Chapter Text
“You do realize that if this works Apple is probably going to try to find a way to sue your ass, or worse.”
Darcy was twisted sideways, short legs dangling over the padded leather arm of the luxurious new office chair she and Jane had splurged on last month, though considering the fact that Jane had a weird aversion to any and all furniture and could almost always be found huddled on the floor somewhere, Darcy wasn’t sure why they bought it at all.
Of course, that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to use it.
“What’s worse?” Jane asked distantly, her voice floating up from a corner of their living room/makeshift office. Sliding one leg off of the armrest, Darcy used the tip of her toes to push against the cool tile floor and spun around to get a better view of her favorite lady friend genius.
Jane was sitting beneath the large, open window, knees folded in to her chest, scribbling away in a ratty notebook that was splayed open on her thighs. Soft morning light from the window fell on her like a spotlight, and her bronze hair glinted and glittered in it like a living thing. Jane’s lips were moving silently, whiskey colored eyes shocking in their alertness given the hour.
It was an early morning for them, or perhaps it was a very late night, seeing as neither of them had ever actually fallen asleep the night before.
Darcy took in all of these details and more as she sprawled lazily in her sunglasses, baggy jean shorts, and purple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt that she got out of the juniors section in Target (because Cowabunga, dude). Dark brows rose above the rim of her even darker glasses. “Worse would be attracting the attention of You-Know-Who.”
There was a slight pause in the scratching of Jane’s pencil. “Stark wouldn’t be interested in this.”
“Correction, Stark is interested in you.”
For the record, referring to Tony Stark by a name synonymous with the dark wizard, Voldemort, was Jane’s idea, not Darcy’s. The tiny woman had issues with Stark that Darcy didn’t quite understand but then again, Darcy had never met him and Jane had. Darcy was a loyal friend though and if Jane didn’t like the man, Darcy was more than happy to join in the man-hating club until he earned his way out of it.
Jane’s face puckered like she had taken a big bite of a lemon and the words wrenched from her lips as bitter as the yellow fruit, “I bet he’s never touched duct tape in his life.”
“Well,” Darcy drawled pushing her sunglasses further up the ridge of her nose with the tip of a finger, “certainly not the kind with cartoon pizzas printed on it.”
Jane’s pencil paused again, stuttering on the page. Her eyes flickered up for the first time since their conversation started and she looked as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice cold water on her.
“Pizza!” Jane gasped, blinking rapidly, “Darcy, you never told me how last night went!”
And here we go, Darcy sighed inwardly.
“You were working and I know this,” Darcy motioned to the hefty radio telescope and the chunky black plastic contraption of wires and metal next to it with a flap of her hand, “is important.”
Jane sat up straight, wincing out a soft, “I’m sorry.” She set down her notebook and pencil beside her and looked at Darcy with a clear and focused gaze. “So, what happened?”
Darcy stared at Jane for a long moment, suddenly sharply grateful for the natural barrier and protection the sunglasses she wore offered, and then very carefully let her head fall back to rest against the chair. Her shoulders lifted in a light shrug and all she could bring herself to say was, “Nothing.”
A beat of silence.
“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”
“I mean nothing happened.”
Jane’s expression darkened. “Did he stand you up?”
“Yep,” Darcy told her without hesitation, popping the ‘p’ obnoxiously. She tried her hardest to school her voice so it kept her impenetrable shield of okay-ness perfectly in place. No one ever liked getting stood up on a date but this one… this one stung more than it should have for reasons that Darcy wasn’t entirely ready to examine closer. When she spoke next, her voice was purposefully light, “But hey, his no-show meant more pizza for me. I even brought you home some, the disgusting kind you like with pineapple. It’s in the fridge.”
Jane frowned fiercely at her (which was odd, because normally pizza cheered her up, much like the turtles on Darcy’s t-shirt). Her friend didn’t say anything for a long time and then her gaze cast off to the side for a moment before flashing back to Darcy’s decisively.
“Let’s kill him.”
The funny thing about Jane was that while the woman couldn’t even bring herself to smoosh a bug, even the gross kind that deserved to be smooshed, she wouldn’t think twice before putting someone who hurt those she loved six feet under. It was adorable, really.
In a potential serial killer kind of way.
“I appreciate the notion, my Mad Scientist,” Darcy told her and scrunched her nose, “but he was trash anyway. We both know all too well that my luck with romance leaves much to be desired. I should have known not to play around with this whole online dating shit show.” Jane’s eyes narrowed dangerously and something about the look told Darcy that she would be wise to delete her profile on the dating app so Jane couldn’t find a way to access the asshole’s information and possibly hunt him down. Shaking her head, she swallowed and cleared her throat, “Let’s focus on the TeleThor.”
Jane sent her a look that said ‘You’re deflecting but I’ll allow it’ and picked her notebook back up with a delicate sniff. “I am not calling it that.”
“Well I am. It’s catchy and sounds almost like a dinosaur and we both know how much the Big Guy loves those.” It was true. Thor was a massive fan of the creatures and laughed with glee any time they appeared in any film they made him watch. Plus, she had already photoshopped a great logo for it that featured a T-Rex with Thor’s face.
“It’s corny.”
Darcy snorted and spun a full circle in her chair, eyes drifting to the ceiling, “Be thankful, Janie. It could have been ‘Talk To Aliens dot com’, but that was already copyrighted by some bastard down in Connecticut years ago who wanted to charge people so they could project fucking Craigslist ads into space. I mean, who does that?”
“A tiny mercy,” Jane muttered distractedly, brows that had been plucked to perfection pinched together in deep concentration. Darcy watched, like clockwork, the moment everything about the woman sharpened to a point; the tiny astrophysicist inhaled suddenly and stood in a flash, moving over to the table where the jumbled bits and pieces of the TeleThor lay. The frenzied look on her face was one that Darcy knew all too well, had seen it possess the woman on more than one occasion.
Jane had figured something out, or was close to an important breakthrough.
“Atta girl,” Darcy said quietly with a small, proud smile.
She watched her friend’s fingers reach for her gloves and the small soldering iron they had found at Walmart. Narrowing her eyes, Darcy grunted and gracelessly clamored out of the chair, snagging the fire extinguisher from the hall closet and carried it over, setting it down on the opposite end of the table with a heavy thunk. Just in case.
Jane didn’t even notice.
Thin wires spewed in disarray out of the back and sides of the chunky black device like an electrical water fountain with one thicker wire connecting it to the base of the radio telescope (which, by the way, was heavy as fuck). Jane sifted through the smaller wires furiously, searching for something specific and, not for the first time, Darcy found herself sincerely hoping this machine worked. Jane was not someone who often let her emotions get mixed into her work, she was clinical and clear headed when it came to all things science, but Darcy could see, clear as day, the strings of her friend’s heart reaching out to intertwine with the machine, willing it into being.
There was a time not too long ago that she might have teased Jane for spending weeks creating an intergalactic communication and translation device from scratch so that she could send and receive frequencies and messages with her deep space boyfriend wherever he was in the universe, but not now.
Not after New York was invaded.
Fucking again.
Three days ago a giant donut spaceship (Jane told her not to call it that but that’s exactly what it looked like) landed in New York City and the Avengers had answered. Thor had yet to make an appearance but both women knew that he was somehow involved in the fight, most likely off planet, because just as quickly as it arrived in all of its destructive glory (seriously, Darcy would hate to be an insurance agent in that city at this point), the ship and its occupants left. There was no great battle here on earth like there had been with Loki and for that, everyone was grateful.
Since aliens invasions were apparently going to be a thing these days, she and Jane tried to go about life the last three days as normally as possible having long understood at this point that there was literally nothing they could do. They were confident in the Avengers and their abilities, but underneath the surface, there was a reason why neither of them could sleep and why Jane spent nearly every waking moment working furiously on this project.
Maybe if they couldn’t play a part in physically saving the world (Destroyer and Dark Elves aside), then they could at least do something useful. Or at least Jane’s brain could.
Not much else would be as useful as a communication device with a range like the TeleThor would have.
Darcy had hunted down the skeletal remains of a small radio telescope from Jerry’s pawnshop on Washington and Lennox and haggled with him until he gave in to the price she was offering. Carrying it to her car and then into their small townhouse had been hell but the elation on Jane’s face was worth the physical exertion. The radio telescope wasn’t much to look at initially but once Jane got her hands on it, she reworked it from the inside out and specified it to fit her needs.
That was one of the many things that Darcy loved about Jane. After Thor’s initial visit to earth, after the Destroyer, after the Bifrost, after the Foster Theory became a reality and their lives irrevocably changed, Jane had all the opportunity in the world to become filthy rich and lecture anywhere and any place she wished.
Only she didn’t.
She wasn’t even tempted to, even though the money would be a nice addition, or at least take some of the worry and burden from their shoulders. Jane, however, was a different kind of breed and the way she put it (after a lot of vodka): she had started this journey making her own equipment from scratch and that’s how she was going to end it. She would be beholden to no one.
Privately, Darcy wondered if part of the reason was because Jane was frightened that a big alphabet government organization would show up on their doorstep and raid their apartment to steal all of her equipment again. SHIELD’s actions down in New Mexico have never been forgiven by either woman and most likely never would.
Fucking iPod thieves.
Small plumes of smoke wafted up from Jane’s workspace as she welded together intricate pieces of the TeleThor and Darcy knew it would be a while before her friend, or as Thor liked to say, sister of her heart, resurfaced. Yawning after a long, sleepless, and disappointing night she blinked slowly, her eyelashes feeling as though they each had tiny, individual weights on them, dragging her deeper into exhaustion.
Darcy hummed to herself and wrote a note to Jane on the whiteboard (the most effective way of communicating when Jane was in the zone) letting her know she was catching some z’s and to make sure she ate some of the pizza in the fridge before shuffling her way back to her bedroom.
Before drifting off, Darcy pulled out her phone and scrolled through the news briefly, scanning for anything about the Avengers. Seeing nothing noteworthy, she frowned and then opened the dating app she had tried and shut the door firmly on her profile, ignoring the stinging in her chest and the burning in her eyes as she did.
She woke with a jolt.
Air filled her lungs in a sudden rush, like breaking the surface from a deep water dive; her eyes shot open, heart in her throat. A hand loomed over her and Darcy flinched back, blinking at it.
“I did it,” Jane said, her voice shaking. Sleep riddled eyes followed the arm up to Jane’s ecstatic face and Darcy wondered why her friend’s eyes were red and her cheeks wet. Jane grinned and a small, wet laugh escaped her chest, “Get up, Darcy. It works.”
She turned and left after that, knowing the younger woman would follow. It took two seconds to register in her brain and then Darcy was a mass of flailing limbs as she hurriedly tried to escape the warmth of her bed. It was no easy thing. She had used her comforter to turn herself into a human burrito and regretted it now as her arms and legs were impossibly tangled. It took considerable effort and focus to free herself from the constraints, but once she did, she padded her way down the short hallway and into the open room in bare feet, hurriedly adjusting her boobs back into the proper confines of her bra as she did. Jane’s back was to her, hunched over the table, peering at the machine that reminded Darcy of the original cell phones, chunky and straight out of the nineties.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Jane was muttering, bouncing lightly from foot to foot, a tinge of frustration in the movement. Darcy approached her side as Jane took hold of the TeleThor and banged it twice on the table, a common sight in their home when something wasn’t working like it was supposed to.
What Darcy wasn’t expecting though was the crackling zap that surged out of the machine, lighting up Jane’s hand with spindly tendrils of glowing, white hot electricity.
“Shit!” Darcy yelped and nearly fell over trying to get away. Jane dropped the machine out of reflex and froze, her fingers stretched out wide and shaking, the tendons straining to escape her skin. Gasping, Darcy rushed back to her side in a panic. “Oh my god, Jane, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Jane wheezed out, staring at her recently electrocuted hand in wide-eyed shock. “I’m fine.”
Her voice didn’t sound fine.
Darcy watched as Jane flexed her hand and then closed it in a fist and pulled it to her chest. She did not miss the way that it shook. “Did that hurt?”
Jane shook her head and swallowed, like something was stuck in her throat. “No,” she said, weakly. Her eyes flicked to Darcy’s, mouth frowning, and then louder, “No.”
The machine made a strange crackling sound and both women took a cautious step back when a wire snapped loose from the side with another zap of electricity causing the entire contraption to pop up in the air and land back down on the table.
“Is it me,” Darcy started, staring down at the machine warily, “or is this project more zappy than usual?” When Jane said nothing, Darcy shook her head, eyes perfect circles. “I guess it really is the TeleThor.”
“I swear it was working earlier,” Jane told her, sounding more like herself, and then in a huff of frustration, she reached for the duct tape. “I just need to fix it.”
“I believe you,” Darcy assured her honestly, then her mouth twisted and she squinted at the machine before reaching out to stop the woman. “But eh, Janie, let’s switch from duct tape to electrical tape—just in case.”
As though it understood, the machine made another popping sound and Jane’s eyes flashed to it. They waited a moment and when nothing else happened, Jane deflated, shoulders slumped, and she nodded.
“Good idea.”
Darcy moved past the smaller woman and knelt down, digging in a plastic container they kept under the office desk. “If it does that again,” Darcy began, sifting through their supplies with a frown, “we should use the fire extinguisher.”
“No!” Jane shouted. “We can’t—that would ruin it. Believe it or not, it’s a delicate machine.”
“Yeah, delicate or not, I also don’t want my friend electrocuted for the sake of science—damnit,” Darcy sat back on her heels and grimaced, looking up at Jane. “Bad news, boss lady, looks like we’re all out of electrical tape. I’ll run to the store and get some,” Jane nodded absently, still staring at the TeleThor and clutching her hand to her chest. Darcy watched her and pursed her lips, “You should come with me.” The scientist’s eyes flashed to hers and Darcy gave her an encouraging grin. “Get some vitamin D, breathe the fresh air, caffeinate, might be a good idea to ground yourself to the earth and all that shit.”
Jane looked like she wanted to argue and stay but at the last moment, she dropped her chin to her chest and sighed, declaring, “For the caffeine.”
Darcy nodded happily. “A worthy cause.”
Boston had not been what Darcy expected. Initially when they moved to this city she had pictured cold stone statues and old libraries packed with yellowed historic documents; being a history buff, that thought alone was exciting. But she learned quickly that Boston was other things, too. There were parks where people went on picnics and houses with fenced in yards filled with trees and soft grass. It was vibrant and filled with color and in the spring there were flowers blooming everywhere. That was Darcy’s favorite thing about the city. Seeing life return even after the cold grip of winter; the air filled with hope.
She and Jane had forgone taking their car opting to get some exercise in and suck in as many lungful’s of fresh air as they could. The stop at the hardware store had been quick and easy, the walk to the coffee shop peaceful and sunny.
Starbucks wasn’t her favorite but it would do in a pinch. Glancing at the state of Jane, Darcy decided that this was definitely a pinch.
Inside there was a line as coffee addicts poured in for their lunchtime fix. The two women took their place in line and while they waited, Darcy pulled out her phone, briefly scrolling the news. She had an alert set for certain keywords or phrases, mostly relating to Thor or the Avengers. She frowned when, still, there was nothing. No sightings of Ironman, Captain America, or even the Hulk.
All of them were gone.
Something about it wasn’t—
“Darcy?” Jane called and her head snapped up, realizing with a flare of embarrassment that the barista was waiting for her order.
“Oh, um, venti vanilla sweet cream cold brew, please,” she pulled out her wallet but Jane, the sneaky bitch, was already paying for both. Darcy sent her a mock glare and the other woman rolled her eyes.
“You can get the next ones.”
“Deal,” Darcy agreed easily. It had always been like that for the two of them, taking turns paying for meals or drinks if they were together. They moved out of the way of other customers and Darcy nodded her chin to the empty space near the pick-up counter since all the tables were taken.
Leaning back against the wall, Darcy sighed, her muscles feeling oddly tight. Jane was biting a nail, eyes flitting off to the side. Darcy watched her.
“Everything okay, Janie?”
Jane’s pretty eyes flicked to hers and she opened her mouth to respond but at that moment a young man, not yet out of his teens, dropped a drink from behind the counter, splattering it everywhere. All heads in the place turned to the accident but Darcy had worked in the food industry before and she knew how embarrassing it was to drop something and have everyone stare at your clumsiness. She politely glanced away.
Until the screaming started.
Darcy whipped around, taking in the horrified, bone white face of the woman in her uniform and headset behind the counter. She was… she was staring right where the young man who dropped the drink had been… but he was nowhere to be seen.
Outside, the sky was clear and sunny but it cracked regardless with a deep, rolling thunder and something in that sound—a deep, soul-shaking dread—entered Darcy and turned her blood to ice.
“What the hell,” she said in an exhale.
“Darcy?”
The soft, deeply frightened tone of Jane’s voice caused Darcy to frantically turn around and face her friend; her friend who was staring at her hands and trembling violently, her friend who was both brilliant and kind and taught her so much about love, her friend whose eyes lifted to hers in abject terror, her friend whose mouth fell open in a silent scream and whose skin began to flake and crack like a thirsty desert until she disintegrated into nothing but ash.
She fucking disintegrated.
Jane.
JANE.
Darcy was frozen in shock and at the same time sinking, she was falling away from her body, her stomach twisting until it was violently ill. Everywhere around her, people started disappearing into thin air, their bodies becoming nothing but a thick, gray ash that coated the floor in a way that Darcy’s mind could not process. Everything locked down inside of her, except for clear, pulsing panic; Darcy couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, all she could do was run.
Bursting out of the door, she ran straight into someone—ran straight through someone—as they turned to ash and a desperate, gasping noise crawled out of Darcy’s throat, twin streaks of hot tears raced down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop. There was a second great and terrible rumble rippling through the sky and she felt the reverberation of it in her very bones, and there were cars colliding in screeches of tearing metal and exploding glass.
She ran faster.
Her two dollar flip-flops were not meant for this kind of fear induced sprint and by the time she reached the corner of Newton Street the band on her right sandal had torn itself completely from the sole. Barely pausing in her run, half tripping, she kicked off both flimsy shoes in quick, jerky movements and continued barefoot, feet slapping against the sidewalks and streets as she willed her legs to move.
Chest aching, a cry tore from her throat as the townhouse finally came into view. Darcy stumbled up the steps, skin slick with sweat, muscles shaking, her pulse jumping in her throat. She slammed bodily into the door, throwing it open, and she was sliding into her home, skidding across the tile floors.
Her heart stopped.
There, in the middle of their living room, stood Thor. He was massive and filling the space in the small townhome, looking for all the world like he wanted to speak but couldn’t, and Darcy just stared at him, shaking so hard that her teeth clicked together, panic swirling deep in her belly, a soft keening noise escaping her chest.
Thor swallowed and he looked scared and Darcy felt herself fall away.
“She’s gone,” her voice cracked, broken and raw and so very lost. Darcy’s eyes were red rimmed and bright and she shuffled a tiny step forward, body trembling. “She’s gone,” she said again and Thor stared at her as though she had struck him. Instantly, her fear twisted into rage. She moved swiftly, leaving bloody footprints in her wake, “Where were you, you asshole?” She shouted, “Where were you?! Jane is gone!”
Thor’s mouth opened and closed but he said nothing. That was when Darcy noticed the unshed tears in his eyes. Something in the god was breaking, or was already broken. But he was watching her, gaze flitting up and down, like he was frightened by what he saw. “Darcy… are you alright?”
She stared at him, not understanding his question. Of course she wasn’t fucking alright, Jane just disintegrated into ash.
He cautiously stepped closer and took her hand in his, lifting it up, and Darcy glanced down to see what he was looking at. Her skin was streaked with absolute filth. Her brows pulled low as she took in the state of her hands and arms and then looked down to her bare legs.
Where did all of this dirt come from?
“Darcy?” Thor called to her, worry clear in his tone, but his voice sounded like it was miles away from here she stood now.
And then she knew and cold nausea was climbing up her body.
Numb. Everything she was seemed to rush away from her head and she stared at her hands, feeling the blood drain from her face. She exhaled a very small, “Oh god.”
Ash.
She was covered in human ash.
Darcy’s legs gave out. Thor lurched forward, catching her before she could hit the ground, and she was tearing at her skin, trying to get it off of her but it wasn’t working. Thor held her and murmured something she couldn’t hear in that deep, comforting voice. Finally he simply picked her up, big hands under her arms, like a father would do to a very small child, “Come with me.”
Unable to object, he carried her to the bathroom and used his elbow to jab the light switch. Darcy flinched back from the sudden burst of brightness. He set her on the counter and moved to the shower, flinging back the shower curtain hard enough that he tore it loose from all of the rings except for one. He twisted the knobs until a warm spray exploded from the faucet. After that, he turned back to her and picked her up once more, bodily stepping into the shower and under the spray with her.
“Can you stand?” Thor asked, his voice very quiet, rivulets of water flowed down his short hair into his face, gathering at his jaw.
Darcy felt groggy and not wholly present, but she nodded anyway, her fingernails digging into the metal armor covering his arms as the water soaked her clothes and hair until they were heavy and plastered to her skin. Oh god, her skin. Thor carefully lowered her to her feet, but he waited a moment, keeping his hands on her to be sure she wouldn’t topple over. Satisfied when she stayed put, the God of Thunder himself began to very gently wash the traces of horror from her skin and clothes. His hands were careful and calloused at the same time, clinical and trembling, and a hot lump began to fill very quickly in the base of her throat. Thor blurred as her eyes filled with tears and when his gaze flicked up to hers and she saw the raw look he wore and the tears pouring freely down his face, Darcy began to sob.
She cried for a long time, the two of them fully clothed and squashed in her small shower, ash from her skin and blood from his flowing down the drain, and she didn’t have the heart to tell Thor that he was using Jane’s body wash on her, not her own.
But Jane was gone.
Her tears left her feeling raw, like she was ripped open. Eventually the water began to turn cool and she cried herself out. When he reached around her and turned off the shower, Darcy looked up at him, not realizing how she had been clinging to him the entire time.
“Thor,” she started, and then stopped, her face crumpling for a brief moment. Her eyes slid shut and she swallowed hard, “What happened?”
He was quiet for a long time and then he slid his hand behind her neck, cradling the back of her head, big fingers threading through her tangled, wet hair, and he pulled her forward as though he needed the contact, not just her.
“We lost,” was all Thor said. Her face was pressed against his chest and even through the armor she felt the rumble of his voice and the strangled breath he took in before exhaling, “We were never going to win."
Dark blood seeped down his body in hot, slick gushes. His chest had been nearly split in two and the pain was blinding; his lungs did not want to work. Hands gripped his flesh, bodies fluttering around the edges of his vision as he was laid on a medical bed. The scent of burnt flesh was strong and the skin on the side of his neck and face felt tight and everything in him burned.
He was on fire but there were no flames, no columns of smoke; Thanos burned nonetheless. His veins roared with the echoing fingerprints of power from the stones on his gauntlet and if he were a lesser being, he would have been destroyed by the very thing in which he used to bring salvation to the universe.
It was fitting, almost.
“My Lord,” a voice to his left was saying with quiet urgency and he eventually was able to flick his heavy gaze in that general direction. Something in him eased at the sight of Ebony Maw, his most trusted and fervent follower. “This wound is very grave but it will not kill you. It will mend, with time and medicine.”
“It’s done.”
Ebony Maw stared at Thanos for a long moment and there was a deeply sated sort of glee in his eyes. “Yes, it is. You were victorious, dare I say magnificent.”
Sucking in a wet, stringy sort of breath, Thanos gasped out, “Such cost.”
“But it’s worth it, no?” Ebony Maw reasoned gently and then his eyes flicked up above Thanos, to whoever stood behind him and he nodded once before glancing back down. He hesitated, “My Lord, what must be done about the Avengers? Some still remain and we know that they are… resourceful in spite of their human weakness.”
The room, despite the flurry of activity, fell silent, waiting, and then—
“If their shame does not kill them… then we will.”