OMG, I wrote fic!
Yes, I have finally finished my big bang!
Title: Makeouts in the Modern World
Ship: girl! Captain America/Darcy Lewis
Rating: Probably R/NC-17
Summary:Darcy has been assigned to teach Captain Stephanie Rogers, or Steph, as she's told Darcy to call her, about the modern world and how to fit into it. This results in shenanigans, sassing Coulson, snarking with Natasha, Tony leering, movie dates and eventual makeouts.
This is part one.
Also, there is artwork for it! by http://ponderosa.dreamwidth.org/
“Oh my god. Is this where we’re going to be living now? Is this a thing that dating superheroes gets you? Where’s my superhero?” Darcy asked Jane as they pulled up to SHIELD headquarters, where Jane’s new lab was going to be. And probably their new home, too. Darcy knew from past experience that they would essentially be living in the lab, rather than in whatever housing her SHIELD paycheck could get her. She hadn’t had time to find a place yet. She’d found that the way SHIELD operated was to whisk everything away and then decide what to do with it later. So when SHIELD decided that she and Jane needed to relocate to New York, they had just hustled them and their belongings onto a plane rather than giving them time to arrange a place to live before they went to New York. If they were lucky there’d be a couch or a futon in the new lab and Darcy could take a nap before starting to figure out their living arrangements.
Unfortunately, the lab was empty except for the boxes that had been confiscated from the lab in New Mexico.
“Really? You didn’t even get us desks! It’ll take me forever to get this place set up,” Darcy exclaimed out loud, leaning against the wall with an exasperated sigh.
Coulson just laughed. Darcy glared just glared at him. “I-pod stealer,” she muttered under her breath.
“Don’t worry, desks are coming. We didn’t know what kind of furniture you’d be needing for the lab so we decided to let you pick the furniture for the lab and the apartment you’ll be sharing with Jane. Your luggage should already be there waiting for you. But first, we have some paperwork for you and Jane to fill out.”
At the sound of her name, Jane looked up from where she was cooing to the equipment she hadn’t seen since it had been confiscated by SHIELD. Darcy just groaned. Jane hated paperwork, and as a result usually had Darcy do it. At first, Darcy hadn’t minded it, but filling out grant applications for a project where you don’t understand most of the terminology could wear on anyone’s patience. As a result, she had come to loathe paperwork just as much as Jane did.
Darcy dragged Jane away from her boxes of work and they followed Coulson down the hall. He showed them into a conference room where they table was covered in neatly stacked piles of paper.
“This is a really bad joke, right?” Darcy said. “How much information could you possibly need from us that you don’t already know?”
“Mostly we just need you to sign lots of non-disclosure agreements…In triplicate. Some one will be in shortly to answer any questions you may have. Once you’re done filling out and signing your contracts, you’ll be able to choose the furniture you will need and fill out the requisition forms needed,” Coulson said with a smirk.
Darcy just sighed and took a chair at the table, pulling the nearest stack in front of her and taking a pen from the cup in the middle of the table. Jane joined her with a wary look and together they started reading through the paperwork. When Darcy was finished, she looked up to find an agent in the room with them. Darcy gave him an almost predatory grin before saying, “So, tell me how these requisition forms work.”
They emerged from the room an hour later. Jane was staring at Darcy in shock, while Darcy was grinning like the Cheshire cat. The agent followed behind them carrying a stack of requisition forms. Darcy decided she was going to like it at SHIELD, especially given how comfortable their apartment and lab were going to be. Funding was a nice thing. No wonder Jane had made her fill out those grant applications.
****
Eventually they got settled in and fell into a routine. People around the building started to recognize her, though usually all she got was a perfunctory “you are allowed to be here” nod. The agent from the first day turned and well, not ran, but walked very quickly in the other direction whenever he saw her. She didn’t blame him; he had filled in quite a lot of requisition forms for her that day. And she could probably get him to fill out more if he came close enough. He was a smart boy to avoid her like that.
She ended up spending most of her time in the cafeteria since, now that they weren’t out in the field, she was more of a personal assistant to Jane than a lab one. Listening to Jane talk to herself about things she had no idea about eventually got boring. At least there were people in the cafeteria. Her duties mostly consisted of making sure that Jane ate and filling out forms, though she sometimes got an unsuspecting SHIELD agent to do even that for her. Eventually it got to the point where Coulson noticed how much time she spent sitting around and started assigning her other tasks. Soon she was no longer Jane’s assistant, but one of Coulson’s. And while she still lived with Jane and thus was tasked with making sure she went home and slept, it got to the point where she didn’t even see Jane for lunch anymore. Instead, Darcy had started eating with the other SHIELD staff, and felt like one of them instead of “that girl who was only there because she tasered Thor” or “the one with the smile.” Not that she started wearing suits or anything, but she felt like a useful part of the organization instead of a waste of space. She was even given a new, government-issued taser! Though she’d been sternly warned not to use it unless the situation warranted it. Of course, her definition of what situations required a taser and which didn’t greatly differed from those of SHIELD agents. She may or may not have accidentally tasered an agent when they woke her up from a nap. She was startled and felt endangered okay? And he was a SHIELD agent; he should be able to handle a taser shock.
But anyways, Darcy was fitting in and hitting a paperwork and usefulness groove when all hell broke loose. And by that, she means they found Captain Fucking America. Unfortunately Darcy didn’t have the clearance or the training at the time to be assigned to the Captain’s little “reintegration” scheme. Though if they had asked her, she could have told them it wouldn’t have worked. Obviously SHIELD wasn’t full of researchers or they would have been able to get a recording of a baseball game from the right time period. And right after that clusterfuck was when Darcy’s life at SHIELD really changed.
They needed someone to help the Captain acclimate to modern life. So they started to look through the personnel files to see who was most suited to the task. Which, of course, was Darcy the poly-sci major, aka the one who took classes on history, dealing with people, and foreign cultures. And the modern world was pretty much going to be a foreign culture to the Captain. Knowing a bunch of languages and how to kill someone with your pinky weren’t the skills needed to help a national hero, long thought dead, get used to modern life. Nope. The skills needed there were a general knowledge of history, how to deal with people and good old fashioned research skills. And if there was anything Darcy knew how to do well, it was how to do research and deal with people a little detached from the world.
****
Her first day meeting the Captain didn’t go quite as planned. Darcy walked in to the room she was supposed to be meeting the Captain in, only to find her absent. So Darcy wheedled her way into the security room and found that the Captain was in the gym beating up punch bags.
So, armed with her computer, taser and charm, she made her way down to the gym, only to have a punching bag fly straight at her when she opened the door.
Thankfully she ducked in time, but in her haste to get out of the way, she fell on top of her laptop.
“Oh my god! I am so sorry! I wasn’t expecting anyone to come down!” Captain America said, rushing towards Darcy to help her up. She was a tall woman with short, unevenly cut, dirty blonde hair. She held her hand out to Darcy, who took it, and was pulled to her feet, her feet almost leaving the ground with the force of the pull.
“Darcy Lewis,” she said, shaking the Captain’s hand. “We were supposed to meet upstairs about 15 minutes ago.”
“Oh, I am so sorry! I must have lost track of time! I kind of zone out when I’m down here…” she trailed off and looked around guiltily at the room full of ruined exercise equipment. “Let me just go get changed and I’ll meet you upstairs in about 15 minutes. Is that okay? Did you have somewhere else you needed to be?”
“Nope. Meeting with you is all I’m doing today. I’m going to be helping you catch up on everything that’s happened in the last seventy years. But I think you might have more than 15 minutes,” Darcy said looking glumly at her computer. “I’m going to have to get a replacement and transfer the files I had. How about we meet in an hour? That’ll give you plenty of time to shower and get changed. Conference room 345 at 10:30, okay? Don’t make me fetch you again. Two computer replacements in one day would be really embarrassing,” Darcy said as she gathered up its remains.
“Yeah, okay,” Stephanie Rogers said, sheepishly playing with her sweaty hair. “I’ll make sure to make it this time. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger again. I am so, so sorry about that. Sometimes I’m not really aware of my own strength.”
“Well, that’s just something that we’ll, well not me and you,” Darcy gestured between herself and the Captain, “but you and SHIELD will have to work on,” Darcy said as she gestured to the ceiling, obviously referring to the rest of the building above their heads. “Training and stuff isn’t really my expertise, though I think Coulson might be thinking about making me go in for some. My donuts keep disappearing and being replaced by granola and bananas. Which would be cute except for the fact that I’m allergic to bananas,” Darcy rambled. Captain America was just really different from what she imagined. When Darcy was growing up she had a poster of Captain America punching Hitler right next to pictures of her favorite celebrities. This tall, shy woman, who was staring at Darcy as if she had grown an extra head, was nothing like what she had expected. “Anyways, gotta go replace this. See you then!” Darcy yelled as she made a hasty retreat. She saw the Captain shaking her head and smiling just a little bit in reflection on the elevator door as she waited for it. Well, at least she thought Darcy was amusing.
****
An hour later, Darcy was drinking coffee and waiting for her files to transfer to her new computer when Captain America, freshly showered with her dark blonde hair curling delicately around her face and dressed in khakis and white button down, came into the room. Darcy took a quick gulp of her coffee to brace herself for spending the rest of the morning, and who knows how much longer, with the gorgeous woman that was Captain Stephanie Rogers.
Of course, she was still Darcy, so instead of making cow-eyes at the Captain, she stood up and snarked, “Glad to see you were able to find the room, Captain.”
Thankfully, the Captain didn’t seem to pick up on her sarcasm and just blushed, saying, “Please, call me Steph. My friends used to call me that and well, if you’re going to be taking the time to help me out, I’d like us to be friends,” she said with a sad look in her eyes.
Darcy had to work to keep a straight face at “Steph” after that instead of just cooing at her. Seriously, was this girl real? She was just too adorable to be true, possible anger and control issues aside. Darcy smiled widely and said, “I’d like that. And well, it’s not like I’m really doing anything useful for SHIELD. I used to be a lab assistant, but I kind of was no longer needed and they decided it was best to keep me around and after the clusterfuck,” Steph made a face at the curse, “that was them trying to trick you into thinking it was the forties, they realized that hey, that chick with the taser actually has some useful skills.” Darcy paused for breath. “Oh god, rambling. Sorry! You must think I am a total weirdo.” Darcy face-palmed and sunk back down into her chair.
Steph just laughed as she pulled out the chair next to Darcy and sat down. “It’s totally fine. I know all about being awkward.” She blushed. “I mean, I don’t know how much you know about me before the program, but I used to be pretty tiny. And a five foot tall tomboy trying to keep up with a bunch of full grown men joining the army? Trying to enlist was pretty awkward. The few times I managed to hide the fact that I was a girl they pretty much rejected me on how tiny I was alone, my asthma not withstanding.” She shifted, and shrugged. “My friend Bucky used to tease me about my short legs not being able to keep up, but I walked a lot faster than him. He was always trying to keep up with me,” she smiled at the memory, but then looked unbearably sad.
Darcy wasn’t sure how to react, so responded to what the Captain had said about being short. “I know exactly how it is. Tall people walk so slow,” she said with a huff. “They claim it’s so that you can keep up with them, but I’m always a block ahead. I hope you’ve kept up your speed-walking skills despite the height difference.”
The Captain smiled again, the sad look leaving her eyes. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep up. I’m from Brooklyn, I know all about walking fast in New York City.”
Darcy had only seen her stern and serious in all of the propaganda she had done during the war. Even in photos of her with her team she wasn’t smiling much. There were a few candid ones where she was with a dark-haired man and another woman where her whole smile lit up the page. Darcy was hoping she was going to get to know that side of the Captain. It was nice to see the woman smiling after all that had happened to her. But Darcy was seriously not going to survive this assignment without embarrassing herself forever if the Captain didn’t stop being so sweet. Thankfully no one else was around to give her shit for being such a dork.
She laughed awkwardly and said, “Well, now that we’ve commiserated about being short, why don’t we start. First off, are there any pressing questions you had? Otherwise we’ll just start from where you “left off,” so to speak.” Darcy made air quotes and started pulling up the lesson plan she had made.
“Well, um, there’s this friend I had? I’d really like to be able to look her up and find out if she’s still alive and what she did with her life. Well, all of my other friends too, but her in particular.” And there she went again with the blushing. Darcy was going to have a heart attack from the cute if the Captain - no, Steph, didn’t cut it out.
“Do you know anything about using computers yet? An internet search of her name would be the easiest way to find her.” Darcy shifted over so that Steph could see the screen and opened up a new tab. Yes, she had just gotten a new computer and already the screen was full of tabs. “What’s her name? The more specific the better. You never know who else might have had her name since then.”
“Yeah, I kind of know how they work. I haven’t really been using them a lot though. Her name was uh, Peggy Carter. Well, really, Margaret Carter. She was an English Agent during the war.” Steph was still being her awkward adorable self, not quite meeting Darcy’s eyes. Hmm, there must be something about this Peggy that the Captain wasn’t telling her. Well, the internet would probably tell her all about it in a moment.
“Okay, so this website is called “Google.” You type in whatever it is that you’re looking for information about, whether it be a person, place, thing, or even scientific knowledge. Google gives all. There are other websites that do the same thing, but Google is the easiest, especially since there’s usually a search bar,” Darcy pointed to where it was on her screen, “and all you have to do is type in what you want there and it will search it for you. Did a lot of people call her Peggy, or just friends?”
“Well, I called her Peggy. Most of the other people around called her Agent Carter.”
“Okay, so let’s start with “Agent Margaret Carter” and let me know if you see anything that seems like it would be about her on the screen.” Darcy typed it in and immediately her page was full of hits. “Oh wow, it seems like she was quite the war hero.”
Steph smiled shyly. “Yeah, she was really swell.”
Darcy clicked on the Wikipedia article about her and her face immediately fell. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said without thinking.
Steph looked at the screen and her face immediately fell. It seemed that Peggy had died right around the time she had woken up.
“Do you want to read the rest? See what she did with her life?” Darcy asked softly, trying not to interrupt the Captain’s grief at another lost friend and lost opportunity.
“Huh, what? Um, yeah. I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”
“Okay, well, why don’t you try navigating the page on your own. To scroll down you can either press the space bar, here” Darcy gestured towards the keyboard, “or touch the mouse pad.” Darcy demonstrated how to do both and moved the computer over to the Captain. Steph became enthralled by what was on the screen, and Darcy quietly snuck out of the room, leaving the Captain some privacy for her grief.
*****
An hour later Darcy came back, having taken the time to run some errands for Coulson. She knocked on the door and entered once she heard the Captain say, “Come in.” She entered the room cautiously, trying not to intrude too much, especially if the Captain was upset.
“Hey. I thought you might like to grab some lunch. If you’re feeling up to it, of course. If you’re not we can resume this tomorrow,” Darcy shrugged awkwardly.
Steph smiled at Darcy, her eyes a little wet, but otherwise seeming okay. “I’m okay. She lived a really full life. It makes me happy that she was able to do everything she told me she wanted to do.” Steph closed the laptop and got out of her chair. “And yes, I would really appreciate that, thank you. I’ve mostly been eating on my own. Well, pretty much everything on my own. I don’t really get many visitors, and I don’t really know anyone else other than you, Director Fury and Agent Coulson.”
Seriously? They left her own her own? Darcy was going to yell at Coulson about how they’d been treating Steph. Not that she already hadn’t when she heard what happened, but keeping her all cooped up by herself after that? It was just mean. If they hadn’t, Steph might have even been able to see her friend before she died! Darcy almost growled at how stupid SHIELD could be sometimes about people. Yes, they were a government organization, but they weren’t dealing with people who had come from government backgrounds. Darcy’d read up on the Captain, and even she hadn’t had much military training before the serum injections and afterwards she had just kind of gone rogue, depending on her enhancements rather than any actual training. You couldn’t treat someone who was going through as much as the Captain was like just another government goon. The poor girl probably needed therapy! But if all she was going to get was Darcy, then Darcy was going to do the best job she could.
Darcy smiled really big at the Captain. “Unfortunately, we’re only going to the cafeteria. Maybe we can get you out for a field trip later if I can come up with something Coulson will approve of.”
*****
Lunch was just the normal cafeteria fare, but Steph seemed way too excited about it. She kept waving at all of the agents who stared at her while they got their food. She tried to introduce herself to them, but they retreated too quickly for Steph to do more than get halfway out of her chair. By the end of lunch Steph had lost her excitement and was instead pouting into the cake Darcy had convinced her to get. After all, what was the use of having such as fast metabolism if you couldn’t eat as much cake as you wanted?
“They’ve been doing that ever since I got here. Sometimes I see the girl who was there when I first woke up. I tried to go over to her to apologize for my behavior and she acted like she had no idea who I was and just walked right past me.”
Darcy viciously stabbed her cake and stuffed some into her mouth to stop herself from growling. She seriously needed to have a talk with Coulson. Darcy swallowed her cake and smiled at Steph. “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? I can get you a computer for you to practice with and we can start again tomorrow and see how much you’ve learned. I’ll show you how to write documents and you can come prepared with any questions you might have or things you would like to learn about most. I’ve realized that I need to yell - run some errands,” Darcy widened her eyes in an innocent expression, “so we can really get started tomorrow.”
Steph made a face Darcy couldn’t quite figure out, though it was probably related to disappointment. She nodded while she moved her cake around. “I guess I’m done eating…”
“Okay, great. Well, here’s a modern era lesson for you. People have gotten really into recycling and whatnot because we’ve pretty much destroyed the earth and used up its natural resources. So when you throw things out you sort them into compost, recycling and landfill. Plastics and clean papers go into recycling, things like food and plates and utensils marked compostable go into the compost bin and everything else goes into the landfill part. Think about it this way, if it will decompose or rot, it goes in compost, if it’s cleanish, recycling and if it’s gross, just throw it away. See?” Darcy said as she put her lunch into the various marked containers.
“I think I’ve got it,” Steph said as she threw out her lunch.
“Okay. We’re off to get you a shiny new computer then!” Darcy turned toward Steph and held up a finger. “Just one warning, don’t google yourself. You never know what will show up and you probably won’t want to read most of it. Seriously, there are some things people have written about you that would scar your brain. Not like, negative. Just like, ewww, did not need to know you thought about me like that type of thing. Got it?”
Steph nodded and opened the door for Darcy as they exited the cafeteria, motioning for her to go first.
****
Darcy charged into Coulson’s office. Thanks to her position as one of Coulson’s assistants she didn’t have to wait to be cleared for entrance to the area. It really ruined her ranting momentum when she had to wait an extra five minutes to get in and then was angry about the wait rather than whatever she had originally come for. Then again, maybe that was the point. Unfortunately, because of her position as his assistant, Coulson knew what the look she currently had on her face meant. She glared at him while he stared impassively at her until she spoke.
“You’ve been keeping her cooped up all by herself and on top of that scared the other agents away from her? How mean are you?” Darcy gestured wildly with her hands. “Her friend died while you were keeping her down there alone! She could have visited Peggy before she died! It probably would have helped to see a friend, no matter how much older she was! Do you think people have no feelings or something? The poor girl is lonely, angry and confused! And you were going to have some random agent help her figure out modern life? Did you want to traumatize the poor girl? Yes, she’s technically military, but that doesn’t mean she lives and breathes it like you do! She wasn’t even in the war for a year, and her basic training was pretty short before she got the serum.” Darcy slammed her hands down on Coulson’s desk.
Coulson opened his mouth to speak, but Darcy just kept speaking right over him. “Don’t you dare defend what you did with the Captain when she first woke up. Have you seen the gym downstairs? It is full of broken punching bags! She said the only people she knew before today were you and Director Fury! The other agents run away when she tries to talk to them! What kind of “reintegration” is that?!” Darcy took a breath. “Yes, I’m done. What?”
Coulson looked a little flustered for once. “After the Captain’s reaction to our scenario,” he winced at the word, “we decided it would be best for the Captain if her interaction with the outside world were kept to a minimum, including interaction with agents. They may have interpreted our orders a bit too extremely. I’ll issue a memo redacting the order to avoid unnecessary interaction with the Captain along with a new one that allows for interaction with the Captain.” He arched an eyebrow at Darcy, as if to say, “anything else you’d like me to do?”
“Yes, thank you. Having lunch with her today was just heartbreaking. She looked like a kicked puppy by the end because all the agents she waved to just kept on walking, pretending like she didn’t exist.” Darcy sank down into the chair in front of his desk. “Also, I know that her friend Peggy died recently, but do you know if anyone else she knew during the war is still alive? I think it’d do a lot for her morale and it would help her figure out the present if she could talk with some of her old friends. They could talk about the war and they might have good insights to help her understand modern technology and culture.”
“I’m sure something like that can be arranged. Obviously the public is not yet aware of the Captain’s discovery, but given that her friends were once military, we might be able to have some of them visit. I will look into it. Anything else?”
“Field trips.” Coulson arched his eyebrow at her again. “You know, so she can see what the world is like now instead of just learning from me, textbooks and the Internet? Getting out into the city and seeing things like the MoMA, maybe a baseball game, etc. would probably really help her feel more comfortable with waking up seventy years in the future.”
“As I said, the public is not yet aware of the Captain’s discovery.”
“And they don’t have to be told. In fact, it would make it easier to take her places if no one is going to recognize her or think that it’s her because she “died” seventy years ago. I just don’t think it’s good to keep her cooped up at headquarters.” Darcy shrugged. “I’ll give you a list of possible locations, so you can arrange some security. By which I mean plant an agent as a museum guard, not clear out the museum or have us be part of an entourage. It’d probably hurt her feelings if she thought you didn’t trust her to go out, even with me as supervision.” Coulson smirked at her. “I totally count as supervision! I even look both ways when I cross the street!”
“Now,” Coulson coughed into his fist. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. If you think it’d be good for her education and morale, I’m sure we can arrange for field trips. Director Fury has been worrying about the state of the basement.”
“Well okay then.” Darcy got out of the chair she’d been sitting in. “By the way, I’ve taught her how to use a computer and am going to have her do research and practice using the internet and word processors. Don’t take this as me approving of it, because censorship is bad and you know my rant about it, but is there anything you want me to block? Any search terms or things you don’t want her to know about yet? I advised her not to look herself up.”
“Just make sure she can’t access anything more than the SHIELD internet and we should be fine. Wouldn’t want her wandering through the mainframe.”
Darcy nodded and turned to leave.
“One more thing,” Coulson said. “Try not to rub off on her. I’d hate to have her disobeying orders.”
Darcy smiled, she’d love to “rub off” on the Captain. No pervy thoughts, bad Darcy! She had to work with the woman. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe some time with Natasha would be good for her. She follows yours orders, doesn’t she?” She smirked and walked out of Coulson’s office. Agent Romanoff would be a very good mentor for the Captain. She might take orders, but she was awesome and used even less effort than Darcy to get people to do what she wanted them to. Captain Rogers might have been able to command a unit of soldiers, but she seemed awkward and shy now. Asserting dominance off the battlefield, rather than being adorable and shy, was probably a lesson that Stephanie Rogers needed to learn. At least in this modern day and age.
****
Darcy had set the Captain up with a computer, safe search on, and then went to her cubicle to set up some lesson plans and field trips for the Captain. While she’d like to take the Captain to the Met, she would have to coordinate it around any possible school holidays, school tours, and crowds, in addition to getting through security with her taser just in case anyone did indeed recognize the Captain. Unlike the MoMA, the Met got really crowded, especially at the entrance. Perhaps she would set up a private tour of some sort so they could avoid the crowds at the entrance, but still allow the Captain to have a normal experience. Darcy was sure she’d appreciate a tour. On the other hand, rather than showing the Captain art she was already familiar with, perhaps the MoMA would be best suited to all of their needs. Less security, fewer crowds, and it was actually a place where the Captain could learn about the modern age. They would probably need a tour there too. Darcy had started attending as many museums as she could in her free time, why not take advantage of being in the city, but despite how often she went to the MoMA, she still occasionally found herself getting lost. So, private tours for all museums, but still going during normal hours. On the other hand, her membership at the MoMA did allow her to bring guests to exhibition openings. Fewer crowds, a new exhibition, the Captain all dressed up…
Darcy shook her head and returned to looking up how to set up private tours at the museums she believed the Captain would both enjoy and learn from. It would not do to fantasize about the Captain. Not only was there the whole dating a coworker thing, though the Captain wasn’t so much a coworker as she was someone in a separate division that Darcy was lucky enough to interact with, but there was the whole army thing too. Darcy doubted that Captain America, wonder girl from the 1940s, would be into girls. Not only was she old fashioned, but she was also in the army. On the other hand, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had just been repealed, so who knew? Darcy decided to look up the woman that Steph had mentioned.
It turned out that Captain Rogers’s “Peggy” had been a British Agent during World War II who had been part of some top-secret missions during the war and had continued to be involved in British-American joint missions over the years. And she had apparently been the first female officer to marry another woman, when Britain started allowing civil partnerships. The military had allowed gays to serve since the late 90s, and apparently Peggy had been one of the higher-ranking officials to support the change. And apparently Steph had seen all this when she read about her friend. Perhaps the tears weren’t so much for a friend but for a lover that had never been? There was a rumor that the Captain had said she “had a date,” when she first woke up, only to learn that it was seventy years in the future. Perhaps that date had been with Peggy? She was the first person the Captain asked about when Darcy mentioned her friends from the war. But either way, Darcy wasn’t going to push. She might add in a few lessons about the gay rights movement in the sixties and now, but the Captain was a woman out of time. She needed to adjust and learn. Darcy leering at her, however hard it was not to do so, would probably not help with her adjustment to the modern age. And so, back to lesson planning it was.
*****
“Now, I know you were in World War II, but you spent most of your time fighting Schmidt and well, there was a lot more going on than that.” Darcy was sitting in the conference room with the Captain. Coulson had set up a reunion with what was left of her team for the weekend, and so Darcy was launching into her lesson plans. “Now I know you knew who Hitler was, but he was a lot worse than anyone thought. In fact, the extent of what he was doing wasn’t even discovered until after the war ended. Were you aware of how he was rounding up Jews and other “undesirables?” Well, he killed over eleven million civilians in concentration camps during the war.”
The Captain looked shocked. “I had no idea. Schmidt only ever took soldiers. Those poor people… I wish I could have done something.”
Darcy patted her awkwardly on the arm. “You did what you could. If you hadn’t stopped Schmidt I’m sure it would have been much, much worse. But on to why I’ve decided this is relevant, other than just informing you of facts that will depress you,” Darcy quipped. She pulled a brochure from her pile of papers. “We are going to be going to the Museum of Modern Art on Monday. They are currently having an exhibition on Lee Miller and Farley Farm House. As Lee Miller was a war photographer, lots of the work shown will have to do with the parts of World War II that you missed. She was one of the first people into the concentration camps after they were liberated. We can also look around the rest of the museum. There’s a design section, they have quite a number of Picassos, Van Goghs and Matisses, which I’m sure you will enjoy” She listed them out on her fingers as she spoke. “They also have lots of paintings that are more modern, and some pretty awesome sculptures too. If anything reflects what is going on in the world, it is art. Or at least, that’s how I convinced Coulson.” Steph laughed at that. “Oh, if you’re really good, or if they put on a relevant exhibition, I might be able to sneak you out to the Met.” Darcy mimed someone sneaking around with her index and middle fingers. “I’ve heard you’re a bit of an artist, and as far as I can tell, artists love sketching things at the Met.”
Steph gave Darcy a huge grin. “I would love that. It sounds like a wonderful outing. Only…I don’t have anything to sketch with.”
Darcy frowned. “Seriously? Am I allowed to yell at Coulson again? Do you think he’d take away our field trip if I did?”
“Again? Did you really do that? Is that why everyone seems friendly to the point of terrified not to be?” Steph gave Darcy a look between, “you are so sweet” and “oh my god, you yelled at your boss for me. I really hope you don’t get in trouble.”
“Has he still not fixed the agents? Augh!” Darcy cried out. “Seriously, it’s like these people aren’t actually human. Are they robots? You’d tell me if you knew they were robots, right?” She grabbed Steph’s arm with a conspiratorial look. “I mean, I know Iron Man is kind of a robot, but there’s a real person inside there, however faily he might be.”
“Iron man? What are you talking about Darcy?”
“Oh, there’s this guy who “consults” for SHIELD, who has this metal suit that has all of these awesome features and it flies around and stuff. So he’s kind of like a robot, except he has feelings. Well, kind of. It doesn’t seem like he deals with them very well. He’s kind of a mess most of the time.” Darcy shrugged. Then she realized she was still holding on to the Captain’s arm and quickly let go. She coughed. “Anyways, I can totally requisition you some art supplies. Just let me know what you’d like and I will have it before next week! Seriously, I am so good with those forms,” she gloated. “And I’ll try to get us some spending money for the museum. They’ve got some pretty great things in their shop. Art books and supplies, raincoats, chairs, it’s a little ridiculous, but I could spend almost as much time there as in the museum itself.” She smiled thinking about all of the things in the store, then shook her head. “Anyways, back to our lesson! People had lots of babies after the war! They’re called “Baby Boomers” and are all getting on in age about now, but such a large number of young people really had an effect on the entirety of American society.”
And so Darcy began her history lessons for Captain America. She found the Captain’s perspective on some of the things that had happened quite interesting. Her sense of wrong and right was stronger than her sense of patriotism and she was horrified at some of the things that had happened during the Vietnam war.
After a few weeks she noticed that the Captain came in wearing the same clothes every day. By the third week Darcy was sick of seeing the same white button down and khakis. She hadn’t seen the Captain in anything other than that or her workout clothes of a white t-shirt and army pants.
“Steph, you know you can wear whatever you want to our sessions, right? Don’t feel that you have to dress formally for me. If I weren’t still doing things for Coulson, I would be wearing jeans and a t-shirt to our sessions. I hope that you feel comfortable enough with me to dress down.”
“Well, I used to wear dresses and skirts sometimes before the war, but now this is kind of all I have, along with my army clothes. They were in the dresser in the room SHIELD assigned to me.”
“Does no one at SHIELD have people skills except, apparently, Agent Romanoff? Is she the only one who isn’t a robot? Like, I’ve seen Coulson fight. I would definitely believe it if he were. Our other field trips worked out, I’m sure I’ll be able to get you out for a shopping trip. It can count as a lesson in modern consumerism and like, fitting into the modern world through fashion, or something.”
***
And so, Darcy once again found herself in Agent Coulson’s office, yelling about how they were treating Captain America.
“Natasha has a bigger wardrobe than Captain Rogers and she wears her jumpsuit regularly!”
Coulson just nodded along as he let her rant. Darcy barging into his office was becoming somewhat of a regular occurrence ever since she started helping Captain Rogers adjust to modern life. Coulson didn’t know everything that Darcy was teaching the Captain, but she had been taking an interest in current events and seemed to be learning how to work modern technologies. The Captain would probably be ready to serve again soon. Fury would be pleased. Jane was coming along with her research and Thor would most likely be back soon. Fury’s “Avengers Initiative” would be starting quite soon, it seemed. On the other hand, he didn’t much look forward to dealing with all of them. Agent Barton had a habit of perching places around headquarters and accidentally scaring people when they found him when he wasn’t on missions and Natasha could be quite intimidating when she wasn’t supposed to be otherwise. And Thor would probably need to learn just as much about the modern world as the Captain had. Probably even more. He was technically an alien, after all. Well, Darcy could do that too. Superhero integration was now her division. Let her baby-sit them. He had more important things to do. He tuned back into what Darcy was saying once he made a note to tell Fury how things were progressing with the Captain.
“And furthermore, it could be seen as a lesson in crowd control, economics, inflation, industry and all sorts of other related fields. So, in summation, if I could between five hundred and a thousand dollars to buy the Captain a whole new wardrobe, I would appreciate it.” Darcy crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly. “And before you protest at the cost, she’s used to nice clothes that last, not the crappy ones that are made for cheap these days. I’d rather not have her horrified and uncomfortable in her new clothing. Also, she’s probably going to need a nice dress for all those fundraisers Stark throws. I’m sure he’ll invite the team once they’ve all started working together.”
“I’ll give you seven hundred for basics. Don’t spend it all at once. If the Captain needs a dress, we can get that later. Where do you intend to take her?”
“I was thinking Bloomingdale’s. It’s a large department store where she can get everything she needs, the quality is pretty good, and it’s definitely a place where she can be exposed to current culture. If she doesn’t find anything, or is too freaked out by the prices, I might take her to the outlets. I’m sure Natasha wouldn’t mind coming with us.”
“You can ask her yourself. If she says no, I’ll assign you another female agent to come along. But you’re right. The Captain should get out more, and having an appropriate, and more comfortable wardrobe will certainly make that possible. I heard that the museum trip went well. She wasn’t recognized and I hear she quite enjoyed the exhibition.” He smiled innocently at her. “As you seem to always be accusing me of being a robot, and yes, I am aware that you do that, let me assure you that I do indeed care about others. I’ve noticed that she has been much happier lately, which has certainly helped our supply of punching bags.”
“Thank you. Sorry about the robot comments. The agents are still being weird around the Captain. I think they follow your instructions very literally, thus the whole robot thing. I think you need to fix their coding.” She chuckled to herself. “I’ll let you know what Agent Romanoff says.” Darcy left the office while Coulson laughed over her comments. He didn’t mind her barging in and yelling as much as he used to because it meant a break of amusement in his day. When he was at headquarters things tended to get boring.
*****
Part Two: http://audrey1nd.livejournal.com/152116.html
Title: Makeouts in the Modern World
Ship: girl! Captain America/Darcy Lewis
Rating: Probably R/NC-17
Summary:Darcy has been assigned to teach Captain Stephanie Rogers, or Steph, as she's told Darcy to call her, about the modern world and how to fit into it. This results in shenanigans, sassing Coulson, snarking with Natasha, Tony leering, movie dates and eventual makeouts.
This is part one.
Also, there is artwork for it! by http://ponderosa.dreamwidth.org/
“Oh my god. Is this where we’re going to be living now? Is this a thing that dating superheroes gets you? Where’s my superhero?” Darcy asked Jane as they pulled up to SHIELD headquarters, where Jane’s new lab was going to be. And probably their new home, too. Darcy knew from past experience that they would essentially be living in the lab, rather than in whatever housing her SHIELD paycheck could get her. She hadn’t had time to find a place yet. She’d found that the way SHIELD operated was to whisk everything away and then decide what to do with it later. So when SHIELD decided that she and Jane needed to relocate to New York, they had just hustled them and their belongings onto a plane rather than giving them time to arrange a place to live before they went to New York. If they were lucky there’d be a couch or a futon in the new lab and Darcy could take a nap before starting to figure out their living arrangements.
Unfortunately, the lab was empty except for the boxes that had been confiscated from the lab in New Mexico.
“Really? You didn’t even get us desks! It’ll take me forever to get this place set up,” Darcy exclaimed out loud, leaning against the wall with an exasperated sigh.
Coulson just laughed. Darcy glared just glared at him. “I-pod stealer,” she muttered under her breath.
“Don’t worry, desks are coming. We didn’t know what kind of furniture you’d be needing for the lab so we decided to let you pick the furniture for the lab and the apartment you’ll be sharing with Jane. Your luggage should already be there waiting for you. But first, we have some paperwork for you and Jane to fill out.”
At the sound of her name, Jane looked up from where she was cooing to the equipment she hadn’t seen since it had been confiscated by SHIELD. Darcy just groaned. Jane hated paperwork, and as a result usually had Darcy do it. At first, Darcy hadn’t minded it, but filling out grant applications for a project where you don’t understand most of the terminology could wear on anyone’s patience. As a result, she had come to loathe paperwork just as much as Jane did.
Darcy dragged Jane away from her boxes of work and they followed Coulson down the hall. He showed them into a conference room where they table was covered in neatly stacked piles of paper.
“This is a really bad joke, right?” Darcy said. “How much information could you possibly need from us that you don’t already know?”
“Mostly we just need you to sign lots of non-disclosure agreements…In triplicate. Some one will be in shortly to answer any questions you may have. Once you’re done filling out and signing your contracts, you’ll be able to choose the furniture you will need and fill out the requisition forms needed,” Coulson said with a smirk.
Darcy just sighed and took a chair at the table, pulling the nearest stack in front of her and taking a pen from the cup in the middle of the table. Jane joined her with a wary look and together they started reading through the paperwork. When Darcy was finished, she looked up to find an agent in the room with them. Darcy gave him an almost predatory grin before saying, “So, tell me how these requisition forms work.”
They emerged from the room an hour later. Jane was staring at Darcy in shock, while Darcy was grinning like the Cheshire cat. The agent followed behind them carrying a stack of requisition forms. Darcy decided she was going to like it at SHIELD, especially given how comfortable their apartment and lab were going to be. Funding was a nice thing. No wonder Jane had made her fill out those grant applications.
****
Eventually they got settled in and fell into a routine. People around the building started to recognize her, though usually all she got was a perfunctory “you are allowed to be here” nod. The agent from the first day turned and well, not ran, but walked very quickly in the other direction whenever he saw her. She didn’t blame him; he had filled in quite a lot of requisition forms for her that day. And she could probably get him to fill out more if he came close enough. He was a smart boy to avoid her like that.
She ended up spending most of her time in the cafeteria since, now that they weren’t out in the field, she was more of a personal assistant to Jane than a lab one. Listening to Jane talk to herself about things she had no idea about eventually got boring. At least there were people in the cafeteria. Her duties mostly consisted of making sure that Jane ate and filling out forms, though she sometimes got an unsuspecting SHIELD agent to do even that for her. Eventually it got to the point where Coulson noticed how much time she spent sitting around and started assigning her other tasks. Soon she was no longer Jane’s assistant, but one of Coulson’s. And while she still lived with Jane and thus was tasked with making sure she went home and slept, it got to the point where she didn’t even see Jane for lunch anymore. Instead, Darcy had started eating with the other SHIELD staff, and felt like one of them instead of “that girl who was only there because she tasered Thor” or “the one with the smile.” Not that she started wearing suits or anything, but she felt like a useful part of the organization instead of a waste of space. She was even given a new, government-issued taser! Though she’d been sternly warned not to use it unless the situation warranted it. Of course, her definition of what situations required a taser and which didn’t greatly differed from those of SHIELD agents. She may or may not have accidentally tasered an agent when they woke her up from a nap. She was startled and felt endangered okay? And he was a SHIELD agent; he should be able to handle a taser shock.
But anyways, Darcy was fitting in and hitting a paperwork and usefulness groove when all hell broke loose. And by that, she means they found Captain Fucking America. Unfortunately Darcy didn’t have the clearance or the training at the time to be assigned to the Captain’s little “reintegration” scheme. Though if they had asked her, she could have told them it wouldn’t have worked. Obviously SHIELD wasn’t full of researchers or they would have been able to get a recording of a baseball game from the right time period. And right after that clusterfuck was when Darcy’s life at SHIELD really changed.
They needed someone to help the Captain acclimate to modern life. So they started to look through the personnel files to see who was most suited to the task. Which, of course, was Darcy the poly-sci major, aka the one who took classes on history, dealing with people, and foreign cultures. And the modern world was pretty much going to be a foreign culture to the Captain. Knowing a bunch of languages and how to kill someone with your pinky weren’t the skills needed to help a national hero, long thought dead, get used to modern life. Nope. The skills needed there were a general knowledge of history, how to deal with people and good old fashioned research skills. And if there was anything Darcy knew how to do well, it was how to do research and deal with people a little detached from the world.
****
Her first day meeting the Captain didn’t go quite as planned. Darcy walked in to the room she was supposed to be meeting the Captain in, only to find her absent. So Darcy wheedled her way into the security room and found that the Captain was in the gym beating up punch bags.
So, armed with her computer, taser and charm, she made her way down to the gym, only to have a punching bag fly straight at her when she opened the door.
Thankfully she ducked in time, but in her haste to get out of the way, she fell on top of her laptop.
“Oh my god! I am so sorry! I wasn’t expecting anyone to come down!” Captain America said, rushing towards Darcy to help her up. She was a tall woman with short, unevenly cut, dirty blonde hair. She held her hand out to Darcy, who took it, and was pulled to her feet, her feet almost leaving the ground with the force of the pull.
“Darcy Lewis,” she said, shaking the Captain’s hand. “We were supposed to meet upstairs about 15 minutes ago.”
“Oh, I am so sorry! I must have lost track of time! I kind of zone out when I’m down here…” she trailed off and looked around guiltily at the room full of ruined exercise equipment. “Let me just go get changed and I’ll meet you upstairs in about 15 minutes. Is that okay? Did you have somewhere else you needed to be?”
“Nope. Meeting with you is all I’m doing today. I’m going to be helping you catch up on everything that’s happened in the last seventy years. But I think you might have more than 15 minutes,” Darcy said looking glumly at her computer. “I’m going to have to get a replacement and transfer the files I had. How about we meet in an hour? That’ll give you plenty of time to shower and get changed. Conference room 345 at 10:30, okay? Don’t make me fetch you again. Two computer replacements in one day would be really embarrassing,” Darcy said as she gathered up its remains.
“Yeah, okay,” Stephanie Rogers said, sheepishly playing with her sweaty hair. “I’ll make sure to make it this time. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger again. I am so, so sorry about that. Sometimes I’m not really aware of my own strength.”
“Well, that’s just something that we’ll, well not me and you,” Darcy gestured between herself and the Captain, “but you and SHIELD will have to work on,” Darcy said as she gestured to the ceiling, obviously referring to the rest of the building above their heads. “Training and stuff isn’t really my expertise, though I think Coulson might be thinking about making me go in for some. My donuts keep disappearing and being replaced by granola and bananas. Which would be cute except for the fact that I’m allergic to bananas,” Darcy rambled. Captain America was just really different from what she imagined. When Darcy was growing up she had a poster of Captain America punching Hitler right next to pictures of her favorite celebrities. This tall, shy woman, who was staring at Darcy as if she had grown an extra head, was nothing like what she had expected. “Anyways, gotta go replace this. See you then!” Darcy yelled as she made a hasty retreat. She saw the Captain shaking her head and smiling just a little bit in reflection on the elevator door as she waited for it. Well, at least she thought Darcy was amusing.
****
An hour later, Darcy was drinking coffee and waiting for her files to transfer to her new computer when Captain America, freshly showered with her dark blonde hair curling delicately around her face and dressed in khakis and white button down, came into the room. Darcy took a quick gulp of her coffee to brace herself for spending the rest of the morning, and who knows how much longer, with the gorgeous woman that was Captain Stephanie Rogers.
Of course, she was still Darcy, so instead of making cow-eyes at the Captain, she stood up and snarked, “Glad to see you were able to find the room, Captain.”
Thankfully, the Captain didn’t seem to pick up on her sarcasm and just blushed, saying, “Please, call me Steph. My friends used to call me that and well, if you’re going to be taking the time to help me out, I’d like us to be friends,” she said with a sad look in her eyes.
Darcy had to work to keep a straight face at “Steph” after that instead of just cooing at her. Seriously, was this girl real? She was just too adorable to be true, possible anger and control issues aside. Darcy smiled widely and said, “I’d like that. And well, it’s not like I’m really doing anything useful for SHIELD. I used to be a lab assistant, but I kind of was no longer needed and they decided it was best to keep me around and after the clusterfuck,” Steph made a face at the curse, “that was them trying to trick you into thinking it was the forties, they realized that hey, that chick with the taser actually has some useful skills.” Darcy paused for breath. “Oh god, rambling. Sorry! You must think I am a total weirdo.” Darcy face-palmed and sunk back down into her chair.
Steph just laughed as she pulled out the chair next to Darcy and sat down. “It’s totally fine. I know all about being awkward.” She blushed. “I mean, I don’t know how much you know about me before the program, but I used to be pretty tiny. And a five foot tall tomboy trying to keep up with a bunch of full grown men joining the army? Trying to enlist was pretty awkward. The few times I managed to hide the fact that I was a girl they pretty much rejected me on how tiny I was alone, my asthma not withstanding.” She shifted, and shrugged. “My friend Bucky used to tease me about my short legs not being able to keep up, but I walked a lot faster than him. He was always trying to keep up with me,” she smiled at the memory, but then looked unbearably sad.
Darcy wasn’t sure how to react, so responded to what the Captain had said about being short. “I know exactly how it is. Tall people walk so slow,” she said with a huff. “They claim it’s so that you can keep up with them, but I’m always a block ahead. I hope you’ve kept up your speed-walking skills despite the height difference.”
The Captain smiled again, the sad look leaving her eyes. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep up. I’m from Brooklyn, I know all about walking fast in New York City.”
Darcy had only seen her stern and serious in all of the propaganda she had done during the war. Even in photos of her with her team she wasn’t smiling much. There were a few candid ones where she was with a dark-haired man and another woman where her whole smile lit up the page. Darcy was hoping she was going to get to know that side of the Captain. It was nice to see the woman smiling after all that had happened to her. But Darcy was seriously not going to survive this assignment without embarrassing herself forever if the Captain didn’t stop being so sweet. Thankfully no one else was around to give her shit for being such a dork.
She laughed awkwardly and said, “Well, now that we’ve commiserated about being short, why don’t we start. First off, are there any pressing questions you had? Otherwise we’ll just start from where you “left off,” so to speak.” Darcy made air quotes and started pulling up the lesson plan she had made.
“Well, um, there’s this friend I had? I’d really like to be able to look her up and find out if she’s still alive and what she did with her life. Well, all of my other friends too, but her in particular.” And there she went again with the blushing. Darcy was going to have a heart attack from the cute if the Captain - no, Steph, didn’t cut it out.
“Do you know anything about using computers yet? An internet search of her name would be the easiest way to find her.” Darcy shifted over so that Steph could see the screen and opened up a new tab. Yes, she had just gotten a new computer and already the screen was full of tabs. “What’s her name? The more specific the better. You never know who else might have had her name since then.”
“Yeah, I kind of know how they work. I haven’t really been using them a lot though. Her name was uh, Peggy Carter. Well, really, Margaret Carter. She was an English Agent during the war.” Steph was still being her awkward adorable self, not quite meeting Darcy’s eyes. Hmm, there must be something about this Peggy that the Captain wasn’t telling her. Well, the internet would probably tell her all about it in a moment.
“Okay, so this website is called “Google.” You type in whatever it is that you’re looking for information about, whether it be a person, place, thing, or even scientific knowledge. Google gives all. There are other websites that do the same thing, but Google is the easiest, especially since there’s usually a search bar,” Darcy pointed to where it was on her screen, “and all you have to do is type in what you want there and it will search it for you. Did a lot of people call her Peggy, or just friends?”
“Well, I called her Peggy. Most of the other people around called her Agent Carter.”
“Okay, so let’s start with “Agent Margaret Carter” and let me know if you see anything that seems like it would be about her on the screen.” Darcy typed it in and immediately her page was full of hits. “Oh wow, it seems like she was quite the war hero.”
Steph smiled shyly. “Yeah, she was really swell.”
Darcy clicked on the Wikipedia article about her and her face immediately fell. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said without thinking.
Steph looked at the screen and her face immediately fell. It seemed that Peggy had died right around the time she had woken up.
“Do you want to read the rest? See what she did with her life?” Darcy asked softly, trying not to interrupt the Captain’s grief at another lost friend and lost opportunity.
“Huh, what? Um, yeah. I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”
“Okay, well, why don’t you try navigating the page on your own. To scroll down you can either press the space bar, here” Darcy gestured towards the keyboard, “or touch the mouse pad.” Darcy demonstrated how to do both and moved the computer over to the Captain. Steph became enthralled by what was on the screen, and Darcy quietly snuck out of the room, leaving the Captain some privacy for her grief.
*****
An hour later Darcy came back, having taken the time to run some errands for Coulson. She knocked on the door and entered once she heard the Captain say, “Come in.” She entered the room cautiously, trying not to intrude too much, especially if the Captain was upset.
“Hey. I thought you might like to grab some lunch. If you’re feeling up to it, of course. If you’re not we can resume this tomorrow,” Darcy shrugged awkwardly.
Steph smiled at Darcy, her eyes a little wet, but otherwise seeming okay. “I’m okay. She lived a really full life. It makes me happy that she was able to do everything she told me she wanted to do.” Steph closed the laptop and got out of her chair. “And yes, I would really appreciate that, thank you. I’ve mostly been eating on my own. Well, pretty much everything on my own. I don’t really get many visitors, and I don’t really know anyone else other than you, Director Fury and Agent Coulson.”
Seriously? They left her own her own? Darcy was going to yell at Coulson about how they’d been treating Steph. Not that she already hadn’t when she heard what happened, but keeping her all cooped up by herself after that? It was just mean. If they hadn’t, Steph might have even been able to see her friend before she died! Darcy almost growled at how stupid SHIELD could be sometimes about people. Yes, they were a government organization, but they weren’t dealing with people who had come from government backgrounds. Darcy’d read up on the Captain, and even she hadn’t had much military training before the serum injections and afterwards she had just kind of gone rogue, depending on her enhancements rather than any actual training. You couldn’t treat someone who was going through as much as the Captain was like just another government goon. The poor girl probably needed therapy! But if all she was going to get was Darcy, then Darcy was going to do the best job she could.
Darcy smiled really big at the Captain. “Unfortunately, we’re only going to the cafeteria. Maybe we can get you out for a field trip later if I can come up with something Coulson will approve of.”
*****
Lunch was just the normal cafeteria fare, but Steph seemed way too excited about it. She kept waving at all of the agents who stared at her while they got their food. She tried to introduce herself to them, but they retreated too quickly for Steph to do more than get halfway out of her chair. By the end of lunch Steph had lost her excitement and was instead pouting into the cake Darcy had convinced her to get. After all, what was the use of having such as fast metabolism if you couldn’t eat as much cake as you wanted?
“They’ve been doing that ever since I got here. Sometimes I see the girl who was there when I first woke up. I tried to go over to her to apologize for my behavior and she acted like she had no idea who I was and just walked right past me.”
Darcy viciously stabbed her cake and stuffed some into her mouth to stop herself from growling. She seriously needed to have a talk with Coulson. Darcy swallowed her cake and smiled at Steph. “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? I can get you a computer for you to practice with and we can start again tomorrow and see how much you’ve learned. I’ll show you how to write documents and you can come prepared with any questions you might have or things you would like to learn about most. I’ve realized that I need to yell - run some errands,” Darcy widened her eyes in an innocent expression, “so we can really get started tomorrow.”
Steph made a face Darcy couldn’t quite figure out, though it was probably related to disappointment. She nodded while she moved her cake around. “I guess I’m done eating…”
“Okay, great. Well, here’s a modern era lesson for you. People have gotten really into recycling and whatnot because we’ve pretty much destroyed the earth and used up its natural resources. So when you throw things out you sort them into compost, recycling and landfill. Plastics and clean papers go into recycling, things like food and plates and utensils marked compostable go into the compost bin and everything else goes into the landfill part. Think about it this way, if it will decompose or rot, it goes in compost, if it’s cleanish, recycling and if it’s gross, just throw it away. See?” Darcy said as she put her lunch into the various marked containers.
“I think I’ve got it,” Steph said as she threw out her lunch.
“Okay. We’re off to get you a shiny new computer then!” Darcy turned toward Steph and held up a finger. “Just one warning, don’t google yourself. You never know what will show up and you probably won’t want to read most of it. Seriously, there are some things people have written about you that would scar your brain. Not like, negative. Just like, ewww, did not need to know you thought about me like that type of thing. Got it?”
Steph nodded and opened the door for Darcy as they exited the cafeteria, motioning for her to go first.
****
Darcy charged into Coulson’s office. Thanks to her position as one of Coulson’s assistants she didn’t have to wait to be cleared for entrance to the area. It really ruined her ranting momentum when she had to wait an extra five minutes to get in and then was angry about the wait rather than whatever she had originally come for. Then again, maybe that was the point. Unfortunately, because of her position as his assistant, Coulson knew what the look she currently had on her face meant. She glared at him while he stared impassively at her until she spoke.
“You’ve been keeping her cooped up all by herself and on top of that scared the other agents away from her? How mean are you?” Darcy gestured wildly with her hands. “Her friend died while you were keeping her down there alone! She could have visited Peggy before she died! It probably would have helped to see a friend, no matter how much older she was! Do you think people have no feelings or something? The poor girl is lonely, angry and confused! And you were going to have some random agent help her figure out modern life? Did you want to traumatize the poor girl? Yes, she’s technically military, but that doesn’t mean she lives and breathes it like you do! She wasn’t even in the war for a year, and her basic training was pretty short before she got the serum.” Darcy slammed her hands down on Coulson’s desk.
Coulson opened his mouth to speak, but Darcy just kept speaking right over him. “Don’t you dare defend what you did with the Captain when she first woke up. Have you seen the gym downstairs? It is full of broken punching bags! She said the only people she knew before today were you and Director Fury! The other agents run away when she tries to talk to them! What kind of “reintegration” is that?!” Darcy took a breath. “Yes, I’m done. What?”
Coulson looked a little flustered for once. “After the Captain’s reaction to our scenario,” he winced at the word, “we decided it would be best for the Captain if her interaction with the outside world were kept to a minimum, including interaction with agents. They may have interpreted our orders a bit too extremely. I’ll issue a memo redacting the order to avoid unnecessary interaction with the Captain along with a new one that allows for interaction with the Captain.” He arched an eyebrow at Darcy, as if to say, “anything else you’d like me to do?”
“Yes, thank you. Having lunch with her today was just heartbreaking. She looked like a kicked puppy by the end because all the agents she waved to just kept on walking, pretending like she didn’t exist.” Darcy sank down into the chair in front of his desk. “Also, I know that her friend Peggy died recently, but do you know if anyone else she knew during the war is still alive? I think it’d do a lot for her morale and it would help her figure out the present if she could talk with some of her old friends. They could talk about the war and they might have good insights to help her understand modern technology and culture.”
“I’m sure something like that can be arranged. Obviously the public is not yet aware of the Captain’s discovery, but given that her friends were once military, we might be able to have some of them visit. I will look into it. Anything else?”
“Field trips.” Coulson arched his eyebrow at her again. “You know, so she can see what the world is like now instead of just learning from me, textbooks and the Internet? Getting out into the city and seeing things like the MoMA, maybe a baseball game, etc. would probably really help her feel more comfortable with waking up seventy years in the future.”
“As I said, the public is not yet aware of the Captain’s discovery.”
“And they don’t have to be told. In fact, it would make it easier to take her places if no one is going to recognize her or think that it’s her because she “died” seventy years ago. I just don’t think it’s good to keep her cooped up at headquarters.” Darcy shrugged. “I’ll give you a list of possible locations, so you can arrange some security. By which I mean plant an agent as a museum guard, not clear out the museum or have us be part of an entourage. It’d probably hurt her feelings if she thought you didn’t trust her to go out, even with me as supervision.” Coulson smirked at her. “I totally count as supervision! I even look both ways when I cross the street!”
“Now,” Coulson coughed into his fist. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. If you think it’d be good for her education and morale, I’m sure we can arrange for field trips. Director Fury has been worrying about the state of the basement.”
“Well okay then.” Darcy got out of the chair she’d been sitting in. “By the way, I’ve taught her how to use a computer and am going to have her do research and practice using the internet and word processors. Don’t take this as me approving of it, because censorship is bad and you know my rant about it, but is there anything you want me to block? Any search terms or things you don’t want her to know about yet? I advised her not to look herself up.”
“Just make sure she can’t access anything more than the SHIELD internet and we should be fine. Wouldn’t want her wandering through the mainframe.”
Darcy nodded and turned to leave.
“One more thing,” Coulson said. “Try not to rub off on her. I’d hate to have her disobeying orders.”
Darcy smiled, she’d love to “rub off” on the Captain. No pervy thoughts, bad Darcy! She had to work with the woman. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe some time with Natasha would be good for her. She follows yours orders, doesn’t she?” She smirked and walked out of Coulson’s office. Agent Romanoff would be a very good mentor for the Captain. She might take orders, but she was awesome and used even less effort than Darcy to get people to do what she wanted them to. Captain Rogers might have been able to command a unit of soldiers, but she seemed awkward and shy now. Asserting dominance off the battlefield, rather than being adorable and shy, was probably a lesson that Stephanie Rogers needed to learn. At least in this modern day and age.
****
Darcy had set the Captain up with a computer, safe search on, and then went to her cubicle to set up some lesson plans and field trips for the Captain. While she’d like to take the Captain to the Met, she would have to coordinate it around any possible school holidays, school tours, and crowds, in addition to getting through security with her taser just in case anyone did indeed recognize the Captain. Unlike the MoMA, the Met got really crowded, especially at the entrance. Perhaps she would set up a private tour of some sort so they could avoid the crowds at the entrance, but still allow the Captain to have a normal experience. Darcy was sure she’d appreciate a tour. On the other hand, rather than showing the Captain art she was already familiar with, perhaps the MoMA would be best suited to all of their needs. Less security, fewer crowds, and it was actually a place where the Captain could learn about the modern age. They would probably need a tour there too. Darcy had started attending as many museums as she could in her free time, why not take advantage of being in the city, but despite how often she went to the MoMA, she still occasionally found herself getting lost. So, private tours for all museums, but still going during normal hours. On the other hand, her membership at the MoMA did allow her to bring guests to exhibition openings. Fewer crowds, a new exhibition, the Captain all dressed up…
Darcy shook her head and returned to looking up how to set up private tours at the museums she believed the Captain would both enjoy and learn from. It would not do to fantasize about the Captain. Not only was there the whole dating a coworker thing, though the Captain wasn’t so much a coworker as she was someone in a separate division that Darcy was lucky enough to interact with, but there was the whole army thing too. Darcy doubted that Captain America, wonder girl from the 1940s, would be into girls. Not only was she old fashioned, but she was also in the army. On the other hand, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had just been repealed, so who knew? Darcy decided to look up the woman that Steph had mentioned.
It turned out that Captain Rogers’s “Peggy” had been a British Agent during World War II who had been part of some top-secret missions during the war and had continued to be involved in British-American joint missions over the years. And she had apparently been the first female officer to marry another woman, when Britain started allowing civil partnerships. The military had allowed gays to serve since the late 90s, and apparently Peggy had been one of the higher-ranking officials to support the change. And apparently Steph had seen all this when she read about her friend. Perhaps the tears weren’t so much for a friend but for a lover that had never been? There was a rumor that the Captain had said she “had a date,” when she first woke up, only to learn that it was seventy years in the future. Perhaps that date had been with Peggy? She was the first person the Captain asked about when Darcy mentioned her friends from the war. But either way, Darcy wasn’t going to push. She might add in a few lessons about the gay rights movement in the sixties and now, but the Captain was a woman out of time. She needed to adjust and learn. Darcy leering at her, however hard it was not to do so, would probably not help with her adjustment to the modern age. And so, back to lesson planning it was.
*****
“Now, I know you were in World War II, but you spent most of your time fighting Schmidt and well, there was a lot more going on than that.” Darcy was sitting in the conference room with the Captain. Coulson had set up a reunion with what was left of her team for the weekend, and so Darcy was launching into her lesson plans. “Now I know you knew who Hitler was, but he was a lot worse than anyone thought. In fact, the extent of what he was doing wasn’t even discovered until after the war ended. Were you aware of how he was rounding up Jews and other “undesirables?” Well, he killed over eleven million civilians in concentration camps during the war.”
The Captain looked shocked. “I had no idea. Schmidt only ever took soldiers. Those poor people… I wish I could have done something.”
Darcy patted her awkwardly on the arm. “You did what you could. If you hadn’t stopped Schmidt I’m sure it would have been much, much worse. But on to why I’ve decided this is relevant, other than just informing you of facts that will depress you,” Darcy quipped. She pulled a brochure from her pile of papers. “We are going to be going to the Museum of Modern Art on Monday. They are currently having an exhibition on Lee Miller and Farley Farm House. As Lee Miller was a war photographer, lots of the work shown will have to do with the parts of World War II that you missed. She was one of the first people into the concentration camps after they were liberated. We can also look around the rest of the museum. There’s a design section, they have quite a number of Picassos, Van Goghs and Matisses, which I’m sure you will enjoy” She listed them out on her fingers as she spoke. “They also have lots of paintings that are more modern, and some pretty awesome sculptures too. If anything reflects what is going on in the world, it is art. Or at least, that’s how I convinced Coulson.” Steph laughed at that. “Oh, if you’re really good, or if they put on a relevant exhibition, I might be able to sneak you out to the Met.” Darcy mimed someone sneaking around with her index and middle fingers. “I’ve heard you’re a bit of an artist, and as far as I can tell, artists love sketching things at the Met.”
Steph gave Darcy a huge grin. “I would love that. It sounds like a wonderful outing. Only…I don’t have anything to sketch with.”
Darcy frowned. “Seriously? Am I allowed to yell at Coulson again? Do you think he’d take away our field trip if I did?”
“Again? Did you really do that? Is that why everyone seems friendly to the point of terrified not to be?” Steph gave Darcy a look between, “you are so sweet” and “oh my god, you yelled at your boss for me. I really hope you don’t get in trouble.”
“Has he still not fixed the agents? Augh!” Darcy cried out. “Seriously, it’s like these people aren’t actually human. Are they robots? You’d tell me if you knew they were robots, right?” She grabbed Steph’s arm with a conspiratorial look. “I mean, I know Iron Man is kind of a robot, but there’s a real person inside there, however faily he might be.”
“Iron man? What are you talking about Darcy?”
“Oh, there’s this guy who “consults” for SHIELD, who has this metal suit that has all of these awesome features and it flies around and stuff. So he’s kind of like a robot, except he has feelings. Well, kind of. It doesn’t seem like he deals with them very well. He’s kind of a mess most of the time.” Darcy shrugged. Then she realized she was still holding on to the Captain’s arm and quickly let go. She coughed. “Anyways, I can totally requisition you some art supplies. Just let me know what you’d like and I will have it before next week! Seriously, I am so good with those forms,” she gloated. “And I’ll try to get us some spending money for the museum. They’ve got some pretty great things in their shop. Art books and supplies, raincoats, chairs, it’s a little ridiculous, but I could spend almost as much time there as in the museum itself.” She smiled thinking about all of the things in the store, then shook her head. “Anyways, back to our lesson! People had lots of babies after the war! They’re called “Baby Boomers” and are all getting on in age about now, but such a large number of young people really had an effect on the entirety of American society.”
And so Darcy began her history lessons for Captain America. She found the Captain’s perspective on some of the things that had happened quite interesting. Her sense of wrong and right was stronger than her sense of patriotism and she was horrified at some of the things that had happened during the Vietnam war.
After a few weeks she noticed that the Captain came in wearing the same clothes every day. By the third week Darcy was sick of seeing the same white button down and khakis. She hadn’t seen the Captain in anything other than that or her workout clothes of a white t-shirt and army pants.
“Steph, you know you can wear whatever you want to our sessions, right? Don’t feel that you have to dress formally for me. If I weren’t still doing things for Coulson, I would be wearing jeans and a t-shirt to our sessions. I hope that you feel comfortable enough with me to dress down.”
“Well, I used to wear dresses and skirts sometimes before the war, but now this is kind of all I have, along with my army clothes. They were in the dresser in the room SHIELD assigned to me.”
“Does no one at SHIELD have people skills except, apparently, Agent Romanoff? Is she the only one who isn’t a robot? Like, I’ve seen Coulson fight. I would definitely believe it if he were. Our other field trips worked out, I’m sure I’ll be able to get you out for a shopping trip. It can count as a lesson in modern consumerism and like, fitting into the modern world through fashion, or something.”
***
And so, Darcy once again found herself in Agent Coulson’s office, yelling about how they were treating Captain America.
“Natasha has a bigger wardrobe than Captain Rogers and she wears her jumpsuit regularly!”
Coulson just nodded along as he let her rant. Darcy barging into his office was becoming somewhat of a regular occurrence ever since she started helping Captain Rogers adjust to modern life. Coulson didn’t know everything that Darcy was teaching the Captain, but she had been taking an interest in current events and seemed to be learning how to work modern technologies. The Captain would probably be ready to serve again soon. Fury would be pleased. Jane was coming along with her research and Thor would most likely be back soon. Fury’s “Avengers Initiative” would be starting quite soon, it seemed. On the other hand, he didn’t much look forward to dealing with all of them. Agent Barton had a habit of perching places around headquarters and accidentally scaring people when they found him when he wasn’t on missions and Natasha could be quite intimidating when she wasn’t supposed to be otherwise. And Thor would probably need to learn just as much about the modern world as the Captain had. Probably even more. He was technically an alien, after all. Well, Darcy could do that too. Superhero integration was now her division. Let her baby-sit them. He had more important things to do. He tuned back into what Darcy was saying once he made a note to tell Fury how things were progressing with the Captain.
“And furthermore, it could be seen as a lesson in crowd control, economics, inflation, industry and all sorts of other related fields. So, in summation, if I could between five hundred and a thousand dollars to buy the Captain a whole new wardrobe, I would appreciate it.” Darcy crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly. “And before you protest at the cost, she’s used to nice clothes that last, not the crappy ones that are made for cheap these days. I’d rather not have her horrified and uncomfortable in her new clothing. Also, she’s probably going to need a nice dress for all those fundraisers Stark throws. I’m sure he’ll invite the team once they’ve all started working together.”
“I’ll give you seven hundred for basics. Don’t spend it all at once. If the Captain needs a dress, we can get that later. Where do you intend to take her?”
“I was thinking Bloomingdale’s. It’s a large department store where she can get everything she needs, the quality is pretty good, and it’s definitely a place where she can be exposed to current culture. If she doesn’t find anything, or is too freaked out by the prices, I might take her to the outlets. I’m sure Natasha wouldn’t mind coming with us.”
“You can ask her yourself. If she says no, I’ll assign you another female agent to come along. But you’re right. The Captain should get out more, and having an appropriate, and more comfortable wardrobe will certainly make that possible. I heard that the museum trip went well. She wasn’t recognized and I hear she quite enjoyed the exhibition.” He smiled innocently at her. “As you seem to always be accusing me of being a robot, and yes, I am aware that you do that, let me assure you that I do indeed care about others. I’ve noticed that she has been much happier lately, which has certainly helped our supply of punching bags.”
“Thank you. Sorry about the robot comments. The agents are still being weird around the Captain. I think they follow your instructions very literally, thus the whole robot thing. I think you need to fix their coding.” She chuckled to herself. “I’ll let you know what Agent Romanoff says.” Darcy left the office while Coulson laughed over her comments. He didn’t mind her barging in and yelling as much as he used to because it meant a break of amusement in his day. When he was at headquarters things tended to get boring.
*****
Part Two: http://audrey1nd.livejournal.com/152116.html