Bygone
Chapter 22: Kismet

He was gone.

Darcy sat on the hastily made bed, holding the already too-familiar weight of the envelope in her hands. She brushed a thumb across the name written so carefully in that textbook-perfect cursive; the ink didn't smudge, leaving her to wonder how long ago it had been addressed, when he had taken the time to write the words within, and if those words were like the few she had gleaned from that first letter. He had only just returned with the rest of the Howling Commandos from classified locations east of Germany, fighting Nazis and HYDRA. Had he carried this envelope with him, kept a candle lit in the dark, foreign countryside, risking their location and lives? Her heart beat all the faster as she thought of his words, of the one specific word neither of them had yet said, might never say, though not from lack of desire to.

She pulled herself up and crossed the short distance to the box where that word was safely locked away, lifting the lid and setting this new envelope attop the first. They had met just one month ago, and she already had two love letters from the man. With barely over a year left to his life, she wondered how many more she might accumulate.

"Fucking Nazis," she muttered and tore her eyes from the letters and the box that housed them.

"Focus," she told herself. "Must keep Stark from destroying more supplies."

With a hard swipe at her eyes and a determined nod of her head, she set about trying to make herself look like a woman who had gotten a proper night's sleep alone in her bed. Given the two consecutive sleepless nights and the scuttlebutt already circulating through the bunker about her and Barnes, she had no hope of fooling anyone, least of all the man who signed her paychecks, but she felt as if she should put some level of effort into the task.

Mess was already closed by the time she managed to make herself halfway presentable. Feeling like death warmed over and looking little better, she glared at the empty room, her stomach grumbling its annoyance at the lingering smell of bacon and toast. The long night's activities had left her starving, and she had hoped for some powdered eggs and boiled potatoes to be able to deal with Stark, his petty jealousy, and general asshattiness. At least Stark had a hot plate and percolator in the office. Coffee might not keep the hunger pangs away until lunch, but it was better than nothing. With thoughts focused solely on the hot, sweet coffee that awaited her and not on either of the two men in her life, she shuffled through the corridors to work.

The office, just one set of double doors from the lab, had become familiar in the weeks she had been working there under - scratch that! with - Stark. She knew the layout, the contours of the ceiling, the odd bricks and uneven floor tiles, the sounds, the smells. Today, it was different.

The techs were at work just past the thick doors; repairs were still underway on the H4, and she could hear the rivet gun hammering away at the not-quite-pristine aluminum. That and the shouted curse words were both familiar, but the stillness in the office was not. Normally, once the workday began, the lab doors barely had time to close before someone came running through them again, asking for blueprints, notes or supplies to be requisitioned. Though more than anyone it was Stark coming to her for assistance. Today, the doors remained closed, the office calm and smelling like the breakfast she had missed.

As she rounded the corner of her desk, she found the source of the smells. Set atop the stack of forms and files was a upturned bowl, under it a plate of eggs, potatoes and toast. A note tucked beneath had her surname in Howard's familiar, messy scrawl.

"You absolute ass," she muttered, unable to keep the affection from her voice.

The eggs and potatoes were barely warm and toast burnt, but she ate anyway. As she did, she resolutely refused to think about that food as anything more than sustenance. To think about it any further would have left her feeling far more warm and fuzzy than she wanted to admit, because even if Stark had not gathered the potatoes and eggs himself, he had thought enough to have someone else do it, had worried about her, had known she slept in and the reason she had missed breakfast. To think such things and draw such logical conclusions would have whittled away more of the self-centered womanizer and revealed far too much of the lovable hero within, and Darcy could not have that. So she filled her belly with food and her head with nothing at all, though her heart still swelled regardless of her desires otherwise.

"Maria," a quiet voice called.

"Yeah" sighed Darcy, sad to hear the false name again after a night of being herself.

"Looks like the H4 is ready for the Colonel." Andy offered an oddly nervous smile as he held the door open for her to come see the results of their effort.

She followed where he led, observing the shining metal. She could identify every piece in it by name and requisition number, list how much of Uncle Sam's money went into it as well as how many rivets they used in assembling it. More than that, she could say which of the technicians standing proudly back had labored close to nineteen hours a day for the past three weeks to bring Stark's creation to life.

"It's beautiful," she said and felt the collective relief in the room. Really, it wasn't for her to decide, but she was the next best thing to having Howard when it came to approval. "Go take a break, boys. You earned it."

She couldn't help feeling like a proud mom as the men beamed at her and shuffled off to grab some coffee and sit for the first time in far too many hours. One figure was noticeable by his absence.

"Where's Stark?"

Felix, the nearest tech, a recent Texas A&M grad who had been given an 4-F thanks to his excessive hypertension, offered a smile equal parts apology and relief. "Colonel Philips had him escorted out a couple hours ago. Apparently, he's not allowed back in for the rest of the day."

"Really," she said.

Like Felix, she wasn't sure whether she was pleased by the news. The results certainly were worth a smile; Stark hadn't gotten to take his jealousy out on the H4 again, which did both Philips and Felix's blood pressure a world of good. However, it meant that the Colonel was even further up in her business than she had thought he was, and she knew the old man was in there fairly deep. Bucky had been so worried about being caught in her bed, but clearly everyone, his fellow and superior officers included, knew precisely where he had been. It was enough to make her wonder if the mission to Italy had been brought forward just to keep them apart. She shoved the thought away. Neither she nor Barnes were anywhere near important enough to be worth that kind of effort.

"Well, I'm not going to complain if it means finally moving this tub to the air strip," she said with far more bravado than she felt.

Felix offered a hearty nod before moving off to get what was left of the coffee.

Without Howard to clean up after, Darcy had little to occupy her brain and hands, and the worry about Bucky out in Nazi-occupied Europe began to plague her thoughts. She knew, as she had told Stark and herself multiple times, that Steve and his squad would survive the mission, that each of them would live another year or longer, but that knowledge didn't stop the concern about what they were facing.

"I thought you weren't the fretting kind."

Darcy glanced up from her work to find Stark standing opposite, looking every bit as exhausted as she felt, with hair and clothes askew. She would have thought him fresh from some romantic liaison, save than he would never wear such a thunderous expression after spending any length of time holed up in a closet with a woman.

"I thought you weren't supposed to come back to work until tomorrow morning," she countered.

"Maybe you haven't heard, but there's a war on." He dropped a small stack of papers and napkins onto her desk, presumably notes and designs that needed cataloguing and sorting. "Someone has to keep Barnes alive."

"Glad it fell to someone with half a brain," Darcy said.

He offered a wan smile, one that hinted at how sorry he was for that very same reason. "Lewis, have you considered that you being here might stop him dying?"

"Don't."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking about this Eistein-Rosen Bridge and all the things it implies, paradoxes and changes you're making. It was bad enough when it was just me and Jarvis, but you're in the center of a war, influencing things that matter. I wouldn't have let Erskine pick Rogers if you hadn't told me to do it," he insisted, chasing after her as she attempted to flee. "Who would be out there now if you hadn't done that?"

"Just don't," she warned, refusing to admit just how much time she had given up to these same thoughts, especially considering the conclusion she had been forced to draw.

She had been living and working among some historical and instrumental figures at a pivotal point in world history, yet nothing had changed. To date, all the events she knew were supposed to happen had happened, some because she had been there to make sure it did. Everything she knew about time travel, which admittedly came from movies and TV shows, indicated that something should have changed; like rings radiating out from a stone dropped in a still pond, those ripples should have washed across history. But they hadn't. George McFly hadn't grown a set; Bill & Ted didn't get an A on their report; Pompeii wasn't burning because everything was still exactly as she had known it. The only logic reason, horrifying as it was, was that she was supposed to be there; that history was as she knew it because her future had always been to go to the past; that the equation to send her home would be left as unfinished as Jane had found it in that box; that Tony would leave that box for Jane knowing she would use it to send the young woman who would become his mother back through a wormhole; that she was going to become Mrs. Howard Stark; that she had left two dollars and ten cents in her pocket along with walking directions when she put her coat into that box to start this cycle all over again.

No, Darcy had spent incalculable hours thinking these thoughts, and she did not want to admit this truth to anyone, not herself, certainly not Howard. Let the past change. Let Howard finish the equations. Let some other woman birth Iron Man. That had been her decision.

"Lewis, can't you just-"

"Howard, please," she interrupted, hating how desperate she sounded, "stop talking."

He paused, mouth pulling into a frown as his eyes studied her. "You never call me that."

"What?" she questioned, wondering what defamatory epithet she had thrown at him in her attempt to shut him up.

"Howard," he repeated quietly. "You never call me that."

"Well, it's your name. Some people actually take the time to learn those." She levelled him with a meaningful stare.

The man bristled. "I learn them when they matter."

"Sure you do," she commented dryly and moved to finally escape his presence and the conversation.

"I do!" he insisted, still following her.

She shouldn't have let him bate her, but she was tired and bordering on panic. "Yeah? You still can't remember Andy's name. Five years, he's worked for you. And let's not even get started on my name."

He breathed a sad laugh. "Oh, Darcy, of course I remember your name."

Despite the conflict of thought and emotions pulling at her with his words, all she could make her mouth say was: "Oh."

A/N: Completely insufficient apologies for the long, long delay. I quit teaching, got a new job in a new city. Lots of stuff all getting in the way and keeping my head and fingers from focusing on writing. Hopefully, that ends now.

Sorry, if it's stilted and awkward, but I'm terribly rusty.

Let me know what you think one way or another.