Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bruce could practically hear Tony again. He had repeated himself enough times.

"She's pretty, brunette, a bit on the young side. I haven't met her yet but this says I'd love her. Doctorate in a physics, spam bombed an entire SHIELD building in retaliation for a lost iPod and once knocked out Godly Fabio so you already have something in common!"

Though spam-bombing SHIELD intrigued him more than a little, Bruce rolled his eyes. It would be one thing if he could say that Tony was always doing things like this. He wasn't, but Tony also knew he couldn't. He knew all the whys and wherefores, he was there though Nat and saw the aftermath of Betty. Tony himself had to make a special suit, for gods' sake, he knew how unpredictable and dangerous he could be to anyone, even a Thor-bashing woman 'on the young side' (which was already dubious for Tony to say, Tony didn't believe in the half-plus-seven age rule, 'young side' for Tony could be a bikini-clad coed).

Tony had sent the text a week ago and called daily to confirm he was still going through with it. 

Bruce didn't remember agreeing in the first place. Tony, as Tony tended to do, probably took his eye roll as tacit agreement, which was irritating enough until he realized he hadn't said no. Not once. And now it was two hours until he'd meet a person he'd never met for a date set up by his most morally dubious friend. Why, exactly?

He knew why. He'd known why for years, the bouts of singleness fraying after a while. He was lonely.

No. He had to say no. Safety. For everyone.

His fingers flew over the generated keyboard on his cell phone screen.

There was a small accident in the lab

"No, no," Bruce rubbed his hand on his face a little, tiredness building up from the effort put into hitting the delete key that many times or the extra thought he had to put into his excuses. "Tony can and will double check everything with FRIDAY."

I've got an experiment brewing.

He deleted that for the same reason as the previous one. Wasn't he supposed to be smart?

My car broke down.

No. That didn't even make sense, he didn't even drive, too much potential for anger. And, really, it didn't really work in the era of Uber, Tony would threaten to drive him and what could be worse than a blind date with your inappropriate best friend tagging along as a third wheel? Delete delete delete.

I'm coming down with something.

…and Tony had Dr. Cho on speed dial. 

I already have a girlfriend.

He snorted at his own absurdity as he deleted it.

I'm not ready to expose myself or anyone else to the shit show that is my life.

Delete.

Too emotionally vulnerable. 

Delete.

I can't go.

Don't overthink it. He hit the send button and a weird knot sunk quickly into his chest. It was done. 

That feeling sunk deeper and Bruce plopped his hands onto the table before him, phone in one making a solid clunk as it collided with the formica of the worktable, and he dropped his forehead with a solid clunk. Two or three more should do it. 

Head drop, Clunk. Head drop, Clunk. Head drop clunk-shhhffts. The new noise made his eyes snap open and he pushed his chair back a bit as he looked down at the floor. Sizzling? The noise was sizzling, and almost… bubbling? 

Floors did not bubble. His floor did not bubble. Three feet of cement and iron with a lead shielding was not prone to bubbling. Something was very, very wrong. He barely had time to get up out of his chair before the floor exploded upwards under him, throwing him towards the wall.

ZZzt. ZZzt. ZZzt. ZZzt.

Her phone was vibrating off the counter. Fucking annoying. Then again, being elbow deep in what could be generously called assorted crap as she wrote on the box. 

ZZzt. ZZzt. Darcy looked at the time. Crap. Abandoning the 'Ass. Crap' box, she put her phone on the TV, being all hands free and giving her a good vantage for the call. Awesome, because this packing wasn't going to do itself probably. She touched the screen for just a second.

"Call the Golden Retriever." 

It made its weird trilling noise. The trilling stopped and a blonde popped onto the screen.

"Hey, big bro!"

A tired, messy looking Thor beamed a great big smile back. Well, not as big as maybe before, but the biggest now. Bigger, technically: He'd gained some weight, his cheeks were excessively ruddy and his hair was dreading from lack of care. He could ignore these calls easily, slip all the way into his little bubble and not have a single out. She knew these calls were perfunctory at best, but something in her knew that he was clinging to this stupid tradition like a fricken lifeline.

"Lady Darcy!" Thor greeted her with all the enthusiasm she would have saved for the queen. "I so look forward to our weekly reconnection." 

Darcy's heart broke a little at the complete genuineness of that statement.

"Me, too, Big Bro, me too," Darcy returned with a matching enthusiasm. She was acutely aware that anyone else would get a face full of sarcasm to that earnest sentiment. "How about you catch me up on the hot goss of New Asgard, huh?"

The next few minutes weren't filled with new Asgard stuff. No. The Asguardian Prince instead told her of a newly discovered (to him) "secret level" of his video game she couldn't even give half a shit about that demonstrated that he both hadn't mastered the idea of googling/wikipedia nor left his couch since their last call. 

Her heart broke a bit more. Not because of his choices, nah, but his inability to, just… keep going. He was stopped, stopped right there of the sofa of his little place in Norway.

She thought maybe that's why she still had him, a study in how a person can always hurt more than they did before, like the universe doing its best to kick her when she's down. Family? Zip. Friends? 99% gone. Not being able to do dick while that last percent of a buddy wasted away? Heartbreaking cherry on top of her shitty interpersonal relationship sundae. 

And she couldn't fix Thor. Oh, she tried to help. She had tried getting him a therapist and then being his therapist by living with him for a while but... ultimately she felt it. The third wheelness. Jane and Erik, Jane and Thor. Now Erik and Jane were both gone but Thor had new friends, friends like him, he didn't need her, not the way she needed him. He didn't deserve her needy crap on top of his own. So she left him in hands likely more capable than hers, hoping for the best. But his game and food consumption never got better. He never called, though at least he picked up. Darcy didn't stop worrying. 

Ironic that he now was giving her the worried doggy eyes.

 "Sister," —Thor had been calling her sister since they reconnected, post Thanos fuckery— "Are you well? I cannot allow another member of my family to expire." 

Darcy shook her head and waved her hand. "I'm healthy, Big Guy." 

"Your heart grows cold, your work is frequent, and your slumber is erratic. It is unhealthy."

"You're one to talk about unhealthy," Darcy snapped. He started his godly pout like a scolded child and it was like a dagger in her little shame-filled heart. Her voice softened, "Sorry, sorry. You're right." Subject change, for fucks sake, subject change. "How's Korg?" At the mention of his name, a controller-wielding yellow-brown rock alien threw himself in view of the vidphone.

"Heya, Darcy!" The rock guy waved at her with a goofy smile. The fact that he was sitting next to Thor and playing a video game wasn't surprising.

"Hey, bud." Darcy's voice contained an eye roll and was thankful her alien friends had a harder time grasping the finer points of her personality to recognize that. Korg pulled himself out of view, ostensibly to keep playing while Thor was distracted by his weekly phone call. Thor seemed to be paying more attention to something just beyond her, indication that he was indeed playing through this convo. Realizing he wasn't listening, her voice lost its fervor and volume. That vocal eyeroll turned physical and Darcy knew she was just talking to herself at this point and just looked at the floor while she talked quietly to herself. "You do the video games and shit, I actively avoid humans. If you don't see 'em there is no chance you like 'em and then they'll up and die on me. You, big guy, will outlast me by like a bajillion years anyway so you're cool."

Silence ate the moment, even the moving people got silent or were all loading the truck, but it was silent. Silent Like the universe was giving Darcy the second to recognize what she said but fuck if she could do that fast enough.

A voice finally ended her limitless silence, all quiet and rueful. Just the softness of his voice was already making Darcy completely aware that she was an ass.

"Losing you will be far too soon, Lady Darcy, far too soon." He had heard her, he looked stoically back at her face like he was trying to project right into the room with her and give her one of those bone crushing hugs she'd become used to. The hurt puppy look mutated into the same face he had when they realized they were alone.

"Fuck. Thor, I'm sorry I… Fuck." Words? What are words? He says Your heart grows cold and she just proves him right like gangbusters. She knew it was even odds on who was going to be the a-hole on any one of their phone calls, but damn it always hurt when it happened. Darcy looked into his stupid big sad eyes, injecting as much feeling as shes probably capable of anymore without resorting to tears, "I love you, Big Bro, okay? I'm sorry, I'm a dick, I just—"

"We all grieve in different ways, Lady Darcy." He interrupted, "I shall not judge."

"I've gotta get going." Darcy said, swallowing a sob and hiding her emotions like a champ. She smiled a slightly wet smile, "They finally approved me for a half-floor spot at the top of the facility so I'm moving. You still know the compound's address, right?"

"Oh!" Thor rumbled appreciatively, "I did not know you received permission for that."

Darcy blinked and gestured wildly behind her at the guys traipsing around her place behind her. "Well w-t-f did you think all the moving people were for?"

Thor ducked his head a bit and looked up to peer at her with one of those little effing half-grins of his, "It would not be the first time I would have seen several half-clad people in your home."

"They're movers, Thor!" Darcy's pale skin felt like it was on fucking fire with this blush.

"I was not going to assume. Some queries should not be asked twice." His eyes twinkled, the little shit.

"Ya know for a guy who just said he 'shall not judge' that sounds a lot like judging." Darcy's eyes narrowed at the screen. Thor grinned and shrugged. Little bastard had managed to completely undo any emotional bullshit this conversation had dredged up. Dear gods, she loved her fake-bro. "Same time next week?"

"Excellent. Until Saturday next, Sister." He announced with that big, no-teeth smile and wave before the image froze on that and darkened, the white letters indicating that the call ended. 

That's always how it was with Thor. They pissed each other off until they didn't, they teased each other until they didn't, and no matter what she'd make that damn phone call even if her hands spontaneously fell off. They were family, and that meant something more hard-core than it did three years ago. It meant solid.

When the image was still, she could see more clearly that he was tired. Bags under his eyes. He'd been steadily gaining weight. She was pretty sure he was eating crap and only seeing Korg and that weird bug-slug guy and Brunnie. He wasn't seeing the sun or exercising or even smelling a vegetable. It faded from the screen and she did her due diligence unplugging it so her half-clad people could do their thing and remove it.

Darcy looked arounds and her rapidly emptying apartment. The place that had been her home since before. The before times dictated everything. There were two schools of thought, to stay where you were for the memories, or so that the lost could ever find you. There was some merit to both schools of thought, probably. Like this place… She wasn't attached to the place, not really. She'd barely lived here, but it was new before. Her friends and family hadn't had a chance to visit yet, them blammo. They never would. It never… she never settled in. Somehow its loss felt like a loss anyway, another loss in a long line of losses.

 At least this one wasn't a person. 

Darcy picked up the last box —it was fragile and light (probably framed photos or her collection of blown glass donuts)— and sighed. 

"Avengers Compound, here I come."

Chapter Text

The moving guys were nice enough to dump all of Darcy's personal stuff but be very careful with the scientific things. They must have been specially trained movers who dealt with science people before and were weary of the amount of shouting they'd get if they messed with something science-tastic. As a former intern, she could relate. Darcy was generally nice to people willing to do the physical labor she was neither inclined nor equipped to do, but tech is tech and she may have let slip that denting the goods was an invitation to remove parts of their anatomy (as much as she could relate, she was still a scientist). Movers were in high demand but no one really wanted to be a eunuch. Once upon a time she had to threaten a couple of dudes with a taser to get this equipment. It was garbage to them, really, all duct taped and badly soldered but this was Jane's life work and fuck if she'd let anyone throw it out or dent it unnessarily. 

Darcy wasn't as thrilled with that line of research but she would set up the equipment and run the algorithms like a shrine to her lost bestie. She set aside once a week to dive into the results of the scans and try to theorize, but her own radiation projects took precedence most of the time. 

At the last set up of the last giant piece of tech, she was joined by the person with Admin duties at the compound: Natasha. Oh, Darcy knew that she was the black widow, but she found it slightly funny that this badass creature would be so relegated to admin duties. Well. Everyone had to wear multiple hats these days. 

"FRIDAY will monitor the radiation levels and remind you to take your preventative medications." the Black Widow said with a completely blank face as she held Darcys fingers against the entry pad by the door and registered her indentity within the rooms biometrics. "Medical expects you twice a month for a check up as per your agreement to get this space."

"Of course." Darcy nodded. Whatever she needed to do for that sweet, sweet space was fine short of her first born. …Maybe even then. "So why's this space available so suddenly?" Curiosity got the better of her. "I mean, month-to-month is fine, but I—" 

The Black Widow pursed her lips and Darcy felt instantly silenced. "Your clearance does not include full disclosure. Be happy you got it at all."

"Oooookay," Darcy acknowledged, "Gift horse, mouth, gotcha." The woman seemed nice enough, most of the time, but Darcy didn't feel like pushing her luck or getting killed by thighs now that she finally had this sexy lab.

It was a perfect space Freaking perfect. Top, unobstructed view of the cosmos if she decided to be lazy (even odds, honestly), and delicious background gamma radion that just perked her theories right up and did awesome things to them.

 The lab floor was only half saturated with radiation, the other side seemed to have a very comfortable one bedroom space. It was perfect, really, special tinted windows for soft light because science people on a whole werent great at maintaining normal diurnal human hours. The bedroom was simple, a big bed, two side tables, closet, darkness, weird machine that looked like a radio but turned out to exclusively make white noise. She guessed it was supposed to be a calming hut that seemed more aggravating than anything else. If she had a hard time sleeping there was always medication or getting laid or more likely medication. She hit buttons to hear it. Static made her think of work, unlike Jane, Darcy had a healthy off switch between work and life, so hard pass. Whale sounds were just annoying, next. But the heartbeat setting? A strong heartbeat. When her niece was a baby her bro and sis-in-law got her some sheep thing that did this. She briefly wondered what happened to that damn sheep while the heartbeat coming from the machine lulled her down. It was calming and steady and there and alive and she burst into tears. Three years of randomly bursting into tears was quite enough.

But that's okay.  No one was here.  No one would know. She was alone. With that fact, she cried harder until she fell asleep in her new lab-loft space.

Other than that initial sob-fest, her week went by as if it were in her planner. 

Monday: Work.

Tuesday. Work.

…It was a very detailed planner.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: Work Work Work. 

Saturday: Call the Golden Retriever. …then Work happened, because why the fuck not?

Her new puffy-seated rolly lab chair was conforming quite nicely to her ass, which was possibly the second greatest bonus to working over a hundred hours a week, losing only to the sweet, sweet reality of the occasional ferreting out of compound results.

Her equipment detected a second strain of radiation, slightly different from the first, lighter in saturation but found freaking everywhere, even in her rooms, but not in high enough concentration to actually worry, kind of like normal background radiation that all humans are unwittingly exposed to. If she could tap into that, finding random frequencies of shit could actually work. She just had to trace and maybe harness it, which meant a tweak or two to the actual mechanics of her radial thermometer. Okay.  She hadn't really come up with a name for it but the fact that it sounded like rectal thermometer just filled her dark heart with as much glee as it was capable right now 

It shocked her out of nowhere. She was so surprised, she slapped it on reflex. Which, if she didn't know because she felt incredibly dumb, metal vs hand was not a close fight. 

"Ow!" She groaned. "Freaking static, I swear."

She got a few more minutes before a shock. She grumbled and went back to work.

Another shock. 

Shockity shock shock. Surprise noises had started to devolve into irritated swears and accusations and aexual performaces of parents. Darcy narrowed her eyes at the machine. 

" You are unplugged . In this lab we obey the laws of physics and—" A big yellow-green bolt popped off and zapped her like it was trying to turn her entire nervous system into a string of christmas lights. "—FUCK! Stop shocking me!" Talking to a piece of equipment was neither new nor rare. Both things should be worrying, but as it stopped shocking her, obviously it paid off. She huffed and stood up as she heard it whirl to life, garnering and gathering all the info she had asked for. 

"What are you doing here?"

She jumped in her seat, still reeling from the shock that hadn't been irritating enough, now a rando had to sneak into her personal space. "Science?" Knee jerk smart-mouthed reactions for the win. She turned to the direction the voice came from, and there he was, a shocked looking, curly haired guy who just screamed stuttering scientist. He was kinda cute. She had a thing for stuttering scientists in the before times. "Who are you?"

"Very funny." He audibly rolled his eyes. Darcy barely had time to figure out whether it was because of 'science' or not having a clue who he was before the tired looking guy gestured toward the door to the hallway. "Look, I'm sorry, Ma'am, but you need to go."

"It's doctor , not ma'am, and you, my dude, are in the wrong lab ." Darcy emphasized wrong and lab with her voice and a slight shoo motion with her hands. Hopefully getting her point across without having to say fuck and you but office decorum wasn't what it used to be.

"I don't know who you are, but this is my lab." He was very obviously trying to keep calm, taking measured breaths, but getting irritated.

"Couldn't have said it better myself." Her tone was still flippant and honestly that seemed to frustrate the guy more. "Actually, I could: I don't know who you are, this is my lab and I was promised that I don't have to share."

"You don't get it, I can't share." He was emphatic about it. She couldn't muster up any indignation at him so much as carefully hidden mild panic that, once again, the universe seemed to take away the things she loved.

"Me either, dude, me either, I'm pretty sure sharing is against my religion." Darcy said flippantly with a stern face. "Look, I've been pining after this space for-freaking-ever so please, please just go somewhere else. Talk to the scary chick doing lab management, take another lab, there are tons available that aren't taken and I need this one."

"Well, so do I! Look, this is my stuff." He pointed to the work area where she was currently sitting. Darcy raised her eyebrow.

"This is all standard issue stuff so I call bullshit." She said with a twist of her head. She couldn't project less give-a-fuck but mentally she was running circles on her contract and hoping like hell there wasn't a mistake brewing that she'd have to bring up to the leggy killer spider in the office.

"But what about—" He probably turned to find something else that was 'his' but stopped when he was the wall of Jane. Her machines were stacked up against the wall, running, duct tape and electrical tape replete with uniquifying qualities. He stopped and looked at them closer, with damn near that look in his big cinnamon puppy dog eyes that Jane had when she saw something new and interesting. Her heart hurt.

"Yeah, ooo, behold the wall of super not yours." Darcy almost growled. She reigned herself in automatically, tempering herself with a breath and rubbing the skin under the nosepiece of her glasses slightly. "Listen, I've been assigned this lab and you —" she stopped rubbing and opened her eyes to look at him, but he wasn't there any more. Gone. "...are gone, so I'm talking to myself again but at least you've taken your hurt puppy face outta here." 

She sighed. Determined not to touch the freaking machine again, she set about collecting her own data. Weird now she managed to constantly surround herself with that specific element. Sparky the Taser. Thor. This damn machine. Named Sparkles now. Because. No, she was not lonely. If she were lonely, thinking about a puppy-faced rando as she did her nightly things like brushing her hair and teeth it would be almost pathetic. 

As consciousness took her that night, she knew: she was pathetic.

Time resettled and a few days went by in a blur of work and the occasional beep from one of the machines or a shock from fucking Sparkles. Four days had passed since she'd seen any other person, FRIDAY having the forethought or enduring preservation of life to have her groceries delivered and abandoned at the door. At least they were groceries again and not rations. Immediately post-Snap was a dark time for a whole lot of reasons. 

Part of the reason she lucked out getting this place was the extra room for sleeping and this. This perfect freaking bathroom. Where there should be a minimalistic decontamination shower, a couple of urination stations, and an eye wash station next to a perfunctory sink… this place had a fully decked bathroom. A beautiful one.  Tiles, not that linoleum nonsense. Big, wide bath and shower. There were jets in the tub. Jets . There were scented candles and essential oil drops. Frankly, even if half the room weren't absolutely coated in insanely helpful radioactive particles, she'd have clawed some poor lab-coated bastard's eyes out just for this bathroom. She never wanted to leave it.

She ran a bath and just soaked. A lavender candle burning, the smell invaded everything and she couldn't help but let her mind blank. It could go anywhere she wanted. Her favorite was the memory of seeing footage of some giant purple douchebag eat it and die. In the early days of The Recovery, she hacked into SHIELD and viewed a short body-cam video from Iron Man's chassis and read the report that said precisely what her big bro had done to that fucker… and honestly it was her happy thought most days.'Concentrating on the good,' that's what she called it if anyone asked.

…Not that there was anyone left to ask.

The bathwater started to cool and her fingers were prunes, which was probably a hint that she should probably get out. She stood up, letting the majority of the water drip down and join the slowly sinking majority on the bottom as she reached her arm towards the very fluffy purple towel she'd set aside. Just a few quick motions to get her dried off enough to leave the bath and whack . 

"Ahfuck!" Darcy exclaimed as she instinctively moved to rub her funny bone, ironically smacked against a freaking safety armbar. She was so calm just a second ago. The arm seemed to set her off, switching from that serenity to pain was just enough for her to get irrepressibly pissed off about. She took a few deep breaths, closing her eyes until a slight shadow interrupted her static breathing.

A shadow passing by her open bathroom door.

A fairly distinct shadow with curly hair and puppy dog eyes. 

"What the hell!" She scrambled and drew the shower curtain into her body instinctively, the metal curtain hangers clanging horribly and she stumbled to some semblance of hiding her nakedness behind an unfortunately clear curtain, her injured arm clutching to her side like it was useless and not just irritated. Turned off the water and grabbed the loose towel, too incensed to mind her modesty or frankly unexpected grace in climbing out of the wet tub and wrapping a towel around her body. She marched out of the bathroom to where he was, ready to give that damn Cinnamon Roll the shouting at of his freaking life. She walked down toward the bedroom… where he wasn't. Undeterred,  she marched back down the hallways to the lab…. Where..  he… wasn't, either. Nor the little kitchen. Huh. Her steps had less march in them, less determination, she was dripping water all over the floor and her towel was soaked. She scratched her head in confusion and her hand came back slimy and soapy. She walked back into the bathroom.

She locked the door behind her. And then narrowed her eyes at it for good measure. Scare the lock into submission. She scooted a small cabinet in front of the door for good measure: it would probably piss off OSHA but a girl deserved to be naked in her own bathroom. 

She set about getting this last bit of shampoo out of her hair and remembered to blow out the candle when she was done.

She needed sleep. 

She was having a dream. Not a lucid dream, not really. Maybe? Darcy didn't know how to do that or do it on purpose or anything, but she knew it was a dream.. Jane and Erik at her dad's for thanksgiving. Brothers and sisters-in-law and nieces and it was so, so happy. And it wasn't real. It wasn't a memory, they'd never all been together like that, but it was just as visceral as if it had been. She knew, dream her knew that it wasn't real. She couldn't enjoy it. She knew it was false, she knew it was a dream and that was just..  the most heartbreaking thing. To see the smiling, happy faces of the people she loved most and know without a shadow of a doubt that none of those faces were real.

It pissed her off.

"Why are you sleeping in my room?"

"Jebusfuck!" Darcy woke up with a start. No Jane or Erik or mass of Lewises smiling. Just jarring and darkness and damn near heart attacks. Her eyes adjusted to the light and her hand fumbled around on the side table until she found her glasses and shoved them haphazardly on her face. There were now fingerprint smudges on the lenses and the room was way too bright because her rods and or cones hadn't quite caught up yet. There he was. Same dude. Same surprised puppy look on his face with those brown eyes and curly hair. She was too tired to really get pissed while her heart was jackrabbiting out of her chest. Which she also decided was to blame for the fact that she looked at him a bit closer this time, probably older than her, with a purple collared shirt unbuttoned a perfectly relaxed amount and the sleeves haphazardly rolled up showing his mannish amount of arm hair. To top it all off, just the right amount of stubble to be cute without being hipstery. The slight pink tinge spreading on his cheeks and ears probably didn't help a ton. Was he blushing? 

He was avoiding her gaze. No, he was avoiding looking at her entirely. She looked down, scared that a rogue boob had jailbroken from her top while she slept or something, but no. Everything was normal. Her eyes rolled. Oh hunkydory. Normal human sleepwear made this little cinnamon roll blush.

"I'm sorry, you're obviously a nice girl," he started, Darcy snorted as he spoke, "but you've accidentally come onto the wrong floor and you obviously won't admit you're wrong, but you're delusional."

"Sure. I'm the delusional one, me . Definitely not you , the one who keeps randomly showing up outta nowhere on my floor and demanding it's his, no no, I'm the nut." The sarcasm leaked off of her like sweat when she'd just run a marathon in July. The Cinnamon Roll seemed to note it but didn't engage or absorb.

"This has been my space since its inception." He gestured lamely, "My room." He pointed in the direction of the bathroom, "My bathroom." He flopped his hand toward the bedside table, "My stress toy. " He stopped at that one because there was literally nothing where he was pointing. "Where's my stress toy?"

"There's no stress toy, dude. See?" She even opened the top drawer of her bedside table for a second as proof, secure in the fact that she hadn't unpacked the adult version of the cast of Toy Story yet. "Must be the wrong room. Can you leave now? And not come back?"

"How do you keep getting passed the biometric security?" He said, a bit tentatively and probably to the houseplant since that's where his face was pointing. She blinked a little. That seemed to set her brain to rights. Consciousness. Rando. Intruder. Security .

"Security, right," Darcy grumbled as she raised her voice and rubbed her eyes under her glasses. "FRIDAY, kindly tell this guy whose floor this currently is?"

"There isn't anyone else in the lab, Doctor Lewis." Darcy thought the irish-sounding AI sounded a little judgy about it. And wrong. Right?

Darcy opened her eyes to where Cinnamon Roll was. It was empty. She popped up out of her bed with unheard of grace and raced out to the main lab space. It was open, and bright by the automatic lights as she entered. Wouldn't they have turned on for him, too? She looked back towards her bedroom, then back to the empty lab space again like she'd missed something. He was gone. Again . Like a freaking ghost. "The hell?"

Chapter Text

Darcy was on edge all day. She'd narrow her eyes to every errant noise, hesitate around corners, take very damn quick showers with the door closed and locked to maintain her perv-free status quo. 

All day had passed and she finished a good day of assorted science, taken a shower, changed into PJs, and, with her grip on a glass of contraband red wine, she settled into her sofa with a nice relaxing breath.

"You can't make yourself at home here!" His voice bellowed, causing her wine to slosh unexpectedly against her face while nearly scaring her out of her pink fluffy socks. She looked up and there he was, all hands on hips and disapproving and hypocritically stalking the wrong freaking lab. "Fine. I'm reporting you. For your own good." 

He left. 

As in… was gone. Darcy's face turned murderous.  No. He wasn't going to beat her out. Nope. Notta. He was not reporting her. None of that shit. She was going to report him and get his pouty ass thrown out.

She almost slammed her wine glass down and burst up off the sofa, her determined feet not even bothering with shoes as she headed for the door. Determination and her scowl cleared her path for her, her t-shirt declaring 'I'm an astrophysicist,  just assume I'm always right' was fueling her righteous rampage. 

"FRIDAY, is Ms Romanoff still in her office?" She asked as the elevator doors opened. 

"Yes, Darcy."

"Great." Darcy slammed the button for the appropriate floor, her ire only growing as she waited.

Nat sighed the minute that Darcy pushed open the door. 

"Can I help you, Doctor Lewis?" She sounded annoyed, pissed and like all other emotions had been drained out of her. And a little like Nat would really like to murder Darcy. With her thighs. Or a pencil. 

Darcy wasn't deterred, though. Pencil related death was pretty far down on the list of scary threats these days.

"Some sneaky dude keeps getting into my lab."

The Black Widow's outgrowth of bleach-blonde hair didn't seem nearly as prevalent as when she wanted to kill someone out of sheer annoyance, Darcy thought. And yet, with The Human Pout running around, Darcy was willing to possibly die via thighs rather than have him privy to another clumsy peep show or have him interrupt her sweet, sweet beauty sleep.

"Trust me, Doctor Lewis," the Black-freaking-Widow rolled her eyes, "no one is getting into that lab without the occupant's express permission."

The Black Widow seemed tired. Like bone weary tired. It had to suck being at the top of the food chain as much as it sucked to be at the bottom. Darcy instinctually wanted to see if there was anything she could do, give her a hug or snack, but that was Before Snap Darcy. She was now After Snap Darcy. Now the idea was so freaking laughable that she couldn't even pay lip service to it. Widow dismissed her, like she was nothing and nobody and she was making shit up for attention or something. That pissed Darcy off. 

…It probably didn't help that she was dressed like a college student on laundry day. She was still pissed off, though.

She definitely didn't want attention. She wanted to be left alone, hence the crux of her current stalkerish moon-eyed problem.

"Well who had my lab before?" She rolled her eyes. This definitely had to stop. "Maybe it's him."

The spy turned administrators body language didn't change much, but Nat actually faced Darcy at that. "I told you its classified."

"No, you told me what happened was classified, I want to know who had the lab. Kinda different things." Darcy noted out loud, apparently forgetting to fear her impending slow death for a moment. "How can a person be classified?"

"Mister Stark is allowing you to use that lab because the previous occupant wouldn't have wanted the space to go to waste. No other reasons." Natasha said with her deep, gravelly voice. "You have a monthly agreement, if something isn't agreeable we can easily terminate it." The smile that spread on her face was not a nice one and the way she said terminate definity sounded threatening. 

Darcy took a deep breath, it's not her fault that there's a puppy-eyed rando trespassing all willy-nilly. She recognized him, maybe? But he disappeared, man. Disappeared . Normal people can't do that. Maybe she was just going insane. Her ideal paramour did tend to be the mature, nerdy type. Though that was pre-snap, Before Snap Darcy.  Now… well, After Snap Darcy thought the opposite made for guaranteed one-nighters. The more she thought about it, a mature, nerdy, disappearing guy was a Freudian playground with wang-shaped slides. 

"Fine." It might be all in her head. She might be lonely. Or something. She stomped out of the cluttered office.

Sparkles was acting up and trying to electrocute her slowly. The damn little shocks needed to stop. She unplugged it and stored it sight unseen under her desk, and yet. And yet the freaking thing seemed to have stored electrical current or static and it just kept shocking her. 

"This is getting ridiculous." Darcy vaguely heard. Only vaguely, because at 'this is' in the know-it-all exhausted tone when she jumped a little and hit her head on her freaking desk. All she heard for a few seconds after was the blank pain of blood rushing her ears from her head colliding with the bottom of her traitorous Stark Industries-issued, solid wood desk. She would never have been this betrayed by Ikea. 

Darcy cursed the fact that she was still surprised by this shit. At some point, she thought she'd grow to expect the freaking guy. She scooted out from under the desk and gave Intrusive Cinnamon Roll her most annoyed glare. 

"Look, you obviously moved your stuff in, and moving it right back out probably feels like a waste, I'm sure, but you need to leave." He looked like he was actually straining to say it, the veins in his neck were all extended like he was stressing. "This is my lab." 

"I moved in here weeks ago, guy. I jump though the SI hoops, I take my SI meds and live my nice solitude-y life and—" Darcy felt a jolt of electricity in her knee just as she realized she instinctively kicked the wall, cramming her toes into the cement wall. She bit her lip angrily and kicked Sparkles-the-machine out of frustration before she grabbed her foot in a futile attempt to stop it hurting. "Dammit, none of it has anything to do with you; This is my lab."

"If this is how you treat your own equipment, I really don't want you in my lab any longer." He seemed..  sad about it? Or disappointed in her or something. She scooted her butt on the floor and got completely out from under the desk. She got up and started limping towards the little sofa and coffee table set up across the large open space. He followed, she could almost feel him stalking her personal bubble as she turned and flopped down on the couch. She was right, he was just behind her, arms out slightly as if to catch her or stabilize her but immediately tucked back in some kind of awkward dance between trying to help her and maintaining his distance. His eyes seem to be concentrating on her injured foot with a thoughtful mouth (was that a pout?) But it was his shins that caught her attention. 

A laugh bubbled up out of Darcy and he looked at her like she was nuts. Maybe she was.

He was shin-deep in the coffee table. In it.

"Oh. Dude, this is so not your lab." She unhappily laughed, "And here's the fun thing, you're dead."

"Am not." He rolled his eyes.

"Can you, like… see a light?" Darcy asked cautiously. "Or some flames? Totally not judging, but peeping on a girl in the bathroom probably ranks you a trip to the Deep South if you know what I mean."

He looked caught-out, his permanently pleading eyes widened and he even blushed a little. "I - I didn't mean—"

"To get caught?" Darcy finished for him. "Yeah, I got that by you hoofed it outta there, thanks. Guessing you had other ghosty shit to do, like head to the girls' locker room or hang out with Stalin."

"There aren't such things as ghosts. They don't exist," He said like she was very dumb.

She looked at him like he was insane because Ghosty Boy there was clearly nuts. "Dude, all that has happened in the last decade and that's your take-away? A weird things can't exist?"

"The last decade?" Cinnamon Roll scrunched his forehead in thought, he genuinely tried to place what she was saying.

"Like...  You know... the freaking alien incursions and  invasions! And people with powers, people with fake powers, and enhanced people! Not to mention the military programs and science experiments and fucking cryogenics in the wild… not to mention where we are !" Darcy looked at him like she couldn't believe his lack of thought on it, like maybe we was either very dumb or one of those people who deny facts like a climate change denier or a flat-earther. "Who even are you that you don't know this?"

"I… I, uh." He stopped moving for a second, but never opened his mouth again. It squished into the corner of his face.

"I-uh?" Darcy thought about the weird name for a second before it clicked, "Ooooh," she pointed at him with a feral smile, "you can't remember."

"I can, too!" Cinnamon Roll protested. His protestations only served to fan the fumes of her amusement. 

"You can't! Oh, that is precious ." Darcy made a motion as if pinching his ghosty cheeks a few inches away. "You can't remember your own name!"

He was silent for a second as he kind of assessed the fact that she was right and it looked like it pissed him off a little. "Well what's your name?" He looked smug for the 2.2 milliseconds it took for a smug, shit-eating grin of her own to spread on her face.

"Doctor Darcy Lewis." She said flatly before tilting her head and getting extra sarcastic. "See how that worked? I remembered it because I'm not dead, Big Guy."

"I'm not dead!" He said adamantly. That stress vein in his neck sticking out again. At this point, she thought maybe she should name it.

"Okay, but, rebuttal: you're kinda standing in the middle of my coffee table." She said matter-of-factly as he looked down his shins had run through by the solid surface of a coffee table. He looked back at her if only to blink away some confusion. "See? Ghost."

"I—" He didn't look like he knew what he was going to say. Probably didn't, in fact, as he barely seemed to try. His mouth opened and closed a few times,  questioning noises that were probably only understandable by dolphins came out of him. Darcy snorted a little bit of a laugh. He narrowed his eyes again.

"Well fine ! If I am a ghost then... BooOOoo!" Cinnamon Roll did his scariest puppy face and lifted his hands like he was miming a scary monster. "I'm haunting this place, until you get out."

"Oh, you sweet, simple dumbass." Darcy said it as sweetly as she could, the acerbicity of her tone slowly growing. "I've tased a god, insulted an assassin, and pinched America's Ass. I'm not afraid of you and this is my lab." She managed to get closer to the apparition, standing up to him as physically as possible given his 5 inches on her. She pointed out the doors. "Go haunt other floors where other people would inevitably be scared or threatened or dumb, but I'm. Not. Leaving."

He took half a step closer to her, too, staring her down as best he could. His soft brown eyes looked at her with all the malice they could, which still left him looking like a faithful cartoon k9 companion. He glared at her with a puffed up chest. "Neither. Am. I."

Chapter Text

Darcy wasn't aware of how creatively Cinnamon Roll would get annoying. Because he was a genius. Veritable supervillain in training. 

It was a long couple of days.

It started out innocently enough. He was always there. Where before he'd be gone for days and stop by for just enough time to scare or irritate the bejesus out of her, he just… stopped that. He rarely poofed out of existence. Eating? He was there. Sleeping? He was there. Bathroom? Okay, he wasn't there, but as soon as she came out he was there. He was always there. 

After two days of that, his almost always-thereness was amplified by constant following her. He simply followed behind her. Really closely. With silent freaking steps. The only sound he made was his breathing over her shoulder directly in her ear. She'd turn around and Cinnamon Roll would just stand there with his innocent looking puppy eyes. He knew what he was doing. Acknowledging that it bothered her felt weird and she full-on knew it would only egg him on further because apparently he was a troll so all she could do was clench her fists at her sides and mutter and by Thor he needed to stop. 

Darcy countered that via her rolly chair. He couldn't annoy her on a rolly chair. Not to mention something about a rolly chair from room to room on carpetless lab floors was innocent and freeing. He stopped trying to follow her 24/7 after that.

Instead, after finding little ways to annoy her all day  — sitting just in her peripheral vision and shaking his damn leg forever that she could huff about and try to ignore but eventually turn and sit in a weird way so she couldn’t see him— making weird faces in every frickin reflective surface she could see so she concentrated so hard on something she couldn't concentrate on it — humming annoying songs that she could only avoid with her trusty replacement iPod and ear buds — Now, he was standing in the middle of her bed, vertical middle, hip deep in the purple bedding. It looked ridiculous. 

Also it looked like not something she could sleep through. Or avoid. Or… anything. 

So she slept on the wing-back chair in the living room area.

Her neck tweaked from sitting in a weird position and her ears throbbed from cranking up the tunes and her brain hurt from trying to think too hard and her back ached from sleeping in the damn chair. 

Showering took place in her freaking bathing suit.

Peeing started out a nightmare. He wasn't there or anything, but she couldn't exactly remember the last time she'd heard of apolite phantom so she couldn't...  let go… fully.

It was a nightmare. A wiz-hard-and-fast hiccupy nightmare. 

He was waiting on the other side of the door. He at least didn't do that. She briefly considered living in the bathroom for the foreseeable future. It was a pretty awesome bathroom, anyway.

Alas, she realized within an hour that bunking in the bathroom was going to have to end: there was simply no coffee maker in the bathroom and she had a mega debate with herself whether having one in the bathroom would even be sanitary.

So RIP Bathroom Idea.

And there he was, sitting on the counter, next to the coffee maker. Was nothing sacred?!

"I tried sitting in the fridge but that didn't work very well." He shook his head slowly like he was talking to someone very young and possibly stupid. "Do you not eat? There was something green in there that I don't think was supposed to be green."

He was more thoughtful that night, or at least trying to vary his how-to-annoy-Darcy tactics. He sat on the chair (Darcy resolved not to ask how that was physically possible given his frequent traveling through solid objects he was now sitting on one. Plus they were floors up: Physics was weird and she was tired.) As much as he actually let her use the bed… him sitting in the chair and belting that damn song about a goddamn parking lot over and over was not conducive to sleep. Ghost he might be, but what he was not was a singer. There were flat notes everywhere, dotted with pre-pubescent cracks of a man who obviously did not sing much in his life. She crammed her fluffily soft pillow to both her ears, cutting off the discordant notes from reaching her brain and turning it into jelly, as was apparently the Cinnamon Roll's goal.

In the morning there were bags under her eyes, but lucky for her she could turn her oft-maligned kinda-ancient iPod's volume up and ignore everything that wasn't on the computer screen for a few hours.

His finger tapped on the glass of the monitor she was using. She resolved not to let the current metaphysical conundrum of Annoying Puppy's existence take her away from actual work and possible future breakthroughs unrelated to ghostiness or straight-up hallucinations.

She ignored it. 

There was a lull in her music and her peripheral vision had the scrunched face of a doubting ghost looking at her monitor. 

She could help it. She tore off her earbuds. "What." It wasn't a question.

The doubting grump-face kept looking at her screen and then back to her with something akin to doubt. No. Pity. She hated that look. "Your math is wrong there."

Her eyes rolled a little. "It's not. It's—"

"Yeah. It is—" she just dead-eye stared as he blatantly interrupted her. "—You're trying to use Euler's Theory so—" and now mansplaining. She didn't have a ghost haunting her lab. Her lab was haunted by a demon obviously.

That's not what I'm doing! I'm—

"Yes it is. Look, here," he pointed a well manicured finger at the screen before moving to a different line and pointing again, "and here and here." Darcy briefly wondered if it were possible to roll your eye so much the optic nerve tore. She would have to look it up later when she was less pissed off.

"No, it's not. Really —" she was about to explain when he interrupted.  Again. 

"Oookay." He raised his hand up in surrender and—Darcy's eyes widened—was that placation ?! "It's wrong, though."

Son of a— Darcy took a deep breath and grabbed her phone out of her pocket. She angrily typed something out of her phone and hit add to cart and check out decisively.  She looked at the ceiling.

"FRIDAY, I need this expedited ." She looked at the Demon, who tilted his head and was studying her equations like they were a toddler's finger painting. She reached over and pressed the power button on the monitor. "And stop trying to screw with my math!"

…

There was a ding at the door to the lab.

"A package has been delivered, Doctor Lewis." The all-seeing, all-knowing AI announced. FRIDAY probably even knew her order history and did not judge. FRIDAY was her girl.

Darcy let out a relieved breath and got up from her rolling chair. She headed toward the door and retrieved a white sealed bag at the lab door. She smiled a bit.

"What's that?" He asked, right behind her, like a creeper.

Darcy resolutely ignored him and went into the kitchen.

"So what's in there?" 

He had followed her, like a stealthy ghost ninja. She ripped open the top perforation and reached in and pulled it out.  A soft green pinecone? It looked familiar, but a lot did and didn't quite remember it. She was happy, even smelling it a little.

"Darcy." No answer. "Darcy?" Still not answering. "Darcy Darcy Darcy." Her hair seemed to stand on end, she obviously heard him but didn't answer. "Darcydarcydarcydarcy—"

She finally cut him off by turning to him. "What!"

He grinned and motioned to the thing in her hand. "What's that?"

"It's sage." Darcy said with an ominous smile as she opened a drawer full of assorted flotsam and pulled out a white lighter.

"Okay?" He didn't quite get it, looking at her up and down skeptically. 

"According to a bunch of witchy stuff I read online, burning it will banish evil spirits. So I'm burning the shit out of this." Darcy clicked the lighter again and started waving the flame on the edge of the grey-whitish green pinecone-looking bundle. 

"Uh...  I'm pretty sure that stuff isn't going to work on me." He almost laughed, looking nonplussed and nonchalant and non-ugly. Smoke started wafting from her little bundle of weird smelling sage and she waved in his general direction. He flinched away from the motion a little before leaning in and smelling the smoke with a momentary frown. Which was fair. This did not smell awesome. He shrugged and did not go away. Rude. "You're going to trigger the sprinklers."

As if on cue, the sprinklers, every six feet as were osha guidelines for lab space, started spewing Dihydrogen monoxide, the dreaded destroyer of electronics.

"FRIDAY!" Darcy quickly took off her hoodie and covered the computers, stripping off her layers and getting the couch blanket to cover more until she was standing there in just a bra and pajama bottoms, her hair drenched. She probably looked like a drowned rat. 

She opened her mouth and took a deep breath  only for the water running down her hair to flow into her mouth. She spit it out only moments before the sprinklers finally switched off.

He just smiled, non-corporeal, non-soaked and non-plussed. She tried to blow a wet clump of hair from her face, but it was stuck there with the heaviness of the water. She pushed it aside, her eyes narrowing at the dry spector before her who was freaking grinning. Her shoes and socks made a sloshing noise as she made it back to her phone, the sloshing apparently kicking off a round of laughter from the prick.

Darcy ordered again. Buy now. Expedite.

…

Hours later, the door "ding"ed an arrival.

"Doctor Lewis, you have a package."

She opened the box and pulled out two canisters of salt. It was table salt, and iodized, but what the hell. 

She surreptitiously lined the room. Walls. Windows. Doors. It didnt seem to effect him unt she declared quite clearly 'fuck it' and super quickly surrounded his probably ectoplasmic body with a salt circle. 

He blinked.

He froze where he was and looked up at the ceiling and started breathing quickly.

"I feel… I feel…"

She hoped it was painless. She hoped it was easy and restful, he was a nice guy, only a little lost and just adorable and—

He grinned suddenly. "...I feel like eating a soft pretzel."

A Troll.

She huffed out a breath and her fingers flew over her phone. 

…

Ding.

Darcy ripped open the cardboard box like it contained the answers to the questions of the universe.

She poured the little plastic bottle filled with clear liquid into a spray bottle.

He looked at it curiously. Has a spray bottle of holy water. He flinched, but the spray went through him. He gives her a look. "What? It's ionized." She squeezed the trigger on the bottle, the tiny spritz of water flying through the air toward him. His tension faded. He tensed slightly and watched it go through him. She was undeterred and pulled the trigger a few more times. Spray Spray Spray. "At least it won't interfere with the science."

"Haven't we learned about electrical things and water?" He looked at the machine to his left.

"Yeah, but this is holy water, it should make you shut the hell up." She was angry enough to, futily, squeeze the trigger on her bottle more.  Spray spray spray .

Slips on a puddle of her own making, lands on her butt. 

She leaned back, her spine against the cold, kinda wet, slick lab floor. She looked at the ceiling and her lungs deflated with the mother of all sighs, because seriously .

He squatted down, coming square into her unobstructed vision as he looked down at her from a closer vantage with slight amusement.  "You are really not good at this." 

Darcy let her body stay exactly where it was as she just lifted her hand and raised her middle finger of one hand while the other dug into her pocket for her phone.

Taptaptap… Ding.

She pulled out the box and unwrapped it from its cellophane wrapper before she slid the top off the bottom and tossed in unceremoniously beside her. 

She sighed as she looked at it. 

Yes, she was relying on a Hasbro game on the break room shelf to help her with her current problem.  But she was getting freaking desperate.

She sat at the Ouija board, fingers delicately poised over the little plastic dial thingie. She'd heard these worked. It probably wouldn't work.

Of course it wouldn't work.

Plus it was a game. A game meant for 2+ players. Who were 8 years old and up. She was at least two 8 year olds, it would be fine. 

" Ouija ? Really ?" He said skeptically. She'd be lying if she said the slight amusement lining his features didn't make him freaking adorable, the jerk.

"For you. It's a D-I-Y exorcism." Darcy growled softly. "Short notice." She stubbornly stayed put, not removing her hands from the plastic dial-thing.  It wasn't going to suddenly start working but she wasn't about to admit that to him.

He snorted. " D-I-Y ."

"Well I would have called a priest or rabbi but there was a crazy long wait list." Darcy took a deep breath and tried to zen out with her hands of the dial and her breathing deep and trying to zen. "Now go off into the aether or some jazz."

"You know what? No."

"Yes."

"No." 

He put his hands on hers on the dial, and suddenly she found herself unable to move her hands. He eyes widened slightly and she jerked her arms like maybe they were just stuck, but no. A slow smile popped up on Cut-Price Beetlejuice's face and he could, infact, move her hands and the disl over to the No circle. He let out a loud Ha! in triumph. His hand control must have slipped because suddenly she had control again and quickly moved the dial over to yes instinctively regardless of it obviously not working to her original purpose.

"You are so going." Darcy glared

He glared back. "No, sorry, you are."

All of a sudden he slid next to her and slipped into her (...that was a weird sentence to even think outside of fun-times). Her arms and feet couldn't move. Her eyes and nose and mouth still could, small blessings considering her freaking eyes were ready to bulge out of her head at the sensation. She felt as if her hands and feet were fully numb asleep and yet moving.

"What the hell?" Darcy stood abruptly, jerkily on her feet. Her hands shot out and hands grabbed the board. Each of her steps felt jerky and weird, like she was possessed by Frankenstein's Monster, not a less jacked Stay-At-Home-Dad version of Lou Ferrigno.

Her fingers jerked closed around the edges of the board and she monster stopped to the chute along with all.

"Woah, hey, no—" she tried to stop before they came up to the chute. It was specifically designed to be a near instant incinerator. She could only control her fucking head and that didnt exactly stop her locomotion toward it and her body kept stumbling forward.

It sounded like Cinnamon -Troll was smiling . "Oooh yes. The chute for experiments that have gone wrong!" He grunted as if it was exertion, "and this qualifies!"

It fell down the chute and the heavy metal drawer closed just in time for The Possessing Jackass to spring out like shed officially been able to kick him out of her body. She looked at the closed chute and managed to open it momentarily to see the remnants of a flame tickling ashes before she shut it again.

Her eyes rolled in the back of her head. She wasn't attached to it or anything but that whole thing was not cool. 

She looked at him with a sneer. "I just bought that!" 

"Technically you bought it for me." He said with a grin. Like it was a game. Darcy refused to admit she'd be having fun if she weren't so ticked off. "Thank you. It was a very entertaining game."

"Whatever." She said, hackles well and truly raised and by freaking god she was going to get this ass taken care of. She huffed and straightened her shirt as if the momentary possession had somehow mussed her lab coat. She stomped toward the elevator. "I'm going downstairs to get on the holy fucking wait list."

Chapter Text

Getting onto the clergy list was… Depressing. She actually left the safety of her lab and ventured out into the peopley Outside only to get sad. Most people were asking for holy people for reasons like death and dismemberment and religion approved therapy but apparently exorcisms were not high on the priority lists, and the best she could get was maybe next couple months at best.

Which she didn't know if she should be grateful for. Mostly because it wasn't for one of those other reasons.

Darcy trudged back through the lobby. There were a few normal people looking harried and trying to get access to floors they had no point to be on, etc, but then one, large asian dude started to wave his arm around like he was doing weird tai chi. Right after, a circle that anyone would make in the dark if they had sparklers. He didn't seem surprised by this at all, moreover, he seemed like he did it on purpose. Skipping the whole scientific nerdery that was making her heart simultaneously ask a bajillion questions and ache for Janey, she jogged up to him as fast as her little non-energy depleting jog could take her.

"Hey, wait!" Darcy waved her hand to get his attention as she caught up to him.

The man looked at her carefully, raising one eyebrow but not speaking at all. He was sturdy and east asain and dressed like all mountain-y in layers of purple and looking at her like a statue might. It was all very weird.

"You're a magicy guy?" Darcy eloquently managed to get out.

"You're a scientist girl." He said back flatly, the sparkler circle apparently having some kind of library in the center of it. She looked away from the weirdness, she had other weirdness to deal with first.

"Lab coat and boobs gave it away. I'm not subtle." She snarked without heat. She offered a handshake, which Magicy Guy took. "Darcy Lewis."

He shook their arms once. "Wong."

Darcy did the polite thing and waited for him to finish, but he didn't. 

"Oh, okay, you're done." Darcy blinked as she took her hand back. No way he had one name like Beyonce or Cher but maybe his deal was minimalism and that translated to names? Or maybe it was his way of keeping people at arm's length? Whatever, Darcy decided she wasn't in the place to judge coping mechanisms. "Alright, Wong. Can you do, I donno, exorcisms?"

"What?" He looked at her in a combination of surprise and confusion, though both faded pretty fast.

"I'm not crazy.” Darcy said too quickly for her not to look bat-crap crazy, “Probably not crazy. Just come up, assess my crazy level and I'll hippity hop my ass to an MRI as soon as you don't see anything." She had thought about all contingencies. She could have lost it, an MRI/CAT scan was the first step to her trip to an overcrowded insane asylum, complete with rubber-room and straight jacket. But that one after this one. She didn't want to be crazy, but she also didn't want to be haunted by Random Phantom reminding her that there was no hope for ones she might have wanted. Darcy took a deep breath and almost begged. "Wong, my man, I just… need him out."

His eyes narrowed but didn't seem unkind. "That is not what I do."

"Please?" She gave him the puppy eyes. She was begging. Darcy was not above giving him some minor worship at this point, Thor would understand.

"Oddly, your plea does not change my abilities." Wong let out what seemed to be in the top ten deepest sighs physically possible to be made by anyone. 

Darcy gave him puppy eyes and doubled down on her begging-without-whining-much: "I'll give you cookies?"

That worked. 

Within twenty minutes Wong was sitting on her sofa on his third white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. He had a plate with three more in front of him on the table. Darcy pointedly ignored the cross-armed petulant child of a ghost man staring at them.

"There is definitely a spirit." The large man said as he bit into one of his few remaining cookies.

The-Puppy-Turned-Dead-Guy looked at her. "Of course he says that. He gets cookies! He's a con artist. Look at what he's wearing…" He probably didn't actually look before he said that because he looked after and seemed like he was backtracking. "I mean it's incredibly authentic but who wears that? Oh yeah. Con artists."

"He feels very negative." Wong continued, heedless of Ghost Guy being a freaking toddler. Cinnamon Roll started whine-talking and mocking what Wong said in a snarky tone. Wong stopped chewing his cookie for a moment and looked to the corner of the room where no one was. "...Very strong."

Fluffy there huffed a laugh but didn't fully seem like he was up for the mockery on that one.

"Kay, good, he's definitely there and I'm not two crackers short of a lunchable." Darcy didn't light up or smile at the revelation, it was good she wasn't crazy but it was still not great having some adorbs spector interrupting her sleep or judging her fridge content or mansplaining her math. "Now how do I … gently encourage him to g-t-f-o, head towards the light, open the door, grow wings, etc."

"I don't feel dead." He said abently, shaking his head. 

"Do you even know what dead feels like?" Darcy snapped

"No?" Puppy Face answered automatically and scrunched his eyebrow. Darcy gestured to him, allowing him to draw conclusions for that statement himself. He caught on very quickly. "Oh, shut up."

"You're just mad that I might be right." Darcy snarked at her spector. 

"I agree with him." Wong said sagely. The words caught both Darcy and her spectral companion. He managed to cut off any comments and addressed Darcy. "Though I cannot see or hear him, he is not dead."

"Ha!" The curly haired man said as he pointed at her in triumph."Told you!"

"Shut. Up." Darcy said succinctly to the guy only she could see before she turned to the one hopefully everyone could see. "Fine, Wong, if I take your word for it that he's not dead, whatever, then how do I make him go somewhere else? And why is he here? And why does he walk through freaking walls? And how do I make him go somewhere else?"

"You asked that already," Cinnamon Roll said, obviously irritated and exasperated.

"I must want the answer twice as bad, huh?" Darcy snarked at her ghost.

"Or you're just that dense." The ghost snarked back.

"I recommend leaving." Wong said flatly.

Darcy's eyes nearly bugged out of her head or shot lasers or something. "That's your exorcism?"

"You leave. That would solve your problem." He said directly to Darcy. The ghost grinned, grinned! His face looked so much brighter it spurred her to roll her eyes. Wong grew even more serious looking, if it were even possible. "My skills do not include spirit-ridding, and there is much still that this world needs protecting from in a spiritual and metaphysical sense than a ghost angering you."

"I'm not a ghost!" The Scruffy Poltergeist groused at the same time as Darcy shouted, "I'm not angry!"  

Wong simply looked at her. Darcy took a deep breath and tried to embody the whole 'not angry' thing a bit better. 

"But this is my office, my lab, my home," the words came out of her mouth like a plea.

"Then consider him a roommate." Wong stated calmly. It only made Darcy crazier.

"Dude, if I wanted to be roomies with someone I'd pick someone I like, not someone all looking like a young Colombo!" Darcy looked from Wong to Ghosty-guy, who was fully mocking her like a twelve year old. "Or at least someone less annoying!"

"Oh, yeah? Like one of your 'friends'?" Cinnamon Roll did fucking finger quotes, to add insult to injury. "Because if you have some, I haven't seen them." Darcy was taken aback, the emotions she tried to keep well locked up threatening to escape.

"Shut up." Darcy whispered harshly, her angry voice cracking and wavering. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't? Because it looks to me like you've been completely alone!" He nearly roared at her. "You miss your friends so much? Go join them wherever the hell they are!" Darcy's eyes became classy faster than she could even attempt to quell. Rather than cry in front of this dick wraith she turned on the spot and managed to wind up in her bathroom father than you could say screw you. The door slammed behind her.

Wong sighed and looked around the room and found the general area he was in with eerie precision. He flinched a bit at the strong gaze sweeping over him.

"Word to the wise, spirit, don't talk of what you don't know." Wong slowly drew his thumb and middle finger together, snapping once, loudly. 

That shook his mind just enough; his memory came back in short, quick flashes of forgotten images.

Big. Purple. Green? Fight. Glove. Snap. And then gone . People … so many people… were gone. Faces fading. Dusting. Half of everyone. Of everyone.

Those memories solidified: Thanos. The Snap.

He blinked at the pictures fading out of his mind back to the solid view of the lab he had just been in and he looked in the direction of the hallway she'd stormed off to, letting immense guilt eat him. As the Asian man summoned some kind of fire circle portal and walked through it, he found himself walking towards the bathroom and standing in front of the closed door.

"Darcy?" He quietly asked the girl who wasn't facing him.

"Go away." The answer was immediate, doing the best to keep her shoulders stiff and any emotion out of her voice.

"Darcy…" He started out, voice soft and gentle. Darcy couldn't help the hiccupy sob that escaped her. Dammit. It seemed to soften him even more.  "I'm sorry. So sorry I…" Darcy turned, her minimal eye makeup running in streaks down her cheeks, she could tell by his assessing looks and even more pitying freaking face. He stuttered and reached out to her, retracting his hand only as he remembered they couldn't actually touch. "I didn't remember until…Wong he… I remember what Thanos did now. I just…" he stopped as she raised an eyebrow, sniffling and wiping under her eye like somehow that would salvage her crappy makeup. She just crossed her arms as he sighed. "I'm an ass." 

"Yeah." Darcy nodded, looking directly at him. She rationalized it as much as she could; she obviously cried, plus it wasn't like she was vulnerable near a person. Ex-person, maybe.  "You are."

She sat on her bed and he took a step tentatively closer. He, too, sat on the edge of her bed, giving her space, of course. It was almost like he was trying to be there for her but she knew that couldn't be right.

"If you don't mind me asking…" he cleared his throat and, while it didn't seem all that possible, his voice made itself softer and more gentle. "Who'd you lose?"  

"Everyone." Darcy said flatly before baby blues popped into her mind's eye and she corrected herself. "99% of everyone." She sniffled and he just stayed quiet, egging on the story by just being there. "The freaking one person I have left has checked the heck out, fumbling through quicksand of beer and videogames and refuses to acknowledge that he's sinking." 

He hummed an acknowledgment or sorts and they just let silence overtake them for a moment. 

"I can't even remember if I lost anybody." He said. Darcy finally looked at him, eyes red but runny makeup under control. He shook his head and sardonically half-laughed at himself.  "I can't leave. I know you want me to. And I've tried. When I'm not with you…" he rubbed the bridge of his nose, like he had a headache or he was used to navigating around the nosepiece on glasses or something. He looked at her. "It's like I'm lost? Like I don't exist. I like existing and I don't think that's, um, normal for me. Which is saying something, as angry and frustrated as you make me, I feel oddly…" he turned to her enough that she turned to him, too, as he stuttered and put forth a vague kind of smile. "...normal … around you."

"Well I make most people feel normal." Darcy swiped her fingers under the eyes, cleaning up her makeup and any remnants of tears before she looked at him. "I'm kinda bonkers, don't know if you've noticed."

"Well you are talking to a person who may not exist." He said, trying to lighten the mood.

She did laugh a little, but it sounded sad or just a reflex. "I may be nuttier than Old Me. Cheery thought, thanks."

"Or," he smiled. That young face from when he was being a little shit did nothing on the youthfulness of his face now, "Or you can think that I'm simply transferred to a different plane and I need an astrophysicist who specializes in identifying directions and frequencies to help me find a way out of this."

Darcy snorted a laugh and his lips curved up even more. "You always been such a sweet-talker?" 

"I honestly have no idea." Cinnamon Roll shrugged. "No memory. I can't remember who or where I was or what I did." He swayed her direction as if to bump her slightly, but they never connected. "Where were you before here?"

"I was an intern for a mega-scientist." Darcy had a last, rogue sniffle as she thought of the woman, but smiled slightly. "Nominated for a Nobel and everything. She was brilliant. She was also my best friend. After like 3 years of being her intern, she was the one who realized she didn't have to dumb herself down anymore to get me to understand her assorted science mumbo jumbo and suggested I go back to college. She…" Darcy swallowed. "It was right in front of my eyes. Just just looked at me as she…" Darcy had no intention of finishing that sentence and the Spectral Confectionary had no intention of making her.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say.

"Yeah well." She shrugged, former emotionlessness settling a bit more firmly now that she had her cry.  She cleared her throat. "So all my break-throughs are hers. I wouldn't be here with Jane being a huge pain in my ass."

"I hate to meet the person who is a pain in your ass." He didn't even skip a beat, but there was something almost kind in his voice. She really didn't want to think about it too hard, but she couldn't help but let out a bark of a laugh. Curly joined her with a big ass smile again. 

She shook her head fondly, "Dick." 

"That I'm pretty sure I've heard before," he chuckled quietly at the self-deprecation. She had a soft grin on. He smiled and let silence overtake the moment as he studied her: this girl who laughed after being sad and carried on and joked when she was obviously hurting. Resilient, that was the word. "You aren't angry?"

"State of the world as it is? Pretty sure I'm always angry." Darcy said with a smirk. He couldn't help grinning a little bit at that, the sentiment resonating with him, too. "But not at you. For now."

"Truce, then." He offered his hand for a second but seemed to remember that he wasn't corporeal and kind of awkwardly put his hand back.

Darcy nodded once, smirking a bit at the awkwardness. "Truce."

Chapter Text

Now that annoying each other was off the table, the only thing left was to talk and Darcy was good at that. Cinnamon Roll a bit less so, well, very less so, but he was able to keep her engaged with his cerebral discussions and his excessively smooth voice. But there were long comfortable silences, too. It was weird. 

The Truce was good… generally. The Truce let her sleep and eat in peace, with just a curious nonexistent guy to talk to. He tried to stay out of her way and just stand there, but it didn't even take two full days for her to realize Ghosty McApparently-Not-A-Ghost was bored. He seemed the type to sit still for hours but not the type that did nothing. Which, yeah, was a dichotomy. Not that she should be telling anything about him, really, because, as she had to remind herself far too often, the Truce did not mean Friendship. She had to remember that. ...Which was hard to do when he did things like apologize for previous jackassery on day three.

"I, um, want to apologize," he said, with his non-declarative sentence and ruining the perfectly amiable ignoring of the recent past that she was happily doing. She looked up at him as he fidgeted, obviously thinking of specifics. "I really was trying to help you do the math."

"I'm sure you were," Darcy rolled her eyes. That really was her biggest peeve of all peeves. He was harmless, mostly, except the annoying bit but having to be mansplained to by the living was bad enough. But he cringed and expressed actual sorrow for his actions, which was a rarity for even living perpetrators. Plus, it only took him a day of walking around nearly silently to muster up the testicular fortitude to apologize... Darcy sighed at herself for being a big damn pushover, but nodded, accepting his apology as she clicked a few icons on her desktop and opened a document. She scooted to the side so he could walk right up to the screen."I know I'm not the Doctoriest Doctor out there, but I'm not exactly dumb. Look at the whole thing without being a little shit, then we'll talk."

Darcy instinctively grabbed the extra rolly chair and dragged it so he and his inconsistent physics could sit, too, and put her hand on the mouse even though she couldn't see the screen. Cinnamon Roll's eyebrows lowered and that WTF forehead crinkle she was clearly getting used to appeared as he looked at the formulae on the screen. He put his hand into hers like he had with the ouija board and used her finger to scroll down as he read, his eyes growing wider as he went. Darcy started to grin smugly as she could see the dumbassery leak out from Cinnamon Roll's ears.

"…uh, wow." He was truly a spector of few words, but a surprised and blown away face was enough to make Darcy smile at her now recognized brilliance. "I mean…" He couldn't finish his sentence, his less than corporal brain seemed to be running a mile a minute in awe of her mish-mashy theory. He realized his hand was still in hers and gently, but kinda jerkily, removed it from hers. If either of them blushed a bit, neither said anything about it. 

"I'm awesome, right? I know." Darcy grinned smugly. Her spector's smile and silent nodding agreement were nothing on his appreciative eyes. "Started out a pet project, but I can't help but concentrate on it."

"Where…" he stuttered a bit. It didn't go unnoticed that his Confectionary-Human hybrid status tripled when his eyes opened wider and he looked completely in awe of her brain. "Where did you get these initial readings to even form a potentially working hypothesis like this?"

"There was a thing in London a few years ago called 'the Convergence.' I was there. I got a new hatred for the Lord Of The Rings movies, a minor case of PTSD, and these readings." Darcy shrugged and pulled up a second screen full of numbers, rolling a bit out of the way for her non-corporal stalker to read. He seemed to keep up pretty okay on the math of her other stuff, but she summed this one up anyway. "The readings of the incident are reminiscent of the ones during the convergence and during the incident. And I get that the red stuff was also a stone or something with a Gamma signature and I'd explain more but I don't know if ghosts even have clearance levels and SHIELD would climb up my butt again. Anyway, even outside of that they're similar, well, more accurately, they're opposite." Darcy couldn't help the fact that she got a bit more animated with her vehemence. "The Convergence wanted to squish things together at a molecular level and the incident literally split people apart…" Curly looked at her with those triple cinnamon roll eyes again and her voice started to gain a little trepidation. "Convergence and Divergence. So, I mean…" she shrugged, bravado leaving her the longer he stayed quiet.

He blinked. "If both could be detected before they happened we could have more warning."

"Theoretically."

"Warning or try to prevent—" His eyes seemed to race around like he was reading blank air or reading his own thoughts in his mind like words in a book. He was excited and Darcy hated to admit it but he was using his brains and brain usage was rare and sexy. "...or even reverse."

He must've been a freaking genius to make the intuitive leap from her data and just a small bit of her theory. While, yeah, she was probably violating the crap out of clearance levels and national-slash-homeworld security, she couldn't help the blush at the look in his eyes that made it seem ever more plausible.

"I don't want to get any hopes up," She hated the fact that she felt like she was overstepping, and worse, getting this all started because of some crappy coping skills and desperate denial, which, yeah, not an awesome start. "I'll just get it started, float the theory, tease out the initial reading and maybe set up the math, prove it, have others review, etc…" She cleared her throat. "I'll let the big brains figure out that extra good stuff. I'm just doing starter-grunt work to see the damn thing, I'll leave it to the folks smarter than I am to do the real science." She shrugged. Her personal poltergeist looked at her softly, his puppy-dog eyes almost tilting downward and enlarging at the matter-of-fact way she demeaned her own intelligence. Darcy quickly covered herself back in a nice cocoon of sarcasm and irony that kept her safe from evil earnest feelings. Darcy looked at him suddenly, moving to smack Mr. Ghostman on the arm but her hand went right through him.  

"But hey! Look at you, understanding complex math and bonkers theories and mansplaining my own equations to me!" He cringed at the fairly accurate description, but it was clear she was as unbothered as someone having been mansplained to could be— "add a lab coat with some coffee stains you could have been a scientist. You did say this was your lab."

"But you were right. Could have been any lab." 

"Still. It's a place to start." Darcy shrugged. "Let's at least go for a name so I can stop calling you variations of Puppy Face or Cinnamon Roll in my head."

"Cinnamon Roll?" One eyebrow raised as he turned to face Darcy, whose face was flushing. She refused to look at him.

"Don't judge me, He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named, I don't have much to work with." She said flippantly, waving him off as she tamed the redness of her skin. She froze and blinked suddenly and looked up, "Wait, Hey FRI, who had this lab before me?"

"I'm afraid that requires a higher clearance, Doctor Lewis."  

"...that's weird." Darcy puzzled and looked over at Cinnamon Roll. "The murder-me-with-her-thighs lady said something like that,” —she knew that 'lady' was the Black Widow but she figured saying that out loud would summon her from somewhere— “but I didn't think about it because that seemed to be her baseline. But I have a pretty high clearance for info." He gave her a doubting look. Darcy waved his doubt away with a hand before explaining herself. "SHIELD gave me a clearance as a bribe, trying to stop me from hacking them again," Her voice lowered, talking to herself with just a hint of gleeful mischief of a motto long since used. "iPod thievery shall not go unpunished." He lifted an eyebrow and she cleared her throat with a smirk. "Anyway, apparently that clearance transferred to SI. My point is, there is only one, maybe two higher clearances and that's Avengers level clearance. If this really was your lab, I mean," she looked at him again, more scrutinizing and surprised than she'd ever looked him over before, "Who the hell were you?"

"Well. That's the issue, isn't it? We have no idea." The Human-Shaped Puppy furrowed his brow, and waved at the SI mainframe on her computer. "Well, can you… hack… that?"

"A Stark integrated SHIELD system?" Darcy toddled her head as she thought, "Seventy five, eighty percent no, also, even with that incredibly sexy twenty-to-twenty-five percent yes, if they track it, I'll get fired. Fie-erred. Even in this open job market, with firing comes starvation, homelessness and destitution. Plus, there's only a certain amount of Netflix that I'm willing to give up and that's none, so, no hacking." She shook her head at the idea. Darcy took a deep breath. The lab was pretty isolated, but other people were in the building, he had to use the elevator sometimes, right? And the beloved lobby coffee cart even if it delivered. "Maybe we check with the other labs before doing something drastic."

With no other ideas, Ghost-boy agreed with a shrug as they both headed into the hall.