Chapter Text
Darcy and Jane are researching on location in the Canadian Arctic, near a town so small it has GPS coordinates for a name. Darcy had hoped, after their unexpected sojourn at Tromsø, that their research would lead them to warmer climates, but Brazil took a backseat to the Canadian Arctic as suddenly as they had left New Mexico for London. Working for S.H.I.E.L.D has its advantages through; their lodge at 72.232125, -94.247225 is as luxurious as a home in an unorganized territory can be, with endless hot water to boot.
None of their niceties have reduced Darcy’s mistrust of SHIELD, however; she can never forget the look on Jane’s face when she was watching three years of her work be confiscated by the faceless government agency that had previously buried Erik’s research. Since then, Agent Coulson – apparently having survived Loki’s antics – has been endlessly generous in funding. Darcy is now being paid for her work in money instead of near-death experiences, and has a substantial check courtesy of Agent iPod Thief to help pay off her student loans from Culver.
Darcy generally acts like she understands less than she does, if only because it lures people into giving her more information than they should. Coulson had seen straight through her act though, and tapped her to be on his team once she’s finished her time with Jane. She knows her intimate knowledge of Jane’s research and processes, her unlimited access to Thor, and her eye for patterns and analyses makes her a resource SHIELD cannot afford to lose – especially because Jane’s schedule is rapidly filling up with requests to collaborate with agencies and individuals all over the world.
So when SHIELD collapses and Darcy finds herself and Jane once again removed from the action and sent to the fucking Arctic by Coulson, she’s a little lost. The Yukon or whatever is all well and good, but she needs to figure out the next step in her career. Jane’s research is becoming increasingly esoteric and there are limits to Darcy’s frankly impressive understanding of theoretical physics.
She’s busy floundering and feeling unsure of her future when Jane gets a call from Tony Stark. Turns out, it’s for Thor because Thor doesn’t have a phone or the standard Avengers-issue StarkPad (“Send ravens,” he had earnestly told her once). Thor sets off immediately because Bruce Banner has found traces of gamma radiation similar to those from Loki’s scepter, which had been lost to Hydra after the fiasco in D.C. Thor returns three days later, swaying on his feet from exhaustion, with bruises dark enough to worry Jane endlessly. He sleeps for two days straight only to be called away again when he wakes.
Jane decides this is unsustainable. Thor can’t keep coming and going all over the world from the Arctic and he’s reluctant to stay anywhere without her after two years spent apart. Jane is considering an offer from NASA’s GISS in New York when Tony Stark calls again.
This time, the call is for Jane. He asks her to work with him on his quest to make the Avengers redundant instead of helping NASA invent inter-galaxy space travel, and invites her to Candy Land, which Darcy learns is his name for Stark Industries’ R&D division. Legally.
Unwilling to let her best friend go alone into foreign territory with two other mad scientists and because Stark promises a salary and dental plan, Darcy follows Jane to New York. Being associated with the Avengers while Hydra has ratcheted up their activities around the world is dangerous, Jane reminds her because Jane worries about Darcy’s safety in the strangest of moments.
Darcy rolls her eyes. She has followed Jane into the hearts of violent thunderstorms and into battle against dark forces older than the universe itself. She has tased a god from another universe. She would do it all again for Jane. She can handle a bunch of glorified, power hungry neo-Nazis.
-//-
Darcy and Jane had been fretting about finding an apartment in Manhattan on such short notice when Stark mentions casually over a video call that there are rooms ready for them in the renamed Avengers Tower if they would be interested. Darcy is very interested in saving upwards of $1500 in rent every month, so she and Jane move in the following week.
It doesn’t escape her notice that Stark puts her on the top residential floor along with everyone else, in a room with fortified windows and an inconspicuously placed panic button.
-//-
She’s ready to continue to help Jane analyze data and call out patterns in atmospheric behavior, but Stark pulls her aside on her first day at the Tower, tells her to stop calling him Mr. Stark, and asks her if she would like to be his “logistics, analytics, and whatever the hell you want to do” girl. Darcy is already cracking her knuckles in anticipation of some major… analyzing.
The Avengers will have more responsibility now that SHIELD has dissolved into chaos and Hydra has reared its ugly head(s) again. They will also have to establish ties with other American and international governing agencies now that they’re working without the oversight of the World Security Council. So her first self-appointed order of business? Find allies.
If she plans to use her old hacking equipment and Tony’s secure server to find Hydra sympathizers in government and multinational corporations, and dump their correspondence on Twitter… Well, that’s just her secret side project.
-//-
Darcy gets a desk. A desk in an office with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Empire State Building. Darcy has never had an office before, so she’s unsure of what to do besides ask J.A.R.V.I.S – a disembodied voice apparently running the Tower – to connect her laptop and phone to Stark’s servers. She wanders around the lower administrative levels of the Tower until she finds an unlocked supply closet to raid. Grabbing one of everything and three stacks of Post-Its in a cardboard box, she takes the elevator back up to her floor. Her office is a room with glass walls and a glass door which can become opaque at command, adjacent to the medbay Helen Cho uses when she’s in New York. Across from her office is Jane’s expansive lab, a part of which she shares with Tony and Bruce Banner. She’s thankful for the setup because she can keep an eye on Jane while she works.
She sets down the box of supplies on her desk and looks out into the lab. Jane is drinking coffee with one hand and drawing something on a rolling glass board with another. She’s hovering dangerously close to a screen Darcy knows is running some kind of algorithm for Dr. Banner, so Darcy leaves her office to gently tug Jane and her board away from the computer.
Darcy is helpless against the soft, thankful smile Jane gives her, so she makes herself a cup of coffee and sits with Jane to ramble at her while she works on her diagrams.
Her own work will keep.
-//-
On her second week and the morning after a particularly thorough upload of Senator Stanton’s emails which expose him to the world as a major donor of one of Hydra’s more ugly heads (medical experimentation on humans, anyone?), Darcy walks into her office to find three steel boxes marked “STARK INDUSTRIES, FOR: DARCY LEWIS” on her desk. She’s trying to use her bio ID signature to open the security screen on the largest box when Tony knocks on her open door.
He leans against the door frame and jerks his head towards the boxes, “Thought you might want to play with these. I’ve created a proxy software - which Jarvis wants your permission to download on your laptop by the way - and tinkered with the standard pivot box a bit. Basically made it ten times better. You’ll find other nifty toys in the boxes. Let me know if you have questions.”
She looks up at him guilelessly. “What’s a proxy?”
Tony grins. “Just be careful, kid.” He straightens up and throws her a USB stick. “Keep this plugged in when you’re having fun. It’s stronger than the one you’re using now.”
Darcy rubs her thumb across the Stark Industries logo on the USB drive and smiles softly at Tony’s retreating back.