Author's Note: Because I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to write this bunny to get it out of my head, so I decided why not, I'll make the fic I post on Halloween!
I. Vanessa Carlysle aka Copycat
Darcy had always had a thing about strays.
As a child her nurturing instincts kicked into overdrive whenever she saw some poor, lonely animal sitting all alone and she always had the urge to take it home and smother it with love. Sometimes this resulted in a new pet like the time she'd found a stray guinea pig, and other times it got her a lecture when she brought home creatures that weren't generally accepted pets, such as when she was nine and had brought home a half-grown bobcat.
Her compassion for strays didn't change as she grew older; if anything it got stronger, and the strays she was drawn to had changed to include the human variety. If you really thought about it, that kind of explained her attachment to Jane Foster - that woman certainly needed more looking after than most people, and Darcy was eager to rise to the challenge the astrophysicist presented.
The fact that she was getting the science credits she needed to graduate was just icing on the cake.
Not that Jane was technically a stray, since she had Erik, but two weeks into her internship Darcy had declared Jane the sister she'd always wanted. So no, Jane wasn't a stray, she was family. And Erik had his stray moments too, really. When he went on Science!benders with Jane, most notably.
Anyway as family, it was Darcy's sacred duty to help Jane take her mind off her alien boyfriend who was currently on another planet. Although it might not have been her best idea to drag Jane to a strip club...
It was as they were leaving the strip club that Darcy found and subsequently adopted her first human stray.
"Come on, Jane, let's get you back to the hotel..." Darcy coaxed the drunk astrophysicist to her feet and began half-supporting, half-dragging the other woman to the door.
The success of the night was pretty debatable, as on one hand Jane was too drunk to think about her hot alien booty-call, but on the other the strip club she'd brought them to had been expensive and her wallet was significantly lighter from tipping the servers. It had been classy up to a point, and there hadn't been any cages hanging from the ceiling, but Darcy had still felt dirty after an hour of sitting next to Jane at her table and chugging tequila shots (because Jane was a lightweight when it came to that brand of alcohol).
Stumbling out the door of the club, listening with one ear to Jane's sleepy drunken mumbling, she was just buzzed enough herself that she almost missed the sound of a slap coming from the alley they were passing. Almost, but not quite.
Leaving Jane slumped against a convenient streetlight with strict orders to scream if anyone besides Darcy tried to grab her, the brunette went to investigate as shouting reached her ears.
Peering into the alley revealed a man with stringy, greasy hair dressed in a ragged black suit backing a woman dressed in heels, lingerie, a coat, and not much else up against the brick wall. Anyone else watching would have assumed it was just an argument between a hooker and her pimp and moved along while trying not to be noticed. Anyone else but Darcy, who promptly pulled out her taser from her purse, yelled, "Hey douchebag!" and fired the minute the asshole turned to face her.
He dropped like a sack of bricks, landing in a puddle of something questionable and twitching spastically.
From there it was easy for Darcy to collect the stunned stripper, detach her taser from the downed asshole (who had by then pissed himself), and herd the other woman out of the alley back to where Jane was leaning against the streetlight and practically sleeping on her feet. The glazed, half-lidded eyes and small snorts/snores were a big hint that the tiny astrophysicist was well over halfway to dreamland.
Surprisingly Darcy managed to get all three of them back to the hotel room without incident.
The next day started when Darcy shuffled into the small kitchenette that came with the room and a hungover Jane looked up from her coffee and asked, "Why is there a stripper passed out on the couch?" Her expression of confusion was actually cute, Darcy thought, and helped herself to some of the coffee.
Her boss made some pretty mean coffee when she put her mind to it. Probably a self-defense mechanism learned from those all-night Science!benders, Darcy mused.
After her usual post-drinking headache had receded a bit, Darcy poured herself another cup of coffee and padded over to the couch, leaning over the back to take a look at who was on it.
Dark hair, check. Pretty face, check. Curvy body, check. Lingerie just barely visible beneath a buttoned up, mid-thigh length black coat, check. Strappy heels tossed carelessly near the paper-strewn coffee table, check. Yup, that was definitely the same stripper she remembered saving last night (and bringing back to the hotel room despite the woman staring at her suspiciously the entire trip).
Deciding that it would be best to start things off on a good note, Darcy went back to the coffee machine to fix a cup for the sleeping woman - adding just a touch of cream because her nurturing senses were tingling - and then walked over to set it on the coffee table.
A grand total of five minutes after Darcy had set the beverage of the gods down within easy reach from the couch, the stripper's nose twitched and Darcy watched in fascination as, without opening her eyes, the woman managed to reach out, grab the mug, and pull it to her. That took talent, Darcy decided, and evidently Jane agreed if the astrophysicist's impressed look were anything to go by.
Both Jane and Darcy had finished their own coffee and set the mugs in the sink by the time the stripper had taken several sips of her coffee and decided to open her eyes.
There was an awkward silence, which Darcy definitely wasn't going to let hang around, so she just said, "Hey, I'm Darcy, and that's Jane. Don't know if we introduced ourselves last night."
Another moment of silence while the stripper swallowed her mouthful of coffee, but then she replied, "No, we didn't really get around to introductions, strangely enough. My name is Vanessa, and you're the one that tased Lucas." There was actually a small note of respect in her voice when Vanessa mentioned that, and Darcy subtly preened.
Jane spoke up next, "Well then, now that that's out of the way, who's up for breakfast? I'm craving pancakes."
"Pancakes it is!" Darcy declared, moving over to the hotel phone so she could order room service, pausing as she turned slightly to look at Vanessa as she asked, "What about you? Blueberry pancakes okay, or do you appreciate the finer things in life and enjoy chocolate chip better?"
It took a few minutes, but Vanessa answered, seeming oddly hesitant, "...Chocolate chip, please."
"Coming right up!"
Between the three of them enough room service pancakes to feed Thor were eaten, but Darcy didn't really care as she leaned back in her chair, rubbing her full belly and sighing contently. Jane had been coaxed into eating five whole pancakes, which Darcy counted as a major success, and Vanessa had been lured into joining them at the kitchenette table by the smell of the breakfast food.
It was a rather surreal breakfast, seeing as their guest didn't know their last names and they didn't know hers, but somehow they got through it. It probably helped that both Jane and Darcy were both still a little hungover and therefore weren't up for conversation and Vanessa didn't try to initiate one. It wasn't the tensest situation Darcy had ever been in, but it was definitely somewhere in the top twenty.
Surprisingly enough Vanessa stayed after breakfast was through and Jane started doing Science! with the stack of papers she'd brought with her (her equipment being unable to fit inside the hotel room). Darcy tried to tell her that they would be leaving soon anyway, but Jane was immoveable when she set her mind to something, and so her attempt failed rather spectacularly.
Because Vanessa was there, standing rather awkwardly in the kitchenette, Darcy promptly enlisted her in trying to transcribe Jane's notes into something the average person could read. Well, more like she dragged the other woman into helping her, but why split hairs? Any help making sense of Jane's handwriting was welcome.
Lunch came around and Darcy called this neat little Italian place she'd found and ordered food for her, Jane, and Vanessa. After the food arrived, Darcy paying the delivery boy, it was quickly eaten, Darcy and Vanessa trading off to make sure that Jane ate all of her food. It was only after lunch that Darcy realized what Vanessa was wearing - or rather, what she wasn't wearing, and then she felt like an idiot as she slipped away to dig through her and Jane's luggage.
A combination of one of Jane's shirts and a pair of Darcy's tighter jeans turned out to fit Vanessa pretty well, once Darcy shoved the clothes into the other woman's arms and pushes her into the bathroom to put them on, anyway. There was a fifteen minute argument between them about whether Vanessa would accept the clothes or not while Jane did Science! in the background. Darcy won the battle, and felt prouder for it when Vanessa exited the bathroom sans coat and plus shirt and jeans. She pulled them off rather well, considering Jane's plaid shirt was a bit baggy and Darcy's pants were a few inches too short above the ankle.
Clothes successfully given and accepted, Darcy and Vanessa turned their attention back to Jane and her nearly-illegible notes.
It was good to have a minion, Darcy thought in the back of her mind, it made work go by so much faster.
Astrophysicist and intern were due to leave at noon the next day, and Vanessa had spent that night sleeping on the couch again.
Darcy's mothering instincts were going into overdrive, and that's when she presented her split-second idea to Jane, got the tiny woman's approval, and then went to inform a half-asleep Vanessa that they were kidnapping her.
She took it rather well, all things considered, only blinking a few times before shrugging, a sort of resigned expression on her face. She didn't even leave the hotel room after being informed of her imminent kidnapping, which Darcy found rather odd. Didn't she want to get some stuff from her own place?
Vanessa must have read the expression on Darcy's face because the intern was soon informed that no, she didn't have anything at her place she wanted, and her driver's license and cash were in her coat. Okay, that pretty much settled that then...and Darcy totally didn't make a trip to the convenience store to get cookies just for Vanessa. Really, she didn't. But for the record, her homemade cookies would totally kick that store-bought brand's ass.
The few hours leading up to their departure were spent frantically organizing and packing up the papers that Jane had spread almost throughout the whole room, what with all the equipment still being in the camper and/or van parked outside the hotel. It would be a tight fit for all three of them in the van, but Darcy wasn't going back on her decision. She was sticking to it, even when she and Vanessa got into a fight over what kind of music to listen to.
Vanessa won that battle, but Darcy was already planning her counterattack.
The second town they stop at Darcy dragged Vanessa clothes shopping, because she couldn't keep mixing and matching things from her and Jane. They'd have to do laundry all the sooner, anyway.
Vanessa put up a token protest, but finally conceded when Darcy threatened to make her wear Jane's physics t-shirt and the bright purple bellbottoms she'd bought on a dare.
Finding out their newest lab minion could change her appearance with a thought almost a full month later was a bit of a shock for Jane and Darcy, but really, that was probably the least traumatizing thing to happen that day.
It all started when they got up that morning to finish setting up equipment in their latest stop in the middle of nowhere and walked out of the trailer to see guys in black combat gear pointing guns at them, and it pretty much went downhill from there. Darcy was chucked in one black creepy van and Jane put into another one with considerably more carefulness (great to see where your priorities are, jerks!). Darcy couldn't see where Vanessa was, but since the other woman sometimes had trouble sleeping and went for walks, she held out hope that the goons hadn't gotten her too.
One trip to a creepy secret base later - complete with higher ranking stooge sporting a bad comb-over and faux kind tone - and Darcy and Jane were put into cells on opposite sides of the hallway. Darcy had been relieved of her taser and Jane only had one pencil hidden in her hair (which was still good, because Jane would totally stab someone with it if she had to).
Neither woman had any idea what the goons and head stooge wanted from them, but they certainly didn't want to stick around to find out.
A quick search of their cells revealed nothing that could be used to pick the lock on the doors, and Darcy got even more pissed off when she realized that the goons had even taken her I-Pod. Damnit, it was like that time with SHIELD all over again! Stupid jack-booted thugs!
Darcy spent ten whole minutes ranting about iPod stealing jack-booted goons, and Jane muttered something when she was done about just knowing that all her research had been stolen. Again. Both women were understandably ticked off about their situation, and Darcy was actually contemplating letting Jane try Science! in order to get them out of there, despite the risk of explosions.
Turns out they don't need to try anything crazy, because before a full day of their captivity is up the head stooge walks into the prison block and unlocks their cells.
What the fuck?
And then the head stooge melts away, melts, and then Vanessa is standing where the head stooge had been, still holding the keys to Jane and Darcy's cells and looking nervous and worried. A minute later and Jane snaps out of her shock and tells Darcy, "Escape now, gaping later," and off they go.
Escape is probably too strong a word, because they really pretty much walked out, Vanessa leading them down side-tunnels and passages littered with dust, somehow knowing all the access codes to the keypads. They emerge onto a deserted street in what looks like a bad part of town to be in, which narrows down where they are since there's only one town within driving distance of where they'd set up Jane's equipment.
The three of them get back to the campsite just as the sun is rising and wordlessly begin packing up everything, Jane muttering about how the area didn't have the right atmosphere conductive to creating an Einstein-Rosen Bridge anyway. They really didn't want to be around if the goons decided to try for round two.
It was only after they'd packed everything, hitched the van to the trailer, and then headed off that Vanessa spoke up, voice quieter than usual. Jane and Darcy just listened, Darcy making sure to keep her eyes on the road.
"My name is Vanessa Carlysle," She began, "And I'm a lot older than I look."
What follows is a life-story that makes Darcy pull over so she and Jane can pull Vanessa into the hug to end all hugs, Darcy maybe sniffling a bit and wiping some dust from her eyes and shut up, don't judge her! You'd cry too!
Jane spoke up, "Listen, Vanessa, you can stay with us as long as you want. We don't want to make you do anything you don't want to, and shape-changing powers or not, you're still the same woman who helps Darcy feed me and watches movies with us and goes out and buys pop-tarts when Darcy can't. I'm kind of surprised you stuck around this long, considering we pretty much kidnapped you, but I'm so happy you did. You're our friend, mine and Darcy's, and we want you to be comfortable with us."
By the end of Jane's speech Darcy wasn't the only one crying.