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Tony Stark's daughter, and Captain America sat on a park bench in Brooklyn. Not for the first time, Darcy considered how much of her life could be the set-up to a joke.
Fortunately for her innate love of anonymity nobody was paying them any attention or composing Shecky Greene-esque odes to their morning off. Sure, they got a few looks -- he was a good looking guy and she liked to think she was a pretty girl -- but mostly the passers-by just passed on by. God bless New York.
Steve wasn't paying any more attention to the passers-by than they were paying to him. He was looking at the buildings like he wasn't sure if he was interested or if he should be crying. Next to him, Darcy was trying to give him a little space by flipping through the pictures she'd taken that day.
"I don't know what's harder -- the new or the old."
She looked up. "What do you mean?"
Steve waved a hand at Bedford Avenue. "For me, it was only a couple of years since I was last here, and, some of this has changed, but I kind of expect that -- I guess it's seeing the things that haven't changed ... it just really hits me, is all. Maybe if it was all different, then it wouldn't be so hard."
True to his word, after seeing the Grand Canyon, Steve returned to New York to help out with more of the clean-up and rebuilding. He'd thrown himself into it, burying himself in rubble and working himself to the point of exhaustion -- well, as exhausted as he could get any more.
One clear fall Thursday, Darcy decided they'd had enough of clean-up and tracked him down and insisted he show her Brooklyn. That might not have been her best choice of day off, but she kind of figured he needed to see it and get it over with. She was a big proponent of 'just rip that band-aid off'.
"That," he pointed to a corner building. "That was a shoe store, and then on the second floor was an accountant and a dentist, and on the third floor it was an Arthur Murray dance studio."
It was apartments and a Thai restaurant now, and the storefront facade had been redone, probably in the 70s, to unfortunate effect. Steve seemed a little too put out at the loss of a shoe store.
Darcy chose to limit herself to commenting mildly, "I've heard of Arthur Murray. The schools are still around, I think."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Slipping her camera back into her pocket, she tucked her hands into the sleeves of her jacket and drew her legs up onto the bench. It might be a beautiful afternoon, but she was a SoCal girl and 45 was freaking freezing. "Oh, did anybody tell you about the Dodgers?"
"Everybody tells me about the Dodgers and then they look like they want to take cover." He huffed and glared at the traffic. "I'm not that fragile."
Darcy bumped his shoulder with hers, which was not unlike bumping a concrete bunker, but, good sport that he was, he swayed a little with her bump.
"It has nothing to do with fragility, Steve. There are people who are still heartbroken about it. My dad -- my other dad, Paul, you know -- his dad is from Sheepshead Bay, and they've sworn to never go to a Dodgers game. I mean, come on, dad wasn't even alive when the Dodgers moved to LA, and he was born in Burbank. Grandpa Jim is seriously still bitter. That wound is raw, my friend, and passed down from generation to generation."
Steve snorted a laugh and looked at her skeptically.
"I'm very, very serious. I can call my dad now and let him tell you all about it, if you don't believe me." She started to reach for her phone, but he shook his head and smiled. That was too bad, really, because she'd love to call her dad and hand the phone over to Captain America. She thought they'd both get a kick out of the conversation. She'd have to remember to make that happen later.
People tended to attribute a lot of her character traits, or influences on those traits, at least, to Tony. Which made sense in that he was the biggest personality most people were ever going to meet. But, the truth was, Darcy thought she got a lot of her ability to roll with things from her other dad. Outside of sports loyalty, he didn't get too keyed up about much. Head up, hard work, use your brain, and simply and methodically buzz-saw right through anything -- that was Paul Lewis.
Tony was the bright, shining mad genius of chaos; Paul was the steady, relentless cyborg of order, and unlike Tony, he could actually power down like a normal person. Maybe that's why she'd liked Coulson so much; his steadiness reminded her a lot of her dad. Stupid jerk, getting himself killed before she could admit to herself that he was actually an okay guy.
"So, who do you root for, then? Not the Yankees."
Darcy pulled herself out of downward spiral of her thoughts with a laugh. "God, no. We're an Angels family."
"Huh." Steve looked back out at the street and frowned, a little sad. "It's not baseball season anymore."
"It's the playoffs, and the company has seats at Yankee Stadium. I mean, I know it's the Yankees, but, the Mets are out, and nobody wants to go see them anyway."
"I'm surprised Tony doesn't have his own seats."
"Tony's not big into team sports, or, you know, sitting still in one place for three hours."
Steve laughed. "Yeah, okay, good point."
"But, we've also got hockey, football, and basketball, if you want to go see a game sometime. I'm always down by that. I've dragged Clint out a few times."
Steve didn't seem enchanted by the wide variety of sporting events tossed his way, and his attention focused immediately on Clint instead, encouraged by a strong desire to think about something other than Brooklyn then and now, no doubt. "How's he doing?"
She let him change the subject -- this was supposed to be his day off, after all, and she knew she'd pushed a lot by getting him to Brooklyn in the first place.
"Well, not having known him before, except for one brief morning of creepy stalking -- him doing the stalking, not me -- I have no baseline, but Natasha's stopped hovering, so I'd say he's doing better."
"I can't really see Agent Romanov hovering." Steve's face screwed up as he tried to picture that.
"She's very subtle," Darcy assured him. "I didn't realize what she was doing at first."
"What was she doing?"
"Oh, just little stuff, just being around him a lot when I knew she had something else to do, or if he was in a room she'd walk through or by it a few times. That's the subtle. Sometimes, she's not so subtle, though. She invited herself out with us to a baseball game, and she clearly had no idea what was going on and couldn't possibly have cared less. She insisted she wanted to experience more American culture. Such lies; she spent the whole game on her phone or watching the crowd in the stands like she was looking for assassins. She was way disappointed she didn't find any."
"All that I can see." Steve nodded. "But, in your opinion, how's he doing?"
"Are you asking as Steve or Captain Rogers?"
"Is there a difference?"
She narrowed her eyes at him and was not amused by his poor attempt at diversion. "Yes, and you know there is."
Steve sighed. "Both."
She rewarded him with as straight an answer as she could give. "He seems okay. I mean, he seems like a guy who got his head scrambled and taken over by an alien god, but who's dealing with it. Erik ... you know, Erik, I think he felt like he didn't lose all of himself, the way Clint did, because some part of him still built in that backdoor to the tesseract device. Clint feels like he was just, gone, but like it was him all along, too. He tried to kill his best friend, and that spooks him."
Steve mouth tightened a little, something dark ghosting over his face. "Sure, sure."
Darcy shook her head and gazed out at the street as she chewed on the Clint situation. "But, it's like Loki-Clint picked the worst place in the world to try and kill Natasha -- going after the slippery Russian assassin in a confined, bow-unfriendly space, seems like a recipe for failure and blood to me. I think normal-Clint was the one who picked the worst place in the world, because he was still in there, hoping she'd take him out instead. I don't know. Still, I can't imagine how long it would take me to not be utterly and completely freaked out if I got brain-wiped and tried to kill Jane or something."
Steve made a thoughtful hum and contemplated the Thai place with more intensity than it deserved. "Time. Everything just takes time, I guess."
"Yeah. He's getting there, though, I think. Like I said, far less Natasha hovering."
Steve started to nod again, but stopped after half a bob and turned a sharp look on Darcy. "Wait, wait, how'd you know where Clint fought Natasha?"
"Uh, security footage?" Darcy said, her tone suggesting he was being unbearably dense.
He gazed sternly at her, his forehead creasing with consternation. "I thought I told you not to do that?"
"I thought that was just while we were at breakfast. I didn't realize it was a life-long prohibition. Besides," she continued, looking up at him with wide eyes, trying to practice the innocent look she was so very bad at, "how will my dad know how good his security is, if I don't test it for him?"
Steve rolled his eyes and stood. "Never mind, I don't want to know. Let's keep walking?"
"Sure, we've only got, what? Sixty miles to go?"
"Bedford's not that long. Heck, Brooklyn's not that long." He reached a hand down to her and she let him tug her to her feet.
"So you say."
They left Bedford Ave at some point and wound aimlessly through the Brooklyn streets. It was all a blur of brick buildings to Darcy, but Steve was reeling off one story after another and she hated to interrupt.
"You should be a tour guide," Darcy told him when he was explaining how he used to dream about the Schrafft's candy counter.
"A tour guide, for what?"
"For this. People do historic walking tours all the time. You could do pre-war Brooklyn. You'd be a hit."
"I don't know."
"Keep the memory alive for everybody."
He shrugged his shoulders and looked uncomfortable enough that Darcy sighed and dropped it. "What was Schrafft's?"
"Oh, it was a restaurant, and they had this really great candy counter. When I was a kid, it looked like it was a mile long," he chuckled. "Me and Bucky ..." his voice stuck for a moment and he took a deep breath. "Me and Bucky would go by every now and then and just look. Sometimes we'd scrape together a couple dimes, you know, but then we usually just went to the drug store down the block; we never could wait long enough to actually get back to Schrafft's."
"You never went in?" That seemed unnecessarily cruel of the universe -- to deny the kid the heaven of the candy counter and then leave the man stranded in a candy counter-less future.
"Once. I'd been real sick all summer, and Bucky saved up some money from somewhere and dragged me out on my birthday. Twelfth, I think. We had egg cremes and probably too much candy." He laughed at the memory.
"That sounds really nice."
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty great." He stared up the street and then looked down, seeming self-conscious and maybe embarrassed. "I mean, it wasn't much, but..."
Darcy was proud of herself for not rolling her eyes at him. Steve got a little uncomfortable when he talked about how poor he was growing up, and she understood, but he got particularly weird about it with her. It would almost be insulting if he wasn't so damned awkward about it. Yes, her father was a gazillionaire, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate or understand how important the little things could be -- and having your best friend and almost-brother scrounge up a good day for you would mean the world to anybody.
It was a doubly sticky issue because he also got super uptight if he thought anybody was handling him with kid gloves. He might think he was an easy-going sort of guy, but in his own way he was just as much damned work as her dad. He was a proud man who had it rough when he was young -- from living lean, and making do, and scut work where he could find it, all the while being the scrawny little guy who was always sick and getting into dust-ups with bullies. That didn't go away just because you're suddenly 6'2" and built like an Abrams.
"I don't know, Steve," Darcy said, shrugging in an off-hand sort of way she hoped would banish his unease, "any birthday that ends with the words 'too much candy', sounds like a pretty awesome day to me."
He smiled a crooked smile at her, and she cheered inwardly. "It really was."
They ended their tour at the apartment building that stood in the place of old Ebbets Field. Steve stared up at the building for a long moment, but seemed, on the surface at least, largely okay that the baseball cathedral of his childhood was reduced to an unimpressive, concrete marker.
"It was pretty small, anyway," he said. "People were saying how it wouldn't last long."
"Sure." They both stared for a long couple minutes, a few residents giving them funny looks.
"I mean, it was a great place and all," Steve said finally, "but ... it was just a place. I'm okay."
Darcy sighed and threaded her arm through his. "Is there anything about the future that isn't a shiv in the kidneys?"
Steve laughed a little, but it sounded horribly fake. Darcy raised an eyebrow and he protested immediately, "Really, it isn't so bad. I guess it's more the people I miss. I expect to see the guy who used to yell at me for hanging around too close to his hotdog cart here, and he hasn't been here for a long time. Or Mr. Mortimer at the newsstand, only that's gone, too. And the dairy trucks, and the iceman, and, I don't know. It's okay. I mean, even if I'd been here, that all would have changed."
"And who was at the shoe store?"
"What?"
"Earlier. The shoe store. You seemed pretty upset it was gone, and it's not like those are era-specific."
"Oh, I worked there for a little while. The owner was kind of a jerk, but the pay was okay. Then I got an asthma attack one day and he said he didn't want me wheezing on the customers."
"So, you're really just upset you didn't get to see him go out of business?"
He frowned and looked both embarrassed and kind of put-out. "Well, no, that's not very nice."
Darcy laughed. "You're something else, Steve."
He grumbled sourly, "I was just using it as an example. I wasn't upset the store was gone or anything."
"Sure, sure. You know, they still make wingtips. Oh, oh, and maybe a pair of spats to go with?"
Steve's lips compressed into a thin line, his jaw hardened, and he stared straight ahead with flinty eyes that sent a local scampering.
"Oh, come on," Darcy groaned. "It was a joke. Jeez."
"You sound like your dad."
"Okay, you know what? I'm going to start taking that as a compliment. My dad is awesome," Darcy sniffed and raised her chin.
Steve's stony facade started to crack, and the corners of his lips twitched. Darcy clucked her tongue and gave him a light punch in the side.
"Speaking of jerks, Captain Rogers."
He broke then and laughed. "You were too easy."
She shook her hand out with a wince. "And you're made of freaking granite."
"If it makes you feel any better," he said with a smirk, "a few years ago, that woulda knocked me sideways."
"Oh yeah, I feel great."
Steve chuckled some more and steered them towards Prospect Park. "I want a hotdog. You want a hotdog?"
"Sure. Treat me to that renowned New York delicacy."
"Hey, aren't you the rich one here?"
Darcy really wanted to pat him on the back for cracking that joke. Progress. Instead she put on her mock-outrage face and said, "What sort of gentleman are you?"
He grinned, getting into the spirit of the teasing and letting go of some of the black mood. "I've been told it's not the thing today to buy a gal lunch."
Darcy snorted. "I bought you breakfast that one time, you can buy me lunch. We're even."
"I thought Tony bought us breakfast."
She waved her hand airily, unbothered by his point. "What's his is mine, so really, I paid out of my inheritance."
"You've got one heck of a squirrelly brain, sometimes."
Steve found them a cart and ordered a couple hotdogs for her and four for him and a couple cans of coke.
"I remember when I was out in L.A. with the USO there was a pretty decent hotdog place in Hollywood," Steve said as he dug out his wallet to pay.
"Still there," Darcy told him. "Pinks. The lines are ridic."
"You ever go, though?"
"Oh, sure, everybody's got to go once in order to learn one simple, yet profound, life lesson."
"What's that?" He asked and handed over her lunch.
"No hotdog on this earth is worth waiting in line an hour for." Darcy took a bite of her dog. "I'd wait in line for five, maybe even seven whole minutes for this one, though."
The vendor gave her a tight, sarcastic smile. "Gee thanks, lady."
Darcy raised an eyebrow. She'd meant it as praise, but if he was going to get snippy New York, she'd give him some snippy Cali. "Hey, no prob, dude."
Steve shook his head and steered her away from the cart with an apologetic wave to the hotdog guy. "You ... sometimes, you ..."
"Me?"
"You kinda remind me of Bucky a little."
"That I will definitely take as a compliment."
"He was always pretty good at pulling me out of a funk."
"Did you need some pulling today?"
"Maybe a little. Maybe I've needed it for a while." He gave her a shrewd look and a rueful smile. "I think you knew that."
They took a seat at a bench and watched joggers and, in Darcy's opinion, crazy people out in shorts and t-shirts taking advantage of the bright autumn sun before winter dug its claws in.
"Maybe I had some idea," Darcy said after another bite of her hotdog. "But, you know, it's not just you. I mean, not to take away from your situation which is uniquely ... um, difficult, but aliens invaded and everybody's dealing with some stuff."
"Like Clint."
"Sure."
"Natasha?"
"She's probably okay. Who can tell, though?" Darcy shrugged.
"She is tough to read," Steve agreed. "She's pretty quiet."
"Yeah, you've got to learn her silences. I've identified like four. There's at least fifty others I haven't figured out yet."
Steve laughed. "What are the four? For future reference."
Darcy licked mustard off her fingers and thought about it. "Okay, silence one is 'shut up before I'm forced to hurt you' -- Clint gets that one a lot -- silence two is 'I'm going to kill Tony Stark', silence three is 'yay coffee', and silence four is 'I got to choke somebody with my thighs today and all is right with my world'."
Steve coughed, choking on his coke. "Those are ... specific."
"See? And so, easiest to pick out."
Steve laughed again and shook his head. "Okay, and then Doctor Foster is working on getting Thor back, right? She seemed a little frazzled when I met up with you this morning."
Darcy started on her second hotdog and chewed for a second before answering. "Jane is driven by the science. If Thor is waiting at the end of that rainbow bridge, that's gravy, but it's not what gets her up in the morning. Sure she'd like it if Thor could come and go a little more easily, but her research, man, she's been working on that forever, that's her life, and right now those answers are just a little outside of her reach. She's almost there. What's really getting her at the moment is that SHIELD are being dicks about giving her their readings from the Great Sky Door over Manhattan."
"Really?" Steve frowned unhappily, and Darcy had a feeling SHIELD was going to end up with a miffed super soldier on their hands in pretty short order. "It would be great to be able to reach Thor if we needed him. I can talk to SHIELD."
"If you want, but I'm not asking. Yet."
"Well, Thor turned out to be a pretty good guy, once he and Tony stopped pounding on each other."
Darcy shook her head and sighed. "Oh, dad."
Steve nodded his agreement. "I'll see what I can do."
"Like I said, I'm not asking. Jane's her own force of nature, and with dad backing her ..." Darcy paused and thought about it, then smiled. "Well, actually, that could be fun."
Steve snorted and gave her a disapproving look. "Darcy."
"What? I'm just saying. Hey, we'd have ring-side seats. Win!"
"How about I just ask nicely and see what the hangup is?"
"Boring, but whatever." She waved her hotdog at him. "Have it your way."
"Thanks," Steve said dryly. "Okay, so who's next? Doctor Banner?"
Darcy made a face of frustration. "He's even tougher than Natasha. Dad and Pepper are trying their best to socialize him again. Actually, I'm surprised he's still here, so it must be working. Of course, he thinks dad is insane for letting him be in the same building as me. I figure if he was really concerned he'd have left already."
Steve shifted uncomfortably next to her and mashed up his trash in his hands in an almost nervous gesture. "Well, the Hulk is--"
"If you say dangerous I'm leaving," she warned, and she was entirely serious.
"Well he is," Steve exclaimed, sounding exasperated.
"And he saved my dad's life and he helped you stop the aliens and, frankly, I think I'm willing to trust Bruce's judgement on if he's good to be around people or not. If there's one thing Bruce Banner isn't anymore it's reckless," she hissed. She really wanted to yell but was too aware of their potential audience.
Steve silently held his hand out for Darcy's trash then stood and walked over to the trash can. He stayed there for a moment or two before returning to the bench.
Darcy shot him a narrow-eyed glare as he rejoined her. "I don't know what your issue with Bruce is."
"I don't have an issue with Bruce," Steve said, but there was an edge to his voice.
"Oh, bullshit. Whatever, Steve." She stood and jammed her hands in her jacket pockets. "I'm not going to feed you some line about how he's the bestest guy in the world, but you've spent, what, an hour around him? I see him almost every day. Yeah, his demon is big and green and massively destructive, but he's not actually a bad guy. And knowing that the Hulk can actually do something good? That's ... that's big. You told me once you knew what it was like when somebody saw something in you that you never saw in yourself. Imagine what that's like for Bruce. Dad's the first person in forever that hasn't been bothered by the Hulk. I'm sure as hell not going to let Bruce down, either." She took a deep breath, gave Steve one last dark look, and turned on her heel.
She made it to Flatbush Avenue before Steve appeared at her side again.
"You're right," he said.
"My dad has like three friends in the world," she said, not looking at him. "Bruce is one of them."
"And I've got one friend in the world anymore and that's you," he said. "I'm sorry, but I've seen the Hulk up close, and knowing that you're around him ... it's scares me, okay?"
Darcy pursed her lips and glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye. It was hard to stay mad at him when he said things like that. "He scares the crap out of Natasha, too, but, you know what? She makes an effort. You keep asking me about everybody else, but if I can find them you can find them."
"I know. You're right," he said again, his voice quiet and his shoulders hunched. "Thanks for making me come to Brooklyn, too."
"Sure."
"I'm really sorry," he tried again, almost pleading with her to look at him.
Darcy sighed and tucked her arm through his. "Just tell me I'm a swell dame, Steve, and we're fine."
"Nobody says that anymore," he protested weakly, sounding just a little sad about that.
"You do. Come on, just once."
He stared at her for a long moment, like he thought she was trying to trick him or something, but he finally gave a half shrug and smiled. "Well, it's true, you are a swell dame."
Darcy tilted her head back as if basking in the sun or the glory of the compliment. "Ah, I've waited my whole life for that."
"Glad I could help." They walked for another block before he spoke again. "Can I ask you a question?"
"My dad is working obsessively on suit designs and I'll admit I'm worried but I'm not sure what to do. I kinda feel bad because I'm leaving a lot of it to Pepper, but I think she's in a better position to help him. They're going back to California in a week or two and hopefully that will help."
Steve was silent for a long beat after that response. "Uh, that wasn't my question."
"I just assumed. You'd asked about everybody else," she pointed out.
"I ... yeah, I guess that's true. Would it help if I talked to him?"
"Probably not," Darcy admitted with a wince.
"I didn't think so." He cleared his throat and examined a shop window or two before saying carefully, "There's somebody else I missed."
"Who? I have no thoughts or opinions on Fury's current mental or emotional state."
"You."
She frowned in confusion. "Me what?"
"If I want to know about everybody else, I ask you. Who do I ask if I want to know how you're doing?"
"Ah." She nodded. "Well, you could ask me."
"Would it work? Because, I've noticed you'll tell me your opinion on everything and anything under the sun, but you're pretty good about not actually talking about yourself at all."
"I ... huh, I don't know what to say about that."
"See? So, you're worried about your dad ..." he tried to lead her into talking.
"Well, yeah, but I've been worried about him since he was kidnapped and tortured for three months in Afghanistan then came home and decided he wanted to put on a flying suit of armor," she said in a flat, dry voice.
Steve licked his lips and looked a little uncertain. "Yeah, I, uh, I can see how that would be. And, well, how about everything else? The, uh, aliens and all?"
"Manhattan was not my first alien invasion. Of course, the first time it was Thor, and then Thor's friends, and then, you know, the fire-breathing deathbot. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that, because it just ... happened, and it was weird and even though it was only this past spring, it feels like years ago." She pursed her lips and looked up at the watery blue autumn sky. "I guess it changed everything, but I couldn't even begin to tell you what everything includes."
"I get that," he said.
"And I miss Coulson, and that bugs the crap out of me, because he was just like this irritating guy who used to call me up all the time and it was only later that I realized I kind of liked him, and then when I really wanted and needed to talk to him most he was gone. Fucking Loki stabbed him in the back. That just kills me. It just ... it kills me," her voice caught. Closing her eyes she took some deep breaths, trying to steady herself.
She felt Steve take his arm back and try to put it around her shoulders, but she stepped away. "If you do that, Steve, I'm gonna break into about a million pieces."
"It's alright," he told her softly.
She shook her head. "Not on a street corner in Brooklyn."
He held his hands up. "Okay, okay."
Darcy took another deep breath and held it for a few seconds before breathing out slowly. "Everything else? I guess I'm dealing just like anybody else. Helping the rebuilding is good. Working with Jane again is great. After I graduated I didn't think we'd do that again, but here we are, and I'm glad. I really like it and we're working on something amazing. I also got to come here and spend some time with my dad and Pepper and I've missed them. And I got to meet Clint, Natasha, Bruce, you. I'm glad. That's all good."
She looked up at him, took in the 'worried but trying not to look worried' frown on his face, and smiled. "To sum up, I'm okay, Steve. Really."
He didn't seem to totally believe her, but he nodded anyway and held his arm back out for her to take. "If, you know, if you ever ... well, when you need to talk, I'd be okay with being the person who knew how Darcy Lewis was doing."
Darcy hooked her arm through his again and they set off once more. "You know, Steve, you're a pretty swell fellow."
"I guess." He gave her arm a little tug. "I had a good day today, thanks."
"I did, too. We'll have to do it again some time. Only, maybe we should try some place not so, you know, emotionally exhausting. How do you feel about the Bronx?"
"The Bronx?" He echoed, sounding a little skeptical of that plan.
"Why not? Hey, Clint lives there. We could crash his pad. Natasha taught me how to break in."
"You broke into Clint's place?" He asked, his voice a little faint and fading into a groan.
"Twice," she said nonchalantly. "He secretly loves it."
"Yeah, I bet."
"Sarcasm from Captain America." She shook her head sadly. "What sort of example are you setting for the kids?"
"There aren't any kids around," he pointed out with a laugh.
She flipped her free hand at him. "Details."
"We're not breaking into Clint's place. We can call ahead."
"Boring."
"What would the kids think if Captain America was caught breaking and entering?"
She rolled her eyes, unimpressed by his lack of daring. "Well, one, we won't take any kids, and two, who says we'd get caught? I mean, by somebody other than Clint?"
Steve started laughing again, a little helplessly and it took him a minute to get that under control. "You are really something else, Darce."
"Thank you."