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Just because Darcy was currently at Stark Tower (or Avengers Tower, or whatever they were calling it) was no reason to break her Christmas traditions. Most of the Avengers were out anyway, and there were no alien invasions, no secretly evil Nobel Prize nominees trying to take over the world, and her scientist was safely...Okay, so, Jane was talking to Banner about physics, which possibly might end the world as everyone knew it, but Darcy was going to worry about that when she started to hear explosions and/or suspicious silences.
Instead, she took out her laptop, hooked it up to Stark's a-maz-ing TV and watched Hogfather. It was still, in her humble opinion, the best adaptation of a Discworld novel around, which was good because it was one of her favourite Discworld novels to start with. The quest to save the world by saving the mythological fat guy who gave kids presents, because by saving him you saved the stories and...well, the dialogue said the rest:
“So you're saying humans need fantasies to make life bearable?” Susan Sto Helit asked her grandfather.
“No. Humans need fantasy to be human,” said Death.
Darcy couldn't say what alerted her to the fact that someone else was not to so much in the room as standing behind her and staring. Some part of her lizard-brain finally woke up and she turned slightly, saw a figure, jumped and flailed and went, “Augh!” like the totally smooth superhero sidekick she was.
James Barnes (she wasn't calling him something as cheerful as 'Bucky' when she wasn't sure if he liked 'Bucky' anyway; he ended up with a weird expression when non-Steve people called him 'Bucky') winced and shoved his hands into his hoodie's pockets.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just...” He glanced at the screen and Darcy looked back as she fixed her glasses.
“-learning to believe the little lies,” Death was saying.
“So we can believe the big ones?” asked Susan.
“Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.”
“They're not the same at all.”
“You think so?”
Darcy leaned over to hit pause on her laptop, and she thought James thought about protesting. She bit her bottom lip and eyed him. He looked like crap, but he was looking...disappointed that she'd stopped the episode. And actually on micro-second reflection, that was kinda a bad point to stop.
“You wanna watch it with me?” she asked. “It's a big couch.”
He hesitated just long enough that she was composing how to explain that he wasn't disturbing (that much) and she'd come out to the living room to watch it so she could have company anyway before he nodded. He sat down carefully at the opposite end to her, keeping his limbs to himself. He wasn't exactly relaxed, but hey, tiny victories, so Darcy rewound to the beginning of Susan and Death's conversation and hit play.
She tried not to watch him as Death and Susan talked - didn't want to weird him out or make him uncomfortable. But she listened, and so when Susan said, “But people have got to believe that...or what's the point?”she heard the way James' breath hitched and stayed hitched.
Death said, “You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?” and James breathed out.
“You know,” Darcy said, cautiously. “I, uh, totally don't mind starting again? If you wanted to watch from the start, so you know what's going on.”
James looked over at her. It wasn't like in the books; he didn't look suddenly young or just like a regular guy if you took away the brainwashed POW shit. But he did look...hopeful. Hopeful, with his eyes (which were actually blue now he let her meet them) no longer glancing at exits.
“I'd...like that,” he said. “Thanks.” There was even a bit of a smile.
Because she was a mature adult who didn't want to startle him, Darcy resisted punching the air. Instead, she just grinned back and went back to the start.