Wish Upon a Star
Chapter 3: Who Are You?
Darcy lay back on her bed in Jane's guest room and stared at the ceiling. Dr. Banner had called to talk to her about the test results that he had gotten from the test that he had run. He patiently talked her through the results, his voice kind and soft. She could see why this other Darcy liked him so much. He reiterated that there had been no exotic particles, and the likelihood that it had been some kind of alternate reality issue was slim to none.
"Darcy," she could hear him sigh on the other end of the phone. "There's just no evidence that it's possible, and if it was," Dr. Banner sighed again, and she felt like she could hear him running his hands through his floppy hair. "There are sensors all over the Tower, Jarvis would have alerted us to something happening in your apartment, there would have been something."
Darcy nodded her head and pinched her nose, laying out fully on the bed. "Right," she nodded again and pressed the phone to her ear. The phone that was full of pictures of her and Jane taken in the lab the didn't remember. Half of them were of Jane sleeping on the stainless steel work benches. The wallpaper when she opened the phone with a press of her index finger was Clint and Bucky kissing. It was a sweet picture, the blond gently cradling the other man's face with his hands, they both had such soft looks on their faces that it made Darcy's chest ache. "Jane tried to explain the physics to me, but I was totally lost. So, what did you find?"
"Not really sure," she could hear pages flipping from the other end of the line. "All I've got is that you've either got some kind of hysterical amnesia, or magic, and a lot of unanswered questions. I mean the laws of physics, the exchange of matter, it just doesn't make any sense. You are you, the sensor data, I went through the entire night with Jarvis. Tony's looking at it also, but after two in the morning, you and the boys were sleeping soundly. The first indication that anything was wrong was just after seven in the morning, when your heart rate spiked, followed by distress from both Bucky and Clint."
"Magic and monsters," Darcy mumbled.
"What was that?" Dr. Banner asked.
"Nothing," she pinched her nose again and rubbed into the furrow between her brows. "So, what you're saying is that this is my life, and I'd better get used to it."
"Darcy, I don't know what else to do, what other tests to run," the stress was clear in his voice.
"It's okay," she pushed herself back up and looked around the sparse bedroom. "Thank you for your help, Dr. Banner, I know you have more important things to do."
"Please call me Bruce," she heard him sigh again. Yep, he must do that like all the time. "And there is nothing more important than helping out a friend."
"Right," Darcy nodded. "So, thanks, and I'm going to let you get back to your own life."
"Let me know if you need anything, Darcy," was all he said before he hung up.
She had been flipping through her phone, laying on the comfortable bed ever since she had talked to Bruce. The sun slowly faded from the floor to ceiling windows, but the bright light from the phone screen never faded. The things that she had learned about herself, or alternate self, were that she took way too many pictures of her cat, which she still couldn't figure out how Rusty was in both places. She learned that Jane still slept in the most unlikely places when left to her own devices, and that this Darcy was in love. Like really in love. The crazy, head over heels, stupid in love that she had thought was only real in movies and Jane Austen novels. She was in love with the two men that she had woken up with. And if the looks they gave her in the pictures and videos that were on her phone where any indication, they loved her, too.
Darcy dropped the phone to the bed and rubbed her hands down her face, forcing the tears that threatened back where they had come from. She didn't know what was happening, or what had happened, but she hated herself a little for taking away that love from them. That she didn't remember going ice skating with Bucky at Rockefeller center, while he told her about taking his little sister there when they were younger. That she didn't remember the time Clint took her to Central Park Zoo, or what he had said to make her laugh so hard that tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn't know how to french braid, but there were pictures of her braiding Bucky's hair, while he painted her toe nails.
She wanted the life she saw in pictures. And at the same time, she was scared that if she tried, she would be stealing it from another Darcy, who deserved it more, who had worked for it.
A soft knock on the door made her sit up, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "Yeah?" she called, sniffling a little as she rubbed the evidence of her tears on the sky blue comforter.
Thor stuck his head into the room, a small smile on his face. She knew Thor well enough to know that he was forcing it for her benefit. She pressed her lips into a thin smile. "Jane has explained what has transpired," he pushed the door open further and accepted Darcy's invitation to sit down on the bed next to her. "I am sorry to hear that you have forgotten your life here."
"Not convinced that it's my life," she leaned into him, and he tucked her under his arm, his massive hand cradling her elbow gently. "But thanks."
"My little sister," he kissed her gently on her forehead, his beard tickling her skin, his rough fingers soft on her face. "Be assured, that whether you remember your life here with us or not, this is your life."
"How do you know?" Darcy sighed and sagged into his body, tucking her feet up under herself.
"I know," he tapped his head and raised his brow. "I do not have the sight like mother did, but I know that when you told Jane and myself that you wished to leave us after the Convergence, that I was compelled to change your mind. I knew that if I didn't, you would regret your choice one day, and I had to make sure that you never regretted, that you were happy."
"When I told you guys, you just nodded sadly, and said that you would miss your lightning sister."
"That may be how your remember it," Thor nodded. "I came to collect you for dinner, my dear one. Jane has procured your favorites."
"I'll be there in a minute," she smiled up at her friend. He squeezed her gently and dropped another kiss on her head. "We're close here?"
"Yes, dear one," Thor tipped her chin up so she could look him in the eye. "You are to me as close as Loki and I once were. You are family."
"I missed you," Darcy pulled him back into her and hugged her arms around his waist. "I was so alone in Virginia, just me and Rusty."
"You are alone no more." he held her to him, crushing her smaller frame into his body. She breathed in the warm scent of rain and power that he always carried with him, with an undercurrent of Irish Spring. "I will tell Jane that you are on your way."
The lab was Jane's every dream. Darcy couldn't stop running her hands over the shiny metal machines, none of which she recognized. Apparently, under the umbrella of Stark Industries and the Avengers Initiative there were no more duct taped together machines. She sat down in the chair by the computer that she figured was hers. The pictures of Clint and Bucky wearing what she could only guess was Halloween costumes on the desk. The blond was clad only in a gold speedo, hip cocked to one side, blowing a kiss at the camera, and Bucky in a black corset and fishnets, caught dancing, his head back, and a smile on his face. She picked up the picture and studied it, seeing the bookcases behind them that she had also seen in the apartment the men shared with their Darcy.
"That's from the Rocky Horror party Tony threw a few months ago," Jane perched on the edge of Darcy's desk. "You went as Janet."
"Not Magenta?"
"Nope, you wanted to be Janet," Jane shrugged, tapping her fingers on the edge of the frame. "We had so much fun. Bucky ended up carrying you home, bridal style. Both you and Clint got so drunk. He made Bucky carry you while Clint rode him home piggyback. There are pictures. Tony's got all kinds of video from that night, too." Darcy just nodded and put the picture back on the desk. "Look, you don't really have to be here, I wasn't expecting you in the lab this week."
"Cause I was supposed to graduate this weekend?" Darcy raised a brow at her friend. "And become a real physicist, so I could help you? Jane, lets not pretend that things are going to go back to how you remember them. I've been looking over the notes of the project we were working on, the data from the Convergence, and the formula that I was working on. I don't understand any of it."
"So," Jane shrugged and picked up the other picture on the desk, it was of Darcy and Jane wearing St. Patrick's day hats. It had been taken back in New Mexico. "You can still input data, or read through your books, relearn what you learned. Just," she put down the picture and pushed off the desk. "Darcy, please don't leave."
"Where would I go, Jane?"
"I don't know," the scientist shrugged and started fiddling with one of the shiny new machines, making the lights on the side flash. "But you said you left, that you said you were done and left London, and I can't imagine the last three years without you, and," Darcy could hear the strain in her friends voice, as Jane tried to hold her feelings in. "I don't want to lose you."
"Oh Janie," Darcy pulled her friend's hands away from the knobs on the blinking machine and folded the smaller woman into her arms. "I can't say how much help I'm going to be, but I'll try."
"Good," the voice startled Darcy enough that she jumped back, nearly tipping both of them over her chair. "The Avengers would be devastated to lose the best science wrangler that we've ever had, well the only science wrangler we've ever had, but whatever." Tony Stark stood in the middle of Jane's lab, a tablet in his hand, not even looking at them. "I have reviewed your contract, because Pepper insisted that we made sure that you were covered while you recovered…"
"I'm not sick, Mr. Stark," Darcy crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up while she glared at him. She had gotten over the fact that she knew Tony Stark around the tenth time he poked her with a sharp poker thingy while Bruce had been running his tests.
"Call me Tony," he said, dropping the tablet down on the desk. "As I was saying, it's right here in your contract, you're covered while you recover from crazy magic brain issues. Pepper insisted it was put into any Avenger contract when you signed up. You know, cause of Merida's run in with Reindeer Games, and Boo Bear's trigger issues. Blanket policy. So, you are still gainfully employed as the resident Science Ass Kicker, says so right here."
Darcy looked down at the contract. The job title actually said 'Science Ass Kicker,' cause of course it did. "I'm not the same person that signed this contract, Tony."
"There's no use going back to yesterday, we were different people then," Tony swiped the tablet from her hands and turned it off.
"Did you just misquote Lewis Carroll?"
"We're all mad here," was all he said. "Get to work Boobs McGee, I expect my coffee black, and every three hours. Bruce likes green tea. And if you wave Thor in front of Jane, she comes up for air."
"I actually knew the last one," Darcy said under her breath.
"You're late for your daily checking with Captain Tight Ass, too," the door closed behind Tony, who jumped into the open elevator and threw them a peace sign as the doors closed.
"So," Darcy raised a brow at Jane.
"Yes, he's always like that," the scientist pulled a dry erase marker out from under a clear board and erased a few figures and replaced them, pressing the capped end under her chin. "Steve tends to go to the gym and gets stuck in workout mode. You usually go down there and pry him away from the heavy bag around now, make him shower and go do something other than hit things. Most of the time you push him in Sam's direction."
"And Sam is?"
"I'll call Bucky to get him," Jane pulled out her phone to dial.
"No, just," Darcy sighed. If this was really going to be her life, and people relied on her to do things, she should do them, or at least try. "Where do I go?" Both feet down the rabbit hole, right?
Darcy managed to get Steve away from the heavy bag, and down to Sam's office, or apartment. She wasn't really clear on that. The man who she had only known before shoving him into the shower as a face on TV, as The Captain America, had been surprisingly easy to push into doing what she told him. He had only protested a little, saying that it was okay that she didn't come find him, that he knew that she didn't really remember. Darcy had just pushed him into the locker room and flicked a towel at him before he disappeared into the frosted glass shower. After waiting for him to change, she flicked through more pictures on the phone. She had picture with a red head she knew as the Black Widow, the other woman's arm around her shoulder, holding shots of vodka and sitting on a beach somewhere with big hats blocking the sun. There were more pictures with Thor and Jane, and Steve, too.
She pushed Steve into the elevator and told Jarvis to take him down to Sam. He kissed her cheek before the doors closed, and promised to come see her later. Darcy stood there looking at the closed doors and pulled the phone out from her back pocket, looking at the last picture that had been taken. It was from the night before she had woken up there. It was a selfie of her with the boys in their apartment. Darcy was in the middle, crushed between the boys. It looked like she had been sitting in Bucky's lap, while Clint was playfully biting at her throat. She turned off the screen and tucked the phone back into her pocket. She squared her shoulders.
When she made her way back down to the lab, Bucky was leaning against her desk, holding a cup of coffee. He gave her a shy wave as she pushed through the door.
"I usually come down and take you to lunch," he said quietly. "But you said coffee, in the lab, so," he held out the mug to her with a shrug.
"Thanks," she took the coffee and held it in her hands. The cup was a little hot between her palms, but she didn't want to put it down. Bucky already looked so nervous that going over to her desk and bringing her too close to the man she barely knew, who was looking at her with such pain and longing in his eyes, didn't seem like a good idea. "Um," she looked over to Jane. Her friend capped her marker and shrugged, grabbing her bag and left through the doors. "Right, so," Darcy rolled her eyes at herself and put the cup down on Jane's abandoned desk. "I don't have any idea what to say to you."
"Right," Bucky sat down in her chair, legs spread and leaned forward. "I don't know how to do this either, doll." His head dropped down between his shoulders and he sighed. "So, Clint and I talked last night," he said to the floor between his feet. "We get that you don't remember us, but we'd like to get to know you again?"
"Like what?" Darcy leaned against Jane's desk, arms crossed over her stomach and looked at the man in front of her. "You want to date me all over again?"
"We don't feel complete without you," he said so quietly she almost missed it. "Maybe you get to know us as friends? See if you can see yourself as our missing piece again?"
"I watched the videos on the phone," she picked up the coffee and took a tentative sip. It was dark and rich, and just the right temperature. "I feel sick to my stomach, watching how happy you are."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Bucky pushed himself to his feet and wiped his face with his flesh hand. "We'll," he blinked up at the ceiling and then looked over at the door. "I'll tell Clint we should leave you alone."
"No," Darcy caught his arm before he could leave, her fingers curling around the cool metal. "That's not what I meant." His lashes clung together, wet from the tears that he tried not to show her. "I mean, I feel so bad for taking her away from you guys."
"You didn't take," he shook his head. "You're still here, you just," he took her hand from where it was gripping his metal forearm. "Darcy," he linked their fingers together, and tipped her chin up to look in his eyes. "On Fridays the three of us order in and watch movies. Stuff I missed, movies that you and Clint love. Come up tonight, and watch a movie with us. We can invite Jane and Thor and everyone if you'd feel better, but please come."
"What are we watching?" she let him pull her back over to her desk. He perched on the end and held her hand.
"Um," Bucky played with her fingers where they were linked with his prosthetic ones. "You've been on a cult classic kick since Rocky Horror night," he looked at the picture on her desk and huffed out a laugh. "We watched it like ten times after that night."
"It's a favorite," Darcy smiled at him.
"I know," he tucked a curl behind her ear, making her shiver. She took a step back from where she had almost been standing between his spread thighs. She let him keep her hand, though. "Clint requested Donny Darko."
"Great movie," she nodded. "Okay. I'll come. No need to invite the cavalry."
"General Tso's and crab rangoon?"
"And pot stickers," Darcy took a deep breath around the lump forming in her chest. "Um," she looked around the lab and then back at the man who was watching her with a careful expression.
"If it's too much," Bucky stood and dropped her hand, rubbing his against the front of his thighs on the dark material of his jeans. "It's how you and Clint," he waved his hands around. "You guys brought me movies and books, and stuff when I was recovering."
"Yeah?"
"You read the entire Harry Potter series to me, even before I was me again," he rubbed the back of his neck and peered up at her through his lashes, still damp and clinging together.
"Okay," Darcy nodded, taking his hand back with both of hers. She could watch a movie with them, she could give them at least that much, she could try and find the Darcy they wanted. "Chinese and Donny Darko."
"Thanks, doll," Bucky leaned in to kiss her cheek, smiling against her skin when she didn't flinch away. "Clint'll come down around six to get you. He was going to bring your copy of Lord of the Rings and your fuzzy bear slippers anyway." He slipped out of the lab without a backwards glance, and Darcy dropped into her chair.
She looked at the coffee that still sat on Jane's desk. She drank the entire mug, even though it had grown cold and bitter.
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