Author's Note

: If anyone's pissy about Darcy just giving up a la Bella Swan, take it up with the original fairy tale author. This is literally the same scenario the Brothers Grimm wrote, just updated for modern day and Avengers. I promise, Darcy will get her mojo back, she's just in a bit of a dark spot at the moment.

The three years after James' departure were heart-wrenching. Darcy felt a sort of irony, that her and Jane's roles had been reversed. Not long after their arrival in New York City, Jane interviewed at Stark Industries and was hired immediately. Well, interviewed was a relative term. She walked into Pepper's office where Tony and Pepper both were waiting for her, Tony simply looked at her and said, "You're hired," Pepper nodded, and that was that. Darcy and Erik were hired alongside Jane, and all three moved into their own rooms in the Tower.

Darcy sort of kept to herself for the most part, staying in her rooms and the labs, not really interacting with any of the Avengers aside from Bruce Banner, who shared the labs with them. She had brief introductions to the other members of the team, but she didn't spend a lot of time with them aside from random interactions and the occasional team-building exercise that somehow wound up with the science team lumped in with everyone else.

By the time year three rolled around, Darcy stopped leaving the tower, and had started wearing dark clothing, even in the midst of summer. A part of her knew she was being more than a bit pathetic (a certain teen pining after her vampire ex-boyfriend came to mind, and the snarky part of her brain scoffed at her current self), but for all she knew, her dear sweet James could be dead, his soul harvested by the Devil. Honestly it felt like she was in mourning, a widow perpetually grieving the loss of her husband. But they weren't married. It was a strange half-life that she lived during that third year. The endless support of Jane, Erik, and Thor was the only thing that kept her relatively sane, the other Avengers looking on in concern at the edges of her awareness.

In a rare moment of sentimentality and thoughtfulness, Jane found a small glass bottle with a cork goodness knows where, and tied a deep crimson cord around the neck. She gave it to Darcy to put the dainty half ring piece in, so that she could wear it next to her heart. And James' mother's rosary always stayed wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet.

She really wasn't a religious person, but she prayed, anyway, to a God she wasn't sure was listening. She prayed for James and smoothed shaking fingers across the lines of cool red lacquer beads and the smooth wooden cross. She would lie awake at night, clutching the rosary and begging whoever was listening to bring her James back to her, safe and sound.

*

After parting ways with his companions outside New York City, James set to wandering again. The landscape had changed drastically since he had left during the War, and much of his time was spent re-learning it. He found that due to his appearance, people were still afraid of him, so he did his best to stay away from the more heavily populated areas. After a couple months of this, he decided to head further upstate.

Near the middle of the second year of wandering, he started gravitating most to a more remote area of the Adirondacks, in the High Peaks wilderness. He found that here, time had done its work far more slowly than in his own home city. The landscape in this area was largely unchanged and untouched by the spreading arms of industry and progress, the wilderness only broken here and there by the roads that laced throughout the region. The only people who really spent time out here were hikers and the occasional homeless pan-handler, but neither had a tendency to to linger for long. He decided that if there was anywhere to weather the rest of his trial, it would be here, where he could keep his interactions with people limited.

He made sure he never stayed in one area of the forest for more than a week, and the people who did catch sight of him usually didn't bother him, probably mistaking him for a bear or some other large animal. He only went into the slightly more populated areas to procure supplies from the locals, people who tended to keep to themselves and didn't ask too many questions.

He knew that if he developed any large caches that park authorities would start asking questions, and his sanctuary would no longer be that, so he tried not to keep too much in one place, and to not create any permanent shelters. In the wintertime, he made sure to keep to the smaller caves in the region, and wrapped in his bearskin, he managed not to freeze to death in the bitter cold.

At the end of his third year, the Devil finally found James, on one of the first truly sunny days at the conclusion of winter. He was sitting along the riverbank, watching the water rush among the rocks and boulders, and listening to the ecstatic song of the returning birds. The only thing that heralded the new arrival was a whiff of sulphur that James caught on the wind, but he willed himself not to react, giving only the slightest wrinkle of his nose and a disgusted sniff and instead focussed his gaze on the whirls and eddies of the river.

He let the moment stretch for several drawn out breaths before he turned to the personage standing to the left of him. He said nothing, just quirked a brow at the clearly seething Devil. If he had been a lesser man, he may have quailed at the sight of the barely checked rage simmering in those dark red eyes. But the past seventy years had given him a thick skin, and he certainly wouldn't have gotten this far if he didn't own a brass pair. So he held his peace and waited for the Devil to acknowledge the truth they both clearly knew.

"The deal is complete. You're free," the Devil muttered grudgingly, an undercurrent of howls and screeching in his voice just barely audible to James' enhanced ears. He would have given a sigh of relief at the words, if he wasn't so on edge still. As it was, his eyes sank closed. "The coat is yours, as are the riches promised."

At the clop of cloven feet against the rocks, James' metal hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of cloth to hold the Devil in place, as his eyes shot open. "Not so fast." The Devil's eyes widened minutely, before narrowing at him. He injected steel into his voice in defence. "First you need to clean me up."

*

James had to say, the sight of the Devil standing waist high in the river looking like a cat getting a bath was the sight of the century. He wasn't sure where the Devil got the scissors or the soap from, but he wasn't going to ask. James had stripped off the bearskin and the green coat and left them on the bank of the river, and he had carefully wrapped the chain holding his dog tags around his wrist, but his shirt and trousers wouldn't budge, so he left them on as he waded into the river.

He took his time, lowering himself until he was crouching in the river so that the water was up past his shoulders and he stayed there soaking in the cool water. After seventy years of squalor, the water felt like heaven. He dipped his head back to wet his hair, and had a fleeting thought that the Devil might just grab him by the filthy mats and hold him under, but he couldn't find it within himself to care.

After a while spent soaking, the Devil began the arduous task of washing him and ridding him of the overgrown hair and beard. The lengthy soak loosened the clothing from his back so that he was able to finally remove his shirt, trousers, and underclothes. He tossed them aside, and they hit the rocks with a sodden slap.

The Devil took a handful of his hair, and he tensed, but the snip of shears commenced not long thereafter, and he allowed himself to relax just a smidge. His head grew lighter and lighter as more and more hunks of hair fell into the river to be swept away by the currents. After the hair from his head, the voluminous beard followed, then his fingernails and toenails.

Once the grooming session was finished, James silently took the soap and began scrubbing himself. It took at least seven scrubs and dunks under the surface for the suds to stop being a sickening greyish brown. It felt a bit like a baptism, every time he came back up out of the water, blowing hard to clear his nose and wiping the streaming water from his eyes. He knew that his transformation was complete when the Devil began to edge away towards the bank.

James stood up and watched, his gaze hard, making sure that no subterfuge was planned. When he realised that he wasn't being followed, the Devil made a quick escape, glancing back every so often as he went, until he was out of sight. James breathed a small internal sigh of relief, and something inside his chest uncoiled and released, although he still didn't let his guard down completely. He used what remained of the soap to scrub out his clothes as best as he could, and set them out on the sunny rocks to dry.

Later, when the clothes were dry, and his fingers and toes were far beyond pruney, James got dressed and slowly made the long trek to town. If he was going to look for Steve and re-unite with Darcy, he was going to need some new clothes first.