Author's Note: Gratuitous French alternate title is gratuitous: Encounters without Masks.

Everyone had read my earlier warning on lots of conversations, right? Good. Also, there is much nerdery and geekery on full steam ahead. I decided to update this one mid-week as an experiment. Don't worry, I'd still be updating the chapter after this somewhere between Friday afternoon - Saturday morning. Also, many thanks for those of you who'd reviewed and favourited!

PS: FFNet, would it kill you to allow people to write fictional email addresses? Seriously? I have to experiment several times to find a formatting that won't get swallowed.


'-

VII. Turn This Way (Rencontres sans Masques)


Darcy finds Loki. More conversations. Loki can't ever give a straight answer because he's a little shit like that and has diva mood swings. The Indefatigable Pepper Potts appears and Darcy gets blindsided.

'-

It was not easy to find out where to look for him first. Darcy was sure that Tony Stark was a technophile. So even if he might have a legacy library filled with books in his homes, she had doubts that he'd have any in the newly minted Stark Tower. Of course, there was nothing wrong with just asking Jarvis while she went back to wandering around.

"There is such a thing as the employee library, Miss Lewis." Jarvis told her

"What's inside?"

"Mostly technical texts and academic references."

Darcy brought up her StarkPad and hit the intranet to find more details about said library. It was rather nice as libraries go, but she could see that it was also popular. People came and went all the time, and the place was even open for twenty four hours on some days. What she first couldn't believe was how one of those days was Friday. That was before it all made sense in hindsight. I bet there are many people like Jane working here.

For some reason, it didn't strike her as a place Loki would be comfortable in. She'd check later, just to be sure, but it wouldn't be her first choice.

"Are you sure there are no other libraries?"

"There are two libraries in Stark Tower, both accessible by employees," Jarvis said. Darcy went ahead to check the second one and read the description. Nope, she thought. It was still as popular and was possibly even worse because it had a coffee shop attached to it. The picture of the sitting room looked downright cosy. In her experience in college, the places that looked the prettiest on the brochures were usually swarming with students most of the time.

Darcy closed her browser. "Seriously, isn't there any place anyone could sit down and read quietly in a rainy day? Alone? Surrounded by books?"

"That would be what a library is for," Jarvis' tone was dry.

She was too busy thinking about other potential places to reply. Library, library… maybe she had to be more creative in her definitions. "Where's the largest collection of knowledge in Stark Tower at?"

"Shall I include those not publicly accessible?"

"Of course. Wait, are there libraries that are not publicly accessible? Jeez, Jarvis, why didn't you tell me so from the beginning?"

"I am afraid I'm misunderstood. Those two libraries are the only libraries in Stark Tower."

She paused as she digested that. It wasn't technically a library; that was what Jarvis was saying. Then again, what could it be? She did say she was going to broaden her definition, wasn't she? Did she actually need to know about what it is right now? No.

"Jarvis, give me the directions to get there."

"I will download them to your StarkPad, Miss Lewis."

'-

She ended up in front of one of Jarvis' server rooms (it wasn't labelled as such, just something like 'cloud computing and network intelligence' experiment blah blah blah, but she got the hang of bureaucratic doublespeak while being Jane's assistant).

A quick swipe of her card opened it. She really had doubts whether she was allowed to be there and Darcy was only thankful for Jarvis' generosity. The air was chilly and she was glad for her love of knitwear. Tall cabinets filled with computing capacity were lined up in rows upon neat rows over sterile white floors and LED lit ceiling. She might not even know what she had been asking for, but Jarvis did give her the correct answer. His physical drives were definitely the largest repository of knowledge in Stark Tower. This wasn't just stored data; this was a part of him, his silicon brain.

Jarvis was right; it was and wasn't a library. Huh.

Her rubber soles gave a soft squeak against the floor.

She just wasn't sure whether she was in the right place, though. It was certainly not where you would hang out to hide on a rainy day. There was a certain coolness and distance from the place that she never felt from Jarvis as the place was all hard lines and corners.

Darcy also wasn't sure what she'd do if she found Loki there. There were his keys that she needed to hand over, yes, but the idea that the God of Mischief actually knew what computers are scared the shit out of her.

Her steps had taken her to the end of the first row and checked the aisle running at right angles from it. The one to the right showed her more rows of servers that ended after a while. No surprises there. To her the left, there were similar rows and…

…was that shag carpet?

She made quick strides and was never happier that Jane never cared for really formal office wear. She could certainly run in her battered Nikes better than high heels.

Instead of the smooth end of the server room, what she saw was an impromptu sitting room—never mind that there wasn't even supposed to be enough space for it. Yes, there was that green shag carpet she saw from a distance. There was a large locked travelling chest on top of which was scattered several books written in a script she couldn't read and it served as a low table. The last was a large green couch with a wealth of pillows. Loki lay haphazardly on that couch as if he'd been there for a while. A Minority Report-like interface floated in the air in front of him, unintelligible glyphs running across the screen while his hand gestures were more annoyed than smooth. He was frowning, muttering things under his breath with boots discarded in some far off corner. She could see that his hair looked the way it did now because he kept running his hands through them.

He looked human and all her worries melted away. She could do this.

She could take it one step at a time and not come up with doomsday scenarios. For all I knew, he might just be trying to order pizza.

"Need a hand with that?"

"I was wondering when you'd speak up. You seem to enjoy staring so much." He didn't look up from his work. The smooth tones of his voice still sparked a frisson at the bottom of her spine, but she could ignore that. She was a big girl.

Darcy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, because living rooms grow naturally all over the place all the time. I gotta get myself some of those seeds these days."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of humour," he replied.

"Bzzt! Wrong!" Her imitation of a buzzer piqued his curiosity. "That would be slapstick."

Darcy dropped herself on his couch, pushing down the remaining foot he had there to the floor. He sent her a look. She simply laid back and rearranged the fluffy pillows around her instead, raising her eyebrows at him in challenge as she settled comfortably there. Urgh, this couch is sooo comfy…

"I hate to sound like a broken record, but I thought they restricted your magic?" She asked.

"They did, but retrieving stored objects is trivial," he replied. The assistant gave him a look of sheer envy. He could've carried a whole house in his pocket dimension, and no one would know. And he could always camp in style, anywhere, and—

Focus Darce!

"You don't happen to be hacking through some network in Stark Tower, are you?" She tried for being honest and hit bull-through-china-shop instead. Loki's answering smile was more than a little scary.

"What if I am?"

There was a threat he didn't even need to voice for her to get. What are you going to do about it?

The small and furry mammal part of her brain preferred to hide in a dark corner away from that look; it spoke of a capacity to skilfully extract pain. But she took a deep breath and forced herself to go through everything she'd seen instead of gibbering. Deep breathing, Darce, you can do this. One, she was reasonably sure he couldn't kill her even if he wanted to without screwing himself—see Thor's comment and Natasha's statement. Two, she never forgot that his title was God of Mischief and Lies.

After more than several seconds, she shook her head with a snort and kept her nonchalance with an iron will. He might intimidate her but she wasn't going to run away first. Darcy excelled at chicken games in college.

"Nah, you're not." She stated.

Loki was offended that she took that conclusion so quickly.

"You have no self-preservation instincts at all, do you?"

"Hey! I'll have you know that I have enough. At any rate, it's still much more than Jane." She protested.

"Which is not much of a comparison when you know what she does."

Darcy ignored Loki's offhand comment because it was so near the truth it was sitting on it, though not even Loki knew how true he was.

"Anyway, what would you even be attacking with? You're already caught and bound." She said this with the most innocent expression she could manage, knowing enough that even the statement would be rubbing it in his face. "It would be a much better use of what little you could do to try to escape rather than anything else. You said it yourself that they've restricted your magic—so, no grand messes could be in your agenda right now."

She was sure she wasn't imagining his disgruntled expression. Probably because she knew more than he expected to. Seriously, do I look that gullible?

"It does not mean I am not plotting any."

"Plot away jailbird. Plot away! I'm sure that's the most fun you'd be able to do for a while, isn't it? I certainly won't be a killjoy." She chirped back. Any sign of vindictive glee she kept tightly under wraps. Any and all looks he sent her she made sure to only return with her brightest smile as she acted like she had no idea why he was even staring at her like that.

She counted it as a victory when she could see him doubting his own suspicion for even one second.

He ignored her for a few minutes to keep typing and even muttering orders out loud to the floating text interface, but she was fine with it. She could just lie here for another moment or two, snuggling to the silken pillows and entertaining herself—if he thought he could outlast her stubbornness, he had another thing coming. Darcy whipped out her StarkPad and logged in to the intranet messenger with her work email:

darcy_regina -at- stark. net is logged in. Darcy_Regina is online.

Darcy_Regina: J, why didn't you tell me outright that Loki's in your server room?

She skipped through the announcement that she was now connected to the artificial intelligence and neural network blah and all other stuff laboratory and stopped at the end bit that she was waiting for.

JARVIS is online.

JARVIS: I did not detect him until you entered the anomalous region of space at the end of this room, Miss Lewis. Your additional presence allowed me to gain a more accurate reading and collapse the probability waveform of sensor data into the detection of an actual occurrence. Previously, he can be in any one of thirty-seven locations. The server room isn't on the top ten of them, hence my choice to omit the information.

Darcy didn't even pretend she understood that except the last bit. She'd probably just show it to Jane sometime.

Darcy_Regina: Fine. Just tell me if anyone's coming here or looking for me, okay?

If the main screen Loki was wrestling with was a plant, Loki's demanding expression would've withered it. Sometimes some weird geometrical shapes pop up in a new floating screen to the side—he worked on it so quickly she was never sure what gestures or shifts he did. His frown only seemed to increase the more he did it, though.

"See? From the way I see it, every moment you spend glaring at whatever it is you're making is one where you're not taking over the world. Especially when it's buggy like that."

"It's not full of insect life," Loki insisted. Other than typing into thin air, his hands occasionally flew in rapid strokes and he looked more like a conductor trying to direct an orchestra that way. He had really beautiful hands; there were faint scars and clearer calluses, yes, but it did not take away from the grace. They were also large enough to almost cover her entire naked waist and he certainly looked like a man who had enough finesse with his fingers and knew what to do with his hands.

Wait, not going there right now, Darce. Not. Going. There.

"I mean your work is screwed, Dude. No one looks that constipated while they're coding if they're not making spaghetti code out of it." Darcy said. She could see Loki's expression twitch at that and ignored it.

He gave a not-quite-concession not long after that when he leaned back. She could see the slight doubt on his face, the disappointment he wasn't even ready to address himself right now.

"It is far quicker and easier to raise an army and attack this building than trying to understand the precise chosen form of your reckoning engines. Much less all the additional time needed to determine the basic orders it does and everything else built upon those grounds."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, Geronimo. I don't think your Babelfish is working at all," Darcy rushed. As wonderfully convenient the Allspeak was, she found it still glitched a bit on more technical conversations. "Or maybe it's just more Google Translate than Babelfish."

"Perhaps," he said grudgingly, "I'm not sure I understand you much better either."

"So, uh, reckoning engines. Reckon is like, thinking, right?So, thinking machines?That's probably a computer," Darcy began.

She didn't have time to mull over what exactly all the stuffs he was referring to when he spoke up again.

"Yes. To involve alien computers in plans of rapid conquest is unnecessarily complicated. It's faster and more interesting to see what people will deny you if they think you powerless and what they will accede to if your force is sitting right next to their border."

"So, bring a big stick and speak softly," Darcy said, remembering Teddy Roosevelt.

Loki was nodding away. "An acceptable approximation, I suppose. I find the threat of death and more death gets people in line very quickly most of the time than anything sophisticated."

Her voice turned fainter. "Death and more death?"

His shrug was too casual for her. Loki didn't even register her doubt.

"What else is an army used for? To fight your battles and to convince others you are able and willing to cut through a swathe of men to reach your purpose."

She could not be completely unaffected when he treated people as useful and disposable pawns on a chess board—if she had been holding a drink, she'd be sorely tempted to dump it on him. On the flipside, the more she stared at his busy and occupied figure, the more she realised that he wasn't even posturing to scare her this time.

And wasn't she lucky that way to have a chance to see what most others fail to find?

It was all just part of who he was. Come on, Darce, think. He's a prince, after all, isn't he? When he grew up in Asgard, he would have dealt with its share of wars. Darcy realised that she could get annoyed at him now and escalate their argument, or, she could hold back and instead pursue this half-open door to see what she could find beyond it.

There was no contest as to which impulse won. She was too curious for her own good.

"So, what are you trying to do?" She cocked her head in the direction of the square of floating text to extend another olive branch. "I might be able to help, you know. I do maintain Jane's computers and install the programs she needed."

He scoffed. She ignored it because she wasn't sure she had been the target of it, not with the frustrated way he was glaring at the floating interface. He waved his left hand and it floated even higher. Even if Loki stared at her with doubt, he still fixed his attention on her all the same. Wow, she mused, he's more desperate than I thought, then.

"I don't think you can read Allspeak."

"I don't have to know all programming languages to recognise a familiar problem," she threw back. "What were you doing, anyway?"

"Trying to get this," he pointed out to the interface above him, "to manifest a Reader to read the stored books." He pointed at the servers.

His answer took her off-guard. "Did you manage to retrieve some of the files…I'm sorry, books?"

"I managed to grab a pile of static knowledge though I'm not sure whether they're the ones I want, yes. Were these questions going anywhere or do you simply not know what to do?" He was tetchy and if he made another comment on her apparent stupidity, she was going to throw her pillows at him, god or no god.

Wait, he wasn't doing it on purpose, she thought, half in disbelief, he just sounded sulky in general. This was just him with his code not working.

"Correct me if I'm wrong. You had the files, but your…Pad can't read them. So you decided to write a program to do so on the fly?" Darcy asked, flabbergasted.

He tilted his head slightly to the side, as if he had to retranslate the words she used manually.

"I am trying to shape a Reader, yes."

It was surreal; this was what the God of Mischief did on spare afternoons, writing random programs because he couldn't get his books fast enough and he was too much of an ass to ask for help. It would explain everything if Thor was the jock brother and Loki was the nerd the popular kids tolerated because he came with Thor.

"I just thought you were a sorcerer, not a programmer… waitaminute, this is Clarke's Law, isn't it? Very advanced techs don't look that different from magic?"

"There is never any difference between them." He emphasised.

She wasn't even aware that Asgard had advanced technology—of course they do, look at their life expectancy, Darce, but seriously, she thought they were all magic.

"Magic is merely beyond the cognisance of people from lower realms, as you have helpfully demonstrated." Loki quipped, still bogged down in his code.

"Yes, yes, fuck all of you self-absorbed Asgardians, your superiority complex, and all that crap. Go earth," she said with not a little sarcasm. She was really getting too used to his condescending ass if she could be this blasé. "Are we done with the dick measuring contest yet? Fulfilled your quota of insults today? Can we now get a fucking move on?"

Darcy received a reproachful glance for that. If that was the only reaction he could give for her language, she didn't really care.

"Soooo, your program isn't that far along yet, is it? When would it be done? Christmas?" She asked. It was hard not to reach her limit of being nice with him.

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Will you spendallyour time asking the obvious, Miss Lewis?"

"Darcy," her voice was sharp. "Call me Darcy; and I wouldn't need to do that if you could actually tell me something instead of being too busy sulking, then we'd be doing something more productive."

It earned her a cold look. Darcy continued undeterred.

"Look, I get what you're doing, okay?"

He seemed sceptical but with that arrogant expression that meant he was too polite to say so. Not that his face would leave anyone with any doubt as to his real opinions. Of course not. We can't have the domestic help failing to understand disdain, can we?

She never thought she'd see it on anyone outside period drama and Darcy had just had it and threw her hands in the air.

"Do you want me to help you or not? What are you looking for? I probably could get it for you through our paltry mortal computers and you don't have to reinvent the wheel for it on your divine tablet!" Darcy huffed.

"You can?"

Did he know just how hopeful he looked under all the jerkass? Darcy tried to reconcile the rumpled guy in front of her who'd probably spent hours coding with the megalomaniacal wannabe dictator of earth.

Her efforts combusted spectacularly. Probably at the same time her panties did.

"Yes! Yes I can and I will. You're really not used to asking for help, are you? Did you always go off to do things alone in Asgard?" She said, trying her best not to vent her frustration at him.

There was that minute twitch of his eyebrows and she knew that she'd hit a sore spot. What annoyed her more was how she could recognise an actual vulnerability there—she'd bet her Rainbow Dash plushie that he'd been a loner bookworm. Shit, she even felt guilty now. Darcy sighed. She couldn't apologise to him if she wanted; he would never acknowledge the chink in his armour and he'd just get pissed off if he thought she saw it.

"Do you have a list of what you're looking for?" She asked. Her voice was friendlier, back to her chipper assistant tone (she gave grudging credit to all those retail customer service training). "You know you could actually get almost all the books you need if you just hit the employee libraries here, don't you?"

"Too many people," he replied.

Darcy suspected it was less the people and more the inability to create his own reading room there, and how his personal bubble was, like, a mile wide because he's a fucking prince and he's entitled to it, yay. Also, no, her sarcasm wasn't directly related to the level of her sexual frustration, why do you ask?

He had sat up and shifted so that he was sitting next to her. She acted like she wasn't hyperaware of his thighs pressed against hers, or how a sniff of him made her want to lick his throat.

The floating interface thingy came down with a wave of his left hand. It worked by voice command too, because he spoke words she couldn't understand and lines came up on its screen. A few more orders from him and the end result was a list of English book titles and it floated next to her tablet.

The tension Darcy didn't realise she had left her shoulders.

She had wanted to believe the best in him, but some part of her hadn't quite accepted it as reality until she had some proof, and here they were. The books were spread across a wide range of subjects that she couldn't see a pattern to it yet. There were some physics and science textbooks that made her cringe unconsciously, but there weren't that many of them. Apart from the occasional science titles, many of the authors' names were familiar to her from her own reading assignments and she could feel herself perking up in interest—politics and culture? I could teach him a thing or two. A large chunk of the list was English—some were German, there was the occasional French, and was that Chinese? And Hindi?

Fondness bubbled inside her like champagne because this was familiar. God, he's such a nerd.

"I used the library indexer in your common libraries and I received these as recommendations for the topics I was looking for," he said, by way of explanation.

"Could you copy that list for me?" She asked. He made a complicated movement with his left hand that looked as if he was using some sort of sign language. The interface flickered and a scroll dropped into her lap. It was a little warm, and she dropped it into her bag before she forgot it.

O…kay, she noted with raised eyebrows. So it has a Print feature too.

"Thank you. Also, what's the Indexer?" Darcy asked.

"That bulky interface machine you keep in the lobbies that allow you to access the catalogue."

She tried to understand what he was saying as her hands moved on their own, opening the library's intranet website on the StarkPad. A few more clicks got her to the page about account requirements.

"Oh, that's just another computer. Yes, well, you know that you could actually access the catalogue from anywhere you are, as long as you can log in through the internet, right? You don't have to be physically there."

A puff of breath tickled her right ear. She bravely continued on, as if she had ice water in her veins.

"You could be reading from your room while drinking wine as long as we can set a library account for you. That shouldn't be too difficult either. I can definitely do it in a few hours. You'll see. I am not going to let a fellow nerd get parted from books—that's just cruel and unusual punishment."

She did her best not to imagine his bedroom. She got the image of Loki sprawled over silk sheets for her efforts. Her throat felt dry.

"You would do that, wouldn't you?" He asked. It had an undertone of wonder, out of all things.

Darcy warily took her eyes from the screen. The way he looked at her was something between a revelation and manna from heaven. He asked a thousand unspecified questions at once.

"Why?"

Oh for fuck's sake. She was an assistant, not a saint.

She sank her fingers into his hair and gave him an open-mouthed kiss for her answer because, why the hell not? And how on earth could she even begin explain that she saw no reason not to give him a second chance? It was as heady as it had been before. He sighed with relief and proceeded to kiss the sanity out of her and Darcy was glad to be on the way to deliriously happy. Loki backed her to the armrest and she pressed herself against his encompassing presence. His fingers curved along her ribs, exploring it with such meticulous care that made her breathless. With every moan he coaxed he became more determined and she arched away from the couch to let him slip his hand underneath her shirt. Loki had cool hands, raising goose bumps and a delightful shiver. Darcy had had boyfriends and girlfriends and none had ever held her this intimately as they kissed.

Unfortunately, Jarvis was the most polite cockblocking friend she'd ever had.

"Ms. Potts had just tried knocking on your door and received no answer, Miss Lewis. I believe she is about to knock on Dr. Foster's apartment now." The AI said.

"Shit!" Darcy cursed. Loki sat up and spat some words in something that sounded like Old Norse, whose sentiments were similar. His collar was skewed to one side and she wished she could see more of his shoulder…

Speaking of apartments, she had totally forgotten about his key, hadn't she?

"So! I've been looking for you because Tony had prepared new accommodations for you. Do you know how hard it is to find you? You should totally get a cell phone, or something. Wait, no, I'll start the paperwork to get you a 'phone. It'd be faster." Darcy spoke all this in a voice that was much too cheerful than was necessary, but she had to distract herself in a hurry. Her hands shuffled through the pockets of her jacket for the keycard (she had to look at least semi-formal when she wasn't in her more field-worthy outfits). Her attention had begun to wander over Loki's form again before she forced herself to look up, pushing the key into his hands.

"Aaand here's your apartment key; it's on the 127th floor, apartment number eight. We're neighbours! My apartment is number five, Jane's on number four and Thor's in three. You know where to find me."

Darcy kissed him one last time, for good luck, and just because she wanted to see how fast she could destroy his coherence. The answer to that was 'fast enough', but he evened the score by being able to open her bra one-handed and she wasn't even sure he'd met the contraption before.

She pulled away a moment before she was going to straddle him, basking in his confusion.

Darcy stood up and sauntered away, putting an extra swing on her hips, purely for his benefit. She made sure she didn't look back (Darcy knew that was half of the effort, right there), and it caused her to miss the hungry look on his face.

Also, she hoped Tony wasn't going to get mad at her for too long if she got Loki a StarkPad. It was utterly necessary, she reasoned, it's for world peace, man!

'-

"Is Ms. Potts still with Jane and Thor?" Darcy asked Jarvis once she was far enough from the server room that her thoughts didn't circle back to what she'd left behind.

"No, but I have informed her that you are on your way. May I suggest the library coffee shop, Miss Lewis?"

Wow, Jarvis was good. "You sure we won't be eavesdropped, Jarvis?"

"There are private booths available, and I'm sure Ms. Potts is aware and will have made the arrangements."

"Swell. I'll be happy to meet her there, then."

'-

The coffee shop in the library on 71st floor shouldn't even be called a coffee shop, Darcy thought, still busy in taking in her surroundings. All the wood panelling, low tech appearance and understated, old world décor brought in mind of British gentlemen's clubs.

Apparently when Jarvis said employee library, what he meant was closer to Hogwarts' Restricted Section, because she had to flash her ID card to the ident-reader by the door and the other library doesn't do that. If Loki wasn't so antisocial or just plain prickly about new places, he might even be comfortable here.

It wasn't difficult to find Pepper Potts. Darcy only needed to find the one redhead in the room that could simultaneously be on the cover of Vogue and Fortune. She was not the only smartly-dressed woman there and Darcy felt distinctly underdressed—and she already dressed differently than when she and Jane were in the field. Thankfully there were the usual smatterings of lab bound scientists and the sleepless zombie grad student peons, because she saw more than a few of them wandering around and found that her outfit was still okay.

Pepper stood up, in a slate grey suit trimmed with silver. Her hair was braided in a deceptively simple style that Darcy wasn't sure she could actually do alone.

"It's good to see you, Miss Lewis," Pepper said.

"Um, you too. I mean, it's great to finally meet you. Just Darcy, please."

"Only if you call me Pepper. Please, take a seat."

The brunette tried to smile and it came closer to a nervous grin. They both sat down; Pepper did it with what Darcy was sure was supernatural grace while she bumbled her way into a chair. "I'm not taking you away from any important business, am I?"

She smiled. "Oh no, not at all. I happened to be free this evening. How are you settling in Stark Towers?"

This sounded a lot like those job satisfaction conversations, the primary difference being the frigging CEO herself actually took the time to meet her. Darcy gulped.

"Great! It's been absolutely great! Did you know that Bruce and Tony are our neighbours? I mean, wow, talk about being close to superstars," she reined in her enthusiasm a bit. Pepper Potts didn't need to hear her verbal essay on the awesomeness of the Avengers. She was plenty awesome herself.

"And of course, there's you. I've never forgotten the talk you gave on campus on how to make it to the top in Wall Street's alpha male culture. The parallels you drew to how it's still more of the same in DC and even Silicon Valley was some serious analysis. More people need to call the old guard on their bullshit! Frankly, I cannot speak enough about that TED talk you gave last year either. Also, am I boring you? Please tell me I'm not boring you because I never stop talking when I'm nervous."

Pepper wasn't offended at all; she laughed. Darcy could even see the crinkles on the corners of her eyes. It wasn't one of those small polite laughs. It was an easy, carefree one.

"It seems like you've been following my career, Darcy."

"It's hard not to when you're a poli-sci major."

Oh, Sarah was going to want all the details once she heard about this, Darcy thought. As poli-sci majors, they both followed Pepper's career. She really needed to keep in touch with her best friend from college again.

Pepper's eyes sharpened with interest. "Oh, yes, I was about to ask about that. How do you find working for Jane? I know you two'd been working together for some time, but I thought you might want something to do something else closer to your calling?"

A waiter came and served them coffee, still fragrant from the pot. A large, sectioned plate of assorted dried fruits came, some looking more exotic than the others.

"And I'm sorry; I don't know your preference, so I hope you can forgive me for ordering something for you ahead of time."

"It's no problem." Darcy insisted.

Whatever Pepper had ordered smelled divine. She wouldn't complain about it. The two women enjoyed their drinks in a moment of peace. Pepper waited expectantly, and Darcy tried to put her thoughts to order.

"I don't touch Jane's theoretical work. That's obvious. I did get used to her hardware and how she constructed it—it's really off-the-wall. And don't ask her about which programs she wants to install. She just has a list of features and it's up to me to find the one that ticked all the boxes, install it on all our computers and read the frickin' manual. I didn't realise I need to touch a statistics textbook again for that." She shuddered from the memory and willed it away again. She'd taken two statistics class because they were a requirement, but she passed it only with blood, sweat, toil and tears.

The assistant huffed. "And don't get me started on organisation; if I leave it to her, she'd just place all the documents in one big pile."

"Tony was much the same before Jarvis was fully online," Pepper said, reminiscing. She didn't sound half as stressed as Darcy had expected her to be, and was actually a little amused. Well, she did sleep with the guy. Even if he drove her up the wall then, it probably seemed cute now through the lens of nostalgia.

"But please, Darcy, are you happy?"

The question caught her off guard. "What?"

"Don't you miss those talks on public policies, of the ways we can improve how the government works?"

Darcy's breath faltered. She still wanted to, that was the problem. But she doesn't want to leave Jane either. She was also getting used to her current work even if she had no idea how to get promoted beyond her current position (she was not an astrophysicist here, definitely). In the end, she still cannot make up her own mind. Apparently, Pepper wasn't done yet.

"Speaking of correspondences, may I have your email address, Darcy?"

Pepper deftly slid her business card across the table. The act partly reminded Darcy that now she had a Proper Job, she probably needed to get her own set. Pepper's name and contact detail was written in letters that were graceful even when unadorned, on an ivory card that was smoother than it looked when she picked it up. Her mailing address was the C-suite of Stark Tower and Darcy had to hold herself back from whistling.

Pepper Potts,
Chief Executive Officer,
Stark Industries,

pepperpotts -at- stark. net

"Uh, don't you already have it, in the company database and everything?"

Pepper arched an eyebrow. "Do you want to work for a company who hands out access to its employee database without reserve?"

She winced. Right.

"Of course not. You've made your point. Let me write it down somewhere…" While Darcy was scrambling through her messy bag for a notepad and pen, Pepper easily slid through her address book on her StarkPad and set that across the table to Darcy too. She entered her email address there.

darcy_regina -at- stark. net

Then, she turned the StarkPad around and pushed it over to Pepper's side again. Pepper observed it with mild interest.

"Your address is not just Darcy underscore Lewis, then?"

The brunette thought back to her reasons as she gave her answer. "There was a Darcy Lou in…corporate comptroller, or something? Some accounting stuff. No way in hell am I going to get mistaken with someone who works financial accounts. There's also another Darcy whose email was 'just darcy' with no spaces in…biomed engineering stuff."

In the end, she shrugged and downplayed it. "Gotta make sure I had something memorable."

"So, Regina is your middle name, then?"

Darcy smiled and did something she wasn't proud of; she sidestepped the truth and flirted with lies.

"Something like that." Her middle name was actually Victoria—Grandma Lewis' name.

"So, not that I'm not happy chatting with you, but I don't think you came here just to eat with me, did you?" Darcy asked quickly.

The two women exchanged glances for a while before Pepper finally nodded. She acknowledged that Darcy could see through pleasantries easily. When the redhead spoke again, her voice had become firmer, with more interest in them than bland corporate politeness dictated.

"Dr. Foster gave me an interesting, abbreviated reasoning of why she joined Stark Industries when she'd had offers from elsewhere with competitive salary quotes. Something about how the unchecked growth of state surveillance and secret organisations can easily encroach on what the Bill of Rights had granted to each citizen. I didn't think politics to be her field of study, so I presumed that you were the one who'd given her a rundown on the issue."

She had Darcy there and Darcy could do nothing but agree with her.

"I'd love very much to be able to see your essay on it. In fact, I think you should publish it. I could give you the emails of some editors that I'm sure would be very interested in it. Your work is very relevant now, especially since some of the examples for your concerns seem to include SHIELD, the up-and-coming organisation people in the right places keep hearing whose exact nature of work is not clearly defined," Pepper said with uncharacteristic frankness for a business leader.

Darcy understood then that she was one of the few lucky enough to see a glimpse of the woman Pepper Potts was, not just the image she carefully crafted and managed for the world.

"I believe that we as a society need to have more works tackling headlong the issue of the modern surveillance state. If people can't see it easily then we should bring it to the public consciousness—we can't have an informed debate on public policy if people aren't even aware of the issues we face."

There was a conviction in her voice that Darcy had missed hearing. It was her own voice, muttering in disbelief in the middle of the night when she was reading about what sort of crap the government was trying to pull through the FISA court. It was the voice of Sarah when she was rousing their circle of friends on one pork barrel projects after another in their apartment. It was the voice of her other friends in political science, people who entered it because they wanted to do something, to inform people how their country works and made sure their choices were made with eyes wide open.

It was tempting, so very tempting to go back to it all. She pressed the heel of her palm into her eyes.

Darcy wrote the essay down because of a burning incredulity that would not go away no matter how long she ignored it (if she stewed for a few days more with all of it in her head, she was going to blow). She didn't want to believe that the country she was living was one where the iPod of one harmless intern could be confiscated without so much as a warrant and never returned. Or that they could do the same to Jane's research notes and Jane's line of research without further explanation than 'national security'. If it hadn't been for the whole incident with Thor, the scientist and her work would've disappeared into obscurity altogether.

I believe we can be a better country than that, she remembered saying once to Sarah. Her friend only rolled her eyes (but she was smiling all the same). Of course we can, Darce, but not without oversight. That's why we're here, remember?

Pepper sounded sympathetic. She didn't press Darcy for an answer and only pushed the dried fruits forward. "I'm sorry. I guess you'd need time to think over this."

Darcy began to pick on chocolate-dipped pomegranates and sugared kumquats. Their table was secluded. It was not quite in the corner, only out of the way, and the other tables around them were suspiciously empty of people.

Yet the only reason she'd written the essay recently had only been for one person: Jane needed to know. Her friend needed to realise what was the stakes of the game was here if they give those shadow organisations more and more unchecked power. She needed to know that they could be players too instead of just pawns.

And of course the poli-sci major had never forgotten about what she wanted to do all those years before. Hells yeah she wanted to change it. Does anyone even need to ask?

But Darcy had never been someone who trusted the easy path. Not all that glitters' gold. She knew she'd sell her left kidney or a third of her liver if it could get her positioned right in the heart of DC. She knew that old hunger would probably still be readable in her writing, in her data, in her face.

It was why she couldn't trust herself to answer—or Pepper for having offered it.

"I like you, Pepper," Darcy finally said, not looking the redhead in the eye yet as she blinked the moisture in her eyes away. "I really, really like you. In college, I've always thought I wanted to be like you and even now, I think you're a good person who had achieved much more than most people could. You haven't lost yourself in the business world."

Pepper nodded soberly. "That's a great trust you place in me, Darcy. Thank you."

Darcy wasn't done yet, though. It was just the beginning.

"Because of this, I'm going to level with you. I don't trust SHIELD because they won't even tell us what they're doing and I'm sure you know that whole shtick about how absolute power corrupts. That's why when they insist on getting their hands on even more of Jane's data without any explanation why, we bailed." She took a deep breath. "Now, Tony's a good man, I know that. But on the same note, I'm sure that SHIELD isn't lacking good people either. The only difference between them is that Tony isn't omnipotent."

"He likes to think he is," Pepper said with a dry note. Darcy let out a bark of laughter.

"Oh, I'm sure he does."

She met Pepper's bright green eyes and spoke her next words with conviction. "I know that he doesn't actually think like that. It's all just part of his public persona, isn't it? The swaggering billionaire. Tony probably knows better than anyone else how fragile his suit is, or just how many steps away from his own mortality he is after each battle."

Darcy knew she wasn't imagining the tension in Pepper's neck. She regretted to have affected her that way, but the words needed to be said.

The brunette sighed. "It's the obsessive genius in him. I could see it because he and Jane are peas in a pod. She can see all the holes in her hypothesis faster than anyone else can, and that's why she's not aware how extraordinary her work is; for her, there are always more flaws she needs to hack at and that she's not there yet. That's why she keeps working day and night at it."

"Tony's brilliance wouldn't have come this far if he wasn't as obsessed in continuously improving himself as well."

Now, it was Darcy's turn to give Pepper space. She decided to try out the dried kiwis next. There were only specks of sugar on the surface, enough to draw out the fruit's flavours and even out the zest, but not enough to overpower. They really were tasty. She was trying to decide whether she wanted to find out the price tag of the platter or not so she could order it some other time (or if knowing how much it costs was just going to give her a heart attack).

The redhead was thoughtful.

"You're quite perceptive. Not many people would see Tony that way," Pepper finally said.

Darcy shook her head. "No, compared to other folks, I'm just lucky enough to live here. I can see you guys being human instead of these perfect heroic paragons of whatevs, and I'm invisible. You can observe other people for as much as you like when you're part of the background."

"Who's really looking at the lowly lab assistant, right? Right?" Darcy waggled her brows.

Pepper raised one finely drawn eyebrow without a word. Said assistant pretended that she didn't know what the CEO was asking.

"Wait, where was I? Omnipotent! Right. So, Tony's not omnipotent, that's his redeeming point."

Pepper's lips quirked at one corner. "I'll be sure to tell him that."

"Nooooo, don't! He'd be all sulky and I can't get the toys I want and I'd probably have to bribe him with a lot more than just coffee and—wait, I'm getting sidetracked." Darcy shook her head.

"So, on the not-omnipotent thing. The point is, I don't know what the future would bring. If someone smashes SHIELD to pieces, or if suddenly Tony gets some super mutation from outer space and was all fuck yeah I'm immortal? And Stark Industries could well be lead by Tony for the next five centuries? Pepper, I think even Jane could see the concentration of power on his side. We'd leave SI without a backward glance and go off somewhere."

"Somewhere?"

Darcy shrugged. This was all what-ifs, right? "I dunno where. Norway like last time is fine, though I'd suggest Bermuda first, because hey, proper beaches. No hard feelings. It's really nothing on Tony or you."

Pepper smiled. "None taken."

The redhead picked some dried cherries for herself. Darcy contented herself with her drink. The coffee had a pretty strong and distinct flavour, almost spicy. She wondered what blend it was.

"This has been very enlightening," Pepper said.

Darcy exhaled long and hard. "Yeah. I mean, I don't know why you even need to talk to little old me, but it's nice to be able to hit up with other social science people once in a while and talk about, y'know, the wider world."

Pepper's eyes were warm. "This has been better than I expected it to be too. It's been great talking to you."

"Aww, now you're just being nice—"

"And you're gently distracting me from noticing that you actually have a brain. That is certainly a very good pose to accentuate your figure," Pepper noted shrewdly. "Unfortunately, it's not going to work that easily on people who actually see you for who you are, Darcy. I am serious about the offer."

Darcy stopped herself from saying whatever it was she usually said. She had to admit that she was too used to being dismissed quickly that she'd even turned it into a defence that by now she had gotten very good at hiding in plain sight; the kind of pretty loud person that most people could automatically tune out. Pepper took her momentary loss of words as an opportunity to continue.

"I know you've still got your whole life in front of you and you're in no hurry to get anywhere, but you don't have to forget your interests just because you're currently assisting Jane in her work and looking out for her. You're your own person too. You're allowed to be your own person. You do know that Stark Industries has an employee scholarship program too? I'm sure you have the capability to apply for graduate school."

Darcy could almost feel her world tilt as Pepper said that, the strength of her conviction set in her smile. The assistant had never thought about it because, heck, who in the world cared that much about political science? It wasn't as if the field was a rapidly growing one like tech. Stark Industries certainly did not dabble in it. There was no Silicon Valley waiting to absorb poli-sci graduates.

"For political science? Seriously?" Darcy couldn't stop herself from scoffing.

Pepper's smile held and now it was even coloured with amusement. "We have employees from very many fields, Darcy."

"Now, I still have vacancies to fill for political aides and I'm not in a hurry trying to fill it. Please, think about it carefully in the mean time and take care of yourself. I'm afraid I have another appointment I need to catch up with."

Darcy blinked, not quite sure why the executive hadn't changed her mind.

"Um, yeah, you too. Err, thanks, I guess?"

Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, smiled one last time before standing up to leave. A faint scent of magnolia drifted behind her along with an impression of freshly cut grass after a rain. She snorted softly at that. It wasn't inaccurate. She now knew what they meant by the Potts' blitzkrieg. Too many things now jostled for space in Darcy's brain and she had no idea how to begin sorting them out. Could she just walk away and leave Jane like that? Her friend was an adult, yes, but she certainly couldn't begin to care about politics—certainly never as much as Darcy. And what if there was another guy like that pissant Blake again? (Jane would actually describe him more accurately as sorry excuse for a scientist and sabotaging bastard of an ex-boyfriend).

The brunette couldn't think. Since when was my life so complicated?

Darcy slumped over the table with a groan.

"Shit."

'-

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Author's Note:

Because Pepper Potts is too cool not to be written as a proactive character.

Complications, complications...

For those who thought that Blake's name was familiar, yes, I repurposed him to fit into Jane's backstory (suffice to say, he is not Thor even if there are uncomfortable similarities).

'-

The Weird and Random Glossary:

Clarke's Law: Three 'laws'* on science (in fiction) formulated by the British Science Fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke. The first two isn't really relevant and Darcy here is referring to the third Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

*technically it's more of Clarke's Conjecture than Law, but who cares?

FISA Court: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also known as FISC Court, of the United States of America. A simple way to describe it is as a secret tribunal whose members are chosen by an unelected official. How will the public ensure that the decisions taken are in its interest? Oh boy, no way am I touching that issue with a ten foot pole. Nope. Search onwards under your own risk, preferably from a public computer and erase your browsing history after that.

'-