Chapter Text
Darcy had been in enough interviews during her life to know that this one wasn’t going particularly well. She managed a weak smile at the serious-faced woman sitting across the table from her. It was not returned.
It probably hadn’t helped that she’d been late. Not by all that much - only five minutes or so - but, Darcy reflected, if you were interviewing for a position where much of the job description revolved around making sure things happened on time, it probably wasn’t the best start.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried to be on time.
Even years of working with Jane and Selvig and their somewhat less than formal approach to, well, everything, hadn’t cured her of the knowledge of how the rest of the world operated - it was just that Congress had turned out to be an absolute rabbit warren of endless corridors, dead-ends and doors that seemed to lead to nowhere.
Technically speaking, she actually had been on time - it’s just that, when she was supposed to be on the opposite side of a desk being interviewed by the world’s least amused woman, she had actually been pushing her way through yet another set of double doors and consulting a nonsensical directory board that had plenty of words engraved fancily on it, but very little relevance to her situation.
“So you are… an astro-physicist?”
Darcy blinked back into the room as the woman looked at her doubtfully over the rumpled set of sheets that constituted Darcy’s resume.
“Yes,” she said firmly instead, nodding her head.
“And you are aware… that this is an executive assistant position? For a congressional office?”
“Also, yes,” Darcy replied, and belatedly realised that she probably needed to qualify the statement when her interviewer frowned. “I did start out in poli-sci.”
“In-” the woman flicked pages over, scanning the sheets. Darcy grimaced, noticing a coffee cup stain on the back of the third sheet that she was pretty sure had originated last night when she’d been up late furiously researching the position. “-2007.”
“Yeah, so, the thing with that was-” Darcy broke off, looking up at the ceiling, hoping for inspiration to strike. All she found was a slightly watermarked tile, which wasn’t terribly inspiring, all things considered. She looked back to her interviewer.
“The thing with that was,” she repeated, fixing a smile onto her face. “I just needed six tiny, tiny credits to complete the course. Right? So, I applied for an internship, and, uh, things… got a little out of hand.”
“Out of hand?” The woman pulled her glasses halfway down her nose and regarded Darcy over the top of them. “Administratively?”
Darcy wrinkled her nose and tilted her head to one side before answering.
“More, um, cosmically.”
“Hmmm,” the woman said, eyeing Darcy with a certain amount of suspicion before continuing. “This role may involve some travel-“
“Not a problem,” she said brightly, remembering that her mother had always said people preferred to hire those who were positive and upbeat. “I’ve travelled for work before and I’ve got no dependents, not even a goldfish.”
The other woman fixed her with a level gaze, and Darcy wondered if, just possibly, making herself sound like a loner with no friends or interests was actually the best course of action. The fact that it was completely true she mentally pushed to one side.
“Do you understand that this role is a little… Different?” The woman asked. “Compared to other congressional offices?”
“I’m good with pivoting,” Darcy said, nodding enthusiastically. “I can do meeting minutes, calendar invites, coffee runs, and deflect from various authorities, including legal ones. I’m also a dab hand at nagging.”
“This role would indeed require… Pivoting,” the woman paused before opting to mirror Darcy’s terminology. “We won’t have as many staff as is usual in this office, so the work will necessarily be more flexible than you might find elsewhere.”
“Not many people want to work for the Winter Soldier?” She asked, sympathetically.
“On the contrary,” the woman replied, setting Darcy’s resume to one side and meeting her gaze. “Rather too many people want to work for the man who used to be the Winter Soldier, and almost none of them for the right reasons.”
“Right,” Darcy replied, nodding. She could imagine it all too well - Jane had found a sudden flood of people apparently interested in her research immediately following both Puente Antiguo and then the convergence in London, and nearly all of them had turned out to be Thor fangirls and groupies.
“We need people we can trust, Dr. Lewis,” the woman said frankly. “People who work hard, who understand that this isn’t a job that runs nine to five Monday to Friday.”
“I’ve never had a job like that,” Darcy confessed with a one shouldered shrug and a crooked smile to match. “Everything’s always been kind of on a…as needed basis.”
“Mr. Barnes is not-“ the woman broke off and fixed Darcy with an appraising look. Darcy raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. The woman collected herself. “He’s not your typical politician. You may find things here a little unusual.”
“I tased Thor once,” Darcy offered. “Unusual is kinda my bag.”
The woman on the other side of the desk blinked once, and Darcy remembered slightly too late that politics didn’t often come with a side of electrocution - even if they were supposedly the more unusual type.
“I know Jimmy Woo?” She said quickly, throwing the name out there in the vague hope that maybe it would help her cause.
“Jimmy who?” The interviewer responded, confirming instantly that it did not.
“Woo. He’s, uh, he’s an FBI agent,” Darcy clarified. “And a part-time magician, now, actually. Does a great kids party. Half rate if you’re intelligence or intelligence adjacent…” She trailed off at the look on the other woman’s face, and swallowed hard.
“I worked with him on the Wanda Maximoff thing,” she concluded with both another shrug and a rising sense of doom about the whole endeavour.
“You were at Westview?” The woman asked, with a modicum more interest than she had shown in the rest of the interview so far, and Darcy thought perhaps she had underestimated the other woman. Then again, it made sense that Bucky Barnes had hired a Chief of Staff whose knowledge ranged beyond the political.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Like I say, unusual is my thing.”
- - - - - - - -
“An… Interesting girl, but I’m afraid she has no real relevant qualifications,” Monica said, shutting the door to Bucky’s office and sliding the pages of Darcy’s resume over to him.
“She’s an astro-physcist,” Bucky said, running a finger down the top sheet, before looking up at his long-suffering Chief of Staff. “She has a PhD.”
“And you’re a Congressman,” Monica pointed out. “This is a political office. Not a laboratory.”
“Do astro-physicists work in laboratories?” He asked absently, tapping one metal finger against the top-most sheet of Darcy’s resume and frowning. Monica sighed.
“I have no idea, Mr. Barnes,” she said, slipping into the chair on the opposite side of his desk and crossing her legs neatly at the ankle. “But I do know that they don’t work in congressional office.”
“Some might say I shouldn’t work in congressional office,” he said, shooting her a sideways look.
“A lot of people say that, Mr. Barnes,” she said frankly, and he gave her a rueful look in response. “In fact, it happens to be one of the reasons I’m keen to staff this particular role with the right sort of person.”
“She said she tased Thor,” he offered, putting the crumpled pages flat on his desk. One advantage of being the congressman that no one quite knew what to do with was that they’d been offered the smallest set of rooms available - just the one main office, and Bucky’s private room off that. And that meant that, even without his enhanced hearing, he’d have been able to eavesdrop on the interview without issue. “Maybe that is the right sort of person?”
“Do you suspect you will require tasing?” Monica asked evenly. Bucky looked sideways at her and considered that there was a fairly decent chance that she was contemplating it herself at that moment.
“I was thinking of some of the other Congressmen, actually,” he responded, and briefly enjoyed the complicated look that passed over Monica’s face as she tried to determine whether he was joking or not. He was. Mostly.
“Mr. Barnes,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Monica,” he replied.
She sighed, and he had the distinct impression - not for the first time - that she was actively holding herself back from rubbing a hand across her face. Monica Smith had come highly recommended, a woman of indeterminable age though he’d guessed upon meeting her that she was likely somewhere in her mid-fifties. With steel grey hair cut into a neat bob and a thus far inexhaustible range of expensive but demure two-piece suits, Monica rarely appeared flustered - even in the face of his demonstrable lack of political acumen.
Sam had taken one look at her and described her as the Miranda Priestly of Capitol Hill, which was a reference that Bucky didn’t understand but still somehow managed to feel vaguely threatening.
“You can call me Bucky,” he reminded her. “I don’t mind.”
“I am aware, Mr. Barnes,” she answered levelly.
It was his turn to sigh, though he turned it into a half-cough that clearly did not fool her. He tapped a vibranium finger thoughtfully against the top-most sheet of Darcy Lewis’ coffee-stained resume.
“She’s been Avengers adjacent,” he said. “Might be useful.”
“I think that’s gilding the lily a little,” Monica replied. “But it’s your call, Mr. Barnes.”