Bygone
Chapter 12: Hopeful

A bomb fell on the camp.

A bomb in the form of one Steven G. Rogers in a dorky helmet and booty shorts. The girls were a hit, cheered and ogled by the men sitting on their asses in the hard-packed dirt of the parade ground, but when Rogers came on stage Darcy cringed as the soldiers went deathly silent. He did his best, but they were not having it.

"Bring out the girls!" a soldier shouted, hurling a fistful of mud at the stage, his sentiment and actions chorused until Captain America made his apologies and was replaced by three smiling chorus girls.

"So you got to see your show," Stark commented with a grimace. "Happy now?"

"That was one of the most painful experiences of my life," she admitted.

Howard nodded. "Imagine how bad it is for me. I helped make that."

"Poor baby, your science experiment is being inappropriately treated," she cooed and gave his head a pat. "Shall I schedule a meeting with Dr. Frankenstein so you can commiserate over a gin and tonic?"

He batted her condescending hand away and smoothed his hair. "Why haven't I fired you yet?"

"Because you'd be lost without me. Seriously, you would last maybe a day."

He straightened his tie, muttering. "I'd last longer than that."

Darcy offered a saccharine smile that he had come to fear. "Really, who ordered the last batch of D42 engines?"

"It was… Patton," he said, sounding in no way confident.

"Close, but you're off by like a thousand miles. Brooke," she informed him. "In England."

"More like three thousand miles off," he corrected, smiling at her as he stepped closer. "You know, you're the only woman willing to put up with me."

She returned the smile. "Very complimentary, Mr. Stark. Shall I note that on my quarterly review and put myself down for a raise?"

He replied with a silent laugh; she could feel the heat of his breath, smell the Scotch on it, and knew they were standing far too close for any normal conversation, though she couldn't say when that had happened. She stepped away, clearing her throat and gesturing to the blueprints he had scattered across a table. "When –"

"Howard!" The urgent whisper came through the flap of the tent. Agent Carter darted in, the imposing figure of Captain America following. Darcy had barely a second to appreciate how he filled the tent before Carter started talking again. "Howard, those repairs to your aircraft, have you finished?"

"Yes," the man said, offering a nod of greeting to the super soldier he helped build.

"Good, you're going to fly us over Austria. We're mounting a rescue operation. Tonight."

Howard took a moment to swallow the last of his drink, turned to deposit the empty glass on the table, catching Darcy's eye as he did; she offered him a small smile, which also happened to be the smuggest she had ever worn in her life. "That's some heavily armed terrain," he commented as he looked back at the pair. "You sure you can handle it?"

"Someone has to at least try," Captain America said, sounding every bit the war hero of his films.

"Good enough for Stark," Darcy declared. "I'll have the H2 fueled and ready to go at 1800."

"We really shouldn't involve you, ma'am," he insisted, turning his enormous blue eyes on her, and Darcy nearly squealed with glee.

"Don't argue with her, Rogers," Stark interjected before the humiliating noise escaped her. "You'll lose. Every time."

Darcy smiled. "I've taught him well."

She pulled on a coat and marched from the tent to make the arrangements for the plane. The aviation personnel were not in the least bit happy with the prospect of having to prep the plane on a drizzly November evening, but, as Stark had said, no one argued with Maria Lewis. Not even Colonel Phillips, who came charging into Stark's tent at 1930 after finding that Captain Rogers had missed his curtain call, that Stark's plane had taken off on a course that would take him directly over enemy territory, and that Rogers, Stark and Carter were missing.

"Where is he?" the man demanded, his voice as gruff and clipped as she had ever heard it.

"Stark?" she clarified. "Last I heard he had a hankering for some fondue. Flew to Switzerland."

He glared down at her. "At 1800? In the rain? And taking one of my agents and a chorus girl with him?"

"No, he didn't take a chorus– oh, you mean Captain America."

"Lewis, do not play games with me." He pointed a warning finger at her but was gentlemanly enough not to actually poke her with it.

"Colonel, Stark isn't under your command. He's here out of a sense of patriotic duty and desire to kick some Nazi ass. Besides, you ordered him to leave a week ago, and now that he finally listened you're getting pissy about it? Really?" She leveled him with a look over the rim of her glasses, one that never failed to make her brothers shamefaced and apologetic. "You really need to make up your mind."

The man glared at her with enough venom to make a Five Star General wet himself, but Darcy held his gaze and waited. It took several long moments, but he finally backed down. "If he lives, you tell him his ass belongs to me."

"You got it, chief." Darcy saluted.

After he left and the night wore on, her brain started to catch up to her mouth. "Dude, I totally just browbeat a World War II colonel. I am so kickass!" Because there was no one around to see, she performed a small and well-earned victory dance.

"Is this what you do when I'm not around?"

Her arms fell and she spun around to find Stark watching her with an amused smile. Her face heated with as it was consumed by a blush of embarrassment at having been caught. "You lived," she said, trying not to sound as humiliated as she felt.

"I build sturdy planes," Stark said with pride. "And Nazis have some of the worst aim I've ever seen." He threw his jacket onto a chair, the shirt underneath soaked through with the evidence of just how nerve-wracking the flight had been.

She smiled and pretended not to notice. "Maybe I've just been knocking you down too many pegs; your head isn't as big a target as it used to be."

"Cute, Lewis," he replied.

"How did it go?"

He paused to fix himself a drink. When he turned to face her, there was a wry smile on his face. "Do you really need to ask? I thought you knew everything."

"No, I forget nothing," she corrected. "And I can't not forget what I never knew. I wasn't a history major. I didn't study the details of every battle in World War II."

"A fair point," he conceded, falling into the chair behind his desk with a groan. "Rogers dropped down into Austria and is, I'm assuming, still alive. Carter wouldn't let me fly to Lucerne, said we had to stay within transponder range." He sighed and took a pull of his drink. "How long do we have to wait?"

Darcy checked her watch. It was nearly midnight, and would soon be the 4th of November, the day Captain America marched 400 prisoners of war back across the border to freedom. "Not long."

She left him nursing his drink and returned to her side of the tent, laying herself down on the cot and staring up at the pitched roof of waterproof wool. Sleep evaded her; her brain was too full of questions. Hours ticked by, but she still lay there thinking. Where was Rogers now? Had he reached the HYDRA base yet? Had he found Barnes and the rest of the captured men? Were they already marching across the border into Italy? Were they coming into the camp at that very moment?

Spurred on by the thought, she leapt to her feet and hurried through the tent to peer out the flap.

Nothing.

"Damn."

"Lewis, will you go to sleep already." For the second time that night, she spun around to face an unexpected Howard Stark. She opened her mouth to say something condescending, but stopped when she bothered to look at him. He was pale from the long hours spent in the underground bunker in England, but, more than that, he looked exhausted. She made sure he got to bed every day, but she couldn't force him to sleep. As good a showman as he was, he easily hid the exhaustion when the colonel or his men were looking, but she had caught him by surprise; he was either too shocked or too tired to bother hiding it.

"Whatcha working on?"

"Your Project Pop Tart," he sighed and rubbed his eyes. "This is the only time I have to work on it when no one will see it." He offered up the file he had filled with notes, copies of articles from scientific journals and a few letters addressed to Mr. B. Tillman.

"Tillman?" she read.

"I had to write under a false name. If they knew it was me asking, Uncle Sam might get wind of it and think I'm developing a new weapon," he explained. "They'd send people around and start asking questions I can't answer."

Darcy looked through the letters, dated as far back as May. "How long have you been working on this?"

"Since you turned up on my doorstep with that telephone of yours."

"Stark, that's almost five months."

"I know," he groaned. "I should have figured something out by now. But—"

"No," she cut him off, unable to stop herself smiling as she held the work out to him. "I mean that's five months you have been working on Project Pop Tart without telling me. I thought you didn't give a crap."

"Well, you were wrong, weren't you?"

He took hold of the papers, but Darcy could not force herself to let go. She stood in amazement of the man she had spent hours cursing internally for being such a self-serving jackass, an unfeeling asshat, a childish dickwad, among other things. Many of those insults were true, but, underneath it all, there might be hope for him yet.

Her fingers finally loosened and the spell broke. She stepped back and gave him a critical look. "You look like hell, Stark. Make sure you get some sleep. When Captain America gets back sometime today, things are going to get very interesting, very fast."

"I'm going to hold you to that promise," he said and started spreading the papers out across his desk, rearranging them until they made some form of sense, at least to him.

"Good night, Mr. Stark."

"Good night, Miss Lewis."

She returned to her side of the tent, laying herself down on the cot and staring up at the pitched roof of waterproof wool. Once again, sleep evaded her; her brain was too full of questions. The most dominant one being: What the fuck was that?

Seriously, what the fuck was that?

She had known Stark for five months. In that time, he had been a steady, solid constant, living up to her initial impression of being a brilliant asshole. Every word out of his mouth and action he had taken had only cemented his character in her mind. With one late-night encounter, he managed to take her notions – so firmly rooted in observation that Jane would have cried tears of sciencey joy – and blow them to smithereens. Eight days ago, she had asked him to work on her problem, told him to take just five minutes to think about it; he could have said something, told her he was working on it when he had time, but he had said nothing. Instead, he silently suffered her censure while losing sleep to help her without ever telling her. God, that was the stuff of loveable heroes. Like when he protected her from the explosion.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," she swore under her breath and flattened the pillow down over her face, burying her scream in it.

How dare he turn out to have such a loveable and heroic streak hidden behind his grabby hands?

What an asshole!


A/N: The initial panic of finding a new place as ebbed into minor urgency and general annoyance. Updates will likely still be sporadic, as the paperwork of teaching has started to kick my ass and the next chapter or two have some major wrinkles I need to iron out... nothing I can pinpoint, just an overall not-right-ness that needs to be addressed.