A/N Well hello everyone! Here we are with the long awaited and (hopefully) eagerly anticipated sequel to V is for Victory! I know it's been awhile but hopefully some of you are still around :) I know it's been a long time and I left you all on that awful cliffhanger so I'll stop talking and let you get to it...

At first, there was nothing but darkness.

She was adrift in a sea of blessed unconsciousness, floating safe and warm where nothing could touch her.

Then, there was the unmistakable feeling of lips pressed softly against hers. Urging her gently to rejoin the land of the living.

With a great deal of effort, Darcy forced her eyelids open and found one of the most beautiful men she'd ever seen hovering above her.

"I thought it was supposed to be Prince Charming who wakes the girl with a kiss," Darcy joked weakly. Okay, it wasn't her best work, but she'd been unconscious thirty seconds ago, so she would give herself a pass this time.

"Prince Charming couldn't make it, but Captain America was happy to step in," Steve teased, brushing a lock of hair off her face, a bright smile spreading across his face as he leaned in to kiss her once more.

Darcy was confused, her head was spinning and she must have misheard him, because did he say Captain America?

"Who?"

Steve froze, his lips hovering eight inches above hers and Darcy didn't know if she should be disappointed or not.

As much as she appreciated the whole Sleeping Beauty routine, she usually liked to know someone's name before she made out with them. Well, there had been that one time she went to the Sigma Nu's Halloween party and her roommate had had to peel her away from a guy she'd known only as Ferris Bueller at the end of the night. But she wasn't nineteen anymore, and she wasn't drunk on jello shots and jagerbombs. Although the way she currently felt wasn't too far off from the hangover she'd had the morning after that ill advised frat party.

Steve lurched to his feet, taking a step back from Darcy, horror clear on his face. But she didn't have the energy or wherewithal to notice let alone worry about that right now. Instead, she let her eyes close, and mentally took stock of how she felt.

"I really hope someone got the license plate on that bus that hit me," she groaned, regretting having ever woken up. She felt awful and she had no idea why.

The last thing she remembered was… aliens in New York? Okay, weird, but not the first alien invasion that she'd lived through. But there was something after that, they had run through the streets to Stark Tower. They made it to the penthouse, but then Loki grabbed Jane and-

"Jane!" Darcy exclaimed, her eyes popping open as she struggled to sit up. "Is Jane okay? Where is she?!"

"I'm right here," Jane said, pushing her way to Darcy's side, helping her to sit upright. "I'm fine. Are you okay?"

"I think so," Darcy answered, grabbing at Jane's arms both to assure herself that her friend was okay and to keep herself steady, since the whole room was spinning a little bit. "My head hurts and I feel a little seasick." She swallowed hard as her stomach rolled. "Make that a lot seasick."

"That's alright," Jane assured her. "Just take a minute."

Darcy closed her eyes, a took a moment to breathe through her nausea, focusing on not throwing up in Tony Stark's penthouse. When the feeling passed, she reopened her eyes and squinted at her friend. Jane looked different than she remembered. "Did you change clothes?" She glanced down at her lap. "Did I change clothes?"

"Yeah, about that," Jane began.

"Oh my god, what am I wearing?" Darcy grabbed her chest with both hands. "What kind of bra am I wearing?! Someone call Frederick's of Hollywood! I have a bullet boob emergency!"

"Why don't you worry about your underwear later," Jane said, rolling her eyes at the younger woman's priorities.

A shorter, kind of scruffy-looking man, stepped forward from the assembled crowd. "Hi Darcy, I'm Bruce Banner, I'd like to check your vitals if that's okay with you."

"Uh, sure, I guess," Darcy shrugged, and then nodded. She didn't seem the harm in that, although she still wanted to know why it was necessary. "Wait. Banner. Why do I know that name?"

Jane moved to sit down on the couch on Darcy's right, so that Bruce could come over and sit on her left while he performed his exam. "Because he used to work at Culver," she said, waiting for the moment when it clicked.

Darcy's eyes slowly widened as realization hit. "No eff-ing way! You're that Dr. Banner?!"

Bruce seemed to physically shrink in on himself, expecting that now the young woman wouldn't want to be anywhere near him. But Darcy wasn't finished yet.

"Dude, you are a legend on campus!" she exclaimed. "The first two questions when you meet someone new are 'What's your major' and 'Where were you when The Hulk attacked?'"

Bruce cringed. "Everyone knows the... other guy, is me?"

"Well, not everyone," Jane assured him.

"It's just... one of Culver's more poorly kept secrets," Erik added, speaking up from where he was standing by he window. Darcy and Jane were nodding in agreement.

"I mean, it's mainly just rumors and hearsay with a dash of good ol' fashioned conspiracy theory, but all the clues are out there just waiting for someone to put them together," Darcy said. "We are college kids, at least a couple of us are smart."

"And you're not scared of me?"

Darcy scoffed at that idea. "Nah, you look like you've got a handle on it. If anything, I owe you a drink," she told him. "Your last little romp through campus got me out of a midterm I was sooo not ready to take. With classes canceled I got a whole extra week to study. I owe my A minus in Public Choice Theory to you. So thanks for that. Seriously."

"You're welcome," Bruce chuckled awkwardly, "I think. Do you mind if I check you over now?"

"Yeah, sure," Darcy agreed. "But you're not a medical doctor, are you?"

"No, but I know enough to know if you need to go see one," he explained. "Besides the headache and nausea, are you experiencing dizziness, disorientation, any other pain?" Bruce asked, using a penlight to check Darcy's pupillary response.

"Well, that light isn't doing my head any favors," Darcy said, squinting. "And I was a little dizzy, but that's already going away. At least the room isn't spining anymore. Same with the nausea."

"That's good," Bruce nodded, moving on to checking Darcy's temperature, satisfied with the results.

"Does someone want to tell me what's going on?" Darcy asked, taking a moment to look around the room as Bruce strapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. She'd been momentarily distracted by getting to meet the Hulk's human counterpart, but she wanted some answers.

Her gaze flitted past Natasha and Clint, not knowing either of them. She blinked twice when she noticed Tony Stark of all people, standing by the bar with a drink in his hand. But since it was his house, she supposed that made sense. She didn't want to look at Steve too long since he was still hovering just out of arm's reach, looking at her like she'd kicked his puppy. And then there was Thor, who was currently taking his hair down from some complicated looking braid, but was currently dressed like she and him were going to the same costume party. He was the one that answered her question.

"Lady Darcy, you fell through a portal of my brother's making," Thor told her. "It took us some time to find a way to bring you home."

Darcy frowned. She didn't remember any of that. "Where was I?"

Jane pointed at the man who'd kissed her. "With him."

"And you are?" Darcy asked.

"I'm Steve," he said, swallowing hard past the lump in throat as he thought back to the last time he introduced himself to the woman in front of him. The penthouse of Stark Tower was a far cry from the dirty alley back in Brooklyn, when he'd met her the first time, although the emotions swirling in his chest were similar. "Steve Rogers."

"Steve Rogers," Darcy repeated to herself. She looked over at Jane, and asked the question for the second time that day, "Why do I know that name?"

Jane smirked. "Because he's also Captain America."

"Captain Amer- Wait, you mean Star-Spangled Man With a Plan, Captain America?" Darcy asked, dubiously.

"The one and only," Bruce confirmed, as he removed the cuff from her arm. "Your blood pressure and pulse are a little high, but that's to be expected considering the circumstances. I think you'll be okay, but if you start to feel worse, then you should see an actual medical doctor."

Darcy nodded, absently acknowledging Bruce's advice, but she had bigger concerns at the moment and turned back to Jane. "Where did you say I went, again?"

"More like when, not so much where," Jane revealed. "The portal sent you back in time."

"To World War Two," Darcy said slowly, glancing suspiciously at Steve from the corner of her eye. "Where I met Captain America."

"And became a star of the Silver Screen," Tony interjected, watching this all go down with undisguised glee written all over his face.

Darcy's gaze snapped in the billionare's direction. "Say what, now?"

"No, seriously, you time-traveled and became a movie star. I'm Clint, by the way, and this is Natasha," he introduced himself and his heretofore silent partner. "We never officially met, but I was in New Mexico."

"Oh yeah, right, I thought I recognized you as one of the jackbooted thugs," she said, with a half-hearted little wave. "And I think I see where the mix-up is. You're all thinking of my great aunt," Darcy corrected, confident that this was all some sort of misunderstanding. "She was the movie star. I was named for her, and everyone says that I look a lot like her, but that's just genetics, not time travel. I'm not her."

"I know it's hard to believe," Erik said, "but you're one and the same."

"Okay, there's a couple reasons that's impossible," Darcy countered, still not believing it. "One, there's no way I was an actress. I know I come off like I enjoy being the center of attention, but I actually have the worst stage fright in like ever. In the third grade, I was a tree in the class play. I didn't even have lines and I still ended up crying and running off stage. And two, she was my Grandpa's older sister. You know, who he grew up with. And since I am very much a nineties kid, I couldn't have grown up in the thirties too. How could I be two completely different people at the same time?"

"I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together," Tony offered.

"Aren't two people enough?" Darcy returned, unable to withhold a smirk, easily recognizing the reference. "I'm not going to be the eggman and the walrus, too."

"Goo goo g' joob," Bruce contributed to the conversation.

Everyone in the room chuckled except for Thor and Steve who looked at each other confused, clearly neither of them understanding what was going on.

"No, but seriously," Darcy said. "Two lives, one person. I know I'm just a poli sci major, but even I know the math doesn't check out."

"It is difficult and complicated to explain in full, but I shall endeavor to try," Thor began.

"Give me the short and simple version then," Darcy requested, not sure her scrambled brain was up to processing 'difficult and complicated' at the moment. She could always get a more in depth explanation when she felt a little less like death warmed over.

"Please yes, give her the Reader's Digest version," Clint concured quickly. There had been a lot of discussions and debates about the nature of time travel and the space time continuum among the science contingent in the tower over the last few weeks, and he was well aware how quickly the conversation could spiral if not kept concise.

"The short and simple version then," Thor agreed, taking a moment to decide how to best boil the information down to its most easily understood form. "The first thing you should know, is that time travel is an extremely difficult and dangerous form of magic," he explained. "As such the practice of such magics are forbidden across the Nine Realms. The Norns themselves stand guard at the Well of Fate at the base of Yggdrasil, as they weave the tapestry of time, in part to prevent such meddling." He paused to make sure Darcy was still following, when she nodded to show she was, Thor continued. "Any attempts to alter the fabric of time will have rippling consequences, from the inconsequential to the disastrous, depending on the methods used. Luckily for all of us and the Nine Realms, that while misguided, Loki is incredibly skilled."

"Misguided would not be the word I'd use," Erik mumbled darkly.

Thor continued as if he hadn't heard him. "Your journey through Loki's portal not only took you backwards through time, but reality itself was manipulated. The loom of fate rewove itself, fundamentally changing the universe in order to give you a history and a place in the past."

Darcy wasn't sure she entirely understood Thor's explanation, and trying to wrap her head around it only made the throbbing in her brain intensify. "So basically, magic."

"Yes, that is the shorter and simpler version," Thor smirked.

"Are you buying this?" Darcy asked Jane, trusting in her friend's scientific skepticism in the face of Thor's magical explanation.

"Darcy," Steve interjected. "I promise you it's all true."

Darcy frowned. "Look, you're real cute and all, in a Boy Scout sorta way, that I'm sure makes people trust you instinctively. So no offence, but I don't know you. I'm asking Jane."

Jane gave Steve, who looked like Darcy had just slapped him across the face, an apologetic glance, before answering her question. "I'll be the first to admit that even I don't fully understand it. And frankly I don't know how this hasn't created some kind of crazy world ending paradox, you somehow being yourself twice. But aliens and magic, we've seen these things before. And the one thing that we can't deny is that the Darcy in 1944 disappeared the same day that Thor went and got you to bring you here. That's an undeniable fact. That was you. It should be impossible, and yet here you are."

"Of all the times you've told me I'm impossible, I never thought you'd mean it like this," Darcy said, able to find the humor of almost any situation. Even if that situation was finding out that she was her own great aunt. "So basically what you're telling me, is that my life is like that episode of Futurama where Fry finds out he's his own grandfather?"

Natasha chuckled, causing several pairs of eyes to dart over to her in surprise at her inappropriate laughter. Especially since it was the first sound she'd made since Darcy's return.

"It's a good episode, and an accurate comparison," she shrugged in explanation, causing the looks to become even more incredulous. "I like Leela," Natasha added unapologetically.

"Yes, but at least you didn't have to do anything creepily incestuous like sleep with your own grandmother to make that happen," Tony supplied helpfully. No one was surprised that Tony enjoyed watching Futurama in his spare time.

"Okay, so I travelled through time," Darcy said finally, circling around to acceptance. "I suppose that explains what I'm wearing, the torture shoes, and the jet lag from hell," she said, reaching down to pull off the vintage heels she'd worn back from the past. She turned to look at Steve, "And that's where… when I met you?"

"Right," Steve confirmed. "We became… close." It was an understatement to be sure, but he didn't even know how to go about explaining what they were to each other. He didn't know what to say to the woman he loved more than anything, but who looked at him as a stranger.

"Close," she echoed. She had figured that much, given the kissing earlier. "Right, there was a… USO tour?" she asked, not sure if that was correct.

"Yes!" Steve exclaimed hopefully. "You remember?"

"I remember the stories my grandpa told me about family history," she shrugged. "Or I guess stories about my history. That's still so funky to wrap my head around."

"Oh," Steve said, disappointment written all over his face. "Of course."

"So how did you get here?" Darcy asked Steve. "To the twenty-first century I mean. Because shouldn't you be like ninety? Or did you hop through the portal, too?"

"No, he spent the last seventy years as a Capsicle," Tony interjected.

Darcy blinked at Tony, before turning back to Steve for confirmation.

"There was a plane crash in the Arctic," Steve shrugged.

"They just defrosted him a couple of months ago," Tony supplied helpfully.

"Convenient," Darcy said dryly, deciding to take this information at face value, unable to muster up anymore disbelief at the moment. "So how come I don't remember you? How come I don't remember any of this? If I lived this whole other life, shouldn't I know that?"

Everyone glanced at each other, no one having an answer. Nobody had anticipated that Darcy would have no memory of her time spent in the past. Although perhaps they should have.

"You didn't remember your life here, back then either," Steve admitted, his heart aching in his chest. He'd been so excited to have Darcy back, that it hadn't occurred to him that just like the Darcy he'd fallen originally fallen in love with in 1943, had no memories of her life in the future, the Darcy that returned to him in 2012 might not remember her time in the past.

"My mother consulted with the Norns on the best way to bring you back to your proper place with the least disturbance to the original intended timeline, and to you," Thor offered his own hypothesis, thinking of Frigga's cryptic words before he brought Darcy back to Midgard. "Perhaps the human mind is incapable of containing the memories of two lifetimes. I will consult my mother further."

"I guess it doesn't really matter, if I remember it or not," Darcy shrugged and slumped back against the couch. "I mean I'm back now and can just move on with my life like it never happened. No harm no foul, right?"

Steve inhaled sharply and Thor gave the super solider a pointed look, but before either of them could say anything Darcy spoke again.

"Ugh, I think I need a drink," she groaned, glancing at the glass in Tony's hand. "Can a time-traveling girl get one of those?"

"No!" Steve exclaimed. "You can't!"

"And why not?" Darcy snapped. "I think I deserve one, with the day I'm having."

"Because it's bad for the baby," he blurted. In a fit of masochism, he had used his laptop to look up pregnancy, wanting to know how far along Darcy would have been when she disappeared. And in the process, he had learned many of the modern do's and don'ts of pregnancy.

The whole room descended into chaos at the bombshell Steve had just dropped. Everyone was talking over each other at this new development.

"I AM NOT PREGNANT!" Darcy exclaimed over the din. "I've worked very hard on making sure I'm very responsible with my birth control. I've been on the pill since I was sixteen, and I always make the guy bag it. There is no way in hell that I'm gonna end up pregnant by some guy I don't even know!"

Steve blushed deeply at having this conversation in front of everyone. "We weren't as careful as we should have been," he admitted. Honestly, at the time, something like birth control hadn't even occurred to him. Sure, he had seen the requisite film on venereal disease when he'd joined the Army, but it wasn't like that with Darcy; he loved her.

"We?" Darcy asked, rounding on Steve, picking out the key word.

"Yeah," Steve said, looking chagrined. "We were more than just close."

Darcy let out a laugh that had zero humor in it.

"The Captain speaks the truth," Thor interjected. "Lady Darcy mentioned she was with child when she thought I was the enemy and feared I may harm her. I could not be certain whether you were aware," he said, with another pointed look in Steve's direction, "as you did not say anything about it before I went to retrieve her."

"No!" Darcy exclaimed, leaping to her feet before Steve had a chance to respond to Thor's comment. "No, nope, nuh uh, no way, absolutely not. This cannot be my reality right now. I didn't even think you were real until twenty minutes ago."

That brought Steve up short. "What do you mean not real?"

"The whole 'Captain America' shtick. I thought it was just an act, that you were an actor hired to boost morale. I wrote a paper on the WWII propaganda machine for my U.S. History class my junior year of high school. I put the paragraph on you between the paragraphs on Rosie the Riveter and racist Looney Tunes cartoons." Darcy was pacing around the room, her arms flailing wildly as she spoke. "I mean, the whole experimental super soldier serum thing's a little far-fetched, isn't it? I thought it was like when they started telling people that carrots improve your eyesight."

"Wait, carrots don't improve eyesight?" Clint interjected.

"No, the British invented onboard radar for their aircraft," Bruce explained. "They didn't want to Germans to know how the RAF could suddenly see them so well in the dark, so they spread the rumor that carrots improve night vision."

Clint frowned. "See if I ever eat another carrot."

"Not the time Barton," Natasha scolded her partner.

"I've accepted that I traveled through a magical portal through time. I've even come to grips with the fact that I'm apparently my own great-aunt. But now you're trying to tell me I'm pregnant with Captain America's spawn?"

Darcy started to hyperventilate, her eyes wide as saucers, clearly beginning to panic. Steve instinctively moved to comfort her, but the absolute death glare she shot at him, stopped him in his tracks, before he could touch her. Jane took his place instead, and with Bruce's help the two led Darcy back to the couch.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Darcy gasped, feeling light headed and nauseous as her breathing continued to speed.

"Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth," Bruce told her, pressing on her shoulders gently so she'd put her head between her knees.

"You need to calm down or you're going to pass out again," Jane said, rubbing Darcy's back. "And that can't be good for…uh, you right now," she added, catching herself just a moment too late.

"Oh god, you were gonna say it's not good for the baby!" Darcy lamented sitting back upright. "No. I refuse to be pregnant. Absolutely not! I don't want it. Take it back. Return to sender."

"I think it's a little late to be closing that barn door," Clint pointed out. "I mean that horse is sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a mai tai by now."

Tony looked at the archer through squinted eyes. "Who are you?"

"Clint has a point Darcy," Jane said delicately. "Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way. If you're pregnant, you're pregnant."

"Yeah, and a really quick trip to Planned Parenthood in the morning could fix that," Darcy snapped without thinking.

"What? No!" Steve shouted, completely horrified. He may not have known what Planned Parenthood was exactly, but he understood the gist of her threat.

Darcy took one look at the absolutely devastated expression on Steve's face and couldn't help but feel guilty at her thoughtless words. But she also couldn't begin to process anything that was going on right then.

"You know what, I can't deal with any of this shit right now," she announced, before practically running for the elevator, disappearing behind the closing doors before anyone realized what was happening.

"Well that could have gone better," Tony said to no one in particular.

"I need to go after her," Steve said heading for the stairs, thinking he could beat her to the lobby if he hurried,

"No. Let her go," Natasha advised, holding him back. "This is a lot to process. Give her some time and space."

"But she's not even wearing shoes," he said dully. A flash of gold caught his eye and he crossed over to where his compass had fallen on the floor by the couch after Darcy had dropped it. He flipped it open and ran a finger over the inscription inside. "She's always running out without shoes on."

A/N And there we have it! First chapter of the second story of this series :D Let me know what you think!