Chapter Text
This is how Darcy Lewis, idealistic political science graduate, wound up working for an extra-governmental shadow organization:
“Ms. Lewis, I’m Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD,” said the man in the black suit who had come, a few days prior, and commandeered all of their stuff. “I have some paperwork I’m going to need you to fill out.”
“Oh, no way,” Darcy said, and she really wished that Jane and especially Thor were still around. Not that Jane would be really effective - but she’d at least be a witness. “That’s totally code for you disappearing me.”
“We do not disappear people, Ms. Lewis,” Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD said.
“Uh-huh. Dr. Selvig said he knew some scientist dude who worked for you guys and then poof! never heard from the poor bastard again,” Darcy said. Even with his sunglasses, she could see his eyebrows raise.
“We need to discuss some security concerns with you, Ms. Lewis, giving everything you’ve witnessed,” he replied. Darcy sighed - they probably had some guy at ready to drug her if she didn’t comply. This way, at least, there might be a hope for transparency. Or the shadow organization version of transparency, which would likely be...shadow-y.
She followed Agent Coulson into the abandoned office space that he and some other agents had set up shop in since the original owners had fled in the wake of the alien attack. Or other-dimensional being attack. Jane still hadn’t determined if Asgard was another planet or another dimension, and Darcy had ran, not walked, when Jane and Selvig had started debating that.
Agent Coulson waved her over into a partially enclosed cubicle. Inside, there was a portable table. She sat and he gave her a tight smile. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea?”
“Coffee, please,” Darcy said. Everyone else in the room was wearing a suit and seemed to be watching her. Darcy rarely felt conscious of how underdressed she was, but there was something about a lot of fit men and women in uniform that put her flannel shirt and jeans in sharp contrast. She kicked her sneakers at the ground.
One of them had a coffee mug labeled SHIELD to her within a minute, and she smiled at him. He looked a little different than the rest of the agents - actually uncomfortable in his suit and tie, and a little bit more...rugged? Ruggedly handsome, actually, and Darcy sighed. Thor wandering around mostly topless had not done good things for her libido. “Thank you,” she said, and watched as Agent Handsome retreated to the corner.
“I’m sure you understand that your proximity to this incident means that you are in the possession of a good deal of sensitive information,” Agent Coulson said. He placed a single black folder on the table. Darcy sipped at her coffee, then nodded. Agent Coulson and his accomplice just stared at her. “Have you given any thought, Ms. Lewis, to what you’d like to do when you complete your degree?”
“Uh...” Darcy said, because her dad was pushing law school and she had sort of paid lip service to that in order to get him to pay for the extra classes she wanted to take so she could graduate early, but... “Wait. Are you offering me a job?”
“Provided you are able to pass our initial new agent’s course,” Agent Coulson said.
“You don’t even know if I can do...stuff,” Darcy said.
“I believe you handled yourself quite capably during this event, Ms. Lewis,” Agent Coulson said, and since he still had his sunglasses on, she couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting her and they were just going to make her an administrative assistant, or something. Though in this economy... “We’ve also reviewed your college record and are impressed with your academic qualifications.”
Darcy pressed her lips together. When people said things like that they were generally saying because we didn’t think a spaz like you would have decent grades, let alone be at the top of your class. “So you are going to disappear me,” she said.
“But we’re also going to pay you,” said the agent in the corner, and Darcy glanced over at him and met his eyes. He looked like he at least knew how to smile.
“Do I want to know what my other options are?” she asked.
“No,” Agent Coulson replied.
“OK,” Darcy said. “Where do I sign?”
Now she was reporting for her very first day of new agent training - after spending the time between her graduation, one semester early, and the next available training session working with Jane. Darcy was pretty pleased with how things had started - she had arrived at a Starbucks where she had met with a man dressed in a black suit, who bought her a cup of coffee. Pretty extravagant, for a government organization, Darcy thought, but she knew better than to say this out loud.
She did not know better, though, when they got into the cab. “Are you going to blindfold me, or something?”
The other agent looked at her and rolled his eyes, then pulled out his smart phone and began to scroll through it in earnest.
Darcy was definitely disappointed, but not surprised, when they wound up in a nondescript office park in Jersey City. They rode the elevator together to the third floor, where several other agents were already waiting with new recruits. Darcy did her best to give them all a quick once over without looking like she was paying too much attention - but from the way they looked back she had a feeling she’d already failed at the whole being a spy thing.
“You can introduce yourself,” her agent said, but this was largely an excuse to go and talk to another guy’s agent, since no one else seemed to be in a chatty mood. Still, that left the other new recruit without someone to awkwardly stand next to.
“Darcy Lewis,” she said. She extended her hand, and he glanced at her for a moment before shaking it. He was a good foot taller than her.
“Matan Zahavi,” he said.
“Shalom Aleikhem!” she replied, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “Oh, shit. Are you from Israel?”
“SHIELD is an international organization,” her agent interjected as Zahavi’s escort worked hard at suppressing a snigger.
“Isn’t the H for Homeland?” Darcy asked, and then shook her head. “Never mind.”
“You’re Jewish?” Zahavi asked, and she nodded, and was relieved that he no longer looked like he wanted to do physical harm to her - she was willing to bet that he was probably recruited based on whatever skills he had learned in the Israeli military, so that was not something she wanted to happen. “American?”
“Yes,” she said. Hopefully he’d forgive her for some more of her stupidity. Thankfully, she was saved from further discussion by the arrival of two more agents and two more recruits, at which point one of the agents in the room moved to the center.
“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Agent Hendricks, and I’ll be teaching portions of your orientation. I’ll be assisted by Agent Beeslaar.” Agent Beeslaar was a very tall, very blonde man who reminded Darcy of Thor, though he was sort of like the poor planet/dimension’s version. She made a mental note that she was really going to have to check in with Jane to see if she’d figured that one out in the past few weeks. “Why don’t each of you introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from, your background.”
A tall blonde woman started. “Rise Friesen, Denmark, I worked most recently at the UN.”
Darcy scrunched her face, slightly. “Matan Zahavi, Israel, Israeli Army.”
“Darcy Lewis,” she said, in her most confident tone - cribbed from mock trial closing arguments. “United States. Uh, Culver?”
She watched as a few people in the room, especially the agents, exchanged looks with each other. She wasn’t the only person right out of college, but the other two were from US Military service academies - which also meant it was likely that she was going to have to form international connections. Despite being in a military organization, she didn’t tend to get along too well with people who gravitated towards that sort of thing. Rounding out the last three was an English guy from MI6, a woman from Egypt who had worked in counter-terrorism, and a Swiss aeronautical engineer/physicist/genius. Darcy was fairly certain that she was the youngest in the group. Hopefully, she thought, this was going to lead to someone wanting to adopt her. Probably the genius - she was good with them.
* *
Darcy wasn’t able to tell anyone in her class how she had managed to get recruited by SHIELD until after their first week of training. Then they received their first level of security clearance and sat through a presentation called SHIELD’s Recent Actions where they all learned about the cult that Captain America had fought in WWII and how it persisted to this day, and how there had been a minor extraterrestrial encounter in a small town in New Mexico.
That afternoon, Rise sat down next to her at lunch. “You,” she said, “were up to something in a small town in New Mexico, weren’t you?”
“Internship,” Darcy said, and grinned.
“So they disappeared you,” Rise said, and then Swiss Sam - used to distinguish him from Uncle Sam, who was from West Point - sat down at their table, mostly because he was trying to get in Rise’s pants. “Darcy was in New Mexico with the alien.”
“Ah,” said Swiss Sam. “I guess I owe Matan ten dollars.”
“Really?” Darcy asked, and Swiss Sam shrugged. “You had that little confidence in my abilities?”
“No,” said Swiss Sam. “Just based on a quick analysis of your lack of military or science training or...any experience, really.”
“Fair enough,” Darcy said.
“So what did the alien look like?” Rise asked. Darcy thought back to all of the non-disclosure agreements she had signed - nothing had indicated she couldn’t speak to anyone who wasn’t affiliated with the incident, and as far as she knew, affiliation could be broadly construed to include knowledge and working at SHIELD. And, speaking of SHIELD they really needed to get some better lawyers to draft that shit.
“A lot like a Norse God, actually,” Darcy said. Rise and Swiss Sam laughed.
* *
“How is spy training going?” Jane asked, when Darcy called her after she finally passed security level one and was given access to the single phone in their dormitory. They had all stood in line for it like mental patients, except for Uncle Sam - it made Darcy want to recalculate her initial perception of him, if he didn’t have a single person he wanted to call - that might be the reason he turned out to be heartless bastard.
“Well,” Darcy said. “We learned about New Mexico today.” Rise laughed, somewhere behind her in the line - she wasn’t as concerned, given that all of her relatives were on a different continent.
“Mmm,” Jane said. “I still can’t believe you signed up to be one of them - some suit! I mean, I suspected it, so did Selvig, but...”
“Look, you guys are useful, trying to figure out your...thing,” Darcy said. “But I was a political science major, I mean, not like I could switch and do a degree in astrophysics-”
“To be fair, I’m not sure if you really have the aptitude for that,” Jane replied.
“This is why there aren’t enough women in science, Jane Foster,” Darcy said. Jane laughed, and Darcy realized that she missed her. She had tried not to think about it too much when she had packed off - she had told Jane she needed to get herself a job in her field, and Jane had rolled her eyes. They had become friends, though. Funny how nearly getting annihilated by an alien assassination machine would do that to you. “Selvig still around?”
“No, he went off to go and work on some project with the suits,” Jane said. Darcy could hear her eye roll all the way in New Mexico. “So, just me, now! On my own - on my own, with no one here beside me.”
“I never took you for a Les Mis fan,” Darcy said.
“Is that where that’s from?” Jane asked, and it was Darcy’s turn to eye roll. What had Jane done when she was at Caltech and Stanford - no, Darcy knew what Jane had done, and she could have had her pick of all of the hot nerd men around her. Then she went off to New Mexico and bitched at Darcy about how there was no one decent to date, unless, of course, someone fell out of the sky.
Darcy opened her mouth slightly - she hadn’t made that connection until now.
“Darcy?” Jane asked.
“I just wanted to uh, say, hello,” Darcy said. “And now I have to say goodbye, so I can call my mom and assure her I’m not dead.”
“Oh,” Jane said. “How did you convince her that you wouldn’t have your cell phone within arms reach at all times in case she wanted to debate the merits of different peanut butter brands?”
“I’m camping,” Darcy replied.
“And you got a job while you were camping?” Jane asked.
“I dunno,” Darcy said. “Maybe I peed in some guys foxhole, he was impressed by my moxie, and...look, I’ll sort it out.”
“That seems implausible,” Jane replied. “Well, anyway, bye. Sell out!” Darcy could imagine Jane trying to make some sort of ‘rock on’ hand gesture as she said that and smiled. She checked her watch when she hung up - exactly six minutes to deal with Patricia Lewis, which was ideal.
“You’re seriously going to call your mom?” asked the Air Force graduate, who had signed on to be a pilot and who was so bland that Darcy had difficulty remembering his name - Kyle? Chris?
“Who, exactly, are you going to call?” she asked. Craig looked back down at the binder with the reading they’d been assigned to do for tomorrow, and Darcy inhaled and then dialed her mother.
* *
“Seriously, this is so not cool,” Darcy said, crouching behind a concrete wall and holding her paintball gun close to her chest. She was decked out in full on riot gear - big-ass vest, googles, and helmet.
“What did you think, you were signing up to go to summer camp?” Uncle Sam asked. He had done a douchebaggy fist pump when he was told that his scores on the shooting range meant that he got to be a Team Captain and then had immediately deflated when he found out that he had Darcy, Rise, and Swiss Sam on his team.
“No, man, I anticipated this kind of shit,” Darcy replied, and rolled to make it behind the larger block he was behind. She glanced behind her and the projectile that had narrowly missed her ass. “But why the fuck is some dude shooting arrows at us?”
“Ah,” Uncle Sam said, handing Darcy some more paint gun pellets. “That is a good question - but then again, aliens are real.”
“No, not the same thing,” Darcy said as she reloaded her gun. “They say paintball, I expect paintballs. Not paint tipped nerf arrows.”
“I would say that this is some sort of, ah, metaphor for what we will experience as agents, yes?” said Swiss Sam, briefly poking above a damaged brick wall that he had taken shelter behind and hadn’t moved from. He aimed at Matan, but missed his head.
“There are never just two teams,” Rise confirmed. Despite the fact that her Scandinavian height made her look like a gladiator, she was actually the worst out of all of them and had only missed getting hit because Uncle Sam had tackled her to the ground.
“We’re going to have to make a move,” Uncle Sam said.
“Why, we are down no one and they have already lost Cory,” said Swiss Sam. “We only need to wait them out to be the winners.”
“Dude,” said Uncle Sam, “All due respect, but I am not taking advice from someone who comes from a neutral country.”
Later, headed to the showers with red paint saturated through her pants from the ill-advised assault Uncle Sam had decided they needed to stage - didn’t they teach them military strategery at West Point? Darcy wondered - she almost walked straight into the guy with the bow and arrow.
She stopped, and her eye wandered to the purple accents on his skin tight suit and then traveled up to his impressive biceps. Finally, she realized she needed to say something. “I am so sorry,” she said, and met his eyes. She was surprised to see that it was the Other Agent from New Mexico, the one who had sort of smirked at her while she signed away her freedom, possibly her soul, and most definitely her self-respect.
“Good shooting, out there,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied.
“Seriously, though, you’d think they taught strategy at West Point,” he said, and then side stepped her and continued down the hall, quiver bouncing against his ass.
* * *
“Darcy?” said Dr. Selvig, one afternoon in the cafeteria during her first week of work as an agent in the intelligence division - and she was pretty sure she’d heard all the jokes, from her fellow trainees, after getting her assignment, but then again, they’d proven to be more creative than she was willing to give them credit for.
“Oh, hey, Dr. Selvig,” Darcy said, and smiled at him as she selected a bowl of fresh fruit. They should really put the whole free meals with plenty of healthy options thing in their recruitment pitch.
“I just...strange seeing you here, after all,” he said, opting to go for the homemade chicken pot pie.
“I could say the same,” Darcy said. “Would you like to get lunch?” He nodded, and she pressed her lips together - Selvig had a Level Seven security badge, compared to her Level Two. It was doubtful there was going to be anything they could talk about, beyond the cafeteria food and the weather. Maybe not even the later. Who knew what SHIELD had their hands in?
They sat down, and both looked at each other for a moment. Darcy ran her hand through her hair and then smiled at Selvig.
“Please don’t give me some spiel about how you’re disappointed in me,” she said. “You’re the reason I’m here, really.” She punctuated this with her fork before spearing some salad.
“How do you figure?”
“You were the one who came and gave that presentation at Cornell - I had to attend, for my political theory course-” Selvig arched an eyebrow at this “-it was on astrophysics and alternate realities and we were reading Zizek at the time,” she said, and was sort of pleased, after plenty of afternoons with him and Jane, that he seemed to be drawing a blank. “Whatever, interdisciplinary bullshit and ideology. I went, and I talked to you afterwards, remember? And you told me about one of your proteges who was looking for an intern and doing really fascinating work in New Mexico...and here I am.”
“Mmm,” Selvig said. “I would have to accept some responsibility, it seems - though I didn’t have anything to do with the instigating event.”
“Maybe you did, maybe one of your Viking ancestors fucked someone and your genes were some kind of locus for drawing everything to that particular place,” Darcy said, “Because really, what are the odds? No, don’t calculate them, I’m cool with infinite.”
“I’m Swedish,” Selvig said. Darcy shook her head.
“One of the women I trained with was from Denmark,” she replied. “She’s sort of my supervisor now, she’s a level above me because of all her experience at the UN doing...secret stuff that she can’t talk about. You want me to set you up with her?”
“Uh, no, that’s alright, Darcy - Agent Lewis, I suppose.” Darcy nodded and used her fork to point at her name badge. “You like it here?”
“Yeah,” she replied, and Selvig didn’t appear mollified. “Look, in this economy, I’d probably be back home working for the Gap and applying to law school - which is far from a sure bet, nowadays, despite what my father this. This is a steady paycheck, free food, nifty clothing allowance...” Darcy, despite what she had thought, liked the suit thing. Made getting ready for work in the morning a hell of a lot easier - plus she appreciated that SHIELD had their lady agents wear a tie as well. Hid where her shirts sometimes pulled.
“You’re in intelligence?” he asked.
“Go ahead with whatever joke you want to make,” Darcy said.
Selvig shook her head, and she had to smile at him. She wondered if he would consider being her dad/mentor, or something. “You like it?”
“It’s certainly interesting,” Darcy said. “Not boring, the day goes by quickly, they’re giving me free Russian classes...I’m good, Dr. Selvig, don’t worry.”
“I suppose that’s a good outcome, then, for being-”
“Disappeared?” she supplied, and he nodded. “Plus, I got to give everyone this canned speech about how I was going to work for a nondescript government agency that was studying world agriculture, or something, and so they all know I’m a spy, so that’s pretty cool.”
“I thought the point was for you to have a legitimate cover-”
“Well, they don’t know who I’m spying for - I mean, CIA, NSA, no one even really knows about SHIELD...so, bad-ass cred, you can add that to the list of benefits.”
“That’s good,” Selvig said.
“Fuck, we shouldn’t keep talking about me - how are you doing?” Darcy asked.
Selvig shrugged, then tapped his finger on his security badge. “Well, very well. Fascinating project, plenty to do...I never thought, after what happened to Dr. B-to my one friend, that I mentioned, the physicist, there would be anything that would get me to come work for...”
He trailed off, but Darcy smiled. “It’s cool - I sort of figured you were involved in the Big Secret in the basement,” she said. “I mean, not the basement here. The metaphorical, ah, basement.” Selvig gave her a relieved smile.
* * *
Darcy looked up from the due diligence she was doing on the mountains of data that had just come in from one of their field offices - she’d been reading for too long, her eyes were bleary - and flinched slightly when she saw Rise in the doorway. “Shit, was my report wrong?” she asked. One chewing out per day was enough. Not that Rise would chew her out - even though her experience had made her Darcy’s superior, she still treated her as she had when they were trainees.
“No, Darcy, it’s...they had to evacuate the Joint Dark Energy Mission tonight.”
“What?” Darcy asked, and she clicked on her computer and pulled up the SHIELD intranet browser. The evacuation was the only item on a usually crowded front page, though it didn’t say anymore than what Rise had told her. “Do you know..?”
“As much as that said,” Rise replied. “Plus we are all supposed to assemble to our disaster preparedness location.”
“Shit,” Darcy murmured, opened her desk drawer, and grabbed the watch that her mother had bought her for her college graduation. Rise arched an eyebrow as Darcy stood and put her badge around her neck. “I take it off to type with...”
“Ah, right...” Rise said. “Your scientist friend, the Swede, he works there?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Darcy said. She hadn’t seen Selvig recently - not since she’d got him to bring along another scientist colleague and go out for a drink with her and Rise two weeks ago. “I mean, he never said, but he said he was going out West so I just presumed...” When they turned the corner in the hallway they joined a flow of other intelligence agents, all of them talking in the same hushed tones, speculating and looking at each other nervously.
“Who gets the drop on us?” Some man asked ahead of her, and Darcy nodded her head along with the thought. They were supposed to be the secret organization.
“The whole facility?” Darcy asked.
“That is what the intranet said,” Rise replied.
“Yeah, I. Right. You’re ice cool, aren’t you, part of being Scandinavian.” Rise rolled her eyes at this as they turned another corner for the main atrium. It must really be serious, Darcy thought, they’ve closed the coffee dispensary. Free coffee was provided twenty-four seven, which Darcy had initially thought was absolutely fantastic until her tour revealed other features and the larger picture came together - free coffee, medical clinic, dental clinic twice a week, gym, free food in commissary...they were never, ever going to leave this place.
All of the agents from intelligence were still milling around, and a few were beginning to appear peeved that no one had stepped forward to make an announcement. “That’s a bad, sign, right?” Darcy asked. “I mean, they have to make a statement-” She stopped when everyone else stopped talking when the head of the their intelligence group’s voice came over the loud speaker.
“We’ll have more information for everyone in a moment,” Agent Ford said. “But first, I need to ask Agent Darcy Lewis to come forward and go with Agent Salinas.”
Darcy didn’t respond immediately, because she was attempting to figure out if it was possible to get disappeared from the organization you’d been disappeared too - Agent tall, scarred and still in sunglasses at night seemed to indicate the answer was yes. Rise had to elbow her in the side. “I don’t know why they want me!” she said.
“I would guess your unique experiences,” Rise replied, voice soft, and Darcy widened her eyes and then nodded. Possibly. Hopefully.
She was hugely conscious of all of the eyes on her as she walked forward over to where Agent Ford and Salinas were standing near a doorway. That’s right, I am very busy and important, she thought, mostly so that she could keep looking straight forward and not being overwhelmed by the feeling of dread that was rising up her throat.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Agent Lewis,” said Agent Salinas, opening the door and gesturing with his hand. Darcy gave him a slight smile, because while she recognized the opportunity for a smart ass comment, it wasn’t going to be anything he hadn’t heard before. She was beginning to catch onto the sense of humor that you developed when you worked for one of these organizations. “You know Eric Selvig?”
“We’re acquiantances?” Darcy said. Salinas had stopped as soon as they were on the other side of the door and it was clear he was staring at her even though he was wearing sunglasses. “We’ve had lunch, a few times.”
“And you worked with him in New Mexico during the Thor Incident,” Salinas replied.
“Yes,” Darcy said.
“We were hoping you could help us with some insights into his behavior,” Salinas said.
Darcy frowned. “Is he all right - he was at-”
“He’s been compromised,” Salinas said. “There is also concern that you may be a target.”
Darcy widened her eyes. “I am really not that-”
“The attack on the JDEM was instigated by an individual who identified himself as Loki of Asgard.”
“Thor’s dick wad brother that tried to kill him with the Destroyer?” Darcy asked. Salinas’ lips almost moved, but he was able to restrain himself.
“Yes,” he said. “That would be him, as far as we can tell.”
Well, shit, Darcy thought.