Title: Slipstream
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Darcy Lewis/Clint Barton, Jane Foster, Tony Stark, Jarvis
Rating: Teen
Length: 1,426 words
Content notes: Contains swearwords, character trapped in a distressing situation
Author notes: Set post Avengers Assemble but largely ignores any canon after that. Moderately ambiguous on the nature of the relationship between Darcy and Clint, so tagged for authorial intent :)
Summary: It started with a piece of alien tech, but that's really irrelevant. Darcy just wants it to stop

It starts with a piece of alien tech.

Because of course it does. Everything that goes hideously, hilariously wrong in Darcy’s life these days starts with alien tech. Or alien critters. Or alien mould.

But anyway.

It starts with a machine that no-one really knows what it does - whatever Tony and Jane and Bruce might claim to contrary, Darcy’s not an idiot – except that one day it does it. Darcy has an impression of what happens rather than a memory, a series of snapshots rather than a coherent event, but they all slide together into place. There’s a low-pitched whine that sets her teeth on edge and makes her ears ache, a deep pulsing emerald light that fans out on a slow, lazy circular scan of the lab, and a high-pitched frantic alarm that vibrates through her bones, and then.

And then.

She slips.

*****

“Darcy,” Jane’s almost shrieking, and Darcy has never heard Jane’s voice hit that particular pitch before. She winces, holding one hand up in a futile attempt to defend her eardrums from Jane’s verbal assault, and that little movement is enough to make the world tilt alarmingly. “Darcy! Oh my god. You’re here, you’re back.”

Darcy blinks slowly. Her head feels stuffy, like her thoughts are swimming against the tide in a sea of molasses and she shakes her head in an attempt to dislodge the sensation. It doesn’t really work, although it does have the delightful side effect of making her feel as though she’s about to hurl, and she swallows, just in case. In her experience vomit and lab tech do not mix well. “Did I leave?” she asks, “I don’t think I left, what the hell?”

Jane appears in her line of sight, her hands fluttering uselessly. She looks… worried. “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asks, and Darcy feels a laugh bubble up in her chest at the clear and not at all subtle avoidance.

“Wow, Janey,” she says, “Really? Okay, I remember that stupid machine switching itself on and… wait, where’s it gone?” Last time she’d looked, the machine had held pride of place in the centre of the lab, but it’s not there and now that Darcy’s stopped to take stock, it’s not the only thing that’s changed. The lab’s been reorganised; benches repositioned, machines moved around and Darcy doesn’t recognise anything that’s set out at any of the workstations. The only thing that looks familiar, that seems unchanged, is her own desk, and Darcy’s stomach swoops as she looks at it.

Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong with this picture. “Jane?” she asks, with a quiver in her voice she wasn’t expecting, and Jane claps both of her hands over her own mouth.

“Oh, god,” Jane whispers through her fingers, and Darcy does not like how wide her eyes have gone. “Darcy, I don’t know how to- Five years. You’ve been gone for five years.”

“Oh, god,” Darcy echoes weakly, and Jane reaches out to catch hold of her hand. Their fingers touch, just the brush of skin on skin.

She slips.

*****

“Jarvis!” Tony yells, from somewhere behind her. “I didn’t order a curvy brunette. Why is there a curvy brunette in my tower?”

Darcy doesn’t turn around, too focused on trying to keep her lunch where it’s meant to be, but she doesn’t need to see Tony to know that she’s brought the terribly wrong with her. The lab’s empty, and not just in a people are not working here right now way. It’s the same space; Darcy’s spent more of her waking hours than not in this room, and she’s intimately, depressingly familiar with its layout. There’s no other room in the tower with the weird squinty L-shape to it, but Darcy’s never seen it without a layer of scientific clutter. She’s never seen it without furniture.

She doesn’t like it. She’s prepared to admit that might be down to context.

“I have no record of the young lady, sir,” Jarvis says, and, okay, she knew it was coming, but just hearing it out loud is enough to make Darcy want to cry. “Security systems show no unauthorised entry and there is no record of internal movement within the complex. Based on internal recording, there should be no-one present at this time.”

“Huh,” Tony says, closer than before. “And she is definitely here? I’m not hallucinating?”

“No, sir,” Jarvis agrees, “There are no measurable abnormalities in your visual or audio processing and my sensors concur that the young lady is both tangible and present.”

“Well, that’s good at least,” Tony says, brightly, with a brisk clap of his hands. “Alright then, so she needs to leave, ideally before Pepper realises she’s here and decides it’s my fault. I’m pretty sure that this time it’s not my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Darcy says, thickly, and she finally turns around to face him. It’s the same Tony she knows and loves, but at the same time, it’s really not. There’s a lightness to him that Darcy doesn’t entirely recognise, a brittleness that’s missing replaced with sharp edges that she doesn’t know. He eyes her speculatively, his expression shrewd and assessing, but there’s not even a flicker of recognition, and Darcy bites down on her bottom lip as it threatens to wobble.

“I knew that, I think,” Tony says, conspiratorially, like he’s sharing a secret. “How did you get in, though? Not that I’m not delighted to hear that I’ve managed to duck any blame or, more importantly, responsibility, and I’m definitely not complaining about the view, but I do want to know how you got around my exceptionally effective security systems?”

Darcy starts to laugh. She can’t help it. “I don’t think I ever left,” she tells him, and Tony narrows his eyes disbelievingly.

She slips.

*****

She’s falling. Nothing around her but whistling air getting louder by the second, and Darcy can see city blocks spread out below her, hurtling closer with a terrifying speed. She twists in the air, desperately grasping at nothing in the hopes it might be something, but it’s useless. She’s still falling, fast enough to make her eyes water, and now, now she can hear the hum of the city – that buzz of constant traffic and heavy footfall that characterises everything that she loves about living in New York. Except that living here is going to kill her, Darcy realises with a burst of dazzling clarity, because the tower isn’t built yet.

Sometimes, Darcy thinks, the universe is a fucking bitch. She opens her mouth to scream.

She slips.

*****

“They’ll get you out,” Clint says quietly. He’s barely more than a silhouette, perched lightly on a table in the dim lights of the lab that tell her it’s either disgustingly late or appallingly early, and Darcy bites back the bitter laugh that threatens to escape.

Because it feels like it’s been forever, over and over again, just one moment in time, and Darcy can’t keep doing this. There’s a scream trapped in her throat and a wild punch itching in her fists and she’s just a lab assistant and she wants to go home.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, instead, because none of that will make the blindest bit of difference to what happens next, and Clint shrugs.

“Waiting for you,” he says easily, like it’s nothing, except that Darcy has no idea when she’s going to appear, which means Clint has no idea when she’s going to appear, which means he might have been waiting here for ten minutes, or ten years and Darcy has no way of knowing.

“Don’t worry about it,” Clint says, knowingly, “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”

“Shouldn’t you be… avenging or something,” Darcy says, with a vague wave of her hand that she hopes encompasses everything the Avengers do, and Clint quirks an eyebrow at her.

“What makes you think I’m not?” he asks, with just the ghost of a smirk that Darcy hasn’t seen in forever. A wave of homesickness washes over her and she’s reaching out before she realises to cling desperately at Clint’s arm.

“Hey,” Clint says, serious again, and his fingers come up to wrap around hers, calluses rough against her skin but still warm and reassuring in the dark. “Hey, it’s okay. It’ll be okay, Darcy, I promise.”

“I’m scared,” she whispers, and Clint squeezes her hand harder, even as he shoots her a tight smile.

“Hang in there,” he says. “We will get you out.”

She slips.