Chapter 5
It’s another bad night.
Not in the mood for a movie, Darcy makes her way to the kitchen to make some tea. Normally she is all about the coffee, but after London she’s come to appreciate a nice cup of tea in the middle of the night.
The facility is quiet. Tony and Pepper is in Miami, and she only knows this because it was on the news. She hasn’t seen any of the other big guns, but that isn’t unusual. For the most part it’s just Bruce and Tony that drops by the lab to Science!, the others have no reason to come by.
Pepper had given Jane and her a tour of the common areas when she first got here, but Darcy doesn’t feel comfortable hanging out there, no matter what Tony says.
Instead she spends her time in the labs, the shitty gym and her apartment.
The gym isn’t really shitty, in fact it’s state of the art and have all sorts of fancy things. But, as Linda from HR pointed out, it doesn’t have hot super soldiers (they have their own private re-enforced gym), and is therefore shitty.
Darcy is not a fan of working out, but after the whole kidnapping, she wants to at least be able to punch a bastard in the face and do it right. So she hits things and does strength exercises. Running is out of the question, but she does join Bruce for yoga when he rolls out his mat in a corner of the lab. This mostly happens after Tony has come by.
Her apartment is still mostly white and shiny. Darcy doesn’t know where to start with all the blank walls, and so she puts it off. She curls up on the couch with a blanket and avoids looking at them. The AI has offered to order some paint, clearly thinking that Darcy needs a push. But she declines, leaving the walls white and feeling the judgement from the AI.
Some days when she’s had a bad night she reverts to her tactic from the interrogation room. She keeps silent all day, letting her head fill up with mindless chatter and decorating ideas, cooking recipes and travel plans. The first time this happens Jane and Bruce looks concerned, but they seem to understand and leaves her to it. It’s worse when the silent days collides with Tony. He doesn’t get how anyone can go seven seconds without speaking, but Darcy isn’t budging. Somehow the silence helps her deal with the mess that her brain drags up, and Iron Man or not, he is not messing with something that works for her.
With a steady income now, Darcy stocks up her little kitchen and gets baking again. She use to love to bake growing up, but being a poor student didn’t encourage stocked pantries.
In New Mexico there was little time for baking and not a very good kitchen.
Tromsø, on the other hand, was fantastic. In addition to the vaffels from heaven, she had time and inspiration to bake. It seemed that everyone was baking, it was super trendy according to the lab manager, and soon Darcy was dragging up her old recipe book and happily exchanging tips and ideas.
London had been fun at first, in terms of baking. But soon the money was short again and then the stupid dark elves showed up.
And then it was back to Culver and poor poor student life again.
But now, well now she could by all the ingredients she needed to make a kick-ass chocolate cake without thinking about how she was going to make rent that month.
With tea in one hand and a spatula in the other, Darcy spend the rest of the night making millionaire shortbread. She might not be entirely certain about what she is supposed to do here in this facility, but she might as well enjoy it. Besides, the shortbread goes spectacularly well with tea. The British really know their stuff.