane was even worse than before, of course, because not only did she love her work, but she was desperate to get her boyfriend back from the far reaches of space (or wherever Asgard was). That was okay; Jane clearly needed someone to make sure she didn’t forget about herself in her obsession, and Darcy didn’t mind being the one to do that.

They got an intern, and between his actual ability to science! and Darcy’s nagging capabilities, they actually had Jane willingly (kind of) going on dates within two years. One thing that helped on the getting-Jane-to-date side but not so much on the Jane’s-emotional-health side was Thor’s appearance on Earth and coinciding decision to not contact Jane. Darcy loved Thor (in a completely platonic way), she did, but when he got back he was so getting yelled at. She loved Jane more.

Thor did show up again, brought by another disaster, but Darcy didn’t think that a lecture was the best idea considering the circumstances. You know, murderous, universe-destroying Dark Elves generally take precedence. This time, Darcy was useful! She helped save the world, like a boss, and it was awesome. Also nerve-wracking and mildly terrifying, but, still.

Except, she played a fairly small part in the saving of the world. All she really did was help set up the science! thingies with Ian. Jane was a lot more important, what with the whole parasitic, destructive thing that took up residence in her body, and Darcy was not jealous of Jane, she really wasn’t, and she was a little glad that she wasn’t important in that way, but she couldn’t help but wish she was important in some way. She firmly shoved that part of herself down, forced herself to be properly supportive of Jane and later happy for her, and got over it. Darcy became even closer bros with Thor (his nickname for her of ‘Lightning Sister’ had, at first, been a little weirdly familiar, but now Darcy was totally willing to consider him her brother. She certainly liked him a lot more than her biological brother), continued assisting Jane with science!, and started a tentative relationship-slash-friends-with-benefits thing with Ian (inspired by that one kiss that had been fueled by nerves, adrenaline and relief but which had actually been pretty good). Her life was good, in Darcy’s opinion, even if she was stuck sharing a tiny English ‘flat’ with Jane and Thor (which was way worse than just twice as bad), Jane still didn’t have the funding to pay her so she had no spending money but plenty of her parents’ disappointment, and she was still unimportant.

At least two of those things changed, though, when Tony finally wheedled Jane into agreeing to take funding from Stark Industries (included in the deal was two rooms/suites/apartments and a lab in Stark-now-Avengers Tower). Darcy was a little confused that Jane was bringing her with, since Jane now had the funding to hire assistants who could properly science! with her, but she was certainly not going to complain. She was also not above taking money she didn’t technically deserve and free housing that she didn’t have to share with Jane and Thor (even if she did have to admit that she and Ian were, in fact,  at the point where they could cohabit together).

Darcy was even happier than before, because her boss was awesome and her boyfriend was great and now-Avengers Tower was incredible. Plus, she got onto speaking terms with Tony Stark (!) and Bruce Banner (slightly less !, but he was pretty cool, too), and became BFFs with Clint Barton, also known as Hawkeye (!), through Say Yes to the Dress marathons and a prank war that Darcy lost, but not without dealing some good blows to him first. Natasha Romanoff was slightly harder to become friends with because she was absolutely terrifying and also didn’t spend as much time in the tower (Clint apparently hadn’t taken nearly as many missions lately as he usually did and Natasha still was, and Darcy was too afraid to ask why). Captain America she didn’t meet at all, supposedly because he was living in D.C instead of staying in the tower.

Jane was doing well, too, because she had her boyfriend back and a ton more funding than she’d ever had before, even if she still refused to use it to hire more assistants. Instead, she just forced Ian to work insane hours with her (Darcy didn’t technically have to, but she did anyway out of solidarity).

Really, considering their lives, it was a miracle that Darcy and Ian’s relationship was as smooth as it was. They only rarely fought, and Darcy had never been truly angry at him, not the kind of angry that would have made her even consider breaking up with him. Considering that most of their time (both together and in general) was spent working together, that was incredible.

But then, if Darcy was impressed with the ease of her own relationship, she was in awe of the perfection that was Jane and Thor’s. They were, like, the absolute dream couple personified; both of them had separate, time-consuming jobs so they didn’t get to spend a lot of time together, their relationship was occasionally long-distance, and they seemed to have nothing in common. Yet they had never fought to Darcy’s knowledge, and Darcy would know if they did because Jane would be heartbroken and mopey about it and Darcy was the only friend she had to weep about it to.

Still, even the dream couple deserved to have a couple of date nights, right? Right. That was why, on Ian’s suggestion, Darcy pestered the next time Thor would definitely have a free night on Midgard out of Tony (the very same day, it turned out) and nagged Jane, with Ian’s reassurance that he and Darcy could handle things for one night, into leaving the lab to go on a date with him (the phrase, “If you can spare the time to get dressed up and go on a date with Richard, you can do the same for Thor. You know, love of your life and all that jazz,” may have been included).

So Darcy hustled Jane up to the veritable apartment that she shared with Thor and stared her down until she got dressed and put makeup on. Finally, with Jane properly ready to go out on a date, Darcy had planned to drop her off to meet Thor in the lobby of the tower. Jane apparently did not agree with this plan. Jane gasped suddenly as they got in the elevator. “Wait! I forgot to collate the data from that last experiment!” She practically wailed, darting forward to press the button for her lab’s floor.

“Jarvis, can you ask Thor to meet us in Jane’s lab?” Darcy requested quietly with a sigh (so close!) as she watched Jane bounce impatiently on her toes, oblivious to Darcy’s conniving. Hopefully, Thor would get to the lab in time to prevent Jane from being able to resume working. Jane could never resist Thor in person. “It’s fine, Jane, Ian and I can do that,” Darcy reassured her somewhat hopelessly, raising her voice so that Jane had no chance to pretend she hadn’t heard. “You go enjoy a night with Thor.”

Jane shook her head firmly. “No, this is more important,” she declared, although she wilted guiltily as soon as the words had left her mouth.

Darcy continued trying in vain to convince Jane all the way down to the proper floor and into the lab, where they found Ian as he removed a USB from a computer. He shot Jane a startled look and then raised his eyebrows at Darcy questioningly, even as he moved to intercept her from getting deeper into the lab. Darcy knew he was perfect.

“Jane, Ian and I are perfectly capable of collating that data without you,” Darcy tried, more to explain it to Ian than actually convince Jane. “Don’t worry about it, go out with Thor.”

Ian positioned himself in front of Jane (even Jane on a mission wasn’t quite willing to sidestep one of her coworkers like that) and stared into her eyes earnestly. “Really, Dr. Foster, I’m sure that it’s nothing you need to do yourself. You can go have a night off while Darcy and I handle this,” he told her. Darcy really appreciated Ian sometimes; he was amazing at backing her up with very little context.

“No, I really – that data will only be there for so long before it’s overwritten, I should stay and help you guys with it,” Jane responded, pursing her lips doubtfully.

With perfect timing (because Darcy wasn’t sure how long she and Ian could have held Jane off), Thor appeared through the door. “Jane!” he called in his deep, deep voice. Yeah, Thor was Jane’s and Darcy would never contest that, but she could still appreciate him, okay? And there was a lot to appreciate tonight.

Thor was dressed in some semblance of modern Midgardian formal wear, though his coat was a little strange, and apparently he was really hot when he wasn’t wearing a hundred pounds of armor or a T-shirt and jeans (well, he was always hot, but he was looking particularly hot right then).

Darcy wasn’t the only one affected, either, because as soon as Jane turned towards him her jaw dropped and her eyes widened.  Thor grinned smugly as Jane’s appreciative gaze swept over him several times.

“Thor,” Jane responded a little breathlessly as Thor strode forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

As Thor began leading Jane towards the door, he nodded to Darcy and Ian. “You have my thanks, Lady Darcy, Intern Ian,” he said solemnly.

(Darcy had stopped referring to Ian as an intern, because honestly that was just awkward when they were sleeping together, but it had taken a while to break herself of the habit, so Thor had caught on. He was just as stubborn as Darcy and didn’t have the same reasons to stop, which meant that she couldn’t get him to. At this point, Darcy was pretty sure he was just doing it to mess with them.)

“Darcy, don’t forget to collate that data! From both machines, not just the one,” Jane called over her shoulder as Thor steered her through the door.

Then they were gone. Darcy let herself breathe a sigh of relief; now that Jane was out of the lab and with Thor, they were in the clear. “Jeez, I thought we’d never get her to go,” she said to Ian, who smiled back, looking just as relieved as Darcy felt.

“I know, it’s like she doesn’t care about anything else when there’s work to be done,” he responded.

“Right? You know what she said about collating this data?” Darcy paused, and Ian stared at her with the proper amount of expectance. “’This is more important’! Than Thor! Can you believe it?”

Ian shook his head. “No, I certainly cannot.”

Darcy got the feeling he was humoring her with that one, but she gave him a kiss anyway.

With that, they got to work collating the data Jane had been so frantic about (once they figured out what data and which two machines). After all, if they lost the data now, Jane would never go out on a date again.

It took barely twenty minutes, not even close to as long as Jane had apparently thought, and they finished with hours before the pertinent data would have been erased.

Darcy spun in her desk chair long enough to make herself dizzy. “Hey, what were you doing with that USB?” she asked belatedly, having forgotten it until then. Her momentum kept her spinning lazily as she pressed her eyes shut tightly and rubbed at her forehead.

“Hm? Oh, that.” Ian hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I was using it to download all of Jane’s data, which you so kindly recorded onto the computer, so that I could run away and bring it to my evil commanding officers,” he said, his voice commendably even to keep with the joke, and Darcy touched her feet down on the floor to stop her spinning while facing him.

Her mouth was open before her eyes were. “Ha ha, very –“ Then her eyes opened, and she took in the scene: Ian, his face stony and his eyes cold, and his hand tightly holding a gun pointed directly at her. Darcy stared wordlessly for a moment, because what do you say to that.

“I’m really sorry, Darcy,” Ian told her earnestly, seeming to really mean it. Darcy thought of his earnest attitude when trying to convince Jane, and didn’t believe it. “You’ve been great, really, it’s just… well, my employers are rather persuasive, and the mission matters more.”

Employers, Darcy thought. That was an interesting word. “Your employers, huh?” she said, half expecting her voice to break, but it held steady. Nothing felt quite real, yet, but Darcy could feel the encroaching edges of panic and hurt. “And who is that? Hydra? AIM?”

“Got it in one. I always knew you were smart, Darcy.” Ian let his fake expression fall. He moved over to the computer, plugging his USB back in and beginning the transfer. “I work for Hydra, and they sent me in undercover to get Dr. Foster’s findings. She really is a brilliant astrophysicist, isn’t she?”

Darcy couldn’t do this, couldn’t small talk with her boyfriend (ex-boyfriend, some part of her corrected hysterically) while he stole her best friend’s life’s work. “Why are you doing this?” she asked in a shout, and oh, there was the break in her voice. And where were the Avengers who were home? Jarvis should have sent them by now. Except no, they wouldn’t be coming, Darcy realized with a dawning sense of horror, because Jarvis wouldn’t be sending them because Jane had had Tony disconnect Jarvis from her lab before the last experiment, citing sensitivity reasons.

Ian, of course, would have known that just as well as Darcy. He must have planned it that way. It was that, above anything else, that for some reason brought it home to Darcy that this was Ian, her boyfriend, the intern she’d pestered Jane into getting, that was holding a gun on her and stealing Jane’s work.

“It’s the job,” Ian explained with a careless shrug. “That’s just how it is, Darcy.” How dare he. How dare he. Darcy was scared, yes – how could she not be when there was a gun being held on her – but she was angry, too. Furious. Because she’d liked Ian, really liked him, and he’d been using her the entire time. For Hydra. And now he thinks he can call her by her name as casually as ever? No.

“How dare you!” Darcy shrieked, and threw herself at him bodily, damn his fucking gun.

Ian clearly hadn’t expected that, as her tackle brought them both to the floor, his breath being knocked out of him as Darcy’s full weight landed on top of him. Darcy didn’t bother to move off of him, instead going for his eyes immediately (unfortunately, she’d left her bag, which had her taser in it, upstairs). Except, Darcy may have been a little… overeager, and before she could actually claw Ian’s eyes out, he recovered enough to defend his face with his left hand. His right hand, still holding his pistol, came around and backhanded her quicker than she could react, and she fell to the ground beside him. Her glasses skittered away.

Ian swung himself over her, rubbing at the tiny scratches around his eyes. “You little –“ he began, snarling. He was cut off as Darcy slammed both hands, clasped together, into his stomach as hard as she could.

Darcy tried to scramble out from underneath him, but Ian pinned her legs beneath one of his own and grasped her wrists in his left hand, slamming them to the ground above Darcy’s head.

“HOW COULD YOU I TRUSTED YOU JANE TRUSTED YOU, YOU BASTARD!” Darcy screamed at him, practically incoherent, as she thrashed under him. Ian was forced to release his gun to hold both of her hands, and he was clearly struggling to keep her pinned.

Good, Darcy thought viciously. If she couldn’t stop the traitorous bastard, at the very least she was going to cause him as much inconvenience as she could.

“Stop it, Darcy,” Ian snarled at her, calmer than she was but still clearly annoyed. “God, you always were an annoying shrew.”

That achieved the desired result, as Darcy stopped struggling for a moment in sheer, disbelieving fury. “What?”

Then she continued struggling, however, because she was going to get one good punch to his stupid, smug, traitorous face.

“LET GO OF ME YOU ASSHOLE I’LL CLAW YOUR EYES OUT TEAR YOUR STUPID NOSE OFF AND FEED IT TO YOU!”

Darcy really, really wanted her taser because nobody had ever deserved to be tased as much as Ian did. It would even be worth getting tased herself through the contact with him.

Ian grimaced at her. “Do you ever shut up? Even in bed you never shut up, not for a single second.” He leaned close, whispering conspiratorially, “You’re pretty hot, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad, but honestly, you were the worst lay I’ve ever had.”

Darcy screamed, long and wordless and enraged and kind of hurt. She couldn’t believe this. That would have pissed her off no matter who said it but it was Ian and she had thought they had something, he’d been her best boyfriend ever and he’d been faking it the entire time, and all that meant that it wasn’t just infuriating, it was insanely hurtful too and Darcy had been sure that her last breakup had been the worst it got but no, no, this was worse. Darcy hated Ian and she couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid – she’d had sex with this man, but she hadn’t even noticed that he wasn’t into it, much less that he’d secretly been working for Hydra. She’d thought, for a little, that she might be okay with marrying him.

Something pulled from deep inside her, painfully, and her scream became less emotional pain and more physical pain. Electricity arced across her skin and jumped in little bluish-white sparks onto Ian. Ian screamed, too.

Until he wasn’t screaming, anymore. It felt like an eternity of pain before the pain stopped, too, along with the electricity. Darcy was left feeling hollow, filled with nothing but a bone-deep exhaustion. She was so tired; she didn’t really want to move at all. But Ian (Ian’s body…?) had slumped down on top of her, which was really quite creepy, and she was having a hard time breathing.

So Darcy forced herself to move, wiggling her wrists out of his now lax grasp and squirming until she could shove him off her onto the floor. His hands had electrical burns on them, she noticed with a distant sense of bewildered horror. Reluctantly (she had to know, had to, but at the same time she really didn’t want to), she reached out to press her pointer and middle fingers to his neck.

No pulse.