Bygone

In the lab at Malibu they fall back into their routine from when she’d visit him at MIT. AC/DC blasting and all. Guess that’s not just a stage.

The lab is still under construction, and Tony has built a second bot to help. U is technically more advanced than Dum-E, but Dum-E does learn and has had years to adapt.

When he’s delivered Darcy thinks he remembers her. Tony scoffs and calls the bot a failure. But Darcy realizes that he doesn’t destroy it, like his real failures.

Darcy thinks Dum-E’s earnestness has grown on Tony. The bot so badly tries to help. It still clings to its fire extinguisher, and while it’s not just fires that get sprayed, when there is a fire the bot is always quick to respond and Darcy’s glad he’s on hand.

Tony ignores every call from SI. A steady supply of personal assistants are sent down. Some don’t last the day and are fired, others end up in Tony’s bed and Darcy has breakfast with them the next day when they stumble out of Tony’s room.

Darcy really has to hand it to whoever is recruiting them. They’re casting a wide net. There was Amanda who had her M.B.A., and then Therese who had survived eight years following a Chemist around south Asia, and then Pam, who came from the media side of things and had totally hooked Tony up with awesome concert tickets.

And then there were the guys. Tony said Tom reminded him of a Yorkshire terrier. Tony said he was allergic to Rick’s cologne and also that he hates the name Rick. And Jason cried within the hour.

Darcy sucks at tears. She’s already given him her VHS of Batman Returns, and that baby isn’t getting released for another couple months, and he’s working his way through her omelet while she hands him Kleenexes when Tony comes up from the lab and has Dum-E chase him out. (Jason is afraid of robots.)

“That was mean.” Darcy tells him.

“I don’t care.” Tony rubs at his face with a kitchen towel, leaving it streaked with grease. “Besides, I think he hurt U’s feelings. Is that my lunch?”

“No, it was my lunch.” Darcy scrapes the remains of her omelet into the trash.

“He know a robot cooked it?”

“No, he thought I did.”

Tony snorts as U wheels into the room balancing a plate holding a ginormous omelet. “Grab a fork, Tenderheart Bear.”

Darcy dodges Dum-E as Tony kicks out a bar stool for her.

“What is this? What are we eating? U? What did you do?” Tony looks down at her when she tips her head onto his shoulder after stealing the bite off his fork. “We have seriously got to start limiting his TV access.”

Darcy shrugs, poking at her half of the omelet. U likes watching these cooking shows that are on the public access channels. Nothing like what’s coming, all low budget and on during the wee hours with infomercials about scissors that can cut pennies and leather cleaners.

There’s one that’s about being frugal, and the guy clips coupons and cooks with food no one else buys or that he forages. The other is a dry as dirt nutritionist with a lady boner for Jack Lalaine.

“It’s vegetables, Tony. They’re good for us.” Darcy tells him as she crunches through a particularly... cooked piece.

“Vegetables? I’m fine with vegetables. What’s wrong with eggplant Parmesan? Or those little cucumber sandwiches I like? Or-“

Darcy shoves her fork into his mouth.

“Okay, I’m serious now.” Tony says around a full mouth, gesturing with his fork. There’s a brownish cube on his fork. “What is this? Is this a root? Is this from the back yard? Are we eating palm tree nether regions?”

“Just eat Tony. Either he’s trying to kill us to start the age of the robot overlords, or he wants us to live.”

U beeps. They still can’t find a pattern to interpret the beeps. They have to plug the bots into find out what they’re doing. Saying? Thinking?

“Did I tell you he bought chickens and ducks from France?”

“I told you, just hire a person if you don’t want to deal with this stuff.” Darcy reminds him.

“No. No, people have people problems. At least robot problems make sense.” Tony holds his fork in front of her nose. “Does this look like a tentacle to you? Anyway, I put them in the upstairs bathroom.”

The phone rings and Darcy and Tony watch Dum-E roll over to it. The bot sets his fire extinguisher aside, picks up the receiver, beeps, and then hangs up.

“Finally.” Tony mutters. “You’d think I was teaching him rocket science.”

“Wait, the chickens and the ducks are in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, we gotta plug him in later and find out what he wanted with them.” Tony stops to mutter as he cuts a hard green thing that might once have been asparagus in half. “You came from ye olden days, you good with plucking feathers and shit? I think he can kill them with his claw.”

U beeps several times, wheeling forward and back. Dum-E rolls to the fridge, smashes an egg in his claw, and then rolls forward to drip the egg on Tony’s knee. Tony sighs his most long suffering sigh.

“Eggs.” Darcy pats Dum-E’s motor box. “Guess you’re building a coop.”

“Can poultry, no, uh, fowl? Whatever, can they even live out here?”

“I bet Jason would have known.” Darcy sets her fork aside. “Oooh, or Tina. Remember, the biologist?”

“The one with the legs?”

“They all have legs, Tony.”

“Not like those.”

They end up back down in the lab. They mention going out, doing things. But the Malibu house has become their haven.

Darcy revels in how different it is than any place she’s ever stayed before. It’s all modern clean lines, and the ocean is just steps away. It smells different.

She sleeps on thousand thread count sheets and goose feather down, miles and miles away from the lumpy pad she’d curled up on back in New Mexico with Jane. There is no crown molding and ornate balconies or statues, like Stark Mansion. She swims in the afternoons, but there isn’t silty river mud between her toes, and there are no creaking hardwood floors like the Prescott country house.

She teases Tony about the robots, about U’s questionable food, about how the only times they go out is when the cleaning crew is scheduled to be in. But she needs their bubble just as much as Tony does.

They are alone. The PAs come and go, and it’s only Darcy and Tony. If she joins the bots for bad late night TV with red eyes, Tony doesn’t say anything. If she buries herself in code, Tony knows, he understands.

They build a world of afternoon deliveries from the outside world, of bots, good whiskey, tolerable food, acceptance of aching grief, and mutual enabling. A part of Darcy does wonder if it’s healthy, but the majority of her is just fine with doing what needs to be done to survive.

And when she needs it, some connection, something to tether her, the stars shine bright and the sky is immense over the ocean. She has boxes she hasn't unpacked in her rooms, full of her things. And she has Tony.

Working the lab full time with Tony is different than it had been with Howard. Tony is different than Howard. He doesn’t stop. Howard would work for hours, but he would go upstairs to run SI. He would sleep, maybe not at a decent time, but at least a few hours every night.

Darcy stays by Tony’s side, recognizing the grief and hurt that seems to fuel him. Damn Howard for never figuring out a way to show his son that he loved him.

But Tony doesn’t want to hear about his dad from her, and Darcy respects that. Tony has always respected her unspoken boundaries. They talk about Maria sometimes, usually when Tony’s about to crash and she helps him haul himself to the couch. When that happens, she stays with him, holding his hand so he doesn’t wake up alone.

After two months at the beach house, Tony finally agrees to go to the SI offices. He leaves Darcy behind and tells her he has a surprise coming. The surprise is two days of furniture deliveries. Darcy dreams of surprising him upside the head with the ugly ass sculpture that arrived two days in.

He calls her after four days and he sounds all wrong. And drunk or stoned off his ass. She flies out to see him, and the world feels strange around her. A world without Howard, JJ, John, or Rebecca.

A world that is beginning to resemble the one she’d grown up in. People use boxy cell phones. Music she’d put on her iPod is climbing the charts. Bill Clinton is campaigning to be president, Disney is promoting it’s new animated film Aladdin, and on her way into the city Darcy passes a brand spanking new Toyota Tercel, which had been her first car.

She’s driving Tony’s Maserati, and it’s another one of those moments that feels so jarring. She belongs, and yet she doesn’t. The world is new and old. It is only now that she feels inescapably like a stranger in a strange land.

Again her name at the desk gains her entry, but she notices one of the receptionists picks up her phone, watching Darcy go.

She’s met by a tall, forbidding man in Howard’s office. He asks how she got up there, how she knew Howard. He’s angry and accusing and she doesn’t like him.

Tony comes in as the man advances on her. Tony is covered in grease, half drunk, and obviously just up from the labs.

“Darcy.”

“Tony, you know her?” The man asks, obviously displeased.

“She’s cool, Obie.” Tony goes straight to the wet bar. He pours Darcy her favored brand of whiskey. “Darce, should we sign on with Roxxon?”

“No.” Darcy blurts, unable to stop her gut reaction. Maybe she didn’t pay as much attention to the business world as she perhaps should have, but she did remember the ongoing rivalry between Stark Industries and Roxxon. And she'd forgotten about Obadiah Stane. Howard had considered him a good partner, as long as he was kept in line. He'd called him a shark, with no little delight.

“There we go.” Tony makes a grand gesture towards Darcy. “No Roxxon.”

“Tony.” Obie says, his voice full of disappointment. “Your father-“

“Obie. I’m going with no. And now I’m going to go back to Malibu and you can go back to keeping this place running so I can, what was it?” Tony swirls his drink and grins, “Keep playing with my toys? That make us millions?”

Darcy waits to talk to Tony about Obadiah until he’s soberish the next day, back in Malibu.

He laughs. “It’s funny, he doesn’t like you either. I know he’s kind of intense, but he was just doing his job.”

“Tony, don’t you think you should-“

“I’m not Howard.” Tony says, suddenly intense. “Big office, board meetings, briefcase full of paperwork. That’s not me. Sorry, Dad.”

“Tony-“

“Leave it.” So she does.