Flashback
It was a suspiciously nice day.
The sun was shining - not always a given in London, especially during late February.
Mark was with her, eyes shining as he inspected the different varieties of fern, telling her stories that were a mix of half-true, half-remembered, and half-repeated.
“Oh, let’s go over here,” he said as the path they were on forked. “I hear their water lilies are stunning.”
“You’re the botanist,” Darcy said, slipping her arm through his and following him as he half-dragged her past an enormous Victorian-looking greenhouse stuffed to the gills with foliage and towards a much smaller greenhouse.
She didn’t really care what they looked at. This was her day off, the time where she wasn’t trying to help Jane with research on the leftover Dark Elf artifacts while at the same trying to set up the Avengers’ latest ‘we’re not actively trying to destroy national monuments’ PR effort. Most of that involved Cap and Thor working at the Naval College in Greenwich, being their well-muscled, all-around-good-guy selves as they helped to shift rubble and rebuild what Malekith had helped to destroy.
“You ok, princess?” Mark was looking down at her with a funny expression on his face.
Darcy shook herself. Day off, Lewis. This is your day off. As in, no thinking about work.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Woolgathering.”
Mark, somewhat uncharacteristically, didn’t say anything, but instead put a finger underneath her chin and tilted it upwards, kissing her softly.
“No need to apologize, princess,” he murmured.
“Well in that case,” Darcy said, snarking in reflex to the unexpected romance. Mark’s grin flashed, and he started off towards the mini-greenhouse again.
“You’re gonna love this,” he said. “I called them yesterday - they said the lilies are just starting to bloom.”
Darcy pushed open the door and winced as she was covered in a blanket of humidity. Her fingers unbuttoned her peacoat as the heat registered, but her mind was elsewhere.
The place was as gorgeous as advertised. Vines snaked along ceiling and climbed the walls, orchids dripping from the vines. She passed through the antechamber into the main room of the greenhouse, not bothering to check whether or not Mark was following her.
Instead, she was drawn to the pond in the center of the greenhouse, stepping forward noiselessly until her legs hit the information placard at its edge.
The pond was covered in water lilies. Blues that were almost purple - or was that purples that were almost blue? - deep maroon, white. And the leaves, all green, some large enough to sit on, some small and delicate.
Darcy stood and stared, taking it all in.
Until she realized she couldn’t feel Mark behind her.
“Where’d you-” she began, spinning on her heels, then stopped, mouth falling open in surprise.
Mark was on one knee, a small velvet box in one hand, smiling up at her. “Took you long enough,” he said.
“You take me to a pretty place, I look at the pretty things,” she snarked back, but she couldn’t quite find the sarcasm that should have gone with the quip.
“Was there something you wanted to say?”
“As a matter of fact,” Mark fidgeted. “I … almost eight years ago, I was TAing for a Botany 101 class, and there was this one girl - a student of mine. Smart, gorgeous, and it took everything I had not to ask her out while I was teaching her. And then all my courage to finally ask her out when she passed the class. With an A, of course,” his smile slipped into the self-assured.
“Of course,” Darcy repeated.
“Anyway, she said yes - and it turns out, I’m really glad she did,” Mark went on. “Because I’m pretty sure she’s the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. The woman I want to have children with.
“Darcy Lewis, you are the most sarcastic, workaholic, gorgeous, selfless, brilliant girlfriend a botanist like me could ever have. Any chance you’d be willing to be my sarcastic, gorgeous, selfless, brilliant wife?”
Darcy wasn’t tearing up. Nope. That was … pollen. Did water lilies even have pollen at this time of year?
“You forgot workaholic,” she said softly. “And yes. Yes, I will marry you.”
And then Mark was on his feet and she was moving towards him and they had their arms around each other, the ring box still in Mark’s hand digging into Darcy's kidney.
Two days later, Mark was assigned to Ares III.