This is a sequel to my story "Dancing in the Dark". You need to have read that one first, for this one to make any sense.

You Can't Start A Fire Without A Spark

Clint

Clint had not been expecting someone he didn't know to be in Natasha's apartment when he let himself in in the middle of the night, which was how he ended up pinned to the floor by a curvy, ex-Russian assassin (although he didn't know this yet) with a knife to his throat at 2am.

Before either of them had a chance to say or do anything, the light came on and Natasha, stood in the doorway to the lounge, snorted.

"How many times do I have to tell you to stop breaking into my apartment, Barton?" She didn't really bother with a security system. Anyone she needed to worry about would be able to disable those with no problems, and the people around here knew better than to mess with the dangerous, redhead, Russian woman.

"Well, how was I to know that you'd finally make good on those threats to get a guard dog?" he returned, ignoring the knife to his throat, since Natasha didn't seem too concerned. He eyed the woman on top of him with a smirk. "Damn good looking guard dog, though, I must say."

The woman dug the knife harder into the side of his neck; not enough to draw blood, just enough to sting, which let Clint know that she knew exactly how to use that knife she was holding, and he yelped at the pain.

"Darcy, play nice," Natasha warned the woman.

"Guy called me a dog, Natasha," the woman – Darcy – complained, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she spun her head round to look at Natasha. "Think I'm entitled to a little retaliation."

"I think that knowing you caught one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best off guard should be good enough for you," she said, mildly.

Darcy seemed to consider this for a moment. She must have decided that she was satisfied, for now, as she got up, giving Clint a hand up as she stashed the knife somewhere on her person (she was only wearing a tank top and small shorts, so Clint didn't even think about where that) and helped him up.

"Gonna introduce us, Nat?" Clint asked.

"Darcy Lewis, Clint Barton. He's a friend. He got me out of the Business." There was a warmth there, in Natasha's tone. Darcy nodded and looked him up and down, considering. "Clint, this is Darcy. She's joining S.H.I.E.L.D. She's... my oldest friend." Natasha smiled, a soft smile that Clint rarely saw from her, as she looked at Darcy.

Clint frowned, pulling all the pieces together. Darcy was a woman, who looked around Natasha's age (although Clint knew enough to know that could be deceiving); she knew about Natasha's life before S.H.I.E.L.D.; Natasha trusted her – and that list was microscopically small; she knew how to handle a knife; she was jumpy enough to keep a knife on her person while sleeping – which is what she had been doing on the couch, as Clint could tell from the nest of covers on the plump piece of furniture in the middle of the lounge; she had pinned him in almost no time – some of which he could attribute to the aspect of surprise, sure – but there was skill there, too; and her eyes showed the weariness of someone who had been running a long time – it was a similar look to the one Natasha had had when he had found her.

My oldest friend.

The pieces came together with some force.

"Darcy Lewis isn't a very Russian sounding name," he remarked.

Darcy looked at him. She was impressed, he could tell. Impressed and wary.

"No," she agreed. "It's not. It's mine now, though. It fits. I like it. I mean, who wouldn't? I love Darcy Lewis. Darcy Lewis is a badass who tased a Norse God."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "You are never going to let that go, are you?"

"Nope," Darcy replied with a grin. "It's the crowning glory of my entire life so far. I want the thing written on my freakin' gravestone!"

"Oh, I have to hear this story!"Clint laughed and Natasha turned back to him.

"Why are you here, Clint?" she asked.

"Power's off at my place. Super says he doesn't know when it'll come back on and I need some place to stay… and I need to shower, Nat. I have a desperate and powerful urge to shower." He sent her a pleading look.

Natasha sniffed the air. "Is that smell you?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

Clint sighed. "I just got back from an op involving a smuggling ring inside a sewage treatment plant, Nat. Things didn't go to plan and the smell just won't go!" He looked at her, pleading. "I showered at HQ five times, Nat. Five. The smell will not go. I figured you had some fancy feminine shit that'd work. Please Nat. You think it smells bad from there, think what I can smell. Please."

Natasha sighed. "Okay, but when you're done, you're sleeping on the couch. I'm not running the risk you still smell when you get out. Plus, you never stay still."

"But..." Darcy looked over at her nest on the couch.

"You," Natasha turned to her. "You, I can cope with. Unless you've gained any bad sleeping habits since we were younger?"

Darcy shook her head. "Not that I know of."

"Good. Night, Barton. Remember to hit the lights when you're done or you pay my utility bill!"

With that, she grabbed Darcy and retreated to her bedroom.

"Nice to meet you!" Darcy called over her shoulder.

"You too." Clint blinked. It had been a strange day.

Tony

Tony Stark hated every moment he was in S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. It made him feel dirty, somehow, despite the meticulously clean surroundings. The only upside to this trip to S.H.I.E.L.D. was that Agent Coulson was taking him to the labs.

Tony liked labs. He preferred his own, of course, but whenever he was in someplace with labs, the labs became his favorite part of the place.

He still remembered that this was S.H.I.E.L.D., and he disliked S.H.I.E.L.D., but he couldn't help but to like their labs. They had good labs.

They heard the voices as soon as the elevator doors opened.

"I don't care if you can't get it to work. You're going to eat something!" There was a long-suffering note to the voice, but with a steely edge; Tony likened it to the way Pepper sounded when she thought he was being unreasonable.

"I just need five more minutes!" the other voice pleaded, absently. "If I could just get this wire to- ah!"

Tony and Coulson rounded the corner and saw the voices belonged to two small women. Tony also saw – like a train-wreck about to happen – the machine buckle, with the woman underneath it.

Before Tony or Coulson could even think about reacting, and faster than any normal human, the second woman had grabbed the first from under the machine and pulled her to a safe distance as the machine's supports gave way and it hit the floor where the woman had been moments before.

The women stared at the machine.

"I think I'll eat that sandwich now," the first woman said, faintly.

Coulson rushed into the room. "Dr Foster! Agent Lewis! Are you alright?"

The women both looked up at him when he entered, Tony half a step behind him.

"I'm fine," the first woman said, brushing the almost life-threatening incident off as if it was nothing. Tony assumed this was Dr Foster. She put forth more of an academic vibe than the other woman, with her scraped back hair, grungy jeans, and a cardigan that literally coming apart at the seams; at the risk of stereotyping, which was not something Tony was too concerned about, to be honest. Then again, the other woman didn't look too much like an agent either. She was young. Early to mid-twenties, he'd say, with curly dark hair loose down her back and hipster glasses on her nose.

"You should go get checked out, Jane," the other woman argued. "I yanked you pretty hard. And you might be in shock or something. Maybe I should take you to medical…"

"But…" Dr Foster glanced at the machinery, laying on the floor in a sad pile.

Coulson interrupted. "I can take you to medical. Agent Lewis can explain what needs to be done to Mr Stark."

Dr Foster looked at Tony as if only just noticing his presence. Lewis, however, seemed to have noticed exactly when he walked in and didn't look surprised in the slightest.

Coulson shepherded Dr Foster out of the lab. She called over her shoulder "Darcy don't you let him touch my-"

Tony never found out what he shouldn't touch as her voice cut off, presumably as the elevator door shut.

Tony looked over at the agent. "So… Lewis is it?"

"Yep," she replied, popping the p between her lips. "Coulson says you can fix Jane's equipment."

"Of course." Tony didn't even pause. He didn't know what any of this equipment did, but of course he could fix it. He was Tony Freaking Stark. He could fix anything. "What does it do?"

Lewis blinked. "I have no idea."

Tony stared at her for a moment. "Then why are you here?" he asked.

Lewis shrugged. "I was Jane's intern. She forgets that she's human sometimes and has to do things that get in the way of her pursuit of science, you know like eat, bathe, and sleep. I'm doing my best to keep on top of keeping her alive while we find her a S.H.I.E.L.D.-verified intern that she likes but that can force her to eat."

"So how am I supposed to know what to do with these?" He indicated the machines.

"I can find you her notes," Lewis replied.

As she was searching, Tony took a moment to look over the research notes that Dr Foster had left on the workbench. Her work was fascinating. She was obviously an astrophysicist, one with ideas and theories way beyond the times, but that she was steadily gaining evidence to support.

Tony was distracted from the notes when someone else walked into the lab.

"Stark," Romanoff nodded to him.

"Agent Romanoff," he replied, coolly. He was still a little sore at her infiltration of his company and the fact that she'd stabbed him in the neck with a needle, goddamn it! "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She spared him a glance. "Who says I'm here for you?" Romanoff looked over to Lewis, who was walking back over to them, a smile on her face as she looked at Romanoff. "You ready for lunch, Darce?"

Lewis nodded. "I'm starved." She dumped a pile of notes on the bench in front of Tony. "Have fun, Stark!" she called over her shoulder as she left with Romanoff.

Tony looked down at the notes, half of which seemed to be written in the most indecipherable he had ever seen in his life, and the other half stained with what looked like coffee.

"Oh, I will," he sighed.

Steve

When Steve opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was white. Snow. Ice. Cold. Crash.

He shot up with some force, head jerking around, trying to assess his situation.

"Hey, hey," a woman's voice called soothingly from his left side. "You're okay."

He turned to face the voice and spotted a small, curvy, dark-haired woman sat in a chair beside his bed. She was wearing pants that were cut rather low on the hips – he had never seen a woman wear pants so low – and a shirt made of some kind of stretchy material that did nothing to hide the woman's rather… ample… chest area. He tore his eyes away, a blush rising to his cheeks.

"Steve? Is it okay of I call you Steve? I'm Darcy and you're in New York at S.H.I.E.L.D., which is what the SSR became sometime after the war, so I'm told. And… I'm doing this all wrong…" she sighed, frustrated, pushing her curls out of her face, distractedly. "I came in because I heard the plan for waking you and it was such a stupid-ass plan… Seriously, it was ridiculously bad. You'd've run for the hills thinking you were kidnapped or something. It was that bad. I don't think they even did proper research. I mean, I am so ashamed of my super secret spy organization employers right now, you have no idea. So I decided that there needed to be a new plan-"

"Which is to ramble at me for ten minutes while waiting for my brain to catch up to the fact that I am not kidnapped?" Steve asked, amused.

Darcy grinned. "Well, I figured if I was friendly and upfront with you, you'd appreciate that a lot more than all the sneaking around and outright lying that my bosses were planning to do…"

Steve nodded, his brain finally catching up to all the information that Darcy had thrown at him since he opened his eyes.

"The SSR became S.H.I.E.L.D. sometime after the war?" he asked. "The war's over? How long was I out?"

"Oh, Steve." Darcy's face softened. "You might not believe me. You may not want to believe me. But trust me when I say that what I'm about to tell you is completely true."

They had been talking for about fifteen minutes, including Darcy taking out her cell phone and proving several facts for him, when a dark-skinned man wearing an eye-patch, a long leather coat, and a – rather annoyed – air of authority.

"Lewis, would you care to tell me why five of my agents are currently incapacitated and you ignored my express orders to stay away from Captain Rogers for the time being?" he barked at her.

Darcy opened her mouth to speak, but the man just spoke over her. "And if that's some wise-ass comment or joke, I don't wanna hear it."

Darcy closed her mouth but continued to meet the gaze of the other man, unblinking.

"Well?" the man prompted, impatiently when she held her silence.

"You told me that you didn't want to hear it, sir," Darcy replied, cheekily.

The man glared at her and Steve snorted. This brought the man's attention. "Captain Rogers. Nick Fury. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I assume Agent Lewis has brought you up to speed, Captain?"

"Yes, sir," Steve replied. "I think I'm up to speed… as much as I can be under the circumstances…"

Fury nodded. "Good. I'll have a med team in to assess you directly." He started to walk out, but turned back at the last minute.

"Oh, and Lewis?"

"Yes, sir?" Darcy replied, innocently.

"Tell Barton to get himself the hell out of my ventilation system… and I don't know what Romanoff is up to and I don't want to, but I know she's in on this too. Tell her I want to see her in my office in ten."

"I'll make sure she knows, sir," Darcy promised.

Fury turned to leave and Darcy looked up at the ceiling.

"You hear that, Barton?" she called to the ceiling. "Director Fury wants you to get the hell out of his ventilation system."

"Noted," came a voice from somewhere in the ceiling.

Fury left the room, grumbling about goddamn Russian assassins and their pet circus monkey.

Bruce

When the girl escaped through the window, Bruce Banner knew he'd been played.

"I'm sorry," a voice said from the other side of the room. Bruce looked around. The voice had come from a young, dark-haired woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties. She was small and curvy, her curly hair escaping from the braid slung over her shoulder. She had her hands out soothingly, as if trying to reassure him that she meant no harm. "I just wanted to talk to you. I knew you'd run if I just came up to you."

"Oh yeah?" he asked, suspiciously. "How do you know that?"

The woman shrugged. "Because it's what I would do. You wouldn't want to risk a confrontation in an area where civilians might get hurt. You and I are a lot alike Doctor Banner."

Bruce paused. "Uh-huh. And the girl? They start them that young?"

"I did," the woman said mildly.

This gave Bruce pause. "Who are you?"

"Darcy Lewis," she replied. "I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D. And we need your help."

"Look... I'm not... He... The other guy... he's not a good guy," Bruce stammered.

Darcy looked at him stolidly. "I said we need your help," Darcy repeated. "I didn't totally understand it all. I can totally do computers but I don't do science. Something to do with tracking gamma radiation, or something. All I know is we've got agents down and a megalomaniac with something potentially extremely dangerous out there and we need Doctor Banner, the foremost expert on gamma radiation. Not the Hulk."

Bruce eyed her. "And why are you here? Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. send you? I could break you without a thought."

Darcy smiled, a little humorlessly. "I'm here because I doubt there are many people out there who understand what you're going through like I do. What it's like to know you're dangerous. To want to just escape. To run until they can't find you, even though you're not entirely sure who 'they' are anymore. To know the things that you've done; what you're capable of. To let it keep you up at night; to know it follows you every waking moment. To want to atone for your sins, but not know how. To feel that need to help people; to help whoever you can however you're capable and to think that if you just help enough people, maybe you can fill that empty part of yourself. That one day it'll be enough and you'll have done enough good to make up for all the bad."

Bruce saw the raw emotion in her face, heard it in her voice as she spoke, and knew that, whoever she was, Darcy Lewis had seen things, done things. She had a lot to atone for. There was real pain there and he knew that she was telling the truth, at least as she understood it.

"Okay," he said, after a few moments. "Okay, I'll help."

Darcy smiled. "Thank you Doctor Banner. While you grab your stuff I'll bring you up to speed. You need to be informed about the Avengers Initiative…"

The Avengers

Darcy walked in step with Fury as they headed for the elevator.

"Are you sure, sir?" she asked, for what must have been the hundredth time.

"Of course I'm damn sure, Lewis," Fury replied, punching the button to call the elevator with more force than was strictly necessary. "Why are you not?"

Darcy sucked in a breath. "I've been an agent for less than a year; I don't have nearly enough experience leading a group; I used to be an assassin. For the Soviet Union!" She hissed the last part at him as the elevator doors opened. It was empty and they got inside. Fury glared at an agent who tried to get in alongside them, and he hurriedly decided to just wait for the next one.

They had ascended a few floors before Fury hit the emergency stop button and turned to look at her. "Lewis, I'll be honest. You weren't my first choice for this job, but seeing as my first choice died a few days ago, you're now my only choice. I understand what you've done in the past, just as I understand Romanoff's history, which is a hell of a lot bloodier than yours. I also understand that, like Romanoff, you're trying to clear your ledger. I get it. But the way you took command out there saved a lot of lives. If you hadn't patched into their comms and directed them where they needed to be when they needed to be there, the damage could have been a lot worse. And they trusted you. They trusted you because they knew you. They trusted that you knew what you were doing. You think that's just something I we can pull out of thin air? I assign another agent; it'll be months, possibly dozens of missions down the line before that kind of trust is formed. Who knows how many lives would be lost, how many missions would possibly fail because the Avengers don't trust that agent to make the right call?" Fury looked down at her, eyes boring into hers as if he could see her very soul. "You can do this, Lewis."

Darcy closed her eyes for a moment, a lone tear escaping against her will as she tried to grab a hold on herself.

Fury must have restarted the elevator, because she felt it begin to move again.

"Thank you, sir," she murmured.

Fury grumbled under his breath, but nodded.

The elevator reached its destination and opened the doors. They were out and down the corridor, standing outside the conference room door a lot sooner than Darcy would have preferred. Fury opened the door and she followed him in.

The Avengers were all sat around the conference table. Stark was doing something on a tablet. Steve was sat straight; attentive. Thor and Clint were having a conversation, and Dr Banner seemed to be meditating. Natasha had been looking at her phone. They all looked up when they entered.

Fury took his place at the head of the table and Darcy stood beside him, not really wanting to sit down.

"Team," Fury addressed them all. "You all know Agent Lewis."

Natasha smiled warmly at Darcy. Darcy tried to smile back, but felt like she was going to throw up.

"Agent Lewis, as of right now, is your official handler."

"Sweet," Clint replied, flashing her a smile.

"Our handler?" Stark asked. "We need a handler? What are we, five?"

"Agent Lewis," Fury told Stark, "will be your official liaison to S.H.I.E.L.D. She will do all your paperwork. She will also act in the same capacity that she did during the battle when you go on missions." He looked around the room. "Does anyone have a problem with this?"

No one said a word. Stark shrugged. "Hell, if we need a handler, it might as well be short and stacked- hey!" He glared at Natasha, who had thrown her entire phone at his head.

"Sorry," she said, unapologetically. "It slipped."

Fury looked at Darcy. "You're gonna have your hands full," he remarked.

Darcy looked over at her team. Steve was now admonishing Tony for his words. Clint was asking Dr Banner what he thought the odds were on Darcy agreeing to naked Thursdays, and Thor was beaming at her from across the table. When she turned her eyes to Natasha, though, there weren't words to describe how she felt. Natasha looked at her, pride obvious in her eyes, smile warm and comforting.

"We'll be okay," Darcy realized. "It's going to be okay."

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