And...here I am again! I'm being spoiled with a ton of extra writing time...So I figured why not keep updating this thing for my readers?
Thanks again, you guys. You spoil me with all your support. ;)
Darcy was frustrated.
She was frustrated with her day, which had been decidedly sucky due to the team's absence. She was frustrated with her toilet, which had backed up and then overflowed all over her bathroom. (That had been so much fun to clean up.) She was frustrated with her hair, which was acting like a bad 80's hair do. (More like a hair don't.)
More than anything, she was frustrated with herself. She'd watched Jane and Thor say goodbye that morning. She'd watched how tenderly Thor had kissed Jane, and how she hadn't flinched when he'd reached up to brush a strand of hair off her face.
She knew that she shouldn't hold it against either of them, but she was annoyed with it. They were so perfect, for each other and as a couple. Jane wasn't having mental breakdowns over the wrong color of dress, and Thor wasn't having to tiptoe around her or having to worry about saying the wrong things. Hell, they'd probably end up settling down and raising perfect little hell raising thunder babies, and Darcy would still be trying to get through her first kiss with Bruce.
Okay, she was having a bad day. And it wasn't looking to get any better.
So Darcy did what any normal 21st century young adult would do when they're having a bad day. She logged onto the internet, and clicked onto Google.
She wasn't sure what to search for, so she searched for the answer to the biggest question in her life at this point.
How to get over an abusive relationship
She sat back in her leather chair as she waited for the laptop to load the page, and then gave a snort of disbelief when she saw the results. There was a Wikihow for it, because wasn't there a Wikihow for everything?
"How to move past an abusive relationship. 6 steps with pictures." Darcy had to laugh at that. As if it was that easy. Curiosity, however, required that she at least take a look at the page. She clicked onto it and smoothed her plaid shirt over her waist. Maybe it wasn't the most conventional method of moving past her shit, but Darcy was curious what the internet had to say.
'Congratulations on leaving this abusive relationship!' the page read. Darcy laughed again. Holy shitty fruitcake of hell, talk about fruity. She continued to read though, and soon her chuckles turned to contemplation.
Maybe it wasn't the deepest, most well thought out guide to healing, but the main point was driven home. On an impulse, Darcy grabbed a spiral notebook off of her nightstand and scribbled down the 6 steps. Not that she thought they would really help, but hey, at least they'd give her something to do other than mope about her friends being gone.
Darcy read over the steps that night, after coming to the sad realization that her late night insomnia buddy, aka Clint, wouldn't be back anytime soon. On any other night, they'd pop 5 or 6 bags of popcorn and put them into a bowl, and then eat it while watching dumb late night talk shows. But because Clint wasn't here, and she didn't feel like doing it alone, she settled for reading over her list.
1. Know that you are a wounded person, and that your main task now is to repair and heal yourself.
2. Whatever happened, the other person has to bear responsibility for the abuse; it was not your fault and you were the recipient of abuse.
3. Make a plan to heal.
4. Do things that make you happy, and that make you grow into a mature person.
5. Manage time in order to nurture yourself.
6. Spend some time with friends, family, and other people who care about you.
It wasn't the most conventional list she'd ever made, but it was something, and it wasn't a therapist. Because Darcy Lewis didn't need a therapist, thank you very much. She did things her own way, and that was that.
She started with step one. She knew that she was a wounded person. That wasn't hard to accept. And she wanted to heal. So she grabbed a pen and crossed step one out.
She went to step two. It was harder than step one. Because it was easy to blame herself for what happened. If she had just tried harder, been a better daughter, a better girlfriend, maybe they wouldn't have had a reason to hate her.
She left step two alone, figuring that it would be a process, anyways.
She had just started into trying to figure out step three when she heard a knock on her door. She sat up and walked across the white, fluffy shag carpet that she'd picked out with Pepper's assistance, assuming that it was her or Jane. When she opened it, she was surprised to see Bruce standing in the doorway, looking tired and disheveled with two steaming cups of some fancy smelling tea in hand. His face was streak with grime, and his shirt was rumpled, but the sight of him still made Darcy's heart rate rise.
"Hey." he said gently.
"Hey." she said. "What're you guys doing back here? Not that I'm complaining."
"We beat the bad guys." Bruce said. "Literally. We beat them into the concrete."
"Yay avengers!" Darcy cheered quietly. "You wanna come in?"
They sat on the floor, using the white shag rug as padding for themselves, and setting the tea on the coffee table.
"So how was your day?" Bruce asked, grinning at her.
"100% shit. How was yours?"
He stared at her. "The same. Why was yours so bad?"
She tried to ignore the stupid tears, but he didn't. "Hey, hey." He soothed. "It wasn't me, was it?"
"No!" she half laughed, half cried. "I just missed you."
He grinned at that. Not just a small grin either, but a big, shit eating grin. "Really?"
"Yeah. And then I felt stupid, because we aren't really together yet, but-"
"Shhhh." Bruce said. "Don't ruin it. That was almost a moment."
Darcy took a sip of the tea, which tasted like it should have come out of one of those gourmet tea shops. It was fantastic. "I made a list."
Bruce's forehead creased in confusion. "A list?"
"About how I'm going to get over Paul. I got it off Wikihow."
"Wiki what?" he said, looking even more confused.
"You're kidding me, right?" she groaned. "Wikihwow. It tells you how to do anything, like how to become a ninja spy or how to stalk a celebrity without getting caught? You seriously don't know what Wikihow is?"
The look of absolute puzzlement on Bruce's face was absolutely priceless. "Um...no?"
She rolled her eyes. "Okay, you know what? I'll give both you and Steve a run down one day. But hey. I made a list. Wanna see it?"
Bruce still looked a little bit lost, but he nodded. "Sure."
She handed it to him, and sipped her tea as he read over it carefully. He looked up and grinned at her. "This is the Darcy Lewis recovery program?"
"Hey!" she shrugged, taking it back. "I may not be the star spangled man, but this chick does have a plan."
"Step 3 make a plan." he said wryly. "Which one are you on? Step two?"
She shrugged again. "Step two is a work in progress. I just started it tonight, and step two might take a little bit of time."
"That's fair." Bruce agreed, leaning his head back on her chair and giving a contented sigh. "Darcy? Can I ask you something?"
"Shoot." she said.
He ran his fingers through his hair, which was an unfair distraction. Not that Darcy was going to protest. "I-I don't know. Maybe it's a guy thing, and that's why I don't get it, but...why don't you like to be touched?"
"What?"
He sighed, and reached out to stroke her arm. She involuntarily flinched, and Bruce nodded his head. "That. He hit you, didn't he?"
"Yeah." Darcy sighed, not even bothering to deny it. "I thought you knew that?"
"I thought he might have. I figured he was verbally abusive..." his face clouded over briefly. "Darce? He didn't...you know?"
She realized what this was going and mentally begged him not to go there. "He didn't what?"
He stared at her, and Darcy could see rage clouding his eyes. "You know what."
She opted for the truth. "He wasn't the first one."
"God, no-"
"Bruce..."
His hands immediately covered his head, and he began to shake. "No, no, no, no, no..." he met her eyes, and the rage in them terrified her.
"Bruce?" she said, unable to keep the panic from tingeing her voice. He shook his head, and began to breath deeply.
"It's okay, Darce. It's okay." he muttered, as if he was soothing the both of them. He looked up, but Darcy could see that his breathing was still heavy. She stared at him warily, until he forced a smile.
"Don't worry. The other guy had enough time out today, he doesn't really want to make another appearance, either." He took a deep breath. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She shrugged her shoulders, still staring at him in caution. She'd never seen him so close to edge of fury before, and she wasn't going to lie. It had freaked her out a little bit. "I thought you'd figured it out. And I figured that even if you hadn't...you knew enough."
He shook his head. "Damn it Lewis. What am I going to do with you?"
"Make passionate love to me in an elevator?" she guessed, and then immediately winced. "Sorry...snarkiness. I'm trying to stop."
Bruce looked at her in confusion. "Why? It suits you."
"Thanks." she said. "But...it's a defence mechanism, I guess. It's how I keep people away from me. And I'm getting sick of doing that."
"I get it. Tony's the same way. I guess I can be too." Bruce admitted, before falling into silent thought for a moment. "Do you even want that?"
"Want what?"
He blushed slightly. "Passionate love. Probably not in an elevator, but...you know what I mean. When we get there, if we get there, is that something you would ever want?"
Darcy blew out a long sigh. "Uh-God Bruce. I don't know. It's just...really, really bad memories. And I have never, ever felt good during it."
Bruce's eyebrows went way, way up, and Darcy had to laugh at the expression on his face. "What?"
"Darcy," he chuckled. "If it doesn't feel good, then you aren't doing it right."
She choked on her tea. "Whoa, Moppy. Did not see that one coming."
They sat in comfortable silence for awhile, before Bruce broke it again. "Can I see that list again?"
"Um, sure?" Darcy passed the purple notebook across the table to Bruce, who read over the steps again.
"What do you say about combining steps 4 and 6 tomorrow?" he asked.
"Huh?" she said, cursing herself for her less than intellectual response.
"Let's go and do something you enjoy. Together. We'll write it off as therapy."
Darcy laughed. "A date?"
He shook his head. "Not a date, therapy. I'll go as your sort of not really friend, and you can be the person recovering by doing something we enjoy. We can explain it to Tony and everyone else that way, too."
She grinned. "Okay, Why not?"
He leaned in. "So tell me, Darcy Lewis. What could we do tomorrow that would make you completely and utterly happy?"
A slow smile grew on her face. She knew just the thing.
Just a note, those are the actual steps off of Wikihow. And the celebrity and ninja pages do exist! Gotta love it!