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From Feb/March 2012:
Title: Howling down the moon (aka dinner and a movie)
Author: marcicat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4450
Note: Inspired by the ‘Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia’ challenge, though it doesn’t really fit the requirements. Loosely follows ‘Look to the sky for love,’ set in an Avengers movie-type universe that includes Bucky Barnes, plus the irresistible "extra" Avengers from Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
Title: Howling down the moon (aka dinner and a movie)
Author: marcicat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4450
Author’s Note: Inspired by the ‘Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia’ challenge, though it doesn’t really fit the requirements. Loosely follows ‘Look to the sky for love,’ set in an Avengers movie-type universe that includes Bucky Barnes.
***
There was surprisingly little downtime as a member of the Avengers Initiative, even when you were classified as “support staff.” Dr. Banner still showed up every day like clockwork, of course, to do — whatever it was he was doing out on their roof. He got mandatory breaks, though, unlike support staff, who mostly just got asked if they could stay late and show up early, with lunch as a hopeful luxury somewhere in the middle.
“You know, someday SHIELD may figure out that you don’t actually need a two hour meditation break every day to commune with the Hulk,” Darcy told him one afternoon. He gave her a conspiratorial smile (and also a sandwich, so it wasn’t like she was going to turn him in or anything).
“I don’t know,” he said. “Wouldn’t want me to go unexpectedly Hulking out, right?” Since about half the people within hearing distance took a step back when he said it, she figured he was probably right.
Barnes was almost as consistent a visitor (and she still had no idea how SHIELD was classifying him). As far as she could tell, he never went to the roof, but sometimes he brought Steve with him and they played cards in Jane’s office. Jane never used it herself, preferring to simply occupy the lab proper until it became hers by sheer association.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Darcy said one day, in that space when lunch was over but she still had a few minutes before she could technically get in trouble for not working. “This is a war question; is that cool?”
Steve looked uncomfortable, but Barnes rolled his eyes. “Spit it out, Lewis.”
“Right. So, Steve, you were out shilling for America, and you’d done, what — basic training?” Steve nodded, warily. “And then you ride to the rescue, against orders, and suddenly you’re in charge of a hand-picked team of international former POWs? I mean, I’m not saying you’re not awesome, because obviously you are, but aren’t there usually some intermediate steps in there?”
“Steve was the only one we would listen to,” Barnes said, and Steve gave his ‘aw, shucks’ look.
“They really couldn’t afford to turn away anyone willing to fight,” Steve offered, and that was that.
She stared at them. They stared back, like they really thought everything had been explained. “Yeah, I still don’t get it. Run that by me again, with more words this time.”
They exchanged a look. Steve did a complicated hand gesture plus eyebrow twitch that probably meant something like ‘if you want to tell her, it’s your funeral.’ Which was a little insulting, actually, but Steve got away with stuff like that all the time because no one wanted to make him feel bad.
“Those international former POWs? Were lab rats along with being forced labor,” Barnes said. “Put together the Red Skull’s obsession with power and his inability to read the fine print, and it turned out Steve here rescued a bunch of newly minted werewolves.”
“You’re not a werewolf, Bucky,” Steve said.
“Well. It depends on which branch of mythology you read.” It had the air of an argument that had been repeated many times.
Darcy beat back the part of her brain that was saying, ‘wait, werewolves are real?’ and tried not to look like she was judging anyone’s sanity. Norse gods, she reminded herself. Norse gods and Captain America and a green giant that was more punctual than at least half his teammates. It didn’t have to make sense to be true.
“Anyway, none of us would listen to anyone but Steve, and there was a war on…”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Steve finished, and Darcy wondered how many people were already saying that about the Avengers.
Since ‘can I see?’ seemed like an ill-advised question, she went with, “I never knew.” Equally inane, maybe, but hopefully less potential for insult.
“That’s revisionist history for you,” Barnes said.
“So — not a secret?” she asked.
“No,” Steve said. “Not exactly.”
Barnes added, “We were called the ‘Howling Commandos.’ Pretty much everybody knew.”
“Huh. That definitely wasn’t in any of the history books I read.” Then again, the Red Skull wasn’t exactly covered either.
There was an awkward silence, and then Barnes said — carefully, she thought, with a sidelong glance at Steve as he started — “You have to remember, everyone figured we were dead. Steve too, when he came to rescue us. Coming back the way we did? It was sort of an… inconvenient miracle.”
She realized he was answering her original question, in a roundabout sort of way. She looked back and forth between them; considered what they might not be saying. “You weren’t quite what they expected, were you?” she finally asked.
That got a laugh, at least, and they moved on.
***
It wasn’t like she wasn’t curious, though, so the next time she found herself hiking back to the labs with Barnes holding the lunch trays, she said, “So, the wolf thing. Still not a secret? Because it wasn’t in the memo we got about you.”
He looked mildly interested. “You got a memo about me? Can I read it?”
She shrugged. “Sure.” If SHIELD didn’t want it spread around, they would have marked it Classified, right? “It’s not exactly riveting stuff, though.”
“Chalk it up to morbid curiosity,” he said. “And no, not a secret, exactly. I just don’t, anymore.”
Darcy figured if he meant ‘can’t,’ he would have said so, so she repeated, “You just don’t. Do I get more than that? It’s not fun, it’s too fun, you forgot how to turn back, the robot arm messes up the transformation, you swore on the souls of your ancestors never to do it again? Anything? You could make something up, if you wanted.”
Barnes stared at her. “You have a vivid imagination.”
“You have no idea,” she told him, and then she counted stairs for a while to give him time to think. She figured sharing more of her theories might not be the best idea.
“I like being a wolf,” he said finally. “For a long time there were good reasons not to change, and then it was a habit. Now it’s just easier not to.”
She gave him a look that hopefully conveyed a full measure of ‘Barnes, that is bullshit and I am giving you a one-time pass because you’re a war hero and also carrying my lunch, but seriously — bullshit.’ “Right,” she said out loud. “Because that’s what you and Steve are known for; doing things the easy way.”
He didn’t tell her to drop it, and she didn’t let it go, exactly, but they made the rest of the trip in silence. He still followed her into the lab, and she remembered to pull up a copy of the memo for him to look at. It didn’t take long to read. “Huh. That was — short.”
Before she could come up with an answer, the alarm blared — once, just long enough for her to think ‘shit, I guess the memo was classified’ — then it abruptly shifted to birdsong. Then crickets, then silence. Probably not a good sign.
“Don’t you people ever take a vacation?”
Loki was standing in the center of the room. He crossed his arms and scowled at them. Barnes looked ready to spit nails, but he was suspiciously still — a spell, maybe?
Darcy sighed. “Hey Loki,” she said. If there was one thing you could bet on with Loki, it was that he tended to do things in the absolute most complicated way possible, which then led to a need for (often extensive) monologuing, so that the puny mortals could fully appreciate his evil genius. In other words, no need to rush on the rescue. Once he got talking, he liked a captive audience.
“Darcy Lewis,” Loki said formally. “You really should file a complaint about that alarm; it’s much too loud.” Then he grinned, all teeth. “And also, ineffective.”
Since this was SHIELD, of course there had been a memo about this sort of situation. She thought it was titled something along the lines of ‘Dos and Don’ts for Engaging a Supervillain.’ Mentally reviewing the rules, she said, “What are you doing here?” (She wasn’t entirely sure if that had been on the “do” or the “don’t” list; it seemed like a starting point, at least.)
“Villainy becomes tedious rather quickly, as it turns out,” Loki said. “I am merely trying to have a civilized conversation with my brother. This is — prep work, you might call it. Can’t have SHIELD bursting in on a family dinner; that would be far too disruptive. And since the Avengers have shown themselves to be far too willing to stick their noses into things that don’t concern them, I’ve decided to provide — a different set of objectives, for the time being.”
She ran that through her Loki-to-English dictionary and could only come up with one response. “I’m not an Avenger.” She pointed at Barnes. “Actually, I don’t think he is either, technically.”
“I do love technicalities, don’t you? As it turns out, I also need to steal something back from the lovely Dr. Foster. You two just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the story of your lives, isn’t it, for you mortals? Anyway, you’ll have much more fun with the Avengers than stuck here with SHIELD. Off you go.”
He waved his hand.
***
She was alone, but — and she checked twice, just to be sure — she was alive, fingers and toes and all five senses present and accounted for. It even looked like she was still in New York, albeit a New York that was silent, empty, and creepy. No people, no birds, no traffic lights. No traffic.
“Well, this sucks.” She said it quietly, since it didn’t seem to be a setting that encouraged volume.
Then again — in the distance, she heard the familiar sound of Hulk roaring. It sounded more like a ‘WTF is this I’m really pissed off’ roar than a ‘I’m being attacked by horrible silent zombies’ roar, so she mentally upgraded her chances of survival. If she wasn’t actually alone, her first priority should probably be to find the others.
Unfortunately, a personal inventory wasn’t encouraging: no coat, no phone, no way of knowing whether this was one of those fairy tale type realities where taking stuff from her surroundings would cause her to disappear / turn into a zombie / be bound to it forever. At least she was wearing comfortable shoes. She started walking. SHIELD headquarters seemed like a safe enough bet as a destination, right?
*It’s not a radio.*
Darcy stopped walking. That was a voice, in her head. A voice that wasn’t hers.
*It’s a direct-to-Steve psychic link; I can’t just send out a broadcast. No one else can hear me.*
Her SHIELD intro course hadn’t covered unexpected psychic communication in potentially hostile alternate realities. Still, it was common courtesy to let people know when you could overhear conversations they thought were private. (Unless the conversation was particularly interesting, which this one — so far, at least — wasn’t.)
*I can hear you,* she thought carefully.
*Hang on, did you catch that? Who’s there?*
The mental voice sounded clearer that time, like it was suddenly paying attention in her direction. *You first,* she sent back.
*Bucky Barnes. Your turn.* And now that she was listening for it, the voice did sound sort of familiar.
*This is Darcy Lewis.* Almost as an afterthought, she added, *Hey.*
*Hay is for horses; didn’t your mother ever tell you that? No, I was talking to Darcy.*
*What?* she thought.
*Hang on. Can anyone else hear me?*
There was silence, but she only seemed to be getting one side of the conversation anyway, so it was possible Bucky was being inundated by people all going ‘hey there’ in his head.
Or maybe not, since it didn’t take long for him to be back. *Ten-second summary: I can hear Steve and I can hear Darcy, and both of you can hear me but not each other. Kicking Loki where it hurts is now an item on my to-do list, and it’s probable that most or all of the Avengers are somewhere in this version of New York.*
She had already figured most of that out for herself, but probably the last thing the guy needed was her mental commentary on redundancy. *Suggestions?*
*We need to get everyone together, find out what they know. See if anyone can figure out how to get out of here.*
Without warning, Darcy was no longer alone on the street. “We need to get out of here,” Natasha said briskly, an odd echo of Bucky’s words in her head. “Now. Also, if you could try to think happy thoughts.”
Darcy thought, *Natasha just found me. Then she told me to think happy thoughts.*
There was silence for a few seconds, and she tried to keep up with Natasha’s rapid progress through a maze of back alleys that seemed to have come from nowhere. Then — *Really?*
Darcy would have rolled her eyes if she didn’t think it would make her lose her balance. They were headed towards jogging speed, and it would be embarrassing to trip over the pavement. (Plus, not exactly conducive to happy thoughts.) *She doesn’t seem like a kidder.*
*Steve just found Stark,* she heard back. *Wasp and Hank are with him. No word on the happy thoughts.*
*We’re sprinting now. No idea why. See you at SHIELD?* She was relatively certain that was where they were headed; things were starting to look familiar again.
It was surely a camera-worthy moment, when they turned the final corner and practically collided with Coulson, wielding a handgun with serious intent in their direction. Natasha put her hands up. Darcy — bent over and wheezing — left hers on her knees. This was so going to lead to higher mandatory gym time.
*Coulson’s here,* she thought vaguely in Bucky’s direction.
*I’m tracking Barton and the Hulk. Steve and the others are incoming.*
He must have figured out how to only think at one of them at a time, she realized. Then, *They’re here.*
***
Actually, Jan arrived first, in flight, with Steve a close second. Stark looked almost as wheezy as she felt — he must be skimping on the cardio too, or else he was working out in the suit. Hank brought up the rear, only slightly larger than usual. She wondered if there were any ants in this version of the city.
Coulson, naturally, didn’t look surprised. “You can’t go in there,” he said.
Darcy looked around as surreptitiously as she could. That wasn’t what anyone else was expecting to hear, right?
*You’re getting all this from Steve, right?* It would suck to be out of the loop, but she didn’t want to distract him with overlap.
*With commentary,* she got back. *He’s already planning new workout schedules. And contingency plans.*
To be fair, ‘demigod trickster sends you to an alternate dimension just to keep you out of his hair for a few hours’ probably hadn’t been high up on anyone’s list of potential threats. Then again, clearly it should have been.
“This place responds to our thoughts,” Natasha announced.
Coulson actually made a facial expression that resembled a tiny smile. “I noticed,” he said. “That’s why you can’t go in there.” It was possibly emphasized by an explosion from somewhere in the building. No one argued.
Stark pretended he was breathing normally long enough to say, “We need to get to Stark Tower.”
Coulson nodded. “Who else is here?”
“Bucky, Hawkeye, and Hulk that we know of,” Steve answered. “Bucky’ll track them and meet us at the Tower.”
There were more nods all around, like of course, that was a perfectly logical plan of action. *Steve makes everything sound so reasonable,* she thought at Bucky.
*It was like that in the war, too. He’d say things like ‘we’ll take six men, blow the facility, and be back by dawn.’ The hell of it was, it worked. I found them, by the way.*
It took her a second to realize he meant Clint and Hulk, but by then someone must have been getting good at the whole ‘responds to our thoughts’ thing, because everyone was suddenly there, with Stark Tower rising in front of them. “Whoa,” she said, because what else was there to say? She wasn’t sure whether to be reassured that the others looked as unsettled as she felt, or freaked out that the Avengers were freaking out.
“Inside,” Stark said. Even the Hulk fit through the giant doors with ease, and Darcy wondered if anyone was going to comment on the fact that instead of Hulk, Clint, and Bucky Barnes, they somehow had Hulk, Clint, and a huge wolf. (Apparently ‘I just don’t anymore’ didn’t apply to alternate realities.) “JARVIS, you there?” Stark asked.
“Indeed, Mr. Stark.”
“Excellent. Institute Stark Reality Check programs two through seven; seal all entrances and exits and see what you can do about interfacing with the SHIELD mainframe.”
There was a whirring sound that she figured was probably 99 percent superfluous, and then JARVIS said, “Reality scans complete.” (Seriously? They had those?) “Outside environs are in a state of flux; at present, occupants of your concurrent reality include Captain Rogers, the additional five members of the Avengers team, SHIELD Agent Coulson, support staff Ms. Lewis, and Mr. James Barnes.” There was a slight pause, and he added, “Highly improbable though that may seem.”
“Yes, thank you for that thought, JARVIS.” Stark turned back towards the group. “Congratulations, we’re all real. I did not see that coming, actually.”
“Can we talk about how Barnes is suddenly a wolf?” Jan asked.
Darcy, who had been edging towards Bucky and hoping no one would notice, stopped. Hulk stole the show, however, when he knelt down and announced, “HULK LIKES LARGE DOG.” Darcy blinked, but no, they were still there. Hulk was patting Bucky, who gave every appearance of enjoying himself immensely under the attention.
*Bucky?* she thought.
*Yeah? Little busy here.*
*I see that.*
Steve cleared his throat. “He does that, sometimes.”
It was possibly the worst explanation of anything, ever, except that they were all sort of used to taking things like that in stride. Clint’s fighting alien spaceships with a bow and arrows? Director Fury has a robot double? Stark built a machine on the roof for the sole purpose of taking off his clothes? Okay, sure. Someone turning into a wolf wasn’t even close to the outer realms of possibility.
“No, that makes sense,” Stark said. “Looks like some of those reports weren’t as cryptic as I thought.”
If someone had asked her to guess, Darcy would have identified the expression on his face as ‘actually, kinda wigged out right now,’ but it was hard to tell with Stark. “What do we do now?” she asked. (‘How do we get out of here?’ seemed to be the obvious question, and if no one else was going to ask it, she would.) “How do we get out of here?”
“We don’t,” said Coulson.
***
It turned out that when Coulson said ‘we don’t,’ what he meant was ‘It’s not impossible, but I get a little grouchy when I’ve been abducted away from my coffee machine and haven’t eaten any lunch.’ Once they’d worked their way through at least half the contents of the closest break room, he was back to a more normal level of doomsaying.
“SHIELD hypothesized that Loki must have access to a variety of self-constructed replicas of our most frequent battlegrounds —“
Stark cut him off. “You’re saying it’s magic. I hate —“
Coulson cut him off right back. “Yes, we’re all aware of your irrational prejudice towards the aspects of discovery you know nothing about. Since none of us are magic users, we’ll have to wait for SHIELD to open a portal.”
There was a loud sigh from the Hulk, and then Dr. Banner was back. He walked calmly to what looked like a coat closet and pulled out a backpack — from it emerged a t-shirt, then a sweatshirt, socks, and shoes. “That’s really convenient,” he said into the shocked silence.
Seeming to only then notice everyone was staring at him, he focused on Coulson. “I’ve studied magic. Thought it might come in handy with everything.” He waved his hand in a way that probably meant ‘turning into an unstoppable green rage monster, that sort of thing.’ “I’m not that good, but I could probably figure out how to send a message, at least. Let them know where we are.”
Coulson was unfazed, and it turned out there wasn’t much difference between ‘actually not confused’ and ‘pretending to be cool with it,’ because everyone else followed suit in a more or less convincing show of support.
“We should stick together,” Steve said. “We can set up a rotation for keeping watch. Is there anything we should know about the building security?”
“Other than the fact that right now we’re trusting my ego to manifest it at all? No, I think that’s pretty much it. And nobody should fall asleep, I’m guessing.” Someone laughed, but Darcy’s focus kept drifting back to Bucky as a wolf. (A seriously big wolf.)
*You should have seen us as a pack.* Wolf Bucky was considerably more sharing-oriented than he was as a human, and images flipped through her head like one of the old Viewmasters. Wolves racing through a forest, wolves tumbled together in a sleepy pile, really ferocious wolves leaping walls and shifting smoothly into equally deadly-looking soldiers…
*So you get to keep all your clothes and stuff,* she sent, thinking of Bruce (and the ridiculous amount of money he must have to spend on shoes). *Also, where was Steve?* She sent back the sleepy-pile-of-wolf-pack picture.
*We would have made a pretty useless fighting unit if we transformed naked all the time. Luckily, magic doesn’t have to follow the rules. And Steve was in the middle, obviously. It was cold, and he didn’t have the benefit of a fur coat.*
*You’re much more chatty this way, you know.*
*That whole lone wolf thing? Complete myth.*
Apparently. She followed along as they all headed back to the lobby (there were only just so many ways to simultaneously accomplish ‘someone should keep watch’ along with ‘we should all stick together’), and found herself being not-very-subtly herded towards Steve. “Let me guess,” she said as her elbow jostled his side. “He does that, sometimes?” Steve just shrugged, and gave her a sheepish look.
Dr. Banner — who was setting up a truly impressive array of dishware on the front desk — looked over as well. “Did you have your phone with you when you shifted?” he asked.
He was clearly addressing Bucky, who looked at Steve, then, somewhat incongruously, growled at Coulson. “Yes,” Steve said carefully. “We were —“ He paused, then added. “Told it was mandatory.”
“What?” Stark said indignantly. “Did Coulson tell you that? Phil, tell me SHIELD isn’t GPS-stalking national icons now.”
“Field agents are required to have access to a mode of communication any time they’re on call, which you would know if you didn’t regard rules as something to be ignored only when they weren’t being deliberately broken. As to the GPS chips, I assumed one of you would have already disabled them; you certainly wasted no time with your own personal phones.” Most of the Avengers looked vaguely guilty; Coulson offered the bland expression that was his personal version of ‘you shouldn’t have messed with me, because I know everything.’ “Also, SHIELD has no need to GPS-stalk anyone, not with Stark Industries’ considerably more detailed tracking compiling data 24 hours a day.”
“Tony!” Jan said.
“What? It’s purely for safety purposes,” Stark insisted. “It’s not like anyone looks at it!”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Steve said. “Bruce, do you need the phone?”
Dr. Banner shook his head. While everyone else had been distracted, he’d constructed a tower of dishes and gotten a flame going in the topmost mug. “No, it’s perfect where it is. It’s here-and-not-here, just like us in relation to our usual reality. Hopefully it will bridge the gap. I will need the number, though.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Clint said, which usually meant he was about to say something offensive. “But what exactly is the leaning tower of Pfaltzgraff for?”
“In a pinch, ceramic is a decent conductor of magical energy,” Dr. Banner explained, even though Darcy secretly suspected he’d just done it because it was fun. He wasn’t even touching it.
“Seriously, Barton, why do you know what brand of dishware is in the Stark Tower break rooms?” Stark asked. “Why do I know? Does that seem weird to anyone else?”
Everyone ignored him. Dr. Banner said, “If the call goes through to the incorporeal phone, I can dial on from there to T’Challa. Wakanda should have enough of a magical signature of its own to pick it up.” It felt like everyone held their breath until he gave a thumbs up and said, “T’Challa, this is Bruce Banner. Yes, Loki again — who else? Can you trace this call?”
***
They were “rescued” to Wakanda, and she spent five solid minutes thinking about the stay-puff marshmallow man. It didn’t appear, so she figured they must be back in their own reality. After that she mostly tried to stay out of the way. Bucky — human again, though she hadn’t actually seen the shift — found her in one of the gardens that ringed the palace.
“They’re throwing us a feast,” he said, dropping onto the ground next to the bench she’d cautiously claimed from the undergrowth. “Well, Bruce, but the rest of us are invited too.”
“I could eat,” she said. “Any word from SHIELD?”
“Thor’s back, Loki’s gone. Fury wants the team back yesterday. Same old.”
Darcy nodded. It was sort of a routine all its own, wasn’t it? “Lunch tomorrow?” she asked.
He laughed, then stood up and held out his hand. “I’ll bring cards. Dinner first, though — there’s going to be music, and bets on whether or not Steve will dance are being placed as we speak.”
“Does he know how to dance?”
“That would be telling.”
They walked out together, and it felt like victory.
THE END
Title: Howling down the moon (aka dinner and a movie)
Author: marcicat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4450
Note: Inspired by the ‘Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia’ challenge, though it doesn’t really fit the requirements. Loosely follows ‘Look to the sky for love,’ set in an Avengers movie-type universe that includes Bucky Barnes, plus the irresistible "extra" Avengers from Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
Title: Howling down the moon (aka dinner and a movie)
Author: marcicat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4450
Author’s Note: Inspired by the ‘Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia’ challenge, though it doesn’t really fit the requirements. Loosely follows ‘Look to the sky for love,’ set in an Avengers movie-type universe that includes Bucky Barnes.
***
There was surprisingly little downtime as a member of the Avengers Initiative, even when you were classified as “support staff.” Dr. Banner still showed up every day like clockwork, of course, to do — whatever it was he was doing out on their roof. He got mandatory breaks, though, unlike support staff, who mostly just got asked if they could stay late and show up early, with lunch as a hopeful luxury somewhere in the middle.
“You know, someday SHIELD may figure out that you don’t actually need a two hour meditation break every day to commune with the Hulk,” Darcy told him one afternoon. He gave her a conspiratorial smile (and also a sandwich, so it wasn’t like she was going to turn him in or anything).
“I don’t know,” he said. “Wouldn’t want me to go unexpectedly Hulking out, right?” Since about half the people within hearing distance took a step back when he said it, she figured he was probably right.
Barnes was almost as consistent a visitor (and she still had no idea how SHIELD was classifying him). As far as she could tell, he never went to the roof, but sometimes he brought Steve with him and they played cards in Jane’s office. Jane never used it herself, preferring to simply occupy the lab proper until it became hers by sheer association.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Darcy said one day, in that space when lunch was over but she still had a few minutes before she could technically get in trouble for not working. “This is a war question; is that cool?”
Steve looked uncomfortable, but Barnes rolled his eyes. “Spit it out, Lewis.”
“Right. So, Steve, you were out shilling for America, and you’d done, what — basic training?” Steve nodded, warily. “And then you ride to the rescue, against orders, and suddenly you’re in charge of a hand-picked team of international former POWs? I mean, I’m not saying you’re not awesome, because obviously you are, but aren’t there usually some intermediate steps in there?”
“Steve was the only one we would listen to,” Barnes said, and Steve gave his ‘aw, shucks’ look.
“They really couldn’t afford to turn away anyone willing to fight,” Steve offered, and that was that.
She stared at them. They stared back, like they really thought everything had been explained. “Yeah, I still don’t get it. Run that by me again, with more words this time.”
They exchanged a look. Steve did a complicated hand gesture plus eyebrow twitch that probably meant something like ‘if you want to tell her, it’s your funeral.’ Which was a little insulting, actually, but Steve got away with stuff like that all the time because no one wanted to make him feel bad.
“Those international former POWs? Were lab rats along with being forced labor,” Barnes said. “Put together the Red Skull’s obsession with power and his inability to read the fine print, and it turned out Steve here rescued a bunch of newly minted werewolves.”
“You’re not a werewolf, Bucky,” Steve said.
“Well. It depends on which branch of mythology you read.” It had the air of an argument that had been repeated many times.
Darcy beat back the part of her brain that was saying, ‘wait, werewolves are real?’ and tried not to look like she was judging anyone’s sanity. Norse gods, she reminded herself. Norse gods and Captain America and a green giant that was more punctual than at least half his teammates. It didn’t have to make sense to be true.
“Anyway, none of us would listen to anyone but Steve, and there was a war on…”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Steve finished, and Darcy wondered how many people were already saying that about the Avengers.
Since ‘can I see?’ seemed like an ill-advised question, she went with, “I never knew.” Equally inane, maybe, but hopefully less potential for insult.
“That’s revisionist history for you,” Barnes said.
“So — not a secret?” she asked.
“No,” Steve said. “Not exactly.”
Barnes added, “We were called the ‘Howling Commandos.’ Pretty much everybody knew.”
“Huh. That definitely wasn’t in any of the history books I read.” Then again, the Red Skull wasn’t exactly covered either.
There was an awkward silence, and then Barnes said — carefully, she thought, with a sidelong glance at Steve as he started — “You have to remember, everyone figured we were dead. Steve too, when he came to rescue us. Coming back the way we did? It was sort of an… inconvenient miracle.”
She realized he was answering her original question, in a roundabout sort of way. She looked back and forth between them; considered what they might not be saying. “You weren’t quite what they expected, were you?” she finally asked.
That got a laugh, at least, and they moved on.
***
It wasn’t like she wasn’t curious, though, so the next time she found herself hiking back to the labs with Barnes holding the lunch trays, she said, “So, the wolf thing. Still not a secret? Because it wasn’t in the memo we got about you.”
He looked mildly interested. “You got a memo about me? Can I read it?”
She shrugged. “Sure.” If SHIELD didn’t want it spread around, they would have marked it Classified, right? “It’s not exactly riveting stuff, though.”
“Chalk it up to morbid curiosity,” he said. “And no, not a secret, exactly. I just don’t, anymore.”
Darcy figured if he meant ‘can’t,’ he would have said so, so she repeated, “You just don’t. Do I get more than that? It’s not fun, it’s too fun, you forgot how to turn back, the robot arm messes up the transformation, you swore on the souls of your ancestors never to do it again? Anything? You could make something up, if you wanted.”
Barnes stared at her. “You have a vivid imagination.”
“You have no idea,” she told him, and then she counted stairs for a while to give him time to think. She figured sharing more of her theories might not be the best idea.
“I like being a wolf,” he said finally. “For a long time there were good reasons not to change, and then it was a habit. Now it’s just easier not to.”
She gave him a look that hopefully conveyed a full measure of ‘Barnes, that is bullshit and I am giving you a one-time pass because you’re a war hero and also carrying my lunch, but seriously — bullshit.’ “Right,” she said out loud. “Because that’s what you and Steve are known for; doing things the easy way.”
He didn’t tell her to drop it, and she didn’t let it go, exactly, but they made the rest of the trip in silence. He still followed her into the lab, and she remembered to pull up a copy of the memo for him to look at. It didn’t take long to read. “Huh. That was — short.”
Before she could come up with an answer, the alarm blared — once, just long enough for her to think ‘shit, I guess the memo was classified’ — then it abruptly shifted to birdsong. Then crickets, then silence. Probably not a good sign.
“Don’t you people ever take a vacation?”
Loki was standing in the center of the room. He crossed his arms and scowled at them. Barnes looked ready to spit nails, but he was suspiciously still — a spell, maybe?
Darcy sighed. “Hey Loki,” she said. If there was one thing you could bet on with Loki, it was that he tended to do things in the absolute most complicated way possible, which then led to a need for (often extensive) monologuing, so that the puny mortals could fully appreciate his evil genius. In other words, no need to rush on the rescue. Once he got talking, he liked a captive audience.
“Darcy Lewis,” Loki said formally. “You really should file a complaint about that alarm; it’s much too loud.” Then he grinned, all teeth. “And also, ineffective.”
Since this was SHIELD, of course there had been a memo about this sort of situation. She thought it was titled something along the lines of ‘Dos and Don’ts for Engaging a Supervillain.’ Mentally reviewing the rules, she said, “What are you doing here?” (She wasn’t entirely sure if that had been on the “do” or the “don’t” list; it seemed like a starting point, at least.)
“Villainy becomes tedious rather quickly, as it turns out,” Loki said. “I am merely trying to have a civilized conversation with my brother. This is — prep work, you might call it. Can’t have SHIELD bursting in on a family dinner; that would be far too disruptive. And since the Avengers have shown themselves to be far too willing to stick their noses into things that don’t concern them, I’ve decided to provide — a different set of objectives, for the time being.”
She ran that through her Loki-to-English dictionary and could only come up with one response. “I’m not an Avenger.” She pointed at Barnes. “Actually, I don’t think he is either, technically.”
“I do love technicalities, don’t you? As it turns out, I also need to steal something back from the lovely Dr. Foster. You two just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the story of your lives, isn’t it, for you mortals? Anyway, you’ll have much more fun with the Avengers than stuck here with SHIELD. Off you go.”
He waved his hand.
***
She was alone, but — and she checked twice, just to be sure — she was alive, fingers and toes and all five senses present and accounted for. It even looked like she was still in New York, albeit a New York that was silent, empty, and creepy. No people, no birds, no traffic lights. No traffic.
“Well, this sucks.” She said it quietly, since it didn’t seem to be a setting that encouraged volume.
Then again — in the distance, she heard the familiar sound of Hulk roaring. It sounded more like a ‘WTF is this I’m really pissed off’ roar than a ‘I’m being attacked by horrible silent zombies’ roar, so she mentally upgraded her chances of survival. If she wasn’t actually alone, her first priority should probably be to find the others.
Unfortunately, a personal inventory wasn’t encouraging: no coat, no phone, no way of knowing whether this was one of those fairy tale type realities where taking stuff from her surroundings would cause her to disappear / turn into a zombie / be bound to it forever. At least she was wearing comfortable shoes. She started walking. SHIELD headquarters seemed like a safe enough bet as a destination, right?
*It’s not a radio.*
Darcy stopped walking. That was a voice, in her head. A voice that wasn’t hers.
*It’s a direct-to-Steve psychic link; I can’t just send out a broadcast. No one else can hear me.*
Her SHIELD intro course hadn’t covered unexpected psychic communication in potentially hostile alternate realities. Still, it was common courtesy to let people know when you could overhear conversations they thought were private. (Unless the conversation was particularly interesting, which this one — so far, at least — wasn’t.)
*I can hear you,* she thought carefully.
*Hang on, did you catch that? Who’s there?*
The mental voice sounded clearer that time, like it was suddenly paying attention in her direction. *You first,* she sent back.
*Bucky Barnes. Your turn.* And now that she was listening for it, the voice did sound sort of familiar.
*This is Darcy Lewis.* Almost as an afterthought, she added, *Hey.*
*Hay is for horses; didn’t your mother ever tell you that? No, I was talking to Darcy.*
*What?* she thought.
*Hang on. Can anyone else hear me?*
There was silence, but she only seemed to be getting one side of the conversation anyway, so it was possible Bucky was being inundated by people all going ‘hey there’ in his head.
Or maybe not, since it didn’t take long for him to be back. *Ten-second summary: I can hear Steve and I can hear Darcy, and both of you can hear me but not each other. Kicking Loki where it hurts is now an item on my to-do list, and it’s probable that most or all of the Avengers are somewhere in this version of New York.*
She had already figured most of that out for herself, but probably the last thing the guy needed was her mental commentary on redundancy. *Suggestions?*
*We need to get everyone together, find out what they know. See if anyone can figure out how to get out of here.*
Without warning, Darcy was no longer alone on the street. “We need to get out of here,” Natasha said briskly, an odd echo of Bucky’s words in her head. “Now. Also, if you could try to think happy thoughts.”
Darcy thought, *Natasha just found me. Then she told me to think happy thoughts.*
There was silence for a few seconds, and she tried to keep up with Natasha’s rapid progress through a maze of back alleys that seemed to have come from nowhere. Then — *Really?*
Darcy would have rolled her eyes if she didn’t think it would make her lose her balance. They were headed towards jogging speed, and it would be embarrassing to trip over the pavement. (Plus, not exactly conducive to happy thoughts.) *She doesn’t seem like a kidder.*
*Steve just found Stark,* she heard back. *Wasp and Hank are with him. No word on the happy thoughts.*
*We’re sprinting now. No idea why. See you at SHIELD?* She was relatively certain that was where they were headed; things were starting to look familiar again.
It was surely a camera-worthy moment, when they turned the final corner and practically collided with Coulson, wielding a handgun with serious intent in their direction. Natasha put her hands up. Darcy — bent over and wheezing — left hers on her knees. This was so going to lead to higher mandatory gym time.
*Coulson’s here,* she thought vaguely in Bucky’s direction.
*I’m tracking Barton and the Hulk. Steve and the others are incoming.*
He must have figured out how to only think at one of them at a time, she realized. Then, *They’re here.*
***
Actually, Jan arrived first, in flight, with Steve a close second. Stark looked almost as wheezy as she felt — he must be skimping on the cardio too, or else he was working out in the suit. Hank brought up the rear, only slightly larger than usual. She wondered if there were any ants in this version of the city.
Coulson, naturally, didn’t look surprised. “You can’t go in there,” he said.
Darcy looked around as surreptitiously as she could. That wasn’t what anyone else was expecting to hear, right?
*You’re getting all this from Steve, right?* It would suck to be out of the loop, but she didn’t want to distract him with overlap.
*With commentary,* she got back. *He’s already planning new workout schedules. And contingency plans.*
To be fair, ‘demigod trickster sends you to an alternate dimension just to keep you out of his hair for a few hours’ probably hadn’t been high up on anyone’s list of potential threats. Then again, clearly it should have been.
“This place responds to our thoughts,” Natasha announced.
Coulson actually made a facial expression that resembled a tiny smile. “I noticed,” he said. “That’s why you can’t go in there.” It was possibly emphasized by an explosion from somewhere in the building. No one argued.
Stark pretended he was breathing normally long enough to say, “We need to get to Stark Tower.”
Coulson nodded. “Who else is here?”
“Bucky, Hawkeye, and Hulk that we know of,” Steve answered. “Bucky’ll track them and meet us at the Tower.”
There were more nods all around, like of course, that was a perfectly logical plan of action. *Steve makes everything sound so reasonable,* she thought at Bucky.
*It was like that in the war, too. He’d say things like ‘we’ll take six men, blow the facility, and be back by dawn.’ The hell of it was, it worked. I found them, by the way.*
It took her a second to realize he meant Clint and Hulk, but by then someone must have been getting good at the whole ‘responds to our thoughts’ thing, because everyone was suddenly there, with Stark Tower rising in front of them. “Whoa,” she said, because what else was there to say? She wasn’t sure whether to be reassured that the others looked as unsettled as she felt, or freaked out that the Avengers were freaking out.
“Inside,” Stark said. Even the Hulk fit through the giant doors with ease, and Darcy wondered if anyone was going to comment on the fact that instead of Hulk, Clint, and Bucky Barnes, they somehow had Hulk, Clint, and a huge wolf. (Apparently ‘I just don’t anymore’ didn’t apply to alternate realities.) “JARVIS, you there?” Stark asked.
“Indeed, Mr. Stark.”
“Excellent. Institute Stark Reality Check programs two through seven; seal all entrances and exits and see what you can do about interfacing with the SHIELD mainframe.”
There was a whirring sound that she figured was probably 99 percent superfluous, and then JARVIS said, “Reality scans complete.” (Seriously? They had those?) “Outside environs are in a state of flux; at present, occupants of your concurrent reality include Captain Rogers, the additional five members of the Avengers team, SHIELD Agent Coulson, support staff Ms. Lewis, and Mr. James Barnes.” There was a slight pause, and he added, “Highly improbable though that may seem.”
“Yes, thank you for that thought, JARVIS.” Stark turned back towards the group. “Congratulations, we’re all real. I did not see that coming, actually.”
“Can we talk about how Barnes is suddenly a wolf?” Jan asked.
Darcy, who had been edging towards Bucky and hoping no one would notice, stopped. Hulk stole the show, however, when he knelt down and announced, “HULK LIKES LARGE DOG.” Darcy blinked, but no, they were still there. Hulk was patting Bucky, who gave every appearance of enjoying himself immensely under the attention.
*Bucky?* she thought.
*Yeah? Little busy here.*
*I see that.*
Steve cleared his throat. “He does that, sometimes.”
It was possibly the worst explanation of anything, ever, except that they were all sort of used to taking things like that in stride. Clint’s fighting alien spaceships with a bow and arrows? Director Fury has a robot double? Stark built a machine on the roof for the sole purpose of taking off his clothes? Okay, sure. Someone turning into a wolf wasn’t even close to the outer realms of possibility.
“No, that makes sense,” Stark said. “Looks like some of those reports weren’t as cryptic as I thought.”
If someone had asked her to guess, Darcy would have identified the expression on his face as ‘actually, kinda wigged out right now,’ but it was hard to tell with Stark. “What do we do now?” she asked. (‘How do we get out of here?’ seemed to be the obvious question, and if no one else was going to ask it, she would.) “How do we get out of here?”
“We don’t,” said Coulson.
***
It turned out that when Coulson said ‘we don’t,’ what he meant was ‘It’s not impossible, but I get a little grouchy when I’ve been abducted away from my coffee machine and haven’t eaten any lunch.’ Once they’d worked their way through at least half the contents of the closest break room, he was back to a more normal level of doomsaying.
“SHIELD hypothesized that Loki must have access to a variety of self-constructed replicas of our most frequent battlegrounds —“
Stark cut him off. “You’re saying it’s magic. I hate —“
Coulson cut him off right back. “Yes, we’re all aware of your irrational prejudice towards the aspects of discovery you know nothing about. Since none of us are magic users, we’ll have to wait for SHIELD to open a portal.”
There was a loud sigh from the Hulk, and then Dr. Banner was back. He walked calmly to what looked like a coat closet and pulled out a backpack — from it emerged a t-shirt, then a sweatshirt, socks, and shoes. “That’s really convenient,” he said into the shocked silence.
Seeming to only then notice everyone was staring at him, he focused on Coulson. “I’ve studied magic. Thought it might come in handy with everything.” He waved his hand in a way that probably meant ‘turning into an unstoppable green rage monster, that sort of thing.’ “I’m not that good, but I could probably figure out how to send a message, at least. Let them know where we are.”
Coulson was unfazed, and it turned out there wasn’t much difference between ‘actually not confused’ and ‘pretending to be cool with it,’ because everyone else followed suit in a more or less convincing show of support.
“We should stick together,” Steve said. “We can set up a rotation for keeping watch. Is there anything we should know about the building security?”
“Other than the fact that right now we’re trusting my ego to manifest it at all? No, I think that’s pretty much it. And nobody should fall asleep, I’m guessing.” Someone laughed, but Darcy’s focus kept drifting back to Bucky as a wolf. (A seriously big wolf.)
*You should have seen us as a pack.* Wolf Bucky was considerably more sharing-oriented than he was as a human, and images flipped through her head like one of the old Viewmasters. Wolves racing through a forest, wolves tumbled together in a sleepy pile, really ferocious wolves leaping walls and shifting smoothly into equally deadly-looking soldiers…
*So you get to keep all your clothes and stuff,* she sent, thinking of Bruce (and the ridiculous amount of money he must have to spend on shoes). *Also, where was Steve?* She sent back the sleepy-pile-of-wolf-pack picture.
*We would have made a pretty useless fighting unit if we transformed naked all the time. Luckily, magic doesn’t have to follow the rules. And Steve was in the middle, obviously. It was cold, and he didn’t have the benefit of a fur coat.*
*You’re much more chatty this way, you know.*
*That whole lone wolf thing? Complete myth.*
Apparently. She followed along as they all headed back to the lobby (there were only just so many ways to simultaneously accomplish ‘someone should keep watch’ along with ‘we should all stick together’), and found herself being not-very-subtly herded towards Steve. “Let me guess,” she said as her elbow jostled his side. “He does that, sometimes?” Steve just shrugged, and gave her a sheepish look.
Dr. Banner — who was setting up a truly impressive array of dishware on the front desk — looked over as well. “Did you have your phone with you when you shifted?” he asked.
He was clearly addressing Bucky, who looked at Steve, then, somewhat incongruously, growled at Coulson. “Yes,” Steve said carefully. “We were —“ He paused, then added. “Told it was mandatory.”
“What?” Stark said indignantly. “Did Coulson tell you that? Phil, tell me SHIELD isn’t GPS-stalking national icons now.”
“Field agents are required to have access to a mode of communication any time they’re on call, which you would know if you didn’t regard rules as something to be ignored only when they weren’t being deliberately broken. As to the GPS chips, I assumed one of you would have already disabled them; you certainly wasted no time with your own personal phones.” Most of the Avengers looked vaguely guilty; Coulson offered the bland expression that was his personal version of ‘you shouldn’t have messed with me, because I know everything.’ “Also, SHIELD has no need to GPS-stalk anyone, not with Stark Industries’ considerably more detailed tracking compiling data 24 hours a day.”
“Tony!” Jan said.
“What? It’s purely for safety purposes,” Stark insisted. “It’s not like anyone looks at it!”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Steve said. “Bruce, do you need the phone?”
Dr. Banner shook his head. While everyone else had been distracted, he’d constructed a tower of dishes and gotten a flame going in the topmost mug. “No, it’s perfect where it is. It’s here-and-not-here, just like us in relation to our usual reality. Hopefully it will bridge the gap. I will need the number, though.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Clint said, which usually meant he was about to say something offensive. “But what exactly is the leaning tower of Pfaltzgraff for?”
“In a pinch, ceramic is a decent conductor of magical energy,” Dr. Banner explained, even though Darcy secretly suspected he’d just done it because it was fun. He wasn’t even touching it.
“Seriously, Barton, why do you know what brand of dishware is in the Stark Tower break rooms?” Stark asked. “Why do I know? Does that seem weird to anyone else?”
Everyone ignored him. Dr. Banner said, “If the call goes through to the incorporeal phone, I can dial on from there to T’Challa. Wakanda should have enough of a magical signature of its own to pick it up.” It felt like everyone held their breath until he gave a thumbs up and said, “T’Challa, this is Bruce Banner. Yes, Loki again — who else? Can you trace this call?”
***
They were “rescued” to Wakanda, and she spent five solid minutes thinking about the stay-puff marshmallow man. It didn’t appear, so she figured they must be back in their own reality. After that she mostly tried to stay out of the way. Bucky — human again, though she hadn’t actually seen the shift — found her in one of the gardens that ringed the palace.
“They’re throwing us a feast,” he said, dropping onto the ground next to the bench she’d cautiously claimed from the undergrowth. “Well, Bruce, but the rest of us are invited too.”
“I could eat,” she said. “Any word from SHIELD?”
“Thor’s back, Loki’s gone. Fury wants the team back yesterday. Same old.”
Darcy nodded. It was sort of a routine all its own, wasn’t it? “Lunch tomorrow?” she asked.
He laughed, then stood up and held out his hand. “I’ll bring cards. Dinner first, though — there’s going to be music, and bets on whether or not Steve will dance are being placed as we speak.”
“Does he know how to dance?”
“That would be telling.”
They walked out together, and it felt like victory.
THE END