Utter Darkness

“Damn,” she groaned as she awoke. She felt like she had a hangover. Her head was pounding, her body ached, she wasn’t in her bed, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten where she was. Squeezing her eyes shut to keep out the early morning light; she sat up carefully, trying not to jar her aching head. After a few moments her eyes adjusted a bit and she cracked one eye open. Her living room, well that explained why her back was achy; her couch was modern and trendy but definitely not good for sleeping on. Through bleary eyes, she glanced at the clock above her TV.

“Shit shit shit! Jane’s gonna kill me!” She pushed herself up as quickly as she could manage and stumbled to the bathroom. The bright light over her mirror only added to her misery. With no time for a shower, she grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and screamed. Her hands were covered in blood.

Suddenly it all rushed back to her, her attempts to stay awake the night before to avoid the dreams, the stitched up guy, finding the seam ripper, removing the stitches, and the blood, oh god the blood. She fell back against the door and sank to the floor of the bathroom as she fought the rising nausea. She was running late, she really didn’t have time to go into hysterics but she was having a hard time fighting it off. With a sudden burst of movement she was at the sink, hot water running, scrubbing manically at her hands. Surely, there was a cut or something to explain the blood, it was just a dream, it was just a dream, it was just a…

BANG, BANG, BANG, “Ms. Lewis, are you alright in there?”

“Yeah, just a sec Cap,” she called out. She grabbed a towel, ducked into her room to grab her glasses, and put them on as she hurried to the door.

Standing just outside her door with an anxious look on his face was Steve Rogers, Captain America himself. He looked over her head and into her apartment. “I heard you scream, what’s wrong?”

She stammered, “Hey Steve, I had a crazy nightmare, and I just realized I overslept, so I really gotta go get ready, but thanks for the concern.” She stepped back and moved to close the door but he grabbed her hands.

“And the blood?”

She looked down at her hands; there was still some blood on her hands and now the towel as well. “Umm, I grabbed a knife wrong when I was going to cut open my bagel?” She offered weakly.

He carefully turned her hands over inspecting them. “I don’t see any cuts,” he said quietly. He gently pushed her out into the hallway and went into her apartment to check. Jane and Bruce came around the corner, and hurried down the short hallway towards her. She leaned heavily against the wall across from her door.

“Darcy, what’s wrong?” Bruce asked. She shook her head as tears clouded her vision. “Steve?” He called into her apartment.

When Steve came out, he was tense. “JARVIS, can you ask Stark to come down here please?”

The AI responded politely, “He has been informed of your request and is on his way down.”

“Thank you JARVIS,” he turned to Darcy. “Alright, you want to tell me what really happened?” He held out the bloody seam ripper. Tears flowed and she struggled to speak, to breathe. She shook her head. No, no. It couldn’t be real. It was just a dream, it was just a dream, it was just a dream. Black spots crept into her vision. No, no, no. Dreams aren’t real. She slid down the wall and blacked out.

“Back already?” a gravelly voice asked. She shook her head.

“Darcy… Darcy, come on wake up.” She blinked at Jane. She hovered over Darcy like a mother.

“Ungh,” she groaned intelligently. She was lying on her back on the floor in the hall. Jane, Bruce, Steve, and now Stark too were crowded around her.

“Oh, Auntie Em, I had a dream and you were there, and you, and you too.” She pointed at the guys surrounding her.

“Well, she must be doing better, the sarcasm is back.” Jane said with a wry grin.

She sat up slowly and leaned against the wall. “Hey guys…”

Stark held out the seam ripper, “Hey Lucy, you got some splainin to do…”

Jane shook her head, “Great, a pop culture snark off, Alright let’s at least let her get off the floor we can do this in the main room.” They all stood and made their way down the short hallway to the main room.

Shortly after Thor’s departure from Puente Antiguo, Stark had been in contact with Jane and there had been serious talks of collaboration, but then of course everything in New York had gone crazy. Jane had been sent to Tromso in the middle of the night, Erik had been mind-controlled by Senor Psychopath, and SHIELD had informed her that because of her connections with the events in Puente Antiguo, she worked for them. It ended up being a very temporary situation though. Stark’s Malibu home got blown up, Pepper got kidnapped, and so Stark blew up all of his suits, and had the glowy-thing removed from his chest. They both moved into Stark Tower in New York and Stark decided he wanted to focus on something entirely different.

Which brought them all here; Bruce was working with Stark on something completely unrelated. Steve, who was pretty much homeless after the Chitauri destroyed the part of New York he was living in, had moved in as well. Erik was unmind-controlled and working on some secret government stuff with SHIELD. Jane was at Stark Tower so often working crazy hours that moving in only made sense, and after finding out about Darcy’s predicament Jane talked Stark into working with SHIELD and making them let Darcy come work for Stark Industries. So Stark and Pepper had the top three floors, after the R and D floors, and the next two floors down were arranged in to swanky apartments (courtesy of Pepper, of course). On the residential floors, there was a main room that spanned two stories. It was huge and open, set up like a living room with a few TVs and comfortable couches, and a nice kitchen in one corner.

They all filed into the main room and sat, except for Stark who paced around the room. Darcy began to fidget as they all stared at her. Jane started in, “Darcy…”

“Just gimme a sec, okay?” she groaned. With a heavy sigh, she explained about the crazy dreams that had plagued her the last four weeks, about the stitched up guy and the seam ripper and to waking up with blood in her hands. “I just don’t get how it could have happened. I mean dreams are just dreams right?” She looked pleadingly around at the gob smacked faces surrounding her.

Tony Stark sat heavily in one of the chairs opposite her. “You know kiddo if it were April first I’d would’ve given you a prize for a great prank, but something about this rings true.”

“Of course it rings true! Why would I lie about this?” she whined indignantly.

“Oh, I don’t know maybe you need to cover up a murder or something.” He smirked and leaned forward invading Darcy’s personal space, reached under her glasses to force one eye open wider, and inspected her pupil.

She pushed roughly at his shoulders. “Hey, whoa, personal space dude!”

“There aren’t any signs of hallucinogenics.” He sat back in his seat with a humph. “Bruce?”

“Let’s look at this logically. Darcy says it was a very realistic dream; there are no cuts on her hands and no other evidence other than a bloody seam ripper. We test the blood on the seam ripper and have JARVIS record her as she sleeps.” Bruce rubbed at his eyes. “Look, this really isn’t my area of expertise; all I can do is offer suggestions. This is the kind of stuff that Betty and I went through to figure out what was going on with ‘the other guy’.” The rumpled scientist stood, rolled his shoulders, pulled out a hanky from his back pocket, and gestured for Stark to hand over the seam ripper. Stark dropped it into the handkerchief; Bruce gave a quick nod and left for the labs.

“Despite what everyone thinks to the contrary, I’m not really a perv, I don’t have any cameras hooked up in any of the apartments, so that’ll take a little rewiring.” Tony rubbed his hands together in glee. “But, this could so totally be worth the extra few hours of work.” Stark cringed as Darcy rounded on him.

“No way! I will move out and go back to SHIELD but there’s no way I’m letting you hook up cameras in my rooms!” She turned to Jane pleading, “Help a sister out, please? I gotta a great big bed you could sleep with me tonight. I know you’re a real light sleeper, you could tell them if anything weird happens.”

“Wow, Lewis, I didn’t know you swung that way, I really should…”

“Tony…” Jane growled, “…remember that sexual harassment clause that lets me out of our contract free and clear? The one that gives me all the rights to everything we’ve worked on together?” Tony paled a bit. “You’re getting dangerously close to a line you don’t want to cross.” She turned to Darcy. “I’m sure we can figure something out, if you don’t mind that I tend to hog the covers and that I toss and turn a lot.”

“Thank you so much,” Darcy gushed.

“You guys are real buzz kills you know that? Fine no cameras.” Tony stood to follow Bruce’s exit. “But, this is still my Tower; if I think anything dangerous is going on here I reserve the right to protect the people in this building, even if I’m protecting them from themselves.” Tony stalked out of the room.

During the whole conversation, Steve had been quietly observing. “It’s kind of odd, but this time I find myself agreeing with Tony. The camera wasn’t a bad idea Ms. Lewis.” Steve stood and left without another word.

The rest of the day was spent working on data transfer and other menial tasks as Jane and Tony went nose to nose on some science detail that flew right over Darcy’s head. She was fairly certain that the detail wasn’t all that important but both Jane and Tony were still ticked off about the disagreement earlier. When the two of them worked as a team everything was awesome, Jane’s work with Stark was all focused on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. SHEILD had discovered the reason that Thor hadn’t returned was because somehow the bi-frost thingy got broken. So Darcy helped out as much as she could, while the real brains, Jane and Stark, did the important stuff.

Later that evening when they finally finished the work for the day Jane and Darcy headed down to Darcy’s apartment. Dinner was Ramen noodles again, Yeah! The day had been so normal that she had almost forgotten about the drama her dreams had caused, except as the night wore on, she became more and more anxious. As Darcy went through the motions of her bedtime routine, washing her face, brushing her teeth, donning her pjs, fear began to creep up on her. The whole, it’s a dream but it’s more than a dream thing, was freaky as hell.

She wanted to help him, she’d always had a thing for helping wounded creatures; a baby bird that fell out of its nest, a squirrel with a missing tail, the fawn lost in the woods behind her house, a stray dog with some really nasty scratches. Time and time again, her mom had to call animal control to have them take care of the animals when Darcy had taken on more than she could handle. She had scars from the worst occurrence. The stray dog hadn’t wanted help or anyone near it for that matter. Her left forearm had borne the brunt of the attack; it had required about thirty-five stitches and almost three months of physical therapy. Something about this guy gave her the same vibe as the dog. He was hurt, and he seemed more dangerous for it.

She grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and checked with Jane before she went off to bed. Jane was still sitting at her kitchen table working out an algorithm for the test she wanted to run on her new equipment in the morning. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Which was Jane speak for an hour or so.

“Don’t you think the guys’ll be mad if you’re not watching me?” Darcy grinned, when Jane was busy with astrophysicist stuff nothing else mattered.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, like I said just a few more minutes.” And when Jane looked down at her notebook Darcy knew she was gone again, her mind sucked into whatever problem she was trying to figure out.

She crawled under her covers and stared at the ceiling tiles. It was so weird, she wanted to help the guy, but also she was way freaked out because it should have simply been a dream, but then again it was far more. As she lay there, she was overwhelmed by questions. Who was he? Why was his mouth stitched up? Why was she there? Was she going crazy, was it all in her head? Was it a dream or was it real? She giggled at herself… “Of course it is happening inside your head Darcy, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” Okay, Dumbledore quotes, really not helping right now. She rolled over clutching the water bottle a little tighter. She took a deep calming breath, counting backwards from 250 by sevens (her mom’s trick), she got to 166 before her mind was too muddy to realize she fallen asleep.

Notes