Chapter Text
For Darcy Lewis, it was always kind of there. She was perpetually cold, but the feeling would subside for a few days on occasion. Even then, she would still feel a chill climbing up her spine.
Then, in 2011, the cold was cut in half. It felt like she’d woken up after living her life in a freezer… now she was just in a refrigerator. She’d tried mentioning it every now and then to friends and family, but they just said her body was naturally cold. It didn’t feel natural. It felt like she was being surrounded in ice, and it was fighting its way in. And then she was kind of sort of free.
Okay, not the best way of describing it. Still, it felt amazing! Even if she did occasionally have a bruise or two show up without explanation.
She was still in London when everything went wrong.
The first sign came when she and Ian were picking up Erik, and a sharp pain struck her chest, just below her heart. She knew she should have listened to what her body was telling her, but she had way more important things to deal with. Jane and Thor were off God-knows-where with some creepy alien thingy that gave Jane telekinesis. Yeah, a new bruise appearing was the least of her worries.
The real damage came just a few months after the battle against the Dark Elves. Aches and pains had filled her body for the past few days, but this was far worse. Her left shoulder was suddenly burning, and she lost the ability to hold on to her cereal. The bowl dropped from her hand, shattering on the floor as Darcy cried out in pain.
Thor was there supporting her before her knees could hit the floor, and she let out a sob as she leaned on him.
She looked over her damaged shoulder, and her eyes widened in a mix of shock and fear. She wasn’t at Jane’s mom’s house anymore; she was out in the open, hiding behind a car. A man in black aimed a gun at her, but before he could shoot, a figure in tan and blue swooped in.
Darcy threw her head to the right so she was facing forward again, and suddenly she was in the house again, lying on her bed. Four concerned faces leaned over her, and she whimpered in an attempt to hold back another scream. Her right hand was placed firmly over her left shoulder, and Jane was trying to pry it away so she could get a better look.
Thor intervened, pulling at Darcy’s wrist, and the brunette saw red. “I’ve been shot,” she whispered, barely able to speak from the pain.
“There’s nothing here,” Jane declared, and Darcy’s head whipped back to see where Jane had tugged her sweater down. The skin was pristine in comparison to what Darcy had just seen.
Bucky?
The voice echoed in Darcy’s head. “Who said that?” she whispered.
Who the hell is Bucky?
“Darce, no one said anything,” Jane insisted. “What’s going on? What’s happening?” She looked to Thor, hoping he would have an answer.
The Norse deity only shook his head as Ian left the room, muttering something about an ice pack. He’d been gone for all of two seconds when Team Science!™ heard his voice.
“Guys, you might want to come check this out!” he called back to Darcy’s room. “Captain America and Black Widow have been arrested!”
The three instantly headed into the living room, and even Darcy managed to stumble in. On TV, three people were handcuffed and being led into the back of a military van. The redhead was holding her wrists up to her left shoulder, blood covering that side of her.
“That’s it,” Darcy muttered. “That’s the place.”
Then, she cried out in pain and fell to the floor when Steve and Natasha were shoved in the van.
Darcy couldn’t stop shaking that night. Her mind was racing with one thought after another, each revolving around the people she’d seen during her… travels? No, that wasn’t the right way to put it.
She jerked up in bed, gasping for breath. Part of her saw her room, but part of her saw something else entirely: a poorly lit room. A lab? A military facility? Both? Everything was wrong, so wrong, so painful.
She screamed and threw her left arm out to the side.
Darcy froze and looked up at the sound of a gun. She didn’t say anything when four men walked inside. Fear struck her, but she still said nothing, even when the one in a suit spoke.
And suddenly the back of the man’s hand made contact with her cheek. She screamed in pain but slowly turned her head back anyway.
The man on the bridge… who was he?
“What bridge?”
Darcy was suddenly brought back to herself, and her eyes met Erik’s. “What?” she asked, quiet as a mouse. She still couldn’t bring herself to use her voice at its proper volume.
“You said something about a man on a bridge,” Erik explained. “What man? What bridge?”
It took her a moment to respond. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “It’s…” She sighed and shook her head. “If I tell you this, promise you won’t think I’m crazy.”
Erik let out a breath of a laugh. “I don’t think you could beat me if you tried,” he joked. “What’s the matter?”
“I was there when Captain America and Black Widow and that other guy were arrested,” Darcy claimed. “I-I mean, not the entire time, but when she got shot, the Black Widow, I felt it. And then all of a sudden, I was there. And there was a man about to shoot me but the Captain stopped him. And-and-and just now, I was there with the man in black who was attacking them… I don’t know where ‘there’ is, but I was there. Someone’s hurting—”
Darcy cut herself off with a scream, her hands going to her head.
“Hey! Hey! Darcy!” Erik called out to her. “Stay with me, Darce, stay with me.”
The brunette took in a few weak breaths, her body shaking as she calmed down. “They did something to him. He’s unconscious.”
Erik pursed his lips together for a moment, like he was deciding the fate of the word. Eventually, he opened his mouth. “Darcy, when I was little, my mother told me about some of her friends. They were all connected; they could read each other’s minds, feel what the others felt, and even project themselves for the others to see. They were called sensates, eight to each set. This might be what you’re experiencing.”
“Sensates?” Darcy parroted. “So people like Black Widow and that other guy, I’m in their head?”
“And they’re in yours,” Erik confirmed with a nod. “You can help each other from afar, and I think your abilities were trying to activate themselves.”
Darcy scoffed. “What skill could I have to offer?” she asked. “I’m not a superhero; I can’t kill someone with my pinky finger.”
“You’re smart,” Erik declared, cutting Darcy off before she could make any other self-deprecating comments. “You think either of them are going to need computers any time soon?”
In an instant, Darcy’s eyes lit up.