Bucky Barnes had seen war, blood, the end of the world.

But nothing rattled him quite like opening Instagram at the gym and seeing Darcy Lewis, poolside, tits up, sunglasses on, captioned: “Hydration is important. 💦”

This one?

All Bets are Off* by OtroAmigo (WIP | 22,812 | E) *chose not to warn

Steve should honestly stop making bets. The universe loved to prove him wrong, so he doesn't know why he even bothers. That is until a stranger on the train makes him all weak in the knees. And that isn't just the vibrator in his ass talking, he swears.

for @zephrbabe​

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Darcy knew what it was the second she woke up.

The dull crampy feeling in her stomach combined with the low-grade fever and the desire to bone her mailman.  Yep, she was in heat.

Right on schedule, too. She’d been adhering to the three-months on, three-months off suppressant regimen and she’d started on the placebos three days before.

Unfortunately, due to her crazy work schedule and a healthy dose of denial, she hadn’t managed to find an alpha to come to take care of her in the past month since she’d broken up with her boyfriend.

Which left her with the awful prospect of riding this out alone.

So she’d never really admit this, but she had Johnny on speed dial. Not for this. For… other reasons that she was too horny to think about.  But she called him and he answered on the first ring.

“Heya, Darce,” he answered, that dumb swagger almost audible in those three syllables.  Fuck, he was a typical Alpha. But that’s what she was looking for.  A typical Alpha that she could count on for the next week and hopefully move on from immediately after.

“Hey,” she began, her voice cracking, and wouldn’t you know it, he picked up on that right away?

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I mean… it’s… my heat.”

He was either shocked into silence or he was waiting for more information, so she just barreled on. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Sure, but you need to be really specific,” he replied.

“Can you come over and take care of me?”

“More specific,” Johnny urged.

She sighed, but the crampy feeling in her belly wasn’t going away. “Come over here and fuck this out of me for the next five to seven days?”

This is absolutely the The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August AU I'd love to write but probably never will… mainly because I think it would require too much meta, too much research, and a shitload of words.

Darcy is a kalachakra - someone who is born over and over again, living the same life on repeat, ad infinitum. 

The kalachakra have a policy of never interfering with the course of history but when the very future of the world and the human race is at stake, they realise that they have to act.

Of course, not all of the kalachakra think the universe should be saved - if it is destined to come to an end, then who are they to change it?

Factions form - those who actively influence the world, trying to find a method to save it, versus those who are trying to maintain the status quo. 

When Darcy is born, the struggle has been going for millennia, in both years and lifetimes.

Her first life is normal (see, here I would have to decide, is she born into the MCU as we currently know it, or a less developed one?? Personally, I’m leaning towards one where Loki wins the battle of New York and the Snap doesn’t get undone) but the world still comes to an end.

Second lives are hard for all kalachakra, especially ones that retain all the memories of their previous lives, who - without exception - go mad and die early (do I make Darcy the rare, special one? Probably!) 

Her third life is one of ‘well if this is gonna happen, I may as well have fun with it.’ Right up until she dies in an alien-army related incident.

Fourth life, she’s still trying to cope with all the memories and spends a lot of time reading books on reincarnation, philosophy, religion, etc.)

Her fifth life she chooses to live normally, but the temptation to tell someone…anyone…is huge but this is the age of conspiracy theories and constant surveillance and the internet. Darcy isn't stupid, she doesn't want to call attention to herself, because who knows what might happen? She learns how to conceal her presence on the internet, and searches for anything that might explain what's happening to her. (She finds fragments and hints and clues to follow but if she discovers the Cronos Club (like the Freemasons or the Illuminati but for people like her) here how will it affect the plot? Another thing to consider.)

(Oh, and here’s another choice…does Darcy intern with Jane for the first time in her first life? In this life? In a later life? Probably not her first life, because Darcy with Jane is going to be a tipping point in this battle!)

Anyway…

At some stage Darcy interns with Jane, they take Thor in and help him, and he turns out to be telling the truth about being an alien/god. For the first time in Darcy’s many lives, something changes - the addition of Thor to the defenders of New York leads to a victory and the world continues instead of descending into chaos and ruin before the Snap decimates half of life. Well, it was good for a while...

The life after this one is where she discovers the Cronos Club (unless we go for the fifth life option) and learns all about kalachakra, the mission to prevent the Apocalypse, the opposing factions, and all the history of her people. Naturally, older kalachakra noticed the change in the timeline and are frantically trying to discover what caused it. With agents in all the alphabet agencies it's only a matter of time before someone in S.H.I.E.L.D. puts two and two together. It's an (as yet undecided) S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that introduces Darcy to the Cronos Club.

Other things to consider:

Darcy has never died of natural causes

Neither have most of the current kalachakra aged say, fifty and under

how many more lives will it take to stop Thanos before he snaps his fingers?

Are the Asgardians aware of kalachakra? Are they universal or confined to earth-based humanity?

Who else is kalachakra?

And a bunch of other things I haven't thought of yet.

And finally... so many ship opportunities!!!

Okay, I know I went slightly over my sentence limit here, but I needed a couple of extra lines to get the images I wanted across.  I don’t think anyone’s going to mind. ;)

“The holly king and the oak king,” one of her sister witches murmurs as she sidles up to Darcy, both of them standing still on the edge of the clearing watching the ceremonial display unfold before them.  “I don’t know how you were able to pull this off, but goddess bless,” she continues, and it’s all too easy for Darcy to spot how her eyes trace over the defined muscles of Steve’s back as he grapples with Johnny, pushing the younger man back a few steps.

In truth, Darcy isn’t quite sure how she’d managed to convince Steve and Johnny to join in her coven’s traditional winter solstice celebrations either, but they were surprisingly open minded and willing to help, even if it meant staging a mock fight in ceremonial garb that was little more than rough woven fabrics and garlands that left more skin exposed than not in the middle of a forest in wintertime.  But yet here they were, re-enacting the age old solstice legend for her.

God, she fucking loves them.

In an attempt to distract Steve, Johnny darts in and steals a kiss from his mouth, which gets a quirked eyebrow from Steve and another lunge that Johnny dances away from.

“So,” her sister witch says to her, “which king will be going home with the Goddess tonight to fully celebrate the return of the light?”

This one took me forever because I kept going “romance?” and then my brain would say, “no, no romance for you” and then I realized I kept just summarizing the Darcy/Steve breakup fic I started a couple years ago and then never finished. So have a brief, angsty summary.

Darcy and Steve had dated for about a year, but in his efforts to find his place in the world and still feel like he was making a difference, he was a terrible boyfriend. They’ve been broken up for a few months when they get trapped by a baddie and Darcy almost dies, realizing she’s been holding onto him, or the idea of him for too long, and starts to really move on with her life. He realizes she’s the best thing he ever let get away, but she refuses to let him back in when he is still the same person that broke her heart in the first place, just one that’s sorry but hasn’t done anything to change.

Around this time, Bucky is found and winds up coming to live at the Tower (because even in my angsty world we live in the 2012 fanon tower situation). 

Finally realizing that he isn’t the person that either Bucky or Darcy needs, Steve finally focuses on himself. Because if he can’t “save” them, he should finally admit that the Captain needs step aside so he can save Steve for once.

ShieldShock Fanfic by @zephrbabe 

From Summer 2017, reposted to Ao3.  

That one cover with Logan has to be the winner, right?

ITS NUMBER ONE IN MY BOOK!