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Darcy was three quarters of the way through her fifth glass of eggnog when it occurred to her that she was maybe not supposed to be so approving of the bourbon lacing the drink. She was, after all, the official person in charge at this particular facility, may Thor help them. It wasn’t like she didn’t know who’d done it. Of the three conscious residents (besides herself, of course) of Fury’s Home for Sort-of-Reforming Bad Guys there was really only one option.
“Looks like you’re enjoying that eggnog, sweet cheeks.”
And that option was a pig.
“Not bad, Rumlow,” she chirped in his general direction before knocking back the rest of her glass. “Personally, I would have sprung for a little more high end than Jim Beam, but I guess dead-on-paper assholes such as yourself can’t really afford to have decent taste in whiskey.”
In the six months she’d been overseeing Fury’s little off-the-record halfway house project, Darcy had taken special care to learn exactly what would irritate her charges the most. So far, she’d determined that Brock Rumlow got his most growly when a.) someone reminded him that he was legally dead because of that whole Crossbones thing and technically speaking the massive public superhero fallout was his fault, b.) someone pointed out that he was incapable of earning any income and was, thus, a bit of a mooch, and c.) any time someone insinuated that he had the refined, gentlemanly taste of a desperate cockroach. She’d long perfected the art of throwing at least one item at him in every conversation, but managing to hit all three in a single sentence? She was going to be proud of that one until the day she died. Out of her periphery she watched as the vein on his forehead jumped to attention when he clenched his jaw.
“I could kill you in your sleep, Lewis.”
Darcy shrugged. Standard Brock reaction. “I figure one day you will. You should see the stuff I wear to bed just to throw you off your game when the time comes.”
Brock slid from her peripheral directly into her line of sight. Some of his anger lines had smoothed out as a smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. “Planning to seduce me to save your life are you?” He refilled her glass and handed it to her.
“I mean, if that’s what gets you hot,” she replied without missing a beat. “The t-rex costume I can sort of get, but if my collection of dead president masks are your kink you might ought to talk to somebody.” Give him any number of military catastrophes and Brock could roll with the punches, but Darcy’s particular brand of the ridiculous almost always threw him off. He hummed noncommittally and settled against the counter beside her, staring across the wide kitchen island and into the open living room.
When Jane and Thor split, Darcy hadn’t expected to end up out of a job. The astrophysicist was her best friend, but apparently that didn’t make for the best in continual working relationships. Jane had been offered a fellowship at an observatory in South America. Her “entourage” was not invited. Darcy had been planning on moving back in with her mom and moping about for a while working a shitty minimum wage gig until she figured out what she wanted to do, but when she’d gotten back to her mother’s house in the middle of the night Nick Fury had been waiting in the kitchen. He needed someone with her skill set (who knew that scientist wrangling and god tazing were sought after resume items?), and with perfect coincidental timing Darcy was in need of a job.
Sometimes she really wanted to call shenanigans on everyone who'd ever even dreamed of being a spy.
Without a lot of career prospects looming on the horizon, she'd accepted Fury's offer. She hadn't expected the job was managing a team of individuals who'd previously done their level best to murder heroes. Well, she was pretty sure the blue chick had tried to murder some sort of hero. She wasn't sure what heroes, but she also wasn't exactly sure exactly what Nebula was, so she’d just work on assumptions. Anyhow, for the first few months it had just been her, a mostly silent and always scowling Jack Rollins, Rumlow, and a fabulous pair of bracelets strapped to her wrists that generated a force field like taser any time they made an attempt to hurt her. Those early months had been filled with a lot of giggling and watching reruns of Supernanny (Coulson’s recommendation) while the former Hydra agents drooled on the cheap Target rugs. By the time Rumlow and Rollins had given in to their captivity, Nebula got dumped on their doorstep and the whole show began all over again.
They’d finally settled into a grudging rhythm and were even developing what might have been called friendship if she weren’t a glorified warden. Her charges had the run of the place so long as they didn’t try to leave. There was a state of the art gym for them to train in, nearly limitless access to information if they felt like studying, and Darcy cooked three square meals a day. The only catch? Well, they had no way to leave. All of their supplies were carried in by airdrop. The computer systems were basically impenetrable Stark Tech that worked on Darcy logic--which none of them could fathom even on their best days. There was no air transport, and while the STRIKE boys might have been able to tell where they were by the position of the stars outside, the prospect of trying to swim to land from the middle of international waters was a daunting thought.
“You never told us how you ended up with this gig,” Rumlow commented quietly. A quick glance told her that he’d calmed considerably, his focus on the chess game Rollins and Nebula were playing in the living room. Nebula, Darcy was fairly sure, might actually be able to survive to make landfall if she jumped into the right current, but she’d never tried. While the alien had expressed a fair amount of anger in her time with them, escape didn’t seem to cross her mind. Privately, Darcy suspected that she had nowhere left to go.
“Just lucky, I guess,” Darcy chirped back at him, swigging from her glass again.
“You know Fury’s just got you keeping an eye on us so he’s got an expendable death squad if everything goes tits up, right?”
An icy finger traced its way down Darcy’s spine. Fury had mentioned that he wanted a team that wouldn’t be beholden to the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., or any government. The term ‘wetwork’ had never been used, but she’d seen enough action movies to read between Captain Eyepatch’s bold lines. She didn’t respond, but she could feel that Rumlow understood she’d known.
“Then why bother with it all?” He swept a hand out to indicate the cozy scene before them. In the early days, the communal living areas of the base had been more sterile and impersonal than the coldest hospital. Darcy had set out to change that the moment she’d arrived. Now the place was so personal that it felt more like a communal home than a base, and she’d gone all out for the holidays. The cozy, mismatched chairs that Rollins and Nebula had settled into for their chess game were draped with themed blankets. An enormous Christmas tree stood in one corner covered in a mix of ornaments she’d ordered from Etsy and a series of salt dough and paper chains that she’d made herself. Stockings bearing each of their names and one blank one for the massive Asgardian still unconscious in their small infirmary were tacked over a fake mantle she’d bullied Rollins into helping her build. There was mistletoe over almost every archway in the place.
“Why go to all the trouble,” Rumlow continued, “of making us feel human when our only purpose is to kill and die?”
“Because nobody deserves to live like that,” Darcy admitted quietly. She pointed at the fridge, glass still clutched in her hand. Attached to its surface with an extremely eclectic collection of magnets were a series of Polaroids she’d taken of them all. In prominent display at the top of them all was a shot from the first day they’d all gotten along. “I keep those there for a reason, you know. You’re all human. Well, human and whatever the hell Nebula is, but the point is that you’re all redeemable. You’re all capable of living lives filled with laughter. You’re also all capable of doing some serious damage. Sounds like the perfect makings of heroes to me.”
“Heroes don’t kill. That’s a point that’s been made clear to me many times over.”
“Anti-heroes, then. They’re always more interesting in stories anyway.”
Rumlow snorted, knocking back the remains of his eggnog. “I don’t think it works like that, sweetheart.” She expected him to refill his glass--it seemed they were doing the ‘drinking and bonding’ thing, after all--but he merely set it on the island and reached past it for her camera. In the space of seconds he’d snapped her picture, the flash making spots dance before her eyes, and stepped backwards to the fridge, shaking the bit of film in his hand. “But if you want to give us reminders of humanity you really ought to be on the fridge, too.”
“Oh, no,” Darcy insisted, moving around the island after him. “That doesn’t go up anywhere until you let me see it. I refuse to let an ugly picture of me exist.”
“Not possible.” Smirking, he stretched the arm holding the picture high above his head. Rumlow wasn’t a tall man, but Darcy was downright tiny.
She hopped trying to reach it but fell--she hated herself for thinking the word-- short. “Trust me, it’s totally possible. My mother may or may not have an entire bank lockbox full of the ugly pictures she refused to let me destroy, but I’ll get them one day.”
“I meant that it’s not possible for you to look ugly.”
Darcy gaped at him. His smirk gentled into something that might have been described as a swoon-worthy smile. Then he slapped the picture on the fridge with a Power Rangers magnet, snaked one arm around her waist, and planted his lips over hers. He swept his tongue into her mouth, stroking it against her own in a delightfully teasing way. Somehow, her hand found its way to his chest and gripped the fabric of his shirt tightly. Her eyes slipped closed and she leaned closer. Maybe she could just let this happen and there wouldn’t be anything awkward about it…
“Get a room,” Rollins demanded from the other room. Darcy tried to throw herself back out of Rumlow’s--was he Brock now that he’d had his tongue in her mouth?--arms, but he held her close, turning instead to regard his partner. Rollins hadn’t even looked up from the chessboard.
“Are all humans this disgusting?” Nebula asked her opponent.
“You ain’t seen nothing of them being disgusting yet,” Rollins assured her.
Just as Darcy opened her mouth to protest, Brock pressed his lips against her cheek and she was blinded by the camera’s flash once again. “Oh, this is going to be a good one,” he laughed, finally stepping away from her and striding across the living room with the camera in one hand and the developing film in the other. He snapped a picture of Nebula and Rollins at their table on his way past, managing to capture them just as Rollins raised his middle finger in salute.
Sputtering, Darcy stomped after him. “YOU TOOK THAT PICTURE WHILE MY MOUTH WAS OPEN!” she screeched, breaking into a jog as Rumlow laughed his way down the hall. “Get back here!”
“Your mating rituals are strange,” Nebula commented, sliding one of her bishops across the board.
“It only gets weirder once they actually start mating.”