Chapter Text
By the end of the first week, Darcy had learned that Stark Tower was less a building and more a vertical ecosystem with delusions of grandeur.
It had weather.
Not real weather, obviously. Rich people had apparently decided real weather was for pedestrians. But there were changes in pressure and mood and light, subtle little shifts that made each level feel like its own country.
The lobby was public weather. Polished, alert, cool. Security badges, tourists outside the glass, employees walking fast, the Stark logo watching everyone like a metallic god.
The corporate levels were office weather. Coffee, printers, expensive shoes, quiet panic, people who said circling back without looking ashamed.
Level Sixty was science weather.
That meant cardboard dust, ozone, coffee cups, half-unpacked equipment, marker fumes, equations, cables, and Jane Foster moving through it all like a storm system with hair.
The residential floor was different.
Level Sixty-Four was still too quiet, still too clean, still too much like someone had built a life-sized architectural rendering and forgotten people would eventually have to live there. But after a week, Darcy had started leaving marks on it.
Small ones.
Her boots by the door.
Her lipstick on the bathroom counter.
Her bras drying over the back of a chair because the dryer settings looked expensive and hostile.
A thrifted blanket she had found in Brooklyn, dark green and gold and soft in the way only old things could be soft, now thrown over the couch in direct defiance of the tasteful neutral decor.
Four plants.
The plants had been important.
The first was a pothos from a little shop near Union Square where the owner had looked at Darcy’s temporary-dead expression and said, “Hard to kill,” while placing it directly into her hands.
The second was a snake plant because Darcy liked anything that survived neglect and still looked elegant.
The third was a little fern she had absolutely been warned was dramatic and moisture-dependent, which meant she had bought it out of solidarity.
The fourth was a tiny cactus from a Brooklyn flea market where she had gone for “one hour” and emerged three hours later with the blanket, the cactus, two rings, an old leather bag she did not need, and a deep spiritual understanding that New York could empty a wallet while pretending to be quirky.
She named the cactus Erik because it looked judgy.
“Good morning, Erik,” she said on Friday, watering the fern with the serious caution of a woman trying not to commit plant murder. “You are looking emotionally unavailable today.”
The cactus did not respond.
That was, honestly, very Erik.
Behind her, the window showed Manhattan waking up in silver and gold, the morning still cool enough to make the rooftops look clean from this high up. Darcy stood barefoot on the floor, sleep shirt slipping off one shoulder, hair piled into a bun that would not survive brushing, and felt something strange and unwelcome press gently beneath her ribs.
Contentment.
Not happiness exactly.
Happiness was easy for Darcy. Not fake easy. Real easy. She liked things. She liked coffee and cheap sunglasses and women with good eyeliner on the subway and the first bite of pastry and the sound Jane made when an equation finally behaved. She liked making strangers laugh. She liked finding a perfect thrift store jacket. She liked walking through a city and letting it happen to her.
Contentment was different.
Contentment wanted roots.
Darcy looked at her four plants.
“Do not get attached,” she told them.
The fern trembled faintly in the air-conditioning.
“Rude.”
Her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
Jane: I need the blue London drive.
Darcy checked the time.
7:13.
She looked toward the ceiling.
“JARVIS?”
“Yes, Darcy?”
His voice came from the apartment speakers, softer here than in the lab. It had taken two days before Darcy stopped feeling the immediate urge to put on pants whenever he spoke in her living room. Privacy protocols had been explained. Twice. Once by an actual employee from residential security who looked very serious and once by JARVIS himself after Darcy said, “So you’re not watching me moisturize, right?”
The answer had been no.
Very detailed no.
Legally structured no.
Darcy had chosen to believe it because the alternative was burning down the tower and starting a new life in Vermont.
“Is Jane in the lab?”
“Dr. Foster entered Lab 60-A at 6:42 a.m.”
Darcy closed her eyes.
“Did she sleep?”
“Five hours and seventeen minutes, according to residential access logs.”
“That’s almost human.”
“Indeed.”
Darcy opened one eye and looked up. “Was that judgment?”
“I have no capacity for judgment.”
“Liar.”
A pause.
“Noted.”
She smiled despite herself.
It had started like that.
Small.
JARVIS was useful in the way very few things were useful without also being annoying. He remembered where Jane was, which doors Darcy had access to, what time facilities were coming, whether the good coffee bar was open, where the nearest working printer was, and whether the tower cafeteria had run out of the soup Jane liked.
He did not sigh.
He did not forget.
He did not ask Darcy why she needed something three times and then send her to the wrong person anyway.
He was also funny, though not in a way she had entirely expected.
Not jokes exactly. Not punchlines.
Timing.
Dryness.
A devastating politeness that made half his sentences feel like he was wearing tiny white gloves while committing murder.
Darcy respected that in a person.
Or an AI.
Or a beloved ceiling goblin with access to elevators.
“Where is the blue London drive?” she asked.
“In the archive cabinet, second drawer, box labeled London Event, Working Copies.”
Darcy smiled.
Because that label had not existed on Monday.
On Monday, the blue London drive had been in a shoebox with cables, receipts, three dead batteries, and a granola bar that had expired during the Obama administration. Now it had a box. A drawer. A digital entry. A backup. A cross-reference.
Order had come to Jane’s lab.
Not complete order.
That would require time, force, and possibly divine intervention.
But enough.
Enough that when Jane asked for the blue London drive at seven in the morning, Darcy knew where it was without having to dig through the wreckage of five countries.
Darcy texted back.
Darcy: Archive cabinet, second drawer. Box says London Event, Working Copies.
Jane: I looked there.
Darcy: Did you open the drawer?
No answer for seventeen seconds.
Jane: Found it.
Darcy: Miracle.
Jane: Thank you.
Darcy: Eat something.
Jane: I had coffee.
Darcy: JANE.
Jane: Going to cafeteria now.
Darcy looked up. “JARVIS, is she lying?”
“Dr. Foster is not currently moving toward the cafeteria.”
Darcy put the watering can down.
Jane: Fine.
Darcy: I am sending judgment from above.
Jane: That’s JARVIS.
Darcy: We’re unionizing.
JARVIS said, “I have not agreed to unionize.”
“Scab behavior, J.”
“I have also not agreed to be called J.”
“Noted,” Darcy said, in his own tone.
This time, there was a pause long enough that she knew he had done it on purpose.
Darcy laughed.
The good week had not been quiet.
Jane’s lab had taken four full days to unpack into a shape that made sense, and the fifth day to become a disaster again for legitimate scientific reasons. Darcy had spent Monday sorting the physical archive, Tuesday fixing the folder structure, Wednesday arguing with Facilities about why Dr. Foster needed a lockable cabinet that did not require three separate approval forms, and Thursday learning that Stark Industries internal messaging system had the personality of a haunted fax machine.
She had won most of her battles.
Not all.
The printer on Sixty remained a bastard.
Darcy had named it Chad.
Chad jammed when frightened and lied about low toner.
She hated Chad.
Jane, on the other hand, had bloomed.
There was no better word for it, and Darcy hated that because it sounded sentimental and soft and like something someone would put in a speech. But it was true. Jane had not relaxed, exactly. Jane did not relax. Jane intensified in safer directions.
Her shoulders had dropped.
Her voice had sharpened.
She slept badly but less desperately.
She forgot meals but not because she was trying to outrun the fear that everything would be taken from her again. She forgot meals because there were three new data sets and a computer that could process models before Jane had time to become angry at it.
That was better.
Not healthy.
But better.
And Darcy had gotten New York in pieces.
A bodega where the man behind the counter called her sweetheart by the third visit and knew she wanted coffee large enough to count as a personal relationship.
A thrift store in Brooklyn with sweaters organized by color and a cashier who had told her, completely unprompted, that men with guitars were a red flag unless they also owned a vacuum cleaner.
A park bench where she ate a bagel and watched two old women argue in Italian with so much passion that Darcy almost applauded.
A bookstore with a political theory shelf good enough to make her forgive the prices.
A train platform where a teenager with green hair complimented her boots.
A city did not become home in a week.
But it could become interesting.
Interesting was enough for now.
By eight, Darcy had showered, dressed, watered the plants, answered six emails, and put on lipstick in the elevator down to Sixty because she believed in efficiency and reflective surfaces.
“Your permanent badge has been updated with archive access,” JARVIS said as the elevator descended.
Darcy capped her lipstick. “Excellent. Does it also come with emotional stability?”
“I’m afraid that is not currently supported.”
“Typical.”
“I can submit a feature request.”
“Please do. Mark it urgent.”
“Of course.”
The elevator opened.
Level Sixty was already awake.
Jane’s lab glowed bright behind the glass. Across the hall, Tony’s public lab was dark except for a small work light near one of the central tables. The Banner lab stayed untouched, clean and patient, like a room holding its breath.
Darcy had stopped looking into it by Wednesday.
Empty rooms made for absent people always felt a little haunted.
Jane was standing in front of the whiteboard with a bagel in one hand and a marker in the other.
Darcy stopped dead in the doorway.
“My God.”
Jane looked over. “What?”
“You’re eating.”
Jane frowned at the bagel as if surprised to find it there.
“Oh. Yes.”
Darcy looked up. “JARVIS?”
“Dr. Foster went to the cafeteria at 7:29 and returned with coffee and a bagel.”
Darcy pressed one hand to her chest.
“I’m so proud of both of you.”
Jane rolled her eyes, but there was a little smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.
Darcy dropped her tote at her workstation and looked at the board.
There were equations.
Naturally.
There were also three different colored arrows, two circles, and the phrase residual distortion? written so hard the marker had squeaked through the glass wall from the hallway.
“Did the blue drive help?”
“Yes.” Jane’s eyes brightened immediately. “The London residual readings line up with the Tromsø sequence if I adjust for the error in the third array. Not perfectly. But close enough that it suggests the models weren’t wrong, just incomplete.”
“Love when science is emotionally validating.”
“It means the post-Convergence distortions may be measurable for longer than we thought.”
“That sounds important.”
“It is important.”
Jane said it fiercely, like the world had argued.
Darcy’s face softened before she could stop it.
“Good,” she said.
Jane looked down at the bagel, then took another bite.
Darcy sat at her workstation and woke her laptop.
The desktop background was a photo she had taken on Wednesday of Jane asleep with her cheek on a printed calibration report. She had set it as the background because Jane had told her not to. It was important to maintain boundaries.
She worked for three hours.
Not glamorous work. No one wrote heroic ballads about cleaning data labels and standardizing notation, but no one got useful research out of chaos either, so Darcy did it. She cleaned old file names, attached scan references, flagged missing sequences, and created a spreadsheet tracking which physical notebooks had been digitized.
At 10:42, she fought Chad.
At 10:57, she won.
At 11:03, she went for coffee.
“Need anything?” she asked Jane.
“Coffee.”
“You have coffee.”
“More coffee.”
“Food?”
Jane hesitated.
Darcy pointed at her.
Jane sighed. “Soup?”
“Good choice.”
Darcy grabbed her badge and headed out.
The hallway was quiet.
Tony’s lab door opened just as she passed.
Darcy nearly walked into him.
He stopped in time.
So did she.
His sunglasses were pushed up on top of his head. There was a smear of something dark near his wrist, grease or machine oil, and his shirt had the faint wrinkles of someone who had either slept badly or not slept in the usual human location. He had a tablet tucked under one arm and a pair of pliers in one hand.
Darcy looked at the pliers.
Then at him.
“Are those for science or murder?”
Tony blinked.
Then his mouth twitched.
“Depends how the next meeting goes.”
“Relatable.”
He glanced toward Jane’s lab. “Foster in?”
“Where else would she be?”
“Healthy. Balanced.”
“Careful. She ate a bagel this morning. We’re all very emotional about it.”
“Big week.”
“Huge.”
The interaction sat lightly between them. Easy in the way shallow water was easy. Nothing underneath yet, nothing deep enough to fear. Darcy did not know him. He did not know her. He was still mostly Stark-shaped, all reputation and sharp edges and sunglasses indoors.
But he was funny.
Unfortunately.
Darcy could admit that privately.
Tony looked over her shoulder into Jane’s lab, where Jane had turned back to the whiteboard. “She still mad about the sample room?”
“She is not mad. She is scientifically displeased.”
“Sounds worse.”
“It is.”
He nodded once, as if that confirmed something.
Darcy shifted her empty coffee carrier in one hand.
For a second, his gaze flicked down.
Again.
Not as obvious as the first day, but there.
Darcy raised her eyebrows.
Tony’s eyes came back up.
He did not apologize.
She did not expect him to.
He had the decency to look faintly caught, though, which was something.
Darcy smiled sweetly. “My eyes are up here, Mr. Stark.”
His grin flashed.
“I know. I was on my way.”
“Scenic route?”
“Architectural appreciation.”
“Gross, but points for commitment.”
He laughed once, short and genuine enough to surprise her.
Not much.
Just enough.
Jane called from inside the lab, “Darcy, if you’re getting soup, can you also get crackers?”
Darcy looked away from Tony. “Yes, your majesty.”
“I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
Tony stepped aside, clearing the hallway.
Darcy walked past him.
“Try not to murder anyone with the pliers,” she said.
“No promises.”
“Coward.”
He made a thoughtful sound. “That’s a new one.”
“Give it time. I have layers.”
She did not look back to see his reaction.
Not because she was cool.
Because the elevator opened and Darcy had places to be.
Maya was at the coffee bar, because apparently the universe had decided Darcy deserved one reliable thing.
“Good morning, glamorous goblin,” Maya said.
Darcy put a hand over her heart. “You remembered.”
“I remember all workplace cryptids.”
“Then you’ll go far.”
Maya started Jane’s coffee without asking. “Soup day?”
“Soup day.”
“Dr. Foster still alive?”
“She ate a bagel this morning.”
Maya stopped.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“I know. We’re taking donations for the commemorative plaque.”
Maya laughed and grabbed a cup.
Darcy bought coffee, soup, crackers, and a sandwich for herself because she was not becoming Jane by proximity. She also bought a second coffee she did not need because the afternoon had a shape already and that shape involved arguing with metadata until her soul left her body.
When she got back to Sixty, Tony was in Jane’s lab.
Not deeply in it. Not settled. Just leaning against the edge of a workstation while Jane pointed at a display and talked with increasing speed. He looked more awake than he had in the hallway, which Darcy suspected meant either science or arguing functioned as caffeine.
Darcy set Jane’s coffee and soup on the table nearest her usual path.
Not in Jane’s hand.
Never in Jane’s hand if Jane was talking. That was how coffee ended up on equipment.
“Soup,” Darcy said.
Jane reached blindly.
Darcy moved the coffee an inch out of danger.
Jane’s fingers found the soup cup instead.
“Thank you.”
Darcy set the crackers beside it.
Then she noticed Tony watching.
Not strangely.
Just watching.
She looked back.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was a suspicious nothing.”
“All nothings are suspicious if you say it like that.”
“Correct.”
He looked amused, but not interested enough to continue. His attention returned to the display when Jane snapped, “Tony,” like she had already forgotten manners were a social expectation.
Darcy returned to her desk.
The next two hours passed in the lab’s usual rhythm.
Jane and Tony argued through three models.
Darcy cleaned data.
JARVIS answered questions.
Chad jammed once in the background, possibly out of spite.
Tony stayed longer than he had stayed all week, though that still only meant the length of one actual meeting and half an argument. Darcy had seen him twice since that second day: once in passing, once for twenty minutes when he and Jane fought about sensor shielding until Darcy threatened to install a referee bell.
The tower did not revolve around him as much as Darcy had expected.
Or maybe it did, and she was simply too far above the corporate machinery to see it.
Tony appeared and disappeared. Calls took him. Meetings swallowed him. Sometimes the public lab across the hall was lit at odd hours, sometimes dark for a whole day. Sometimes JARVIS said Mr. Stark is unavailable with the pleasant finality of a door closing.
Darcy did not ask where he went.
Not her circus.
Not her billionaire.
At one, Tony’s phone buzzed.
He looked at it.
Something crossed his face too fast to name and too practiced to be accidental.
He looked away from the screen first, then his expression caught up and smoothed itself into irritation.
“Conference call,” he said.
Jane frowned. “Now?”
“Apparently adults with job titles want me to have opinions.”
“You do have opinions.”
“Exactly. You’d think they’d be more careful.”
Jane looked at the display. “We’re not done.”
“Great news. Science continues after lunch.”
“It is after lunch.”
“Then after whatever comes after lunch.”
“Work.”
“That sounds fake.”
Darcy said, without looking up, “It’s what people do when they don’t own towers.”
Tony glanced over.
She kept typing.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him point at her with the hand holding his phone.
“Logo,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was thinking it.”
“Think quieter.”
Jane made a small, amused sound.
Tony shook his head and headed for the door.
He was almost out when Darcy said, “Pliers.”
He stopped.
Looked down.
He was still holding them.
Darcy held out her hand automatically.
He looked at her hand.
Then at her.
Darcy remembered a second too late.
Not handed things.
She lowered her hand and tapped the table beside her.
Tony walked back and set the pliers down on the table.
“Would’ve noticed eventually,” he said.
“Sure.”
“In the elevator.”
“Absolutely.”
“Maybe during the call.”
“Very professional.”
He looked at her for one more second.
Nothing big.
Not yet.
Just a flicker of something that might have been amusement, or recognition of a remembered detail, or simple relief at not having to explain a weird preference to a woman who had known him for one week and did not matter.
Then he said, “Don’t steal those.”
Darcy placed a hand on her chest. “I would never.”
Jane said, “She would.”
“Jane.”
“You stole Erik’s mug.”
“No, you stole Erik’s mug.”
Tony looked between them.
Darcy lifted her chin. “Go to your call, Mr. Stark. The adults with job titles await.”
He left with a laugh under his breath.
The doors slid closed behind him.
Darcy picked up the pliers, looked at them, then put them on the far side of the workstation where Tony would see them if he came back.
Jane was staring at the display.
Darcy went back to work.
Nothing changed.
Not really.
By three, Jane had spilled soup on a printout but not the original, which Darcy counted as growth.
By four, Darcy had found a missing scan file in a folder labeled old maybe useful, which made her consider violence against past versions of Jane.
By five, Luis from Facilities stopped by to ask if the new cabinet locks were working and left with half a bag of crackers and a warning about Chad.
By six, Darcy’s eyes hurt.
She saved everything.
Backed it up.
Backed up the backup.
Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling.
“JARVIS.”
“Yes, Darcy?”
“Can you remind me tomorrow to buy labels?”
“Of course.”
“And plant food.”
“For your apartment plants?”
Darcy narrowed her eyes upward. “You sound like you have an opinion.”
“I merely have access to your reminder history.”
“Erik is thriving.”
“Erik is a cactus.”
“Exactly. He has low expectations.”
“Noted.”
Jane, from the whiteboard, said, “Who’s Erik?”
“My cactus.”
“You named your cactus after Erik?”
“He shares the energy.”
Jane thought about that.
Then nodded.
“Fair.”
Darcy closed her laptop.
“Dinner.”
Jane did not even argue this time.
Miracles everywhere.
They went down to the cafeteria, bought food, came back up, and ate on the common level because Darcy had decided Level Sixty-Five should not be wasted just because Tony Stark apparently built recreational spaces and then forgot recreation existed.
The common floor was ridiculous in a different way.
Cinema room. Game room. Bar. Lounge.
Library corner with books that looked expensive and unread.
A pool table that seemed decorative until Darcy touched it and discovered it was, insultingly, perfect.
Jane sat cross-legged on one of the sofas, eating noodles from a carton while reading something on her tablet. Darcy sat on the floor with her back against the sofa, because expensive furniture made her rebellious, and ate dumplings while watching the city lights come alive.
“Do you like it here?” Jane asked suddenly.
Darcy tilted her head back against the cushion and looked up at her.
Jane’s eyes were still on the tablet, but her voice had gone careful.
Darcy knew that too.
Jane did not ask emotional questions like most people did. She launched them at odd angles and pretended the answer was data.
Darcy looked out at Manhattan.
She thought about her apartment. The plants. Maya downstairs. Luis from Facilities.
JARVIS telling her which printer was least evil.
Jane eating bagels before Darcy threatened her.
Tony Stark looking caught for half a second in the hallway.
The tower still did not feel like home.
But it no longer felt like a place she had been placed.
“Yeah,” Darcy said. “I think I do.”
Jane’s shoulders dropped a little.
Darcy smiled.
“Don’t get emotional. I’m still mad the kitchen has a wine fridge but no normal kettle.”
Jane looked up. “It has a kettle.”
“It has a machine that heats water in six settings and asks questions. That is not a kettle. That is a judgment chamber.”
Jane smiled and went back to her tablet. Darcy ate another dumpling.
Below them, New York kept moving. Above them, the penthouse stayed quiet.
Somewhere between, Tony Stark probably annoyed someone important on a conference call.
Darcy did not think about him much after that.
She thought about tomorrow’s labels.
And whether the fern needed misting.
And whether she could find curtains that made her apartment feel less like she was living inside an expensive aquarium.
It had been a good week.
A weird week.
A rich people science tower week.
But good.
When she finally went back to her apartment, Darcy changed into soft shorts and watered the fern again because it looked emotionally fragile. She put the thrifted blanket over her legs, opened her laptop, and searched for curtains in jewel tones while JARVIS played music quietly through the apartment speakers after she asked him to find something “not sad, not clubby, and not whatever billionaires listen to while buying islands.”
He chose Nina Simone.
Darcy looked up.
“Okay,” she said. “Good taste.”
“I am pleased you approve.”
“Don’t get smug.”
“I would never.”
“That was smug.”
“Good night, Darcy.”
She laughed, pulled the blanket higher, and looked around the apartment.
Four plants.
One thrifted blanket.
Three open browser tabs for curtains.
A mug from the tower kitchen that she had not stolen, because she lived here and therefore could borrow it across floors.
A framed photo of her mother on the shelf.
Darcy breathed in.
Out.
The city glowed beyond the windows.
For the first time since arriving, she did not feel like she was sleeping in someone else’s idea of luxury.
She felt like she was beginning to make a place.