Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Guys. University is hard. Just run away and join the circus. And you're like, Margaret (have I mentioned I'm Margaret? I'm Margaret) that sounds like terrible advice. IT IS. DON'T FOLLOW IT. I HAD NERDS FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT. I'M NOT TO BE TRUSTED WITH LIFE CHOICES.

But, really, I'm sorry for the month long furlong. I've been writing this on and off for the past month and these are the meager fruits of my efforts.


They don't see Erik that day. Instead they're briefed on why they haven't and can't see Erik. From the scepter to the mind-control and to the opening of his mind's eye, Jane and Darcy get's a pretty clear picture of the shit storm Erik's been through.

"Along with every other SHIELD personnel that was affected by Loki's scepter, Dr. Selvig is being held under observation until it becomes clear that there are no latent effects of the Tesseract's influence."

Observation her ass, Darcy can pretty much guess what that meant and Jane's pretty much on the same train because then they're talking over each other.

"You can't just lock him up and pray the mind control scars away and hopes he gets over it!"

"Do you really think keeping him from his friends is gonna help? And since when did you become experts on recovery from having your minds invaded by an alien being?"

"We're helping him through his recovery as best as we can-"

Jane stares the man down. Agent Romanoff waves him away and he gratefully exits, leaving the three women alone in the impressive conference room.

"Dr. Foster," she starts but Jane just glares harder.

"You said he was fine!"

"No," she said calmly, "I said he was getting better."

Jane kind of deflates and mumbles, "Even prisoners get visitors."

"Dr. Selvig isn't under arrest," Agent Romanoff sighs a little bit though her posture doesn't indicate any wariness. "He wasn't the only one forced into helping Loki. Every single one of them has had their mind made into a plaything, directed by someone else's whims. Believe me when I say, they need time to recover, to gather themselves back up again. And we gave him the space to do that."

Romanoff stands up, "He's been informed of your presence and when he's ready, he'll see you. Until then, all you can do is wait."


Jane's a little mopey after the meeting, half-heartedly revising equations on her white board which only looks sadder next to Stark's fancy touch screen monitors littering the lab. Darcy's never really seen Jane like this, since she usually finds science as a fine substitute for emotions when things turn to shit.

Even Tony's minding his own business, only giving Jane's shoulder a tight squeeze and mumbling an apology then shuffling to his corner of the lab, hidden by precariously stacked pieces of machinery. His usual stream of conversation with JARVIS is reduced to requests for files and locations of machinery.

Jane sits in her chair, lethargically swinging it side to side while Darcy pretends not to be creeping on her by hiding behind her computer screen. She doesn't know what to say because, well, they don't exactly have any proverbs about having your father-figure mind controlled by an alien god do they? Maybe Hallmark will start a line after the almost-invasion.

Jane sighs and stands from her chair and grabs her bag and says, "I'm gonna go get something to eat."

Darcy perks up, food, food she can do, "Sure, you want me to call for take out or-"

Jane gives her a weak smile and waves her off, "No, no, it's cool. I'm just gonna grab a bagel across the street."

She starts gathering her things into her bag and Darcy and Tony share a look. Jane leaving the lab to eat when the sun was still out. It's like the Twilight Zone's Twilight Zone.

"Oh, um, do you want me to come?" She's reaching for her bag when Jane shakes her head.

"Nah, I'm just gonna. Get some fresh air? Feel the sun? I don't know, what do people usually do during times of stress?"

"I built a metal suit out of missile scraps."

Darcy gives Tony an incredulous look, "Yeah, I think air might be good. Just, answer your phone because I can't promise not to call on an AMBER Alert if all I get is complete radio silence, okay?"

Jane's smile widens a bit and she comes over to Darcy's chair and hugs her tight, surprising Darcy and pulling an, "Oh!" from her before she wraps her arms around the other woman.

Jane tucks her chin on top of Darcy's shoulders and sighs. Then, she says, warmly, "AMBER Alert is for children."


Facebook officially lost its allure. Which should be impossible because Darcy's still facebook friends with a lot of people from high school who were pushing the boundaries of Super Senior into Van Wilder status. Long story short, a lot of questionable decisions are made and a lot of them were chronicled by a brave sober soul who tagged appropriately.

She clicks out of Sarah Menke's sorority's Pimp$ 'n' Hoe$ album after seeing the same keg stand picture for the third time and sighs. It's been two hours since Jane left and she was both worried and bored.

She knows Jane's on roof because JARVIS checked fifteen minutes ago (which Tony declared Not Even At All Creepy because, "If that's creepy then that would mean I'm creepy and my title of billionaire, philanthropist, playboy is full enough as it is without going all Howard Hughes on everybody. I just like knowing where my people are. I don't like losing them- I mean, track of them. Shut up. Your hair is stupid.")

Whatever. Darcy is, technically, a lab assistant. Since she's in a lab, half of her work is done right there, now all she had to do was assist.

She pushes hard against her table, propelling her chair towards Tony's little area. She misses him by about four tables so she grapples her way next to his. He only gives her a small glance to make sure she's not touching anything essential.

She puts her elbows on the top of some blue prints and rests her chin on her hands and asks, "So. What's up with you?"

"Nope," Stark said, popping the last syllable, steadily ignoring her.

Darcy presses her chin harder on her hands and tilts her head to the left. She bats her lashes. "What ever do you mean, Mr. Stark?"

"This," he waves at her general direction, "is not happening. We are not talking about our feelings, you are not touching my stuff, there will be no braiding of any sort, friendship bracelets or otherwise. Which are flammable anyway, so. Nope."

"Ugh, your face is flammable."

Tony sighs forlornly, "It really is."

"Mr. Stark, you, sir, are being boring. JARVIS thinks so too, right?"

The voice streams out of Tony's computer's speakers, "There has been a significant decrease in laboratory related accidents recently, sir."

Darcy smiles brilliantly and points at his computer, "Oh, hell yes! JARVIS if you had a hand, I'd be high-fiving it right now."

Tony's response was to swivel a degree to the left, effectively cutting her out of his line of sight. He says slowly, enunciating, "I am a busy man being busy."

Darcy's feet scrambles, moving her chair and herself back in front of Tony, "And I'm a lab assistant. We're in a lab, you're a scientist, lemme assist. I promise I won't blow stuff up. And I'm super good at finding patterns! And tasing things! Did I tell you about the time I tased Thor? Fun times. What are you even working on?"

"An arrow. Go away."

Darcy squints at the thing in front of Tony, "That…looks like a Keurig. With an arc reactor in it. Do you need a sidekick or something? Because I'd go for a Roomba if you were looking in the household appliance department. I mean, just stick a knife on it and, wham! Murder by Roomba. And then it'll even help in the clean up! It's perfect!"

Tony looks perplexed that he had a Keurig on his lab table, "I swear this was an arrow three hours ago. JARVIS, why am I making this and what the hell happened to Barton's arrow?"

"I believe you declared a need for a machine that brewed coffee indefinitely. As for Agent Barton's arrow, you tossed it in Dr. Foster's side of the laboratory, declaring it as medieval as her equipment an hour ago, sir."

"What. Ever. Our medieval equipment found an alien god, so you can suck it, Stark."

Tony scoffs and continued tinkering with the coffee machine, "Please. I've read the reports. You people were just in the right place at the right time. Your equipment did jack shit."

Darcy puts on the face she used when she was camp counselor and the children were being particularly belligerent, serene and patronizing "Just because we found an alien and you didn't doesn't mean you have to be jealous, Tony. Everybody's got their strengths and I guess finding new life forms just isn't yours."

"Excuse me, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in this planet that can say I successfully nuked and neutralized an alien warship."

"And we're all super proud of you," she all but coos, reaching over the desk and patting his head, flattening the mad scientist 'do he had going on. Tony looks violated and contemplating to sue for emotional damage.

She's going for a cheek pinch when she hears the sound of someone regretting their existence and the poor choices they've made thus far.

Darcy spins her chair to the appropriate direction. "Dr. Banner! You should tell our poor boy Anthony that he shouldn't feel any less proud of himself just because Jane's dime-store equipment detected new life form and his hasn't."

"I synthesized a new element! Every single science lab has to get new prints of the periodic tables of elements because of me! I basically jump started the periodic table printing industry!"

Dr. Banner looks slightly amused and holds up a stack of papers held together by those giant binder clips that look like they can rip someone's face off, "I have something Dr. Foster might find useful. It's, uh, it's kinda specific to gamma radiation and we were talking about it earlier, so I thought I'd just leave this … here. I'm sorry, did I say something?"

And Darcy's face must have been particularly pathetic if she managed to derail Dr. Banner, Dr. Zen and Focus Because If Not, Green Things Happen (true story, the code to the copy machine took a higher level of clearance than finding that particular fact out. Tony helped. Well, she says helped, she really means blabbed. Well, she really, really means jailbroke her computer when she wasn't looking. To be fair, she read everybody's files, well tried to read through the black outs. Dr. Banner's was the only one with a video that she could access.)

Tony makes a frustrated noise behind her, "Really? I just got her distracted from that."

"What? No, it's fine, I'm fine. What do you mean distracted? I don't need distracting. I'm like a camera I'm so focused. I'm freaking instagram over here. So I'll just take that and I'll sort it out. For Jane. Who has officially been out of the lab of her own volition for the past two hours. While I sit here. Not unlike a duck."

She sets the stack down on a desk. Her head follows it and she sighs.

"I'm lame. This is lame."

Three cold cylinders pat her shoulder softly, a whirring sound behind the action. Darcy lifts her head up and sees that one of Tony's robots has wheeled next to her, looking sympathetic even without a face. She gives it a pat back, on what she can only assume is either its elbow or its hips, "Thanks, bud."


They spend the next three days in a limbo and riding the sighing train, where Jane sighs then Darcy sighs then Tony sighs then Dr. Banner comes in to drag Tony away because he forgot about an experiment that was currently burning a hole through two feet of concrete. And then Jane and Darcy were left alone, their once stable footing lost, unsure of how to proceed with the possibility of the idea that Erik may not be returning to them.

"It's just, I knew he was busy, but I knew he was coming back, you know? And we'd Three Musketeers it up again. I know I'm being selfish, not working for the past couple days and I know it's stupid to want to eat your cake after…baking it. Buying it? Making it? I think I lost control of that metaphor."

Darcy puts her arm around Jane, the angle awkward the way they were sitting in their kitchenette table, "It's alright, French metaphors are hard."

Jane looks like she wants to argue the statement, but Darcy's already distracting her with toasted Pop Tarts and the new issue of Mad Scientists Monthly (maybe, probably not).

"Tony said he found twenty-three mistakes in this issue and that you wouldn't be able to find even twelve of them. And then he made fun of Culver. Also he said my hair was stupid. So, you should defend my honor by kicking his ass in Where's Waldo: Science Edition."

Jane spends an hour scanning each article with a red Sharpie while Darcy collated what little data that's been produced by their lab the past three days.

At the hour and a half mark, Jane puts down the Sharpie and says, quietly, "Hey, thanks. I feel like I don't say that enough, but thanks."

Darcy grins brightly, "Anytime, boss."

The rest of the week is spent in a sort of semblance of normality with Jane dipping her toes back into research-mode. She spends more than a few hours arguing with Tony about the errors in the journal and whether grammatical errors counted (Darcy and Dr. Banner votes yay because, come on. They're supposed to be geniuses.) and Darcy has to put a little bit more effort in transcribing notes and filing data, but it's still no where the amount she's used to doing.

Jane still disappears into the roof for a couple hours, sometimes the whole day, and Darcy does her best to keep occupied. She's mostly alone since Tony "I Have an Actual Lab Where I Can Do Actual Work" Stark mostly flits in and out of their lab, reclaiming his robots who likes to wander into Darcy's space and hands her things she doesn't need.

"You're like the new kid in class everybody likes just because you're new. I hope you know they're gonna get tired of you and eventually come back to my warm, oily, embrace."

When Darcy doesn't respond, Tony drags a stool next to her. "You know when I told you this wasn't creepy? Good news is, it's still not, bad news is I think you're edging on what the legal system refers to as an 'invasion of privacy' and 'stalking'."

Every time Jane vanishes into to parts supposed-to-be-unknown, Darcy obsessively checks the CCTV feed Tony 'accidentally' ("Oh, oops, is that the security feeds from the south corner of the roof. Goodness, how did that pop up.") set up for her. It's not even really her fault. She pretty much burns through whatever work Jane leaves for her in a few hours considering she's still programed to do the long haul, bulk kind of filing where she forgets the alphabet and has to sing to herself every few minutes. And it's not even like she can help with the actual work and maybe when she has really bad moments she feels like she's utterly useless and shouldn't be sitting in the big kids table. Thank God nobody sees those moments but an AI who knows how to keep a secret (she may have caused the Great Collapse of the Print-Outs of 2012 and blamed it on the bio labs, because, you know, they're always mutating shit, Jane, what if they made something invisible. That hates paper. Yes. Definitely that.).

Tony is still expanding on what the legal system considers to be a definite breach of security and privacy when Darcy just sighs and makes a shooing motion. "Go sculpt your soul patch and leave me and the creepy security footage of my boss alone."

His hand jumps to his chin protectively, his face scandalized. He probably gasped loudly too, but the doors swing open and Darcy is literally so bored she was hoping it was Agent Hill with more paperwork that needed filling out.

Instead it's Agent Romanoff with a man that is giving Darcy is serious case of déjà vu. She wants to throw herself to the other woman's feet and beg for something to do. They work for the government, right? Isn't there suppose to be an endless tsunami of paperwork to be done?

She's about to wave hello and declare her innocence of the whole hacking into their security cameras deal when her breath catches in her throat.

"Oh, my God."

She's pushing Tony away, almost tipping him off his stool and barrels through the super spies and apparently her sense of self-preservation and into Erik's chest.

She wraps her arms tight around his middle while he pats her back soothingly. "Jesus, we thought-"

"Darcy, I'm fine-"

"-you got sent to Gitmo or something and-"

"-really, I'm-"

"-no one was telling us anything. Jesus Christ. I mean-"

"-alright."

Darcy coughs and sniffles a little because apparently she started crying, "-we just. We didn't know if you even wanted to come back. Because, Jesus, of all the reasons not to, this is pretty high up on the fucked up list."

Erik pulls back and pats down her hair that got caught on the threads of his sweater, "I would never."

Darcy wants to cry even more but she remembers she's in public surrounded by hot people that can kill her so she deflects with manic joy instead. "Oh! Oh! Jane! We need! I'm gonna go get her! Erik, she's been taking breaks, Erik. It's like the weirdest and tensest relaxation method I've ever seen. And I asked Dr. Banner and he said it was weird too! I'm gonna go get her, so stay here while I run farther than I have this whole year, because, wow, there are a couple flight of stairs between me and the roof."

Tony sighs loudly, exasperated, "You have phones. This is the 21st Century. I built a source for sustainable energy and threw a nuclear bomb at an alien warship. I think you can text her that her long lost father-figure has come back."

Everybody that could fit in a leather jumpsuits (maybe sleeveless ones for Agent Forearms, Darcy checked subtly, definitely sleeveless) and Darcy glared at his direction. Erik has strayed from the conversation towards Jane's side of the lab, concentrating hard on the little squiggles that were supposed to be equations.

Agent Forearms (which, Darcy decided, is what he shall be christened until proper introductions were made) glares a little harder, "That's cold, man."

A little chime comes out of one of the speakers and Darcy guesses that it's the equivalent of a polite cough for AI computers, "I've taken the liberty to send Dr. Foster a message alerting her that her presence would be appreciated in the labs."

"Your computer has better manners than you, Soul Patch."

"What is even the difference between what I said and what he did!"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe he didn't suggest to basically send Jane 'The guy who mentored you through your biggest scientific break-throughs is back, LOL TXT IT."

Tony flips her off. Darcy feigns distress, too elated to be offended, "That, sir, is a rude gesture."

"And this, madam, is a rude dance," he says while raising his other middle finger and does a jig before he remembers there are other people in the room when Agent Forearms' phone flashes and the simulated noise of a camera's shutters clicks.

The other man is grinning and moves to show Agent Romanoff who leans back to look at the screen. Tony sniffs, all hoity-toity, "Whatever, I've been caught on camera doing worse."

Darcy's eyes flit towards Erik, still scrutinizing Jane's whiteboard closely, his nose brushing the surface every once in a while. Agent Romanoff is leaning on her lab table watching Tony and the other man bicker. He's complaining something about a quiver that constantly needs oiling when Darcy realizes why she got all déjà vu when she saw him.

She points at him accusingly, "You!"

Everybody but Erik stops what their doing and looks at her like she's crazy, which maybe she is, but not about this. "You were so totally in New Mexico! I've totally seen you at Izzy's!"

"Uh."

Agent Romanoff smirks and puts on a face of wonder, "Goodness, Agent Barton, were you spotted by one of the civilian assets you were suppose to be conducting surveillance on?"

Agent Barton née Forearms sputters while Stark laughs loudly, "Oh, my God. I think your Super Secret Spy membership just got revoked.

Agent Barton glares at him and Darcy feels kind of bad, so she tries, "Well, in his defense it was post-Destroyer Destroying Puente so jack booted thugs were abound. Besides Izzy's was, like, the only store that opened quickly and served coffee."

Agent Barton grins and joins Agent Romanoff, who is still leaning on her table. He offers his hand, "Clint Barton, Agent of SHIELD."

Darcy grasps his callous ridden hands and shakes firmly, "I'd introduce myself except I'm pretty sure you know my social security number better than I do."

"So, Darcy Lewis, resident of Paramus, New Jersey, daughter of David and Amanda Lewis, and Netflix account holder who has Downton Abbey queued, how're you liking SHIELD accommodations?"

He rests his elbows on top of the table and his chin on the crux of his intertwined fingers, he looks down right cherubic. Agent Romanoff snorts lightly and Darcy is feeling a little violated. "That was creepy."

Clint, still grinning, waves her off, "Pssh, no it wasn't."

"Oh, I'm sorry, you're right. That was super, fucking creepy."

Whatever Clint planned on saying is cut off by the sound of a sharp intake of breath. Jane is standing by the door and staring intently at the back of Erik's figure, still immersed by the equations.

She rushes towards him to the other side of the room and all but tackles him into the white board. Her face is all red and bunched up and she's not quite crying, her voice carrying over only pieces of their conversation, "…thought you were gonna leave…don't think I can do this…just like Dad but you wouldn't be there…"

All through this Erik murmurs comforting promises and then he holds her by her arms and looks at her, "Your father would be so proud of you."

Jane smiles brightly and wipes at the errant tears that escaped. Then Erik urges her towards her equations which Darcy hasn't seen her fiddle with for almost a week and points at very specific spots. He rubs a symbol off with his finger and then another and Jane is there filling it in with a different squiggle.

Tony drifts near them and squints at their work. He tries to point at a spot next to where Jane is writing and gets body checked for his troubles. And then he's grabbing his own marker and saying, "No, no, no, no, see. Do you see it?" Jane glares at him but does look at his contributions and nods slowly.

Erik turns towards the rest of the occupants of the room and waves them over, "Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, I think this maybe relevant to your interests."

Darcy hangs back while Barton and Romanoff listen intently as Erik explains what resources they're going to be needing to help with the progress. Barton and Romanoff interrupt occasionally, either confirming or explaining that "the US government does not have access to that, Dr. Selvig." At which Tony laughs his billionaire laugh and points to himself and says, "I privatized world peace, I guess I can privatize inter-dimensional travel too."

Darcy smiles and pats Tony's monitor, "JARVIS, I think this is the start of an amazing new era. Or the apocalypse."

Dry as a motherboard, JARVIS replies, "Indeed, Ms. Lewis."