For the next few days, Ksenia was out. Bobbi Morse hovered like a worried mom while her fever rose higher and higher; the antibiotics didn't seem to even be touching it. Darcy on the other hand hovered like a worried sister, following Bobbi around and doing everything that she said to make Ksenia more comfortable. Darcy wanted to move her to the lab, but the few times Ksenia came to, she protested with whatever strength she had. Jemma Simmons also came in and had hooked up an IV full of fluids and antibiotics. She didn't seem as worried as the other two and told them that the fever should break soon.

Nightmares plagued Ksenia's sleep, and in them, she kept losing everyone that she had ever loved and lost, again and again. Every time she lost Natasha though, she would come back to life and tell her that everything would be alright. Over and over, no matter what took them from her, Natasha wouldn't, couldn't stay dead, and that brought her comfort.

On the day her fever finally broke, Ksenia woke up alone in her mother's room. It was dark, but the small lamp in the corner cast a soft light around the cozy space. As her eyes scanned the surroundings, she stifled a surprised gasp when she realized that she really wasn't alone. In the corner, Loki stood with his back turned to her, looking at a decorative rock, a geode or something similar that belonged to Natasha. She could tell that he was wrestling with his emotions, he missed her. But why was he here? Was he checking in on her?

"I miss her too," she admitted as the silence split, which seemed to startle the god out of his thoughts. Loki jumped, dropping the geode and then half turned to give her a comforting smile that seemed to melt some of her worries away. The last time someone looked at her like that was when Natasha had grabbed her after the explosion back in the mountains, to make sure she was unharmed. Before that, it was when she last saw Luka back in the hotel before her world turned upside down. And then before that, it was the last time she saw Anatoli alive. The smile that Loki gave was genuine and she felt comforted, and not only that, but loved.

"Did Natasha ever tell you about the time we first met?" he asked as he bent back down to retrieve the geode that he had been admiring.

"A little," she admitted as she carefully pulled herself up, wincing at the pain that shot through her body. "She said that you barged in on her in her cave." Loki gave a quiet laugh as he walked over to her and sat on the edge of the bed, bringing his hand up to her forehead to feel if any of the fever still burned from her. As soon as his cool hand touched her, something seemed to snap within her soul and a sob escaped her lips that she didn't even know she was hiding. Somehow, it seemed as if the dark had gotten darker as the feelings she had tried to squash down lately suddenly rose up. She had lost so much; how much longer was this torture going to plague her life? Loki removed his hand and worry reflected back in his brilliant green eyes. He looked like he wanted to hug her, to embrace her to let her know that he was there for her, but he was unsure. And god did she want that. The look in his eyes was so conflicting, but she could see that he longed to comfort her. Tears collected in her eyes and before she knew it, they carved paths across her cheeks. They gathered at her jaw and then dripped onto the sheets, staining them with sorrow. She abandoned her cautious movements with her battered body and met Loki in an embrace that caused her to cry harder.

Loki joined her with quiet sobs of his own as this young girl seemed to break down the walls he had spent so long putting up in a matter of seconds. He held onto her as if he had known her all of her life. It just felt so right and he didn't want to let go, so he didn't. The way her body shuddered as sobs wracked her frail frame was breaking his heart. He adjusted his position so that she would be more comfortable, he could tell that her sobs were painful. With her laying against him with her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, he almost didn't hear the door open. His eyes shot over to it and Darcy had just popped in. When she saw what was going on, understanding collected in her own eyes and she mouthed a quick 'sorry' before quietly retreating once again.

To keep Ksenia from spiraling even deeper into her sorrows, Loki knew he needed to pull her out. "For the record, her name wasn't on it," he said. Ksenia's sobs turned into quiet sniffles until she looked up at him in confusion. "The cave, where we first met. It wasn't her cave."

When Ksenia saw a light return to Loki's eyes, she smiled and gave a shaky sigh, but she still didn't move from his arms. She didn't want to, she hadn't felt this safe in a long while, or so loved since she was last in Natasha's arms.

Loki picked up the geode that had since rolled to the center of the bed and held it in front of him with Ksenia eyeing it. "She hit me with a rock." A smile broke from his lips as he recalled the memory and couldn't help but start laughing. It quickly became contagious as Ksenia picture her mother, a top world assassin, defending her cave with...a rock. "Im serious!" he continued, "she threw it so hard that it carried me off of my feet and into the wall behind me. I couldn't be mad though, she was just so beautiful." A darkness started to return and the smile slipped from his lips as loss seeped back into his heart. When Ksenia saw that, she reached her hand up and wiped a single tear from falling from his eyes. It seemed to bring him out of his mind and he looked back down at her before hugging her tighter to him. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Ksenia opened her mouth to tell him that she was fine, but his gaze told her that she didn't need to lie. "Honestly, I feel weak," she admitted as she regretfully pulled herself out of his arms. She settled back against the headboard and sighed. "I need to get out of this bed and help you guys find my mother. Now, I'm not sure if they are going to move her now that you've..."

"Ksenia," he interrupted disappointingly, "I saw it myself...she's gone."

She cocked her head sideways and looked at him like he had just sprouted two heads. "Gone? No, you don't understand..."

"Ksenia, I saw her...I felt her...she was gone." He pleaded with her to understand; the young girl had to be in denial.

"No, you're not getting it, Yuri wouldn't let that happen." She saw Loki about to protest again but she gave him a look, which seemed to amuse him for a moment before his face fell yet again and she continued.

"You are so much like her," he admitted. She didn't know but the look that she gave him was the exact same look that Natasha had always shot his way when he was being 'unreasonable'.

"I'm not unreasonable, you just won't listen to me," she said as she started to get annoyed. "Will you just hear me out for a second?" When Loki said nothing, she continued. "Soon after we ended up in The Red Room, Yuri and my mom had a falling out when she wouldn't admit that she knew who I was. To protect me, she fought against him and almost died. Just for a second, she saw in his eyes that he realized that he might have gone too far, that he needed her for his plans and he thought he had almost killed her. My thought is that he wanted us to think that Yelena killed her, so we would stop looking for her. Maybe she did...die, but I would bet my life that Yuri had a back up plan. I mean, it would basically be a suicide mission for us to find the base again just to bring back a body, right?"

Hope sprung into Loki's soul but he dared to cling to it. "I understand what you are saying, but Ksenia...I can't feel her anymore."

"Look, hear me out," she continued, "I think Bobbi is still feeling things from her. She is trying to hide it because she thinks that mom is really gone. I'm sure she's convincing herself that she still isn't up to par with whatever she went through the other day. She said she almost died and she isn't quite recovered from that. She's hiding it from Darcy too and I know that they are pretty close."

"Ksenia, I've always had some sort of feeling that she was out there, even if it was extremely faint and I couldn't trace it. Why would that change now?"

"I've thought about that too," she said as she started to get more excited. "The powder that exploded in your face. Have you run tests on it?"

"Well, yes but..." he tried before being cut off again.

"And what did they say?"

"Well, Agent Simmons is still looking into it but they somehow got contaminated by something of Starks," he admitted.

Ksenia smiled this time, clearly excited as Loki had just connected the dots with one of her theories. "That's because Yuri is using Starks technology."

As soon as she said that, everything clicked into place for him. Everything made sense; that's why he couldn't feel them in the Red Room, that's why he couldn't get to Dove in the jet, and that's why the powder kept him from getting out of the mountains as easily. Whatever he did, he could not get back there. The Red Room had weaponized Stark's shield technology. For the first time in days, he let the hope in. He didn't know what he would do if this theory turned out to be untrue. Natasha could be alive.

Interrupting their celebration, Darcy gave a soft knock and peeked her head back in. She saw that their tender moment was gone, so she entered with a very tired looking Bobbi behind her. "I'm sorry for the interruption," Bobbi announced as she withdrew another IV bag, "but I've got to change out your meds."

Not sure on how to let the two women in on their theory, they kept it to themselves. Ksenia planned on talking to Bobbi more about what she was feeling. She didn't want to get the entire teams hopes up just in case she was wrong.

"That's fine," Loki said as he got up with a little more pep in his step and eyed Bobbi thoughtfully, "I'll be right back." He shared a look with Ksenia that told her that he had an idea, although she had no idea what.

The moment he left, Darcy plopped down onto the bed next to her and caused her to wince. "Don't be a baby, you've been sleeping for days!" she teased.

"And that doesn't mean that I've miraculously healed now does it?" she shot back with a smile as she rubbed at her shoulder.

Bobbi shoved Darcy out of the way and onto the other side of the bed and took her place. "Can I take a look at your arm?" she asked with an unusual slur and gently unwrapped her shoulder after a nod. "It's looking a lot better, we were worried about it but it looks like the...antibiotics..." and then she trailed off.

"Bobbi?" Darcy asked in concern and laid a hand on the blondes shoulder which snapped her out of her weird mood.

The agent continued like nothing had even happened, although she shared a worried glance with Ksenia to where Darcy couldn't see.

"Good," Ksenia breathed in confusion to change the subject. "Now can I get out of this bed?" When Bobbi smiled and stood up, she offered a hand to her. Ksenia took it and got up for the first time in days. It felt so good to stretch her muscles, but she couldn't move anywhere without dragging the IV pole with her. She turned back to the other women when she heard Darcy shifting around to talk to Bobbi.

Darcy got into Bobbi's face and began lecturing her when she saw the exhaustion in her eyes. "Barbie I swear, if you are keeping something from me to protect my feelings...I'm going to hit you. You've been acting too weird lately."

"Thanks," Bobbi rolled her eyes and then squeezed the bridge of her nose with her fingers before getting quiet. When Ksenia made her way over to her, Bobbi played it off and busied herself with straightening up the bed.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked this time in concern when Bobbi wouldn't meet her gaze.

"Im fine, just a headache," she shot back in an effort to get Ksenia and Darcy to drop it. "I told you it's nothing."

"It's never nothing with you," Darcy growled as she got up and disappeared into the bathroom to look for some Advil.

"Look," Ksenia began, "I need to talk to you about it, like, really bad. I don't think Natasha is..."

"I said im fine!" Bobbi yelled suddenly and rounded on her. Getting into Ksenia's face was meant to get her to back off, but the young woman was unwavering as she narrowed her eyes at her in defiance, just like Natasha would have.

After the commotion, Darcy came back with Advil in hand and didn't know what to make of the scene. "What the hell is going on?" When neither of the women moved, Darcy forcefully pulled them apart and tried to get their attention. "Don't make be beat it out of you two, what is going on?"

This time, Ksenia answered, still not breaking eye contact with Bobbi's daring stare. "I think Bobbi has something to tell you." When Bobbi narrowed her eyes in warning, Ksenia finally backed off.

"Bobbi?" Darcy asked and got between them. She saw that the blonde was at a loss for words and didn't quite know what to say. When Bobbi gave up and sarcastically waved for Ksenia to explain, she walked away, all the time shooting daggers at her.

When Ksenia was done sharing what she had seen, she realized exactly why Bobbi had kept that from her friend. Darcy was way more concerned for Natasha than she had realized. She could see that Darcy looked up to Natasha as not just a mentor, but also as a mother, though she would never admit it. Ksenia understood that giving this girl hope and then snatching it right back would destroy her. Feeling horrible for even bringing it up in this way, Ksenia tried to apologize to Bobbi. Before she could though, Loki returned to the room after his absence with a look on his face that seemed to mirror the hope in Darcy's. "Loki, what's going on?"

With a sheepish look, he admitted to swiping something from the lab. Standing before the women, he produced a syringe filled with a red liquid which made Bobbi take a step back. "No," she protested, "I'm not doing it."

"Doing what?" Ksenia asked, not sure what was going on.

"I can't, I just..." Bobbi argued before having to sit down; she was clearly exhausted. Whatever was going on with her went deeper than anyone had realized.

"Its Natasha's blood," Darcy told Ksenia. "Loki took it when he rescued you from the mountain from her, just in case we could use it for something and to see what The Red Room may have pumped into her along the way. Her fresh blood could reconnect them and Bobbi could possibly see Natasha again; but it's a long shot. Loki..." Darcy began as she looked at the excited god in disappointment, "I don't...I think we need to take a break, at least for now," she finished as she took in Bobbi's distraught form.

"We can't! Natasha needs us, and Ksenia just figured something out, The Red Room has to be using Starks shield technology to..."

"No." One word, such a simple, but complicated word came from Bobbi and the room seemed to deflate. "I'm not giving you all false hope. This is just me recovering from a near death experience. That's it, she's gone."

Ksenia limped over to her and sat next to the agent. "I'm so sorry for bringing this out." She caught Bobbi's gaze and looked at her, really looked at her distressed and pleading eyes and felt sorry for what she was going to ask next. "Would you do it if you knew that she was alive?" The promise in Bobbi's eyes as well as the nod gave her some bit of comfort, so she continued. "I know you feel something, or else you wouldn't have even told me what was going on the other day. It must take such a toll on you, but think of what they are doing to her; think about what they could do to her. If there is even an ounce of you feeling like she could be alive, dont you think we should do whatever we could to save her from that torture?"

Darcy never thought that she would take Bobbi's side over Natasha's, but being connected to the Avenger was killing her. "Ksenia, honey," Darcy said softly as she pulled her away from Bobbi. "Being connected to Natasha isn't an easy thing for her. She feels a lot of what Natasha goes through. We can find another way to...Bobbi?" She couldn't help but become distracted when Bobbi snatched the syringe from Loki's hands and shoved it into her arm. "Well, there's no going back now," she said as she rushed back over to her partner.

After several minutes of nothing happening, Bobbi got up in frustration and rubbed her temples. "I told you guys," she all but yelled in annoyance. She felt as if she let the team down once again, giving them false hope when there was no way it could even exist in the first place. When Ksenia walked over to thank her for at least trying, she was tempted to take a step back; she wanted to be alone. Ksenia had just barely made contact with her when all of a sudden the blonde froze, pupils dilating while the rest of the team sensed that something was wrong.

In a matter of seconds, Bobbi's body snapped tightly over in pain. Her stomach contracted and cramped, igniting a fire within her that made her want to pass out. A scream split her lips before she could stop it and the cramps radiated outward, pulling more muscles under the burning, piercing pain. Her legs then failed her and Ksenia had no choice but to catch Bobbi before she hit the floor, her IV getting ripped out on the way down and her shoulder catching the bulk of the woman's weight. Bobbi barely registered Ksenia's pained grunt, or Loki dropping to the floor to scoop her up when the cramp started again. This time though, the pain doesn't cycle through. It nestles deeper and deeper, it feels like its radiating from her abdomen to every piece of her.

The walls of the tower fly by as Loki whisks her towards the lab with Darcy and Ksenia hard on his heels, though none of this registers with her as the pain is all consuming. It gnaws her bone marrow and shreds her nerves, eroding the matter of her being. The minutes of hours pass like mountains forming, like a star going supernova. Her fists are curled around the fabrics of Loki's shirt, nails splitting the fabric as if it were made of paper. They burst into the lab, surprising everyone who was there, and it was everyone.

"You can't keep doing this to her! It's going to kill her!" Jemma yelled the moment she realized what was going on when Loki re-entered the lab, this time with Agent Morse writhing in pain in his arms.

"It's not like we had a choice in the matter!" Darcy yelled as she took the lead and led Loki toward the back of the lab, clearing the gurney that they now had in there. "She thinks she can do this by herself, she wouldn't even tell me that she was feeling things again."

Skye helped her as anger started to replace her worry. No, they did this to her, she thought.

"Wait, what?" Clint asked as he joined her with Tony and began the routine of hooking her up like they had done a matter of times. "She's been seeing Natasha again? How? I thought she..."

"No, guys, this is different, this is way worse; look at her!" Darcy yelled as blood poured from Bobbi's palms as her fingernails dug into them in her clenched fists. "I don't...I don't know what's going on."

Meanwhile, Bobbi tries to scream, but her vocal cords wont vibrate. She tries to clear her vision because if she goes, she wants to go seeing the faces of the people she loves, but her eyes wont work---her vision a collage of black and blinking white and blurry colors. She can hear though, if she really concentrates, and she hears people shuffling, moving all around her. The pain was making it hard to concentrate, but amongst the shuffling, she heard screams and moans, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from because it was all around her. Surely it wasn't from her friends in the tower, why did they sound like they were in pain? A face then popped into her blurry vision and a smile cracked across his face as malice dripped from his malevolent gaze while he recited his favorite line from his most admired author, Dante Alighieri. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," he warned before his face disappeared and she tried to find it again, but her vision threatened to leave her once more. She managed to move her head and it felt as if an explosion went off inside of her mind, though she managed to see rows upon rows of people, all lying on cots, writhing in pain as a black substance ran into them from tubes stuck into their bodies, different than the substance that ran into her own. One of them, a man, ripped his tubes from his arm after destroying his restraints and raged towards her with murder in his gaze, an anomaly amongst the soldiers. The man who had invaded her vision before suddenly blocked his path and stopped him almost effortlessly, but not before the soldier threw his fellow comrades around who were strapped to the cots in his way as if they weighed almost nothing. The name Yuri tasted foul in her mouth as he ended the rampaging soldier's life effortlessly as the pain started to reach a peak and dots swarmed her vision.

As Bobbi was no undoubtedly seeing what Natasha was seeing, the tensions in the lab rose and everyone was on edge. "Well what happened? Why is she all of a sudden in this state?" Steve asked from the background as he stood back next to a disturbingly spitting image of Natasha.

"She took some more of Natasha's blood," Loki admitted as he laid a hand on the blondes forehead. He tried to get a read on her but pain flashed into his head when he tried, the powder he had gotten hit with still was affecting him.

Skye grabbed his arm then and pushed him back, not afraid to get in his face. "You son of a bitch, you took it when you came down here. You forced her to take it, didn't you?"

"It was me," Ksenia admitted as most of the eyes not focused on stabilizing Bobbi all shot to her. "I asked her to take it, but she refused, she didn't want to. She had to have realized that she was wrong though because the next thing we knew, she snatched it from Loki's hands and injected it into herself."

Skye set her sights on Ksenia then and was about to advance on her angrily when Bobbi's eyes shot open and she choked out a haunting phrase before her back bent at an impossible angle, but not nearly as impossible for it to break. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." No, Skye couldn't stand it any longer, she was going to do whatever it took to protect her teammate.

"I'm going to push her morphine," Jemma announced as Fitz handed her the syringe already drawn with the sweet relief.

Suddenly she was stopped when Darcy grabbed her arm aggressively, preventing her from giving it to Bobbi. "No, it blocks what she can see, it makes her head fuzzy."

Fury blazed into Jemmas eyes as she tried pulling her arm back, but Darcy wouldn't let her. "What if she isn't seeing anything? She's suffering, surely you wouldn't let her suffer like that when I could take the pain away. Let me go Darcy, she needs it."

"No." Darcy spoke with all the authority she could muster while dropping her silver chain from her other wrist in warning.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Tony yelled in surprise when a new danger entered the standoff. "Skye, drop the gun," he warned.

Skye trained her gun on each member of the Avengers team when they tried to approach her until they planted themselves still. "Jemma, push the morphine," she commanded when she trained the gun on Darcy for her to let the doctor go.

Not quite sure if the agent would pull the trigger or not, Darcy released her grip on Jemmas arm, but tensed her wrist to let her silver chain fly in an effort to taze the doctor unconscious. Skye sensed this and fired a warning shot into the floor next to her foot, bits of tile licking Darcy's skin in the process. Getting the message, Darcy backed off. "She said to never give her relief when she's like this. She gave strict orders; you don't know what you're doing," she pleaded.

"I do know what im doing," Skye shot back in relief when Jemma tossed the now empty syringe onto the table. "You guys would do whatever you can to get Natasha back at the expense of my teammate. You would rather have her suffer in order to get a shred of information from whatever she may see. Well im putting a stop to it, we are leaving the moment she's stable." Skye lowered her gun and the room breathed a sigh of relief as the danger passed.

Meanwhile, the torture Bobbi was going though continued for only a few more minutes. She couldn't connect the dots as to what she was seeing as the pain radiated through her in waves. Her vision came and went as well as the information she was gathering. When the fire started to extinguish within her veins, her mind clouded just as she was able to see valuable information on a screen next to her. As the blackness finally overtook her though, another man, a ghost, turned from the screen and put a finger to his dark, smiling lips. Shhhh, was the last thing she heard before her body went numb and finally, the pain stopped. There was one thing she was sure of though, Natasha Romanoff was alive.

Bobbi felt as if she were floating as she came to. She didn't want to wake up now, she was just about to see what was on that computer screen, why was she waking up? With a groan, she tried pulling herself over onto her side in an effort to pull herself up, but hands were pushing her back down. Her whole body had a deep ache to it, though it was more of a dulled pain for a reason she couldn't quite understand. "No," she gasped, trying to escape the hands that were preventing her from doing what she wanted to do. Her mouth tasted funny, like she had been drinking liquid copper, so she spit out the odd taste when she realized that it was blood. She was so confused, and when her eyes finally started to adjust through the haze, she realized that she recognized the faces in the room from somewhere. One face in particular stood out and she reached for her, glad to see that she was okay after the hell she had been through. "Natasha," she called out through blood stained teeth, and then smiled as the redhead came closer. It faltered when she realized that it wasn't her, so she recoiled in...fear. "What? No, she's still in there. Why am I back?" she groaned as she fought off the hands still trying to keep her still.

"So she's alive?" The Natasha look-alike asked with hope.

Bobbi looked at her without so much as a trace of a smile and then regretted it when Ksenia's face fell. "She's alive, but they... I don't understand what they are doing to her. It...I've never felt pain like that in my life." She faltered then when a wave of dizziness caused her to begin to fall. She wasn't in any danger, there were hands all around her to help her so she simply gave in this time. Her gaze found the syringe on the table next to her as she fought to stay awake and shot a look of betrayal at Darcy and Tony. "You promised..." she pleaded as darkness swam in her vision and blood instead of tears leaked from her eyes. "I'll never forgive you, I almost had her, I don't...Lazarus," was the last thing she managed as she locked her gaze with Darcy who only looked at her sadly as well as surprise when Bobbi uttered that almost mythical word.

"Oh no freakin' way," Darcy gasped when Bobbi was pulled into a deep sleep. She looked up and saw the distraught faces of Skye and Darcy who were still stuck on Bobbi's threat towards Darcy, when it was really them who betrayed her by pushing the morphine.

"Guys, I am so lost," Fitz sputtered as he struggled to grasp what was happening. There was just too much going on.

"I'm a little lost too," Clint said before snapping his fingers to bring Darcy out of her thoughts. "Darcy, what has you so freaked out?"

"Bobbi is going to hate me, but I think we need to get Dove back here ASAP," she said before grabbing Tony by the shoulders and shaking him. "I need you to go get him or something because if Bobbi said that right, he knows more about this than any of us combined...KSENIA!" she shouted in realization. "How much do you know about Anatoli's work?"

"Anatoli? Why?" Ksenia asked before Tony interrupted her question.

"Darcy, I hate to give out anymore bad news but Dove dropped off of the face of the earth earlier," he said. "We tried reaching out to Luka to let him know you were safe and he said that Dove disappeared. What does he have to do with anything? Does it have something to do with what Bobbi said? The whole bring people back to life thing...Lazarus?"

"Wait, Lazarus?" Skye asked in confusion. "Not the whole 'Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate' thing?"

"Lazarus?" Ksenia uttered before realization dawned on her. "Anatoli told me and Luka everything he possibly could about his project. You think that's how they brought Natasha back?"

Darcy smiled as this new bit of information. "Oh I have no doubt, we just need to talk to Bobbi when she gets up."

"I dont think shes getting up anytime soon guys," Jemma said as worry splayed across her face while she tended to her friend. "Her vitals are low, whatever she just went through almost killed her."

"Darcy..." Ksenia began with hesitation, "I don't...I don't think you realize just how brutal that project was. So many people died from the agony the serum caused; agony that lasted for days. Genius Halipleumon, he called it. 'Like the Roman guardian angel, Genius, the medusa like venom would watch over and drive the body mad, until their spark would either be relit fully, or extinguished.'" Only those whose hearts didn't give out reaped the benefits from it. He told me that he leaked it to SHIELD soon after the project ended and he thinks they experimented with alien DNA, making the process a lot less painful. I seriously doubt, from what Bobbi went through, that this was the more 'refined' form."

The blow to Darcy's spirits caused her take a step back as her eyes found Bobbi. She noticed the blondes ragged breathing and her heart broke for both her and Natasha. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," she recited before walking over to a computer in silence to busy herself with something other than watching her friend suffer or from hearing anymore bad news.

"Is anyone going to tell us what that freaking saying means?" Skye asked in frustration.

With her back turned from the group and her shoulders sagged in dismay, Darcy answered. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."