R is for Rooftop (Bucky & Darcy)
Not long after the mess that was the incident in London and Jane getting possessed by that weird red stuff, Jane's mother strongly encouraged that they get their own place of residence.
Literally anywhere but her apartment.
With a deadline of as soon as humanly possible, Jane and Darcy found a tiny top-floor apartment not far from the Royal Observatory and moved their sparse belongings—a lot of their stuff was still in New Mexico at the dealership since they fled so quickly when Loki attacked New York—from one end of town to the other.
And that's how Darcy met James 'Bucky' Barnes—formerly the Winter Soldier, formerly-formerly Steve Rogers' number uno Howling Commando.
Not that she ever told anyone.
She and Jane watched evil!SHIELD label Captain America an enemy of the state on their tiny, second-hand television, and they were seconds away from sending Thor across the Atlantic to help him.
But before they could, a pants-wearing Erik got a terse text message from an unknown number telling them all to stay put and for Thor to stay on his guard and not to leave them, no matter what.
It was signed CB.
And when it turned out that Ian—quiet, unassuming, halfway decent almost-boyfriend Ian—was really a Hydra plant sent to steal Jane's research and kill them all, Darcy had been immensely grateful they send word.
Thor took care of the situation easily.
But not before Ian was personally introduced to her taser.
He really should have known better.
Darcy sighed, shifting on the lounge chair she'd been lying on since she fled up to the rooftop terrace, the apartment below too crowded with the addition of Steve and his friend Sam, who were on the hunt for Bucky and had been staying with them for the last two weeks.
With Jane and Thor in the only bedroom, leaving the couch in the den as Darcy's domain, the rest of the remaining floor space went to the two guests, filling the cozy home to bursting.
So before she did or said something she'd end up regretting—they had enough on their minds as it was—she made her way up the rickety staircase to hide for a while.
Looking up, she tried to find Jane's stars in the cloudy London skies, but the thick cloud cover refused to budge.
She drew her legs up one by one and picked at the frayed edges of the hole in the right knee of her jeans, her breaths deep and even as her nerves slowly began to settle down.
A sound dragged her from her open-eyed meditation, and she looked to her left in time to see movement in the shadows of the rooftop next-door.
Narrowing her eyes at the darkness, she froze when a man in a tattered hoodie and jeans with long, unkempt hair practically materialized in front of her, and she clenched her hands on her knees.
The ping of recognition went off in her mind as she saw the frown on his face.
When Steve and Sam first showed up, she snuck a peak at the pictures they showed Thor, and even though it was dark, he sure as hell fit the figure of the muzzled man from the bridge.
It didn't take long for her to puzzle out why he was there either, but her words stuck in her throat as she met the fierce blue gaze of the man on the other building.
And then the realization she left her taser on the coffee table next to her makeshift bed hit her like a ton of bricks.
The man shot Nick Fury.
"They're not here," she finally blurted as she blinked out of their little staring contest—and holy shit his eyes were blue—and then she flinched when the words passed her lips.
Even with the darkness, she saw the muscle in his jaw tick before he nodded, "I know."
"There is a god downstairs though, and the last time someone tried to attack me, he ended up getting his head bashed in, and it was a bitch to get the bloodstains out of the hardwood," she offered before she slapped a hand over her mouth.
Because why did she have to offer something so blatantly threatening?
Again, he shot Nick Fury.
But all he did was laugh, a short bark really, but he kept to his perch on the roof to her left and didn't look like he was going to move any time soon, and she couldn't figure out why, "I'll keep that in mind."
Down on the street, a car slipped into an open parking space, and an older man—Darcy couldn't remember his name, but he had a German accent and smelled like cat litter—got out and made his way into the townhouse across the street, and the assassin melted back into the shadows.
He was gone so long that Darcy thought he was gone, but in a minute he was back, sitting down in a low strip of light thrown from the bare bulb that lit up the small garden that separated rooftops.
She had a thousand and a half questions for him, but they all stayed on her tongue before she finally managed, "Are you going to sit out all night waiting for them to get back?"
If there was one thing Darcy was not, it was an idiot, and while she knew where Sam and Steve went off to, she wasn't going to offer up the information because he hadn't killed her yet.
"Are you going to tell him you saw me?"
She jumped a little when he finally spoke, opened her mouth to answer, and then snapped it shut when she realized she didn't have a clue what she was going to do about him.
A man who could definitely kill her if she gave him an answer he didn't like.
Because that man shot Nick Fury.
Finally, she settled on, "What do you want me to do?"
He was silent for a long time as he watched her, and she thought for a moment that she might have surprised him before he just shrugged.
"I think Steve just wants a chance to get his friend back."
His frown deepened, "I can't be that man from the museum."
It took a minute before she remembered the exhibit at the Smithsonian, and from her mindless surfing on the Internet, she'd seen the halls dedicated to the Captain and his team.
Especially one James Buchanan Barnes.
"I don't think he's expecting that. You two were all the other had back in the olden days, and helping people is his thing right now."
"He shouldn't waste the effort."
She shook her head, "He's stubborn like that. I once did a paper on the time he had Howard Stark and Peggy Carter drop him behind enemy lines even though his superiors said his best friend was probably definitely dead."
Sitting up, she flipped her legs over the side of the lounger and faced him fully, "Steve Rogers does what he wants, and until you decide to have words with him, he's just going to keep on keeping on with trying to track you down."
He was quiet for a long time, and he might have been mulling her words, or he might have been trying to remember that very first rescue, or he was quietly debating with himself whether or not to kill her—Nick. Freaking. Fury.—but he finally just settled on narrowing his eyes, "You know who I am. Why aren't you running scared?"
"Dark elves."
The look he favored her with moved to confusion, and she waved a dismissive hand, "It's an Asgard thing, I guess. But they were much scarier."
"I think I should be offended."
She shrugged, "I just state facts," a drop of water landed on the bridge of her nose, and her eyes crossed as the skies opened up. "Sometimes this place and its weather ADD drive me up the damn wall."
Not surprising, but he didn't say anything, and she was soaked through in the seconds it took for her to decide what to do next, "I'm going to head in," she pushed off the chair and made her way to the stairs. "Do you, uh, want an umbrella or a blanket or something?"
Assassins or not, manners were manners.
"Nah. Lock your windows tonight."
Arching a brow in askance, she stared at him until her vision blurred thanks to the water running down her lenses, and she shook her head when he didn't offer more, "All right then. It was uh, nice to meet you. I won't say anything to Steve, but you should probably throw him a bone at some point."
He remained silent.
"If there's anything else I can do," she shrugged one shoulder. "Well, you know where to find me."
Darcy felt the pressure of eyes on her back until she slipped inside, locking the balcony door behind her like he asked.
In the morning, Steve and Sam were all aflutter because that German man across the street was apparently a Hydra plant—big shocker there, really—but it was all right because he was dead now.
Apparently, some mysterious assassin—one who shot Nick Fury, perhaps—killed him late in the night after carving a bloody star into his left shoulder.
Darcy drew the same conclusions everyone else did, but stayed quiet about the fact that he'd definitely been scouting their neighbor all night from right above their heads.
The duo was gone within hours of checking the scene—he didn't have to leave such an obvious sign, so maybe something she said to him resonated—and she had a feeling they'd find him sooner or later.
Three weeks after that, the contents of the apartment were packed away into a Stark Industries moving truck, and she, Jane, and Thor crossed the Atlantic on a private jet with a retractable stripper pole build into the lounge.
According to the flight attendant, Mr. Tony Stark hadn't actually used the thing in years, and since she was on the low end of sixty, Darcy certainly hoped so, or she was going to have a really hard time looking her new benefactor in the eye.
Two days later, Darcy was exploring the shops around One Avengers Plaza when she spied one wayward assassin, who was definitely letting her see him as he tailed her.
Three days after that, she signed a lease on her own apartment.