Bygone
Chapter 10: Essential Personnel
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," she breathed as she read the name again, hoping it might have changed in the time it took her to blink.
Maria Jane Lewis.
No, still the same.
From across the decades, Jane's voice came to her. '…his assistant. Her name was Lewis, too, funnily enough. Maria Lewis.'
Maria Lewis, Stark's assistant… a job she already possessed.
Maria Lewis with the fabulous taste in coats… coats which were tailored perfectly to her oddly proportioned body.
Maria Lewis, who left walking directions to exactly where Darcy needed to go.
Fuck, I am so dumb, she thought and threw her head back against a wall, not caring that it was cement with a cushioning layer of ceramic tile. It hurt like hell.
"Lewis," Stark said. "Are you all right? You look sick."
She turned her eyes to him, not bothering to lift her head from the wall. He was looking at her with concern, his eyes surveying every inch of her for damage. All her trauma was internal, however, so there was nothing for him to see.
She felt so stupid for not catching on sooner. She knew Howard Stark had an assistant named Lewis. Given that he couldn't remember her name, she ought to have known he would invent an identity for her using the wrong first name. But why Maria? It was her middle name, yes, but only Jarvis knew that. Maybe it was the first one that came to him. Maria was a common enough name; she and Tony had debated that months ago when he quizzed her on her lineage.
The air pulled from her lungs as if she had been punched.
Maria. Lewis. The only two things she and Tony had in common. Maria Lewis, his mother's maiden name.
"Are you going to faint?" Howard asked.
"No, but I might hurl," she muttered, daring to look at him again, seeing past his concern to the mark on his collar. Not lipstick. "You're bleeding."
His hand flew to his neck and came away red. "Yeah, the explosion."
"I wasn't hit," she commented in a desperate dib to think about something else, anything else. As per usual, the gods weren't listening.
"Well, I was standing over you. I took all your shrapnel for you because I am a stand-up guy and all around gentleman."
At the sight of his smile, one clearly designed to comfort her, she groaned and sunk to the floor. Why did he have to go and tell her that? Now she had pictures floating through her head of him huddled protectively over her. That's not how she wanted to think of him. He was Howard 'Grabby Hands' Stark, a thoughtless, selfish, childish womanizer, not a man who threw himself over a woman during an explosion. That was the stuff of loveable heroes, the stuff that made Darcy's knees weak and filled her with the warmth of a thousand puppies chasing butterflies through a rainbow-filled meadow. She did not want that feeling associated with Howard Stark because it made the idea of Darcy 'Maria' Stark all that more plausible.
His interpersonal ineptitude left him flapping his hands uselessly in the air. Whether it was in an attempt to fan her or from not knowing what to do with himself, she wasn't sure. His words made her think it might be the former as he observed, "You're in shock."
"Damn right I'm in shock," she muttered. There was nothing quite so shocking as learning you are the mother of Iron Man.
Oh, fuck, I'm Tony's mom! she hit her head against the wall again.
"Stark, that woman of yours," Phillips called. "Bring her over. Now."
"Sorry, Lewis," Stark apologized, pulling her to her feet and leading her to that tiled conference room where she had helped him pick Steve Rogers as their super soldier. He set her down at the table, bringing over a glass of water in an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture.
"I'm fine," she lied.
"Leave, Stark," the colonel ordered. It took a moment and an MP to force the man from the room, but soon she and the stone-faced Colonel Phillips were alone at the table.
"Name," the man demanded in a clipped bark. It was a tone she heard often but never directed at her.
"Lewis."
His eyes narrowed as he leaned in, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "I had my lead scientist shot inside my secret army installation. I am not in the mood for games. Your full name."
"Maria Jane Lewis," she said, tasting the bitter bile on her tongue.
"Date of birth."
"August 8th," she said, pausing to remember what the driver's license had read, "1920." That made her twenty-two. She had travelled back in time, lived for months in 1943 and was still younger than when she started.
Phillips scowled across the table at her, barking out questions which she answered with stilted, stuttered words. Mostly it was shock, but some of the hesitation was her pausing to remember the information made up over the course of the past six weeks or that which she had only just learned from Stark's forged documents. She was suddenly from Bridgeport, Connecticut, a town she had never even heard of before reading it on the papers now in her purse. Her mother's name was Louisa Cooper-Lewis, not Sarah Gardener-Lewis. Her father, Richard and not Milton. It was too much. The explosion and Erskine's death would have been sufficient, but throw an interrogation and son into the mix and Darcy was ready to run screaming.
"Empty your purse," Phillips said.
"Why?"
"A man just detonated a bomb with a cigarette lighter. I am not taking any chances," he said brusquely, a finger jabbing at the tabletop. "Purse. Empty. Now."
Darcy put the bag on the table. An MP stepped forward, unlatched it and tipped it upside down, sending the contents scattering across the polished wooden surface I n front of the colonel. The man sifted through the mess with the tip of pencil, finally lifting the newly printed identification papers, studying them.
"I don't know about most people, but I don't usually go carrying copies of my birth certificate around with me," he commented dryly, his raised eyebrow rivaling Jarvis's.
Darcy paused, unsure what to say, though she was clearly meant to say something. "I was going to start looking for an apartment of my own after we were done today," she said. "I thought I might need them."
He nodded slowly. His posture seemed to have changed, though his tone was still suspicious. "Where are you looking?"
"SoHo," she said. She didn't even know if that area of the city was even considered residential in 1943. Things changed so rapidly in New York; for all she knew it was filled with operational factories instead of the artist lofts she knew in her day.
Phillips frowned, his eyes narrowed as he studied first the papers on the table and then her. "A young woman has no business down in SoHo," he declared. He took a pen and jotted something down on his notebook, tearing the page out and handing it to her. "That's the kind of place you ought to be. My niece lived there until last month. Tell the manager I sent you."
Darcy accepted the note and her purse. "Can I go?"
"Send Stark in," he said after a single, hard nod.
She offered a vague nod of her own in reply.
She found Stark just outside the door, knowing he would have been standing with his ear against it if the MP hadn't been keeping him away.
"Well?" he demanded.
"The colonel wants you," she said dully without pausing in her movement away from the interrogation. She walked, unthinking, up the stairs, through the door and out into the street. There were car parts littering the street, MPs in uniform and plain clothes milling around the wreckage and barricading witnesses and suspects. She kept walking on numb feet until the chaos was behind her, and all she heard was the routine sounds of daily life in New York.
She stopped, staring at a world where things were normal.
"Where to, lady?"
Darcy blinked and realized there was a taxi parked in front of her. She could get a ride back to the mansion; Jarvis would be there with Pop Tarts and a mocha latte. He would speak to her in that soothing way that made everything seem like it would be okay. She knew it wouldn't be, though. She had proof of that in her purse in the name of Maria Jane Lewis.
"Uh," she said, looking down at the paper Colonel Phillips had given her. He would be watching her, she was sure, seeing if she really was who she claimed. She would need to keep up appearances, find an apartment, if she wanted to quell his suspicions and remain free to go home.
The bitter aftertaste her new name had left in her mouth only further encouraged her to distance herself from Howard.
She read the scrawled address aloud, "140 East 106th Street."
"That's The Griffith," the man commented. "I know the place. Hop in. It'll run ya about a buck."
Darcy checked her purse, found she had five dollars in crumpled ones. More than enough. "The Griffith, then," she said and climbed into the back.
The yellow brick building, while not the tallest she had ever encountered, managed to intimidate her. Something about the thick pillars standing between no-nonsense arches reminded her of the buildings at college, the ones where the oldest and most respected professors glared down their noses at the students. Her impression, it turned out, was completely accurate, only instead of a wizened old man with elbow patches on his tweed jacket, there was a pinch-lipped woman looking down her nose through a pair of jeweled reading glasses.
"May I help you?" she said, her pretentious lock-jaw accent the sort that brought to mind bad impersonations of Julia Child.
Darcy cleared her throat. "Colonel Phillips suggested I inquire about a room here."
The woman's manner changed almost immediately. Her stiffness softened and something of a smile touched her still rather pinched mouth. "Ah, Colonel Phillips. Yes, his niece, Miss Rutherford, was a resident here at The Griffith for nearly two full years. She's married now," the woman said, stopping to look Darcy over. "Are you employed?"
"I work for Stark Industries," she replied. "I'm a personal assistant."
The woman nodded, eyes narrowing as she asked, "Do you plan on working there long?"
Darcy paused, wondering what sort of thing she was meant to say. Did she say 'yes' because she wanted to give the impression of having a secure paycheck with which to pay rent? Or did she say 'no' because the woman thought young ladies ought to be staying at home? "Not long. I'm only staying in the city until I can return home to my family."
"Your husband?"
"No, I'm not married," she said, quickly adding, "yet."
That seemed to please the woman. She pulled a paper from the desk and slid it across the counter. "Normally, I would require an application and references, but Colonel Phillips is a man of great standards. His niece was an exemplary guest. I expect no less from you, Miss…"
"Lewis," she supplied, the bile rising in her throat again as she gave her full false name. "Maria Lewis."
"Very well, Miss Lewis. Welcome to The Griffith."
Darcy signed the contract, wrote out a check with her new checkbook and was given a key to her new fully furnished apartment after a surprisingly long lecture on expectations at The Griffith.
She fell onto the daybed, buried her face in the horrid floral bedspread, and seriously considered crying.
"I don't want to be Iron Man's mother," she told the painting of a noble horse and his weak-chinned rider.
It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but Darcy curled into a ball and fell asleep.
oOo
Morning came, bringing with it the unfortunate realization that she would have to face Stark. She groaned and rolled from the bed, annoyed that she had slept in her only outfit, which was wrinkled beyond any acceptable measure. It was all she had, though, so she made herself as presentable as possible and headed down the stairs to work.
The hotel manager, Miriam, furnished her with directions to the nearest train line. Darcy was at Stark Industries R&D facility faster than she had expected, though without the home made Pop Tarts to which she had become accustomed; the continental breakfast at The Griffith wasn't half bad if one didn't mind the chemical tang of powdered eggs. Being a child reared on processeduerized food products, Darcy didn't mind one bit. What she really needed was coffee.
A need that only grew as she stepped through the doors of Stark's office and found the man standing, arms crossed and faces red with fury.
"Where the hell have you been?" Stark shouted before she could even muster the courage to offer a greeting. "I had Jarvis scouring half of Brooklyn for you!"
"And what were you doing?" she muttered.
"Scouring the other half, obviously. You just left. A spy destroys our installation, kills Erskine and you just left!" He was pacing his office now, raking a hand through his hair, which had been sticking up at odd angles since she walked in the door. "I thought HYDRA had kidnapped you! Where the hell did you go?"
"My new apartment," she said, picking up a file and heading toward the door. She was in no mood to deal with him or look at him so disheveled from being up all night because of her; the safest place for her right now, was as far from Howard Stark as was humanly possible. Howard disagreed. He blocked her path, his face dark and mouth made tight by his clenched jaw.
"Your what now?"
She repeated herself slowly, knowing it irritated him. "My. New. Apartment."
"When did this happen? When were you planning on telling me?" he demanded.
"Yesterday. And I just did," she pushed him aside.
"You can't just decide these things on your own, Lewis."
"You aren't my fucking husband!" she shouted. Not yet, a snide little voice in her head muttered. She ignored it and pressed on. "It's bad enough I'm stuck working for you, watching you spend your time sleeping your way through the city instead of figuring out a way to send me home. I don't need to be at your beck and fucking call twenty-four/seven. I'm not your god damn servant!"
His mouth flapped mutely for a moment, probably more shocked that she was actually yelling at him than anything else. "Lewis, I don't think about you that way. But I don't want you wandering the city."
"I noticed that," she agreed with a scathing laugh, "when you had Jarvis escorting me around for the first week."
"It was just a precaution," he hedged. He at least had the courtesy not to lie about it.
"Well, it stops now. I'm moving to The Griffith."
"No, actually, you're not," he said. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and held it out to her. "We're flying to England tonight. Colonel's orders. The SSR is taking the fight to HYDRA."
Darcy read the memo, a brief but pointed command to take any and all necessary equipment and personnel to some coordinates that she presumed were in England and to await further instructions. "I'm 'necessary personnel'?"
"I would dub you as 'essential'," Stark assured her, daring to smile, though only a little one.
A/N: In case you hadn't noticed, I started italicizing Darcy's thoughts to make it easier to distinguish them.
I admit to some dissatisfaction with this chapter. Darcy's move to the Griffith and her return to work seem a bit stilted to me, but I couldn't find another way to get from point A to point B without it, and didn't want to get dragged into a flowery description of things we already know. (Honestly, we've all watched Agent Carter... Do I really need to write a three paragraph description of the manager and the rooms? Methinks not.) I'm sure a good Beta/Editor could have coaxed me through it, but I ain't got one!
So I hope you like this chapter, such as it is.
Please let me know what you think. I've never written in this universe before and would love to know that I'm doing it justice. (It will make the three other Darcy/Bucky stories I'm slowly piecing together a lot better, too!)