The secret to taking care of scientists is to realize that they're essentially just a group of kindergarteners. If they're fighting then you sit them on opposite sides of the room facing away from each other. If they're getting too rambunctious then you put them in time out. If they're not listening to you ("just sit down and eat the goddamn muffin, Tony!") then they don't get a treat ("No, Jane. You haven't slept in three days. You only get decaf."). In every group of kindergarteners, however, there's the one kid who's maturity and ability to sit still is light years beyond that of the others'. Bruce Banner was that kid. After the Scientists Three began tracking and analyzing and whatever it is that they actually do, chaos reigned for the first couple hours as Jane argued with Tony and Tony egged on Bruce and Bruce just wanted to be left alone. The other hero-types had slowly dispersed from the lab in the wake of this (they were encouraged to do so by Darcy's assurances that this was relatively normal and as less and less English was spoken in favor of the language of Science!) and went off to regroup somewhere else to discuss the proposed plan of attack ("I have a plan," Tony mocked the Captain, "attack"). At least that's what Darcy assumed was going on. So, while She had to wrangle Tony and Jane as per usual, Bruce took instructions really well and only required a regular dose of tea. The hall guards grumbled every time they had to escort her to the dining area to get some but a good threat of "don't make me sic my scientists on you" did the job of deterring that.
On the bright side, Darcy had finally been able to change out of the God Damned Cocktail Dress, even if the work-out sweats and t-shirt that Natasha "call me Nat" Romanov had acquired for her were still just a bit small and stretched uncomfortably across her chest and hips.
Darcy was pretty sure she did that on purpose to make Steve blush.
After the initial adrenaline of Science! Wore off, things had calmed considerably in the lab over the past couple hours. Doctor Banner had settled into doing continuous scans for radiation by hooking up a gamma ray detection scanner to Loki's scepter. Jane was doing… something that involved a lot of numbers and equations. Tony was just sort of hanging around by where Darcy was stationed fiddling with his holo-tablet-thingymabob, swiping left and right at a speed to rival that of a Tinder addict.
Surprisingly, despite Tony's slowly increasing fidgeting, it was Bruce who broke the quiet that had settled over the group
"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract." He sighed, running a hand through his rumpled salt-and-pepper hair. "But it's gonna take weeks to process."
Tony didn't even look up as he responded. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." She'd bet her taser that that's what he was already doing on his tablet.
"All I packed was a tooth brush," Banner joked.
"You know, you should come by Stark Towers sometime." Tony hopped off his perch, wandering over to the quiet doctor. "Top ten floors, all R&D. Jane loves it." Said scientist was so sucked into her work that she didn't even noticed she'd been brought up in conversation. "It's candy land."
"Thanks," Banner shrugged. "But the last time I was in New York I kind of broke" he glanced around at the two women, that sheepish look with the underlying guilt that Darcy hated so much showing up on his face again. "Harlem."
"Well, I promise a stress free environment," Tony continued, ignoring his protests. "No tension. So surprises." Suddenly, he had what looked like a souped-up fork (haha, "souped-up fork") that crackled, and she watched in interested as he quickly jabbed it in Bruce's ribs.
The doctor flinched and drew away but otherwise seemed fine, if not a little confused at the other man's method of bonding. Tony leaned in, narrowing his eyes and studying him closely. "Nothing?"
"Hey!" Darcy jumped, noting Jane do the same, and nearly fell out of her stool as Steve's voice boomed from close behind her where the entrance of the lab was. She hadn't even realized he came in, but he had and apparently in time to see Tony's (relatively harmless, in Darcy's opinion) stunt. "Are you nuts?"
Tony ignored the question, continuing his faux interrogation of Doctor Banner. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?" To any other person, he might have come across as just being a sarcastic dick, but Darcy could see the glint in his eyes; He was genuinely curious. Now, whether that curiosity was for strictly scientific purposes or because he had a shiny new toy/friend to play with was still up for debate, but if Darcy's instinct was right then Tony was already plotting up ideas and experiments in his head to help out the quiet doctor. He really was a bleeding heart, even if he covered it with cynicism and wit.
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve scoffed.
"Funny things are," Tony shrugged in reply, stepping around a desk to place himself between Steve and the others in the room. Clearly they was gearing up for some kind of argument, and while Darcy had yet to witness a full on blow up between the two, she was certain than one wasn't far off and make sure to be off to the side so as to avoid any accidental explosions (Tony had a tendency to swinging his arms around when he got riled up and it's resulted in one or two mysterious chemicals spilling onto things that they shouldn't).
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," The Good Captain argued, but then looked slightly guilty. "No offense, doctor."
"No, it's alright," Bruce assured him, even if he seemed a little put-off. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."
"You're tiptoeing, big man." Tony shot back at him. "You need to strut."
"And you need to focus on the problem," Steve growled, tacking on a "Mr. Stark" to the end of the sentence as if mocking the man in front of him.
"You think I'm not," he asked incredulously, hands swinging just as Darcy predicted. "Why did Fury call us, and why only now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all of the variables."
"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve intoned.
"He's a spy, Captain. His secrets have secrets," Tony scoffed, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Darcy internally snickered at the image of Director fury dressed up in The Black Widow's cat suit and slinking down darkened hallways. He pointed to Banner. "It's bugging him too, isn't it."
Bruce sputtered, not quite expecting the question directed at him. "Uh… I I just wanna finished my work here and…" He trailed off, but it was easy to tell he had more on his mind.
"Doctor?" Steve's voice was harsh against the silence following the doctor's fumbling answer. There was another beat of silence before Bruce finally responded with what he was really thinking.
"'A warm light for all mankind.'" he muttered, referring to the interrogation they'd all watched on the monitor between who Darcy had been informed were Fury and Loki.
"I heard it," Steven acknowledged.
Bruce pointed a thumb to Tony, who'd settled back down at Darcy's side. "I think that was meant for you."
"That would make sense," Darcy chimed in, seeing where he was coming from almost immediately. "What with the finished construction of Stark Tower and everything."
"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly-" Steve cut himself off with a look from the man whose name was plastered across said tower. "...building in New York?"
"It's powered by Stark Reactors," Doctor Banner explained. "A self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"
"That's just the prototype." The amount of ego in that one statement was enough to bolster the self confidence of a generation of middle school girls. He kind of deserves it though, Darcy thought, recalling Jane explaining it to her in a way she could understand and how amazed she'd been. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now," Tony finished.
Bruce followed up with his suspicions, referring to Tony's statement. "So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place."
"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finished breaking into all of the SHIELD's secure files." Ah, so that's what he dropped on the computer earlier.
Steve looked taken aback at Tony's announcement. "I'm sorry, did you just say-"
"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hour's we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." Darcy nearly choked when he pulled out a bag of blueberries, first offering some to her then turning and holding the bag out to Doctor Banner. "Blueberry?"
Bruce hesitated before reaching out and grabbing a few. Oh, now she really know Tony was trying to make a new friend.
"Yet, you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Steve accused.
"Whoa, Sassmaster Steven needs to back off," Darcy cut in, feeling more than done with his denial of the likelihood of the situation and retaliatory attack of Tony's character (You have to reach a certain level of friendship before that's acceptable and he was certainly not at that level yet). "You've been in this Century for what, a couple weeks? A couple months at most? How much do you actually know about SHIELD aside from what they've told you?"
He ignored her, making her annoyance burn a little brighter and border on anger. It didn't matter how big a delicious-looking his muscles were. She was a 21st Century woman, not some demure 40s dame, and she would not be disregarded like she had nothing to contribute. "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."
"Following is not really my style," Tony shot back, his attention half on Darcy's growing ire.
Steve noticed this and suddenly a smug smile shifted over his lips and she just knew that he was going to say something that would piss her off. "You won't follow, but you'll happily lead a dame into battle because you need someone to agree with whatever you say? Or is she here for something more?"
No one was surprised to hear the slap of Darcy's palm against Steve's cheek, except perhaps Steve himself. No, Darcy corrected in her head. He doesn't get to be on a first-name-basis after pulling a stunt like that.
It rang for several seconds in the tense silence that followed his remark.
"You're ass is lucky I don't have my taser on me," she hissed "If you ever say anything like that again, about me or anyone else, I'll skip the taser and head straight to Thor, or better yet we can go track down Peggy Carter and ask her opinion on the matter."
He stumbled back, his skin paling several shades as he realized what just happened. She saw the regret instantly, but made no indication of it while his gaze whipped around the room. "Just- Just find the cube," he stammered, and - in an image that Darcy would have laughed at if her weren't so pissed off - tripped over himself in an effort to escape the suddenly hostile lab.
(A/N for those of you would couldn't tell, Steve just accused Tony of sleeping with Darcy. No, I don't hate Steve, but everybody on that helicarrier is a big ball of stress and he's got that on top of acclimating to a new century and essentially dealing with everything he knew being ripped away. ALSO, I was originally going to give the honor of that comment to Nick Fury, but then I realized that continuity means that because SHIELD was the one who ran the original paternity test that dickhead already knew about the biological connection between Tony and Darcy.)