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Darcy dreams.
There's a beautiful Parisian cafe on the corner, smelling of fresh-baked pastries and coffee fit for a king, and Darcy wanders into it, stares at honey-glazed golden danishes and tries out some phrasebook French. The server behind the counter laughs at her accent but smiles regardless, and Darcy walks away with a paper bag of deliciousness she can't wait to eat into a street market, full of clothes and knick-knacks and food and people. There's a couple arguing on a street corner when Darcy tries to cross, and one of them shoves at the other, into her; she hisses as coffee spills all over her jacket and she has to carry it. She knows she needs to find coffee for Jane, really soon, or they won't be able to save the world; Darcy's carrying around a doohickey which is starting to beep.
The couple on the street corner are still arguing: " - just want to find you," says one, and the other says, "Can't you get it into your thick head? I don't want to be found - " and Darcy thinks of seeking and finding and the bilgesnipe bounding out of a portal in the street, one of Thor's friends on its head wielding a spear -
- there's snow, falling. It's freezing cold and Darcy steps through a portal and then she's standing on a mountainside, watching a train to an incessant beeping near her ear -
Darcy fumbles her alarm, squints at the time, and rolls over, scribbling something unintelligible in her dream diary before she promptly dozes off again. The entire book is full of messy meandering thoughts, cities she's been to and cities she's not, Facebook and freezing and falling and stars. When she wakes up for real her dreams are gone within seconds, only half-formed wisps that disappear when she thinks of them, and Darcy shrugs it off and gets dressed for a new day.
Her days are slow, meandering and long now that Jane's on the lecturing circuit, invited with benefits to all the places that had snubbed her only a few years before. Darcy hip-checks Jane in the kitchen, standing by the counter and staring blearily into a cup of coffee, and gets her own; they share a companionable silence as Darcy twirls the spoon in her cup to slowly dissolve the sugar, clinking along to some music in her head. "Do I have something today?" Jane asks, after a while, and Darcy squints at the date and time on her phone.
"Tomorrow," she says, "flight to Frankfurt."
Jane closes her eyes and rubs at her forehead. "Ugh."
"Bad dreams?" Darcy asks, somewhat sympathetic, and Jane makes a face and sighs.
"Thor's on my schedule, or something," she says. "But he called - he'll be in Asgard soon." Jane's described Thor's dreams before, drunk and laughing on a rooftop in London: abstract, saturated, intense, "Like everyone was speaking a language I almost knew," she'd said, "until I listened closer and I couldn't understand a word." Now, she shrugs, makes a face. "It's easier when we're off-sync."
Darcy hums into her mug, the steam warming her hands and face. "I might head out," she says, and Jane peers at her, nods.
"Pick up one of those...?" She waves a hand, searching for a word neither of them know, and Darcy smiles.
"Yeah, I will."
They're in Geneva now, the land of snow-capped mountains and French-edged food, where Darcy can lapse back to English after a greeting without worrying too much about being understood. She wanders around the shopping malls, stops in a café and picks up Jane's favourite baked goods, and drinks amazing coffee as she watches the world go by. Some people look back at her, gazing out the window, and she gives them a smile when their eyes meet, grinning to herself whenever they look surprised or pleased and keeping internal score - until one man stops in the street like a deer in headlights.
Darcy blinks at him, and he blinks back. She turns her head around but everyone around them, between them is flowing on, lost in their lives and conversations as he stares at her from the street. His hair is tied back, his face scruffy but handsome and oddly familiar, like she's seen it in a magazine or a newspaper on a rack, absentmindedly scrolled past it on her Facebook feed, and -
Darcy's phone rings. She glances down and away and when she looks up again he's gone. Jane's on the phone, rattled and annoyed: "They just told me I've been moved to present tomorrow - like I can just drop everything and go!" and Darcy placates her as she picks up her bag and starts planning flights; whatever happened earlier, forgotten.
Darcy dreams.
She's on a date with a bland-faced man with fantastic arms in a bar somewhere in America, and they're making a game of flirting with the waitresses that come by, even as he sidles closer and closer. But Darcy isn't feeling it and she downs something sweet and bright and fruity and pushes his hand away to dance where the music's pounding at her heart, through her veins and out her feet, tap tap tap as goes the beat with a haze of colour and darkness and light. There's a cute girl she spins around with and out and she accidentally knocks into a man, who starts and stares at her; he's frowning and Darcy yells, "Cheer up!" over the mass of ambient noise and the crashing sound of breaking glass and tugs him into the crowd -
- it's snowing, inside. The wind is howling and Thor's yelling for drinks, drinks as he rolls out a boar over a crackling firepit, fireworks going off in the sky with a bang -
Darcy wakes up, squints into the darkness, and calls out, "Everything okay?"
There are some more loud noises, bangs and scrapes, and then Jane's voice calls out, "It's fine!" Darcy rolls her eyes and tries to remember where her dream was at, but the few pieces she has slip out of her grasp, fading like wisps. She hesitates over her diary, writes down snow and leaves it at that as she goes to see what Jane's up to.
Jane's equipment follows them, needs to be set out and sorted and it leaves Darcy with taped-together beepy boxes to monitor during the day, just in case. Jane spends the afternoon schmoozing and crashes on the hotel sofa at absurd-o'clock, flushed and excited as she rambles to Darcy about the fantastic new science and the assholes she wanted to punch. Darcy says, "No updates here," and Jane takes one look at her, eyebrows raised, and says, "Post-drinking drinks?"
They do a run of it; Darcy needs a lot to catch up and they try out local beers, different styles from all over while Jane points out hot guys Darcy should pick up, ranking them by some obscure scientific algorithm she's tried to explain more than once. Darcy drinks cocktails and guesses at numbers but they end up going back to the hotel just the two of them, arm in arm and laughing about Darcy trying to explain Jane's work to an equally drunk dude at the bar, his face as she got more and more expansive and less and less coherent. "It's okay, it's okay," Jane says, giggling, and when they pause to catch their breaths a guy wearing a hoodie brushes past, his hands in his pockets - and then he stops.
"Who," he says, his voice rough and cracking along the edges, "who are you?" and Darcy squints at him.
"Do I know you?" she says, because he's scruffy-faced, oddly familiar though she doesn't think she's seen him before and Jane glances between them and tugs at Darcy's arm, linked in hers.
"Hey," she says quietly, "come on, let's go," and they do.
Darcy dreams.
She's in an old-fashioned bar or club, military men dancing with beautiful women, wearing a dress and heels she'd kill to be out of normally but it's okay, just for the night. She's laughing at a joke, sipping at a cocktail like she's dignified, and there's a stunning woman on the floor she wants to dance with. Darcy steps out on the floor, spins a few turns with the men in uniform, and taps the woman on the shoulder. "Mind if I cut in?"
The blond man dancing with her is frowning at her, almost confused, and when the woman says, "Yes, of course," and steps aside Darcy takes her arm and whisks her away. She looks familiar, like Darcy's seen her in history books or on TV; she takes the lead, through steps Darcy feels like swing dance, the old triple beat in her heels. "That was very well done," she says to Darcy, and she's British, too. Darcy bats her eyelashes and curtsies in her skirts and presses her mouth to her cheek.
"Add me on Facebook," Darcy says, as the woman's boyfriend comes by, says, "Peggy?" And both of them turn to Darcy, identical expressions on their faces, and Darcy thinks puzzles shouldn't be this hard, puzzles should be -
A breeze cuts through, cold enough to make her shiver. Darcy wraps her arms around herself and gets a hot chocolate at the bar, laden with warming alcohol, trying to chat up the man beside her dressed in military blue. She trails her fingertips up his arm and he presses his lips to the back of her hand, offers her a dance when -
Darcy wakes up cold, tugs the airplane blanket a little further around her shoulders, and looks out into the aisles, low-lit: screens dimmed or low, the occasional person with a reading lamp and a book, Jane beside her, fast asleep for once, a notebook full of equations on her lap. She buzzes the air hostess for some water and a snack, and the woman smiles at her. "It's hard dreaming when you're away, isn't it?" she says, and Darcy shrugs.
"Yeah," she says, "I guess."
When they land it's in the United States again, though they're down in Chicago this time; the news is full of the new Avengers, the old Avengers, the Avengers ten times over again. Jane watches it with her mouth thinning into a line and Darcy switches channels to a nature documentary, dolphins swimming in the ocean, and it's better than seeing the same footage of Thor over and over again on the screen. "Do you think," Darcy starts, one morning-late-night, and Jane looks up from her work, spread out across the table, and makes an inquiring sound.
"Do I think...?" Jane prompts, but the talk show on the radio's switched to soulmate stories for the night, the announcer saying so you and Bob knew you were soulmates after you recognised him - from your sex dream? to a chorus of embarrassed laughter, and Darcy shakes her head.
"Never mind," she says. "Hey, need any help?"
Darcy dreams.
She's walking down the streets of a city that could be anywhere, hands in her pockets, scarf around her neck, listening to the music pour out of clubs, jazz and pounding dance and heavy rock. There's a dozen dark alleyways and a million people falling down drunk and Darcy's reading the war recruitment posters, Uncle Sam needs YOU! like she has to. Someone shoves past her, too forcefully to be by accident, and Darcy pats herself down, then realises: "Hey! That's my iPod!"
She chases the boy down the streets, hazy and old with cobblestones turning to concrete under her feet, through a dark, packed club and out the other side where she can't tell what direction he turned; there are two men there, grappling against the wall, sharing heated kisses and Darcy tosses a mental coin for left or right when the blond man looks up. She's looking past him but his expression when he turns to her is absurd, confused and guilty, and Darcy stares at him, bemused. "Hey," she says, "did you see that guy? He stole my iPod - " but the guy's already shaking his head, eyebrows drawn together.
"Your - iPod?" he starts, pauses. "What's your - " when Darcy spots the kid dash in a silhouette of light against the main street and she's already running past, boots pounding on pavement, her mind fixed on her goal as she calls back, "Catch you later!"
She wakes up triumphant and with a spring in her step to countermatch the heavy bruises under Jane's eyes as she watches her data compile and run; Darcy bumps her aside with a mug of hot chocolate and says, "Get some sleep." Jane protests half-heartedly but Darcy covers her with a blanket when she curls up on the couch and dozes off, and returns to her work, foot tapping along to the music in her earbuds.
They're back to London, later; Jane's still got the lease on her apartment and it's a delight to be back in a place that isn't a hotel room, despite the food molding in the fridge. Darcy spends the day fighting off jet-lag and cleaning and restocking, sends a Facebook message to Ian: want to catch up?? but doesn't expect anything back. Eric calls in the evening and talks to Jane for a while, science flying over Darcy's head as she channel-surfs and stifles her yawns.
She ends up on a late-night science program, a soothing female voice-over saying and by correlating pee-gee-oh waves, perhaps we will finally come to a solution to the age-old problem of finding one's soulmate, and she falls asleep to the sound of Jane's voice, rising and falling like waves.
Darcy dreams.
She's at the beach, cool and windy, walking around with a thingamabob that's beeping intermittently as she scans. She's got a pile of stick-shaped portal-things she needs to plant in her bag, and she keeps an eye on the clouds on the horizon as she buries one in the sand. It's a slow, easy day, only a few people playing in the surf, and Darcy thinks about ice cream and steak pies as she walks, eyes on the tiny map on the screen.
"Need a hand?"
Darcy looks up. It's a man, dressed for the weather in a hoodie and long pants, shifting from foot to foot. He's scruffy but good-looking and Darcy raises her eyebrows and grins at him. "Really?" she says. "I could be doing anything. I don't even know what I'm doing."
"You must be doing it for a reason," he says, "and you don't look like someone who's planting bombs or some shit like that." He shrugs, raises his hands. "D'you need help or not?"
He looks like he means it, and Darcy's not one to turn help away. "Sure," she says. "Let's go."
They clamber over rocks and dip their toes in the water; he takes a sand dune at a run and she laughs when he comes back, sand covering his clothes and streaked through his hair. They split the cost of fish and chips and feed half to the seagulls that come so close Darcy thinks she could catch them, and she watches his face surreptitiously when the walk along the shore, the tight lines around his face relaxing, slowly, as she talks. "And then?" he prompts, and she shakes her head and grins.
"Come on," she says, "I've gotta have something to tell you next time."
He studies her, eyebrows furrowing slightly, and says, "I never got your name."
"Darcy Lewis," she says, "and what about you, Mr. Mysterious - "
Darcy's phone shrieks near her ear and she turns off her alarm and squints at the time. There's an odd feeling in her chest, like she's still waiting for something but whatever it is falls from her mind like sand through her fingers.
When she stands up she accidentally kicks Eric where he's asleep on the floor and he jumps and shouts, waking up Jane, who unbalances off the other couch and tumbles gracelessly to the carpet; Darcy winces and says, "Sorry!" and goes to make coffee as a peace offering as Jane groans and rubs at her shoulders and Eric swears tiredly at the morning. They accept mugs of coffee like it's ambrosia and Darcy digs out ingredients for breakfast, starts mixing pancake batter and checking the internet for world-news updates as they slowly pull themselves together.
Ian has a girlfriend-soulmate, Darcy finds out two days later, catching up over coffee; she's a pretty English girl with a generous mouth and eyes that sparkle when she smiles. "It's been great to meet you," she enthuses, and they make plans for a museum trip in a week.
"Looking forward to it," Darcy says, smiling, but when she's putting her number in her phone, her eyes catch on a guy watching her.
There's something unmistakably familiar about him, despite or because of the hair hanging in his face, the wary, surreptitious glances around him. Darcy frowns but when he notices her looking, he stands up and walks away.
"Someone you know?" Ian asks, peering over his shoulder, and Darcy shakes her head, feeling unmoored and uncertain.
"I... I don't know."
Darcy dreams.
It's warm and quiet and she's lying in bed, squinting into the darkness. Someone's already talking, " - some things to sort out, sorry, doll," and she says, confused:
"Is that you?"
The guy looks familiar, absurdly so, and he stops still under her examination. "Me?" he says. "Nah. Go back to sleep, Darcy."
"No," Darcy says, its up, grabs at his sleeve. "I've seen you before, somewhere. Haven't I? Mr. Mysterious," she says, and she doesn't remember where it's from but it fits. "You never said what your name was."
"I could," he says, with a wry smile tugging at his mouth, "but you'd forget." He huffs half a laugh and lets her tug him down until he's sitting on the edge of the bed. "And, like I said - I have some shit to sort out first."
"Oh," says Darcy, "you've got the right girl. I'm a pro at sorting - more than a pro, I sort things for a job. I'm great, we're all great." She gives him a beseeching look to his bemused smile. "We could even call Thor?"
"Thor, huh?" he says. "Now that's a tale for later." He looks more thoughtful than anything, now, and Darcy waggles her eyebrows at him and angles for a kiss; he turns his head at the last minute so her cheek slides along his, skin against stubble, and he breathes a sigh into the curtain of her hair. "You haven't seen a blond guy lately, have you?" he asks. "Tall, old-fashioned, kind of a stubborn asshole, looks like the epitome of perfection?"
"You're not so bad," Darcy says, "I mean, those muscles, whoa," and it drags a smile out of him. "But I don't know. Sorry."
"Yeah," he says, "I figured." His smile takes the bite out of it, and Darcy thinks he should wear it more often, wants to smooth away the furrow between his eyebrows until it's never there at all. "Thanks, though."
"A hot old-fashioned blond guy," Darcy repeats, and there are only wisps of dreams in her head. "Hey," she says, "you never told me your name."
"I'm no good for you, Miss Darcy Lewis," he says, and taps his finger on her nose; she wrinkles it at him just to see him bite back a smile. "It'll have to wait." There's a noise then, loud and echoing, and Darcy glances toward the window as he looks up and away, and when she looks back he's gone.
She wakes feeling strange, and buries herself in data collection, hooking up Jane's hand-made machines to the computer and trying to sort out formats and extraction while Jane's gone. Darcy's iPod is on shuffle and her mood slowly picks up over the day, and when Jane comes back from a presentation Darcy's dancing around the room while she waits for her scripts to run. "Good day?" Jane asks, smiling, and Darcy grins at her and shrugs.
"Not bad," she says, and pulls Jane in; Jane shakes her head and huffs a laugh but Darcy turns up the volume on her speakers and Jane relents and falls into a rhythm with Darcy's steps, their arms swinging between them.
"Hey," Jane says, when the song finishes, the tight stressed lines around her eyes softened, just enough. "So, apparently Tony Stark actually collected data on the Einstein-Rosen bridge in New York - "
"Not again," Darcy groans, only half-meaning it. "Really?"
"One more time?" Jane asks, and Darcy rolls her eyes and smiles.
"When's our flight?"
Darcy dreams.
It's in bits and pieces, flashes and spaces; she dozes and dreams and wakes and dozes. There's a man who looks unbearably familiar but she has no idea who he is, another who glances at her like she's a mirage and Darcy wants to say, like you're not? She dreams of aliens flooding New York, London, Jane glowing red; she dreams of being trapped cold and alone and waiting for something that will never come. " - 'til the end of the fucking line, you're going back on that now?" someone shouts, and she startles awake with a gasp, confused and lost and with a lump in her throat that feels utterly alien.
They land in New York with a familiar hustle and bustle, security and bag checks and Darcy making sure all of Jane's equipment gets through, always a hassle even though they have permits, now. "Ugh," she sighs, once they're out in the city air, "New York, huh?"
"Not all it's cracked up to be?" Jane says, and Darcy meets her gaze, shares a wry smile.
"It's just - it's been a while," she says.
Their bags go by courier but Jane begs off a few blocks out, wanting to stretch her legs; Darcy stays by her side as they wander the city in the shadow of Stark Tower, the Avengers in the news. "Do you think," Darcy says, "the rest of them have soulmates too?" as she's admiring a Thor t-shirt, bright red with Mew-Mew plastered across the front, Jane browsing knick-knack souvenirs with a bemused look on her face. "I mean..."
"No," says Jane, "they would, right?" She glances at the shirt Darcy holds up for her inspection, eyebrows lifting up her forehead. "I guess... I wouldn't know if they've found them, though. Maybe that one?" she says, and points out another, mocked up like one of Iron Man's showgirls; Darcy laughs.
Darcy dreams.
She's sitting on the top floor of Stark Tower, where the walls are glass and endless; she looks down at the lights below and wonders what it would be like to fly. The floor's dark, quiet, and Darcy feels the urge to get Friday to play something loud and obnoxious, just because.
"Hey," someone says.
Darcy looks over her shoulder. It's a tall blonde man, dressed in a tight t-shirt that does wonders for his muscles, but his expression is strange, awkward, lost. "Hi...?" Darcy says, a little curious, a little confused, and he sighs and runs a hand through his hair, military-short, and sits down next to her, arms on his knees.
"So, uh," he says, "Bucky said I should talk to you."
"Bucky," Darcy says, bemused. "I don't... I don't know a Bucky - you've got the wrong girl, I think." She waggles her eyebrows at him, adds, "Not that I mind."
He huffs a laugh, shakes his head. "No," he says, "I guess you wouldn't. Is this what you like doing?" he asks, suddenly, waving an arm across the view from the glass, miles of lights and the faintest haze of clouds and stars up above. "Sittin' up here?"
"I've only been here once," Darcy says. "But the view's great. I mean, totally both of them." She grins at him and he looks like he's about to roll his eyes at her, and there's something strangely familiar about him, about everything. "It'd be nice, I guess. Stark's got the best seats in town." She looks down, and down; the lights, mirrored in the bay. "It's romantic, I suppose - I don't hold much to it, but you can just picture it, can't you?"
"A candlelit dinner, looking out over the city?" he says, and there's something longing and wistful in his voice. "Yeah. Yeah, I can see it." He slants her a sideways glance. "You're that kind of girl, huh?"
"Hey," Darcy protests, "I'm easy, I don't need to be wooed." She rolls her eyes and rises to her feet, says, "Come on, Friday, give me a beat or something," and something starts playing, beyond her conscious recognition, light and flirty and fun. "Have some drinks on Stark with me," she says. "There's a whole bar back here, you know."
"Alcohol doesn't do much for me," he says, but he stands by the bar while she mixes herself a drink anyway, watching her thoughtfully. "So why're you here?"
"Here as in - what, New York?" Darcy says. "Jane's got a thing with Stark - Stark's data, I mean, a collect-y thing, I don't know." She takes a sip of whatever-it-is in her glass, something that tastes like a bright burst on her tongue. "I'm her assistant."
"Small world," he says, and she raises her eyebrows curiously. "What, you don't recognise me? At all?"
She studies his face; the strong line of his jaw, the blue of his eyes. He's handsome, she thinks, practically the epitome of perfection - and the thought feels like something she's thought before. There's an odd sense of familiarity, but she can't place it at all. "I dunno," she says. "Are you someone famous?"
He laughs, ducks his head. "Uh," he says, "Steve Rogers. It's nice to meet you, Darcy."
"Steve Rogers," Darcy says, "as in..." She can't voice it, the odd nagging thought in her head, so instead she says, "and how do you know my name, anyway - "
Something sounds, loud and jarring, and he looks away - Darcy wakes to noise.
"What?" she says groggily, but Jane's already saying: "No, no, stop," and the wailing siren from the ceiling pauses quickly. "I didn't mean alarm," Jane grumbles.
"My apologies," Friday says, and if she could sound embarrassed, Darcy would say she is. "From previous parameters, I had assumed..."
Jane sighs, but she doesn't mean it. "Well," she says, "next time, save the alert for when we're awake - and something quiet, please."
"Of course," Friday says. "Your preferences have been recorded."
"Alert for what?" Darcy wonders, sitting up, dragging her fingers through her hair. "Something important?"
Jane ducks her head. "Just - Avengers alerts, you know? Just in case..."
"It's something to do with Thor?" Darcy asks. She remembers hearing the alarm, echoing, like it was in her dream. The rest of it, when she tries to catch it, is like chasing wisps of cloud that float away. Was there a guy? She's not sure. She feels unsure of all her dreams, lately.
"Yeah," Jane says, "well, I haven't heard anything yet, but..."
Darcy pats her arm and gives her a commiserating look. "Come on," she says. "It's still way too early - let's grab some hot chocolate or something."
They sit on the couch with mugs and turn the channel to the television, a new contingent of SHIELD-Hydra that's attacking the Avengers' new base with a swarm of robots. The chocolate is warm and filling, spiked just enough, and Darcy bites her lip and watches as the Falcon and Captain America do a team-maneuver, falling from the sky. She feels strangely anxious, uncertain, and it's far too weird for not knowing why. Jane's studying the Scarlet Witch, red power at her fingertips, with the thoughtfulness of a scientist, and Darcy heaves a sigh and stares into her mug, watching her marshmallows melt.
"Hey," Jane says, "who's that?"
A new face, Darcy realises; the camera catches only glimpses, a metal arm with a red star, long disheveled hair hiding his face. She feels like she's definitely seen him before - the gait, the way of ducking his head - in Geneva, Frankfurt, London. She squints at the television feeling utterly bemused. "I think I know that guy," she blurts, unthinking. "Have you - do you - "
"Really?" Jane's frowning. "Actually..."
He carries a gun as a weapon, but he dodges cameras like a spy; Darcy only catches glimpses of him when the camera pans, not enough to see his face. She can't shake the feeling there's something she's missing, something she's forgotten, the worst case of deja vu. The enemies diminish, the Avengers succeed, and as the last robot lies sparking on the ground Captain America lowers his shield, extending his hand to the too-familiar stranger. News commentary picks up; Darcy knows there'll be talk all over with the way the metal-armed man hesitates and steps forward, as the two men finally come together in a tight, long embrace.
The camera cuts to the news, rehashes and replays, and Jane turns the channel off, frowning slightly. "Well," she says, "I was going to say maybe he's your soulmate, but..."
Darcy laughs and punches Jane lightly in the shoulder. "Seriously?" she says. "You're such a romantic. Nah, he probably just thought I looked like someone he knew."
Darcy dreams.
Darcy dreams of beaches and cities and people and wide-arching fields of flowers, stretching endlessly to the horizon. She dreams of New York fifty or sixty years ago, of Russian winters and ducking away from bombs, of warm eyes and a reassuring smile. She dreams of a dozen places, a dozen things, a dozen ways - and when she wakes up, it's all as usual; it floats away like a wisp of thought unformed.
She's working on analysing the last of Stark's data for Jane when there's a soft noise from the ceiling. Darcy looks up, and Friday says, tone apologetic, "Miss Lewis? You're expected upstairs. Would you mind...?"
"Me?" Darcy says, and pushes her glasses off her nose, rubs at her eyes. She's been staring at screens for hours now, she thinks. "Who is it?"
"I'm afraid I have been requested to keep silence," Friday says. "If I could direct you to the elevator."
Darcy yawns and runs her fingers through her hair, fixes it up to some semblance of normal by feel as she staggers a little out of her chair, then heads out. The mystery is intriguing, curious; it sends a little thrill up her spine to wonder who it could be, though she knows it's likely Jane or maybe Thor come back from Asgard for a few days. She looks around the elevator curiously as it rises and rises, and when it finally comes to a smooth stop, courtesy of Stark's best engineering, she thinks she knows where she is. Why she'd be directed to the top floor, though...
She steps out into darkness. She'd forgotten how long she'd worked, and it's nearly a surprise to see the night stretched out across panels of glass, the city and surrounds glints of light in the darkness. She thinks she could stay here forever, and her mouth's touching a smile when she calls out, "Jane?"
"'Fraid not," says a voice, warm and familiar, and she spins on her heel to see - and it is, the man on the TV, the man she's seen halfway around the world before. "I s'pose I should introduce myself, huh? Bucky Barnes."
"As in," Darcy says, and shakes her head, bemused. "I - I don't understand. I've seen you before, but..."
"Nothing at all?" he says, but he looks more wryly amused than worried, and Darcy's oddly glad it doesn't make him frown. "Hey," he says, "it's okay," because Darcy's breath chokes, oddly, strangely, a feeling like a sob caught in her chest and he puts his arm around her shoulders and she ducks her head into his chest, squeezes her eyes shut.
"I'm sorry," she says, because she feels like she needs to, and he smiles. It lights up his face, and Darcy smiles shakily up at him as he pulls away an inch, smiles at something over her shoulder.
"Hey," says the blond man coming up to them; he's dressed to the nines and Darcy thinks he looks so completely familiar, like she's seen him a million times before. "Darcy, right? Steve Rogers."
"You're not - Captain America," she says, and his smile quirks.
"I'd thought you'd forgotten," he says. "Come on."
He leads the way across the floor, Bucky on her arm, and there nestled in the corner near the windows is a cosy little table, candles on the table, food steaming, making Darcy's mouth water. Darcy takes the seat Steve pulls out, still confused, still wondering; she tugs Bucky down until his mouth slides against hers, stubble rough against her chin, and then Steve's there, mouth chaste and quiet when she shifts to meet him, and everything's wonderful, more than she ever dreamed.
She starts at the thought, glances up at them, and Steve says, hesitantly, "So, uh. We're pretty sure you're our other soulmate."
"Oh," says Darcy, and she's smiling. They're both watching her; Bucky more expectant, Steve more nervous, and she wants to kiss them until they're smiling, flirt with them until all the lines of stress and pain are gone from their faces. She will, she knows; they'll work it out. "Yeah, I kinda figured."