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After Hydra gets ahold of Jane Foster, they don’t have much use for the intern they were using as a spy (especially since she seemed like a very bad spy). Darcy knows that she needs to appear useful enough that Hydra won’t just kill her to get rid of her, so she finds a gym area and starts practicing moves that an older brother in the military could have taught her. Unfortunately, the gym she picked is the preferred hang out of Hydra’s pack of enhanced soldiers. They’re cruel and half feral and can’t decide if they’re offended or amused that some chit of a girl is using their gym.
If Darcy was listening to her common sense, she would leave and find somewhere else to get noticed as not useless, but Darcy is not in a good place. In the last year her whole world imploded. Her brother died. She found out Hydra was real. Shield was destroyed. Darcy is exhausted and scared and angry and for the first time in her life she doesn’t have a support system or a family. So instead of being meek, she gets loud mouthed and obnoxious. This pisses off the Hydra pack, but it also earns her some respect. They let her come back, but they give her a hard time.
A few weeks later Brock Rumlow, who is recovering at a startling rate, rejoins the pack. Darcy doesn’t particularly notice him when she snarls at the group, but he notices her, and goes ‘huh, I like you’. He is delighted by the way this small seemingly fragile and breakable girl has the guts to stand up to the big strong amoral Hydra soldiers. He also notices that she doesn’t seem very invested in the Hydra creed and decides to take this kid who’s gotten in over her head under his wing.
Darcy quickly finds that to her surprise, Brock Rumlow is the only thing in her current life that is simple. He starts to teach her how to fight, which actually means that she can start to use some of the more advanced moves that knows. He shields her from the rest of the pack when they get agressive. He also keeps her out of sight of the higher ups. Most surprising of all, when she’s upset and struggling with her emotions or the things she is having to do to stay alive, he provides a quiet, comforting, presence that offers her shelter until she can get ahold of herself.
In exchange, she watches him. When she notices that his still healing injuries ache after he joins the pack in sparring and rough housing, she asks why he joins in when it so obviously pains him. His only response is to glare, unwilling to explain that it’s his only source of needed physical contact. A few days later when she joins him for a rest, she sits so that their shoulders and arms brush. He startles and looks at her. She just raises an eyebrow challengingly. After that, she makes sure to give him whatever subtle physical contact she can get away with.
One day he’s having trouble controlling his feral side. She gives him space, but doesn’t leave him alone, and once the rest of the pack leaves, she starts talking. She doesn’t talk about anything in particular, but it gives him something to focus on until he gets a grip. After a few of these incidents, all he really needs is her presence.
Since she follows him around a lot, she is in the room when the pack is making a plan for a mission. Their plan will be successful, but it will result in a lot of civilian deaths. Darcy quietly suggests an alternative with less deaths, the fact that it will make their job easier appeals to them. One of them makes the comment that maybe she’s a clever little thing after all. Another one says maybe she doesn’t have an empty skull. They’ve been calling Brock 'Crossbones’ since the accident resulted in an x-shaped scar on his face and a third member of the pack snorts and says that since she’s been Crossbones little shadow, they might as well call her 'Skull’.