Chapter Text
Tony can’t say he’d ever evacuated that fast before. Whipping into a suit was easy enough, it usually came to him. But the speed that he’d dragged himself from the table and out the door, pressing the code on the way out was incredible. He could feel someone hot on his heels and he was sure it was Natasha but he didn’t necessarily want her following.
This was something he had to do.
Her room was the guest room in his own suite, getting there was easy enough.
“Jarvis, close and lock the doors behind me.” He got into the elevator one step before Natasha and the doors slammed on her. He could almost hear her growl of frustration. He knew, part of him knew, he shouldn’t have left her alone, but he had to. He had to find out what they had done to her.
he didn’t care how old Natasha said she was, in his eyes, she was a child.
The suite opened up to him and he spun to the right, he made way swiftly down the hall. The door was cracked open the way he left it, and the wizard of oz was still playing on the television. The bathroom door was ajar and light spilled from the open doorway.
He pushed it open, and gasped.
The first thing he noticed was the hair all over the floor. It was covering every surface, long tendrils stuck to the tile floors and in the plush bath mats. She was standing in front of mirror, a rough pair of scissors in her hands and she was cutting, chunks, away. The curls were falling long and tangled down the floor. There were parts where her hair was still well past her behind, and some of it was diced fairly short. It looked like she was making her way clockwise. She cut off another particularly long piece.
She had a comb in one hand and was running it through the newly cut pieces and then running it through the rest, as soon as it would catch on a knot she would cut it off.
“..Darcy…” he voiced.
She spun and looked at him. Scissors locked in her hand like she was prepared to shank him with them. Hand shaking in trepidation, he noticed the sweat the bloomed across her brow, and her eyes, borrowed in concentration, the low blue depths swimming beneath her eye lashes.
“Baby…” He said. He could hear the sadness in his own voice and winced. “Why’d you cut your hair?” He asked. He stepped forward as she placed the scissors on the counter. She shrugged. Her shoulders drooped forward and her head bowed, almost as if in shame.
“Knots.” She said.
“Ugly. Knots.” She said.
He embraced her as gently as he could and hauled her out of the bathroom, shutting the door soundly. He put her back in the bed and sat in the chairs beside it. She was looking up at him with lopsided hair and big watery eyes.
“I have knots.”
Tears began to flood her baby blues and leak down her cheeks like a dam slowly breaking. He gripped her bruised and fragile hand. His heart weighed heavy behind the metal encasing that magnetized it.
“I do too.” He said. And as she cried, head on his shoulder, water soaking into is suit jacket he would be man enough to admit to her, one day, that he cried too.
.
.
.
Natasha stared at the closed elevator and sighed. Knowing already that Tony had restricted their flow to his suit. And she really didn’t feel like pissing of Jarvis by hacking him. She slammed her hand on the metal surface, frustrated at Tony once again, booting her from righting her wrongs. She laid her head against it briefly and waited.
It was maybe twenty minutes before Jarvis opened the elevators back up. She flew on them, slamming the doors in Steve’s face. Steve had been more than sympathetic towards Darcy, even though she had kept Tony distracted from meetings the last few days and generally put the team in disarray, she knew that in Steve’s heart he knew Darcy belonged here. But that didn’t mean he was the best pick to comfort her. Not that she had any fears over him being insensitive, but she needed a gentle, calming hand, Steve might be a little too brush. She could remember him trying to help Bucky recover, and what a disaster that was, she wasn’t going to take the chance on Darcy.
When she arrived ,Darcy was sitting in the bathroom. On the toilet, facing backwards, in her hand was Tony’s phone. She was figuring out a puzzle as Tony lifted lengths of her hair and brandished some scissors, some sheers, a spray bottle of water and a wide tooth comb. To her horror she realized that he was going to cut her hair.
Tony Stark was going to cut her hair.
“Don’t.” She warned. They both turned to her, with deer in the headlights look. Tony went so far as to tuck the scissors behind his back like they hadn’t been there.
“Don’t do anything. I’ll do it.” She said. She removed her long shirt, and was in her tank top. Tony backed away. And sat on the bathtub. She could see it, the want to purge your old life from out of your skin. The urge to burn away the past and start fresh, if this is what Darcy needed, she would do it.
“Don’t worry, Darce. I’ve got this.” She said. She picked up the scissors. And went to work.