Chapter Text
Darcy swore Jane didn't mention anything about the Convergence affecting space and time, though to be fair, she wasn't all that great at listening. To be more fair, she found herself dodging dinosaurs one minute and falling through an alien landscape the next, so maybe Jane should have tried harder.
She was over the time and space travel and the aliens, especially with the imminent destruction of London on the horizon. It was all very cliche and very bullshit since there was no Doctor to grab her hand and tell her to run. She'd give her left boob for Christopher Eccleston to come and save the day from the evil space elves.
As it was, she was running alone, having lost Ian ages ago. She cursed the fact that traveling through the portals, especially the time ones, made her queasy as hell. The Doctor always said that time traveling outside of a ship was rather unpleasant. She just wondered how much her extensive knowledge of the show would help her. She also really hoped that 'A Sound of Thunder' was wrong and that butterfly stomping wouldn't fuck Earth over, 'cause she definitely accidentally killed more than a butterfly.
Her last time jump left her in an alley, finally throwing up the contents of her stomach into a tin trash can. Darcy heaved to catch her breath in the crisp fall night, hand gripping the brick wall so she wouldn't succumb to the overwhelming vertigo.
"Drink too much, babe?" She turned to see a man in a dark suit and an impeccable pencil mustache, shit eating grin on his face. Only John Waters wore his facial hair like that nowadays. Fuck. What time was she in? And why did she have that exact same question on her ankle? When she didn't answer, only looked sicker, he approached her, smile fading. "Are you alright?"
She backed away. "Cool your jets, Rhett Butler."
He frowned haughtily, plucking off invisible imperfections from his suit and straightening his tie. "Clark Gable had nothing on me... God, rest his soul."
Darcy rolled her eyes. "Look, I'm just gonna go--"
"Back through those portals? I don't think so, Honey. They all closed up about the same time your dinner made its second appearance."
"How did you- wait what? What do you mean they closed!" She clutched at her chest, suddenly feeling like her heart was replaced by a hundred angry butterflies.
"I mean wherever you came from, be it the Flintstones or the Jetsons, you might be stuck for awhile, Darling."
She narrowed her eyes at him, forcing herself to breathe like the Lamaze class she went to with her sister-in-law. "You're awfully calm about this, dude."
"You live the life I live and you accept that the impossible isn't as impossible as you thought real quick."
She couldn't argue with that one. "What year is it? Who are you."
He looked like she insulted his mother. "1964. Since you're clearly not from around here, I'm gonna forgive you. I'm Howard Stark."
The vertigo returned with a vengeance. "The Howard Stark?" He nodded, preening at her recognition. She could see the resemblance now, see the Tony Stark in this man. She didn't know that Fantastic facial hair was an inheritable trait. "My soulmate is Howard Stark. The Howard Stark." Darcy swayed and when he reached for her, she didn't even try to pull away.
"Sorry to interrupt your little flip out, but I'm not your soulmate. I don't even have a Soulmark."
"So this isn't yours?" She asked, kicking off a boot. She often drank a lot. It wasn't outside of the realm of possibility that someone else would have said that to her as their first words.
Howard kneeled, laughing a little, though it faded as he inspected the Soulmark. He pulled his fingers across his stache, though Darcy suspected it never saw a hair out of place since he hit puberty. "Put your boot back on," he commanded, a lot less amused than he was just a moment before.
"What's up? Is that yours?" She asked, even as she complied.
"That's my handwriting, even though I don't have a Soulmark of my own." He checked his watch. "If this thing didn't get screwed up by the time jumps, it's about midnight." He looked around. "I have no intention of going the way of Batman's parents tonight." She laughed, smiling for the first time since he found her. He felt tension he was unaware of leave his shoulders. "Name?" He asked.
"Darcy Lewis. Maria Darcy Lewis if I piss you off." She looked away and frowned. "Fucking fuck." Her name was never really a big deal; she didn't like her given one, so she went by her middle. Now, the name 'Maria' held all kinds of implications; the worst being that she'd never return her own time. She'd have to ask him about time machines later.
"You always swear like a sailor?" He asked with a chuckle.
"Yep. All the time. Especially when I realize I'm living an episode of Doctor Who." And not a particularly happy one, she lamented.
"Which one?" he asked. Then he jammed his fingers into his ears. "Wait! Don't tell me! I missed the last couple episodes. If you ruin it, I'll be real ticked off."
She held up her hands. "I wouldn't dream of it." Literally she wouldn't unless it was like a drug induced fever dream or something... Accidentally spoiling fifty years of Doctor Who for Howard Stark. There were sentences that described real life, and then there were sentences that described her life.
"Come on, it's not safe here at night." Howard offered his arm.
She took it. "Where is here, anyway?"
"Brooklyn. I picked up some weird readings and drove out here to investigate. I thought I would find some old Hydra technology; I found my soulmate instead." He smiled at her, not lecherous or condescending for the first time that night. She may have swooned a tiny bit.
"You're so convinced that we're soulmates but you don't even have a mark. I totally could have faked this...somehow."
He arched an eyebrow as he led Darcy to his red Stingray. "Did you?"
"No--" She couldn't resist running and sliding over the hood of the Corvette. "I didn't."
Howard laughed at her antics. "Well, the way I see it is that you're obviously from the future-how far?"
She counted on her fingers. "94 to 04, 04 to 14... Almost fifty years." She should have known that. She only just watched the 50th anniversary episode a week ago. Forty-nine years from now. Whatever.
He let out a low whistle. "Fifty years... Anyway, you get your Soulmark when they are born. Unless you age remarkably well- if you do, please let me study you- you haven't been born yet, so no mark."
~2013~
The Dark Elves were defeated and mostly eradicated, she didn't have an evil smoke monster coursing through her and Thor was back indefinitely. All that seemed woefully unimportant, though, when Ian returned and told her that Darcy was missing. Jane had sent Thor out to search for her (her body, just in case. God she did not want to think about it), only staying behind because she was exhausted (and because the God of Thunder threatened to forcibly tie her down).
She wept silently into her cup of earl grey tea, feeling useless. Jane could work on bringing the girl home, but she didn't know where or when Darcy was, and if she was alive, Heimdall couldn't see her. She could be long gone or yet to come all the way across the universe and there was no way of knowing. Her tears renewed.
Someone knocked at her office. "Um, Doctor Foster?"
"What is it Ian? I thought you were out searching." She sniffed thickly.
"I was but," he looked over his shoulder, somewhat distressed. "Someone here wants to see you."
"Doctor Foster," a semi robotic voice greeted, and then Iron Man entered the room removing his face plate.
Jane looked shocked and then grateful. "You're here to help clean up! Thank you! My assistant, she's missing."
"I-what-no. I mean I can but, I'm here because my mother told me to deliver this letter to you, in this city, at this address, on this exact date. Do you have any idea why she did that? 'Cause I've been wondering for over twenty years."