Chapter Text
Thor announced the trip like a man declaring war on boredom.
He stood in the communal living room with his hands clasped behind his back, hair loose around his shoulders, wearing the satisfied expression of someone who had arranged an excellent surprise and expected the room to understand that resistance would be both futile and mildly insulting.
“I have spoken with Heimdall,” Thor said. “Asgard’s observatories are prepared. The scholars of the upper star courts are eager to meet Jane. The royal archives have opened their celestial records. There will be access to the great telescopes, the sky bridges, the lunar vaults, and the western halls where the old astronomers kept their maps of realms no longer named.”
Jane Foster’s entire body went still.
It was the good kind of still. The terrifying kind. The kind that meant her mind had left the room at speed and was already standing on an alien balcony with seventeen notebooks, three recording devices, and a complete disregard for the human need to sleep.
Thor’s smile widened.
“And Darcy,” he said, turning to her with ceremonial gravity, “the palace kitchens remember you fondly from your last visit by reputation alone. The young pages have been warned. The old aunties are delighted. My mother’s garden keepers have requested that you not attempt to reorganise their tea storage without supervision, but they do this with affection.”
Darcy stared at him.
Then at Jane.
Then back at Thor.
“Are you saying,” she said slowly, “that you are taking us to Asgard for a month?”
“Aye.”
“A month month?”
Thor frowned with exaggerated seriousness. “Midgardian calendars are strange, but yes. A month of your months.”
Jane made a sound that was not language.
Darcy made a sound that was somehow more not language.
Tony, who had been pretending to work on a tablet and failing because he had immediately become emotionally suspicious, looked up sharply. “Excuse me?”
Thor beamed. “You are excused.”
“No, Big Blonde Field Trip, that was not permission language. You’re taking them where?”
“Asgard.”
“For a month.”
“Yes.”
Tony looked at Darcy. “You knew about this?”
Darcy looked like she had just been handed the moon with a bow on it. “No. But I am spiritually already packed.”
Jane had both hands over her mouth now, eyes huge and wet. “The royal archives?”
Thor bowed his head. “All that may be safely shown to you.”
Jane turned to Darcy with the expression of a woman who had been offered both academic fulfilment and divine dessert. “Darcy.”
Darcy grabbed her hands. “Janie.”
“We’re going to Asgard.”
“We’re going to Asgard.”
“The observatories.”
“The palace kitchens.”
“The lunar vaults.”
“The aunties.”
Tony set the tablet down. “Nobody is going anywhere until we discuss logistics.”
Darcy turned to him, eyes bright with the specific danger of joy that had already begun outrunning reason. “We will discuss logistics while packing.”
“Packing is not discussion.”
“It is if you narrate.”
Bruce, from the couch, smiled into his tea with the quiet resignation of a man who knew the trip was already happening and had chosen peace over denial. Natasha leaned back against the window, arms folded, watching Darcy and Jane practically vibrate with delight. Clint looked thoughtful, which usually meant he was calculating whether Asgard had snacks and whether a human archer could get away with tagging along in luggage. Fury, attending remotely on the secure screen for what had allegedly been an unrelated check-in, closed his eye for one long second.
“Odinson,” Fury said.
Thor turned. “Director.”
“You can guarantee their safety?”
The room softened around the edges at that.
Not because it was an unreasonable question. It was the only question that mattered in the language Fury used when he did not want to say please bring them back to me alive. But Darcy and Jane, still holding hands, stopped bouncing. Tony’s mouth closed. Phil, who had been standing near the side table with his hands in his pockets, looked at Thor.
Thor’s expression changed.
The laughter remained somewhere in him, because Thor’s joy had deep roots, but over it settled the weight Darcy had seen after dinner once, when he had asked for the real story of HYDRA and not the one with potato metaphors.
“They will be guests under the protection of the House of Odin,” Thor said. “Under my protection. Under Asgard’s hospitality. No harm will come to them without the attacker declaring themselves against my realm.”
Fury’s gaze did not move. “That a promise or policy?”
Thor’s voice lowered. “Both.”
For a moment, the room held two worlds inside it: the modern one, full of screens and surveillance and insurance liabilities, and the older one, where a prince’s word carried the shape of a drawn sword.
Fury gave a short nod.
“Then take them.”
Tony made a noise of betrayal. “Wow. Fast approval from the pirate king, no notes?”
“I have notes,” Fury said. “They’re classified.”
Darcy was already moving. “Okay. Jane. Twelve hours. We can be packed in twelve hours.”
Jane looked offended. “Twelve? I need instruments.”
“You need clothes, notebooks, chargers, toiletries, and whatever science objects Thor says won’t accidentally offend a realm.”
“I need my spectrometer.”
“You need one spectrometer.”
Jane narrowed her eyes. “Three.”
“One.”
“Two and a half.”
“That is not how spectrometers work.”
Tony stood. “I’m sending equipment.”
Thor looked amused. “Asgard has equipment.”
“Not Stark equipment.”
Jane’s eyes lit up.
Darcy pointed at Tony. “Do not enable her.”
Tony pointed back. “I have never not enabled science in my life and I won’t start now because you’re going to space camp.”
“Asgardian palace camp.”
“Worse. There will be capes.”
Thor smiled. “Many.”
Darcy gasped. “Can I wear a cape?”
Thor looked genuinely scandalised. “Of course.”
Darcy turned to Phil, glowing. “Phil. Cape.”
Phil had known the trip was going to happen from the second Thor said observatories and Darcy said aunties. He had known with the same certainty he knew the path of a bullet after it left the barrel. He had also known that the correct response, the only response that respected who she was, was to be happy for her.
He was happy for her.
This did not prevent something quiet and unreasonable from settling behind his ribs.
“A cape seems appropriate,” he said.
Darcy narrowed her eyes at him for half a second, because she was far too good at hearing the spaces between his words. Then Jane grabbed her arm and shouted something about star maps, and Darcy was pulled back into the whirlwind.
Within twelve hours, they were gone.
This was not an exaggeration, though everyone later agreed it felt like one. The Tower became a departure terminal operated entirely by caffeinated women and poorly supervised geniuses. Jane packed scientific instruments with the wild-eyed tenderness of a mother choosing which children could survive the flood. Darcy packed clothes, boots, hair ties, snacks, gifts for palace staff she had never met, emergency chocolate, seven kinds of lip balm, and what she called “diplomatic earrings.” Tony attempted to send three crates of equipment and was reduced to one after Darcy threatened to inform Pepper he had tried to colonise Asgardian luggage. Bruce contributed medical supplies and tea. Natasha slipped a small knife into Darcy’s bag and pretended not to. Clint added snacks to three separate compartments and pretended very badly. Fury sent a secure device that would work “under specific realm conditions” and then refused to explain whether that meant magic, science, or intimidation. Phil gave Darcy back her lightning bolt earring, because she had finally remembered to ask.
She put it in immediately.
Then she kissed him in the private corner near the lift, one hand curled in his tie, her smile bright and nervous and too full of leaving.
“It’s only a month,” she said.
“I know.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The ‘I understand the concept of time but object emotionally’ face.”
His mouth almost curved. “That’s specific.”
“I study you.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Her expression softened. “I’ll call if the realm technology gods allow it.”
“Do.”
“And I’ll come back.”
Phil looked at her.
Darcy’s teasing faded. She understood too much. She always did.
“I’ll come back,” she said again, quieter.
He kissed her then, not carefully enough to be casual, not long enough to make leaving harder than it already was. Her fingers tightened once in his tie before she let go.
“Bring me back a rock,” he said.
Darcy blinked, then laughed. “A rock?”
“A safe one.”
“No glowing?”
“Preferably.”
“No curses?”
“Definitely.”
“What if it’s emotionally significant?”
“I’ll make an exception.”
Her smile did something dangerous to his internal stability.
Then Thor’s voice boomed from the far end of the room, “Lady Darcy! Jane attempts to smuggle a third spectrometer!”
Darcy turned. “JANE.”
Jane shouted back, “IT’S SMALL.”
Darcy kissed Phil once more, quick and warm. “Duty calls.”
Then she ran.
Five minutes later, the Bifrost opened on the Tower’s secured landing platform in a blaze of impossible light. Jane stood with her bags, nearly shaking with anticipation. Darcy stood beside her with a scarf around her neck, one of Thor’s travel cloaks already draped over her shoulders despite Tony saying she looked like a tiny wizard with luggage. Thor placed one hand on each of their shoulders.
Darcy looked back once.
At Tony, who was pretending his sunglasses were necessary indoors. At Bruce, who lifted a hand and smiled softly. At Natasha and Clint, both too still. At Fury on the screen, expression unreadable. At Phil.
She blew them a kiss.
Then light took them.
And suddenly the Tower was quiet.
Not immediately quiet. At first there was noise. Tony complaining about rainbow scorch marks. Bruce collecting abandoned tea cups. Clint asking if anyone else smelled ozone and pastry. Natasha checking the landing platform because no one trusted departures to be uneventful anymore. Phil standing very still. Fury signing off with an instruction to update him when contact was established, which was not fooling anyone.
But underneath the noise, the quiet had already arrived.
It spread slowly over the next day.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Tony
By day three, Tony decided Asgard was rude.
Not politically, though probably politically too. He was not up to date on their monarchy beyond “gold,” “capes,” “complicated family trauma,” and “interdimensional bridge with design flair.” No, Asgard was rude because it had taken both Jane and Darcy at the same time, which was frankly poor resource planning.
Jane’s lab was still active, technically. There were people in it. There were ongoing analyses. There were screens running models and systems humming and a portal containment ring sitting dormant in the middle like a very expensive reminder that the fun people had gone elsewhere. Bruce came down. Tony came down. JARVIS monitored. Work continued.
But the lab felt wrong.
Too clean.
That was the first sign.
No Darcy notes on the monitors. No sticky labels reading EAT BEFORE TOUCHING REALITY. No half-empty mug abandoned beside a clipboard because Darcy had rushed off to stop Jane from inventing cosmic malpractice. No Jane shouting from under a table. No Darcy shouting back that under-table science was still science and therefore subject to hydration rules.
Tony tried mandatory dance time on Wednesday.
It was a disaster.
He played the playlist. The lights shifted. Bruce, loyal and miserable, stood in the centre of the lab and attempted a step-touch with the energy of a man attending a memorial service for rhythm. Tony did the opening sequence with perhaps more dramatic force than strictly necessary. JARVIS displayed the lyrics for one track because Darcy had insisted sing-along options improved compliance. Nobody laughed.
Not properly.
Tony stopped halfway through the second song.
“This is terrible,” he said.
Bruce lowered his hands. “Yes.”
“Not because of my choreography.”
Bruce paused.
“Careful,” Tony warned.
Bruce smiled faintly. “Not primarily.”
Tony looked at the couch.
Empty.
No Darcy rolling off it in hysterics. No Natasha beside her, pretending she had come for security and then losing the fight against laughter. No Jane arguing about momentum. No Clint appearing with takeaway.
Dance parties, Tony discovered, required more than music, lights, and Tony Stark’s unappreciated kinetic genius. They required Darcy making them safe enough to look ridiculous.
Without her, ridiculous just felt exposed.
He turned the music off.
The silence after it was worse.
“Lunch?” Bruce asked after a moment.
Tony glanced at the time. 2:17 p.m.
Lunch had happened at noon when Darcy was here. Aggressively. Unavoidably. Like weather.
Tony looked at the untouched tray JARVIS had ordered because apparently the AI had developed abandonment protocols.
“I had coffee,” Tony said.
Bruce gave him a look.
It was a gentle look.
Disgusting.
Tony sighed. “Fine. Lunch.”
But it was optional again.
That was the problem.
No one appeared in the doorway with a plate and moral certainty. No one said, “Anthony Stark, if caffeine were a food group, you’d still be deficient in fibre.” No one handed him toast while telling him Pepper’s time zone. No one made lunch feel less like self-maintenance and more like being included in the category of people worth feeding.
He ate because Bruce was watching.
It was not the same.
That night, he called Pepper without Darcy reminding him.
Pepper answered on the third ring, expression softening when she saw his face.
“You miss them,” she said.
Tony scoffed. “Please. The Tower has gained three square feet of walking space and no one has threatened me with lab exile in seventy-two hours. I’m thriving.”
“Tony.”
He looked away from the screen.
Pepper waited.
He tapped one finger against the table. “It’s quiet.”
Her face changed, not pity, never pity. Pepper was too kind for pity and too smart to mistake quiet for peace.
“She’ll come back,” Pepper said.
Tony swallowed around something annoying.
“I know.”
“And Jane?”
“With seventeen new theories and an illegal Asgardian telescope part in her luggage, probably.”
Pepper smiled. “That sounds right.”
Tony leaned back in his chair. The lab behind him hummed, impressive and empty.
“I think I forgot how loud it was before,” he said.
Pepper did not ask what he meant.
She knew.
Before Darcy, the Tower had been loud with machines, alarms, Tony’s voice, Tony’s music, Tony’s refusal to sit still long enough for grief to catch him. Darcy had made it loud with people.
That was harder to replace.
“Call them when you can,” Pepper said.
“I will.”
“And eat dinner.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “Did Darcy brief you before leaving?”
Pepper’s smile became suspiciously satisfied. “She may have sent a schedule.”
“Betrayal from another realm.”
“Eat dinner, Tony.”
He did.
Eventually.
Mostly.
Phil
Phil did not expect the month to feel long.
He was wrong.
This irritated him because Phil preferred to be wrong about things with operational consequences, not emotional ones. Operational errors could be corrected. Emotional errors sat quietly beside you in the car and followed you into your apartment.
Darcy had been gone four days when he realised he had started checking his phone at predictable intervals.
Morning. Lunch. Mid-afternoon. Evening. Before bed.
Not obsessively. He refused the word. He checked his phone because communication from Asgard was unstable and delayed, because the secure device Fury sent had specific realm conditions, because Thor had promised updates when possible, and because Darcy had said she would call if the realm technology gods allowed it.
Still.
He checked.
The first message came on day two, garbled and delayed, but unmistakably Darcy.
Darcy: asgard has THREE kinds of ceremonial bread and one of them sparkles
Darcy: jane saw the observatory and cried but she says it was wind
Darcy: thor says palace gossip travels faster than bifrost. i am thriving.
Darcy: also i found you a rock. unsure if cursed. investigating.
Phil read the messages three times.
Then replied:
Do not bring back a cursed rock.
Her answer arrived nine hours later.
Darcy: control issues from another realm. impressive.
He smiled at his desk like a fool and then immediately schooled his expression because Maria Hill walked in.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
“Lewis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Is the rock cursed?”
“Undetermined.”
Maria nodded like this was reasonable intelligence.
“Keep me updated.”
He did.
Life continued.
S.H.I.E.L.D. did what S.H.I.E.L.D. always did: identified threats, monitored rot, recruited brilliance, buried mistakes, wrote reports in language designed to make horror digestible to committees. Phil attended briefings. Read files. Coordinated with Stark security. Updated Fury on HYDRA remnants. Made calls. Drank coffee. Slept badly some nights and better others.
But his apartment had become louder in memory.
That was the problem with letting someone fill a space. Once they left, absence had furniture.
Her earring was gone from the dish by the door now because she wore it to Asgard. Two of his shirts were gone too, packed with alarming innocence into her bag after she said, “You have plenty,” and he failed to argue in time. Her preferred tea sat in his cabinet. Her hair tie was looped around his bedside lamp. A book she had been reading lay face-down on his coffee table with a receipt as a bookmark and a note in the margin that said, men in old novels need snacks and therapy.
He began eating dinner at the table instead of over reports because the first night he tried to work through the meal, his phone buzzed.
Darcy: i am in a different realm and can still sense you not eating properly.
Phil looked around his empty apartment.
Then at the phone.
Then ate at the table.
He did not tell anyone.
Unfortunately, the Tower noticed everything.
On day seven, he stopped by to review updated back-channel monitoring with Tony and found the lab dim, quiet, and faintly resentful. Tony was at the workbench. Bruce sat nearby with tea. Neither had eaten lunch. A tray sat untouched on the side table.
Phil looked at it.
Tony looked at him.
“No,” Tony said.
“I didn’t speak.”
“You had Darcy face.”
Phil’s brow lifted. “Darcy face?”
“The face she makes before food becomes policy.”
Bruce looked at Tony. “He does.”
Phil picked up the tray and set it in the centre of the workbench, carefully away from anything glowing. “Eat.”
Tony stared. “Oh my God. It’s spreading.”
Bruce accepted a sandwich. “Thank you.”
Tony pointed at Bruce. “You folded immediately.”
“I miss lunch governance.”
Phil did too, though he did not say it.
Instead, he sat for twenty minutes while Tony complained about Asgard, Jane’s absence, Darcy’s betrayal schedule, and how dance parties had become “a carcass of joy.” Bruce gently suggested that perhaps they simply missed their friends. Tony said that was what he had just said, only less poetically. Phil drank coffee and listened.
When he left, Tony handed him a small sealed container.
“What’s this?”
“Brownies.”
Phil looked at him.
“Darcy made a freezer stash before she left,” Tony said, looking away. “Apparently for morale emergencies.”
Phil took the container.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
Phil did not.
But that evening, he ate one at the table and admitted, privately, that it helped.
Natasha
The Tower had too many corners without Darcy.
Natasha knew that sounded irrational. Corners did not change because one woman left for a palace in space. Architecture remained architecture. Angles stayed fixed. Windows did not become more vulnerable because there was no Darcy in fuzzy socks walking past them with a clipboard and a mug.
Still.
The corners felt different.
Natasha continued to stop by, because protective habits did not evaporate simply because the protected subject had temporarily relocated to a heavily guarded alien monarchy under the care of a thunder god. Also because Tony and Bruce were failing at meals with embarrassing predictability, and Clint had begun eating protein bars in the vents again, which Darcy would not approve of unless the vents had been recently cleaned.
They had not.
By day five, Natasha found herself sitting on Darcy’s couch.
Not in the communal lounge. Darcy’s apartment.
JARVIS had let her in because Darcy had left a list of approved access, along with a note that said, if Nat needs quiet, let her have the good blanket and don’t be weird about it.
Natasha stood in the doorway for almost a full minute after JARVIS read the note.
Then she went in.
The apartment smelled faintly of vanilla, laundry soap, and the candle Darcy always lit while doing admin because she said bureaucracy required ritual cleansing. Balloons from her birthday still lingered in one corner, softer now, slightly deflated, bumping lazily against the ceiling like they were too committed to leave. The Hermes bag sat on a shelf, displayed with Tony’s museum plaque beneath it because Darcy had apparently given in after Tony made the plaque tasteful. Phil’s bag—the one she actually carried—was gone with her to Asgard, thundercloud charm and all.
Natasha took the good blanket and sat on the couch.
She did not cry.
That would have been strange.
She simply sat.
Darcy sent her a message twenty minutes later.
Darcy: if you’re sitting in my apartment pretending you’re not brooding, please eat the emergency cookies in the blue tin.
Natasha looked toward the kitchen.
There was a blue tin on the counter.
Natasha: You are in another realm.
Darcy: my governance is interdimensional.
Natasha smiled.
It felt unexpected on her own face.
She ate a cookie.
Later, Clint joined her without asking. He brought coffee and did not mention that she was wrapped in Darcy’s blanket. She did not mention that he had cleaned the vents, probably out of guilt. They sat in silence for a while, not guarding, not exactly waiting.
Just missing.
It was not a skill Natasha had learned young.
She was learning it now.
Fury
Fury lasted nine days before calling Thor.
This was not because he missed Darcy and Jane.
It was because inter-realm guest security required oversight.
That was the official reason.
The unofficial reason could go to hell.
Thor answered through a shimmering projection that made the S.H.I.E.L.D. secure room smell briefly of ozone and cedar smoke. He looked far too pleased.
“Director Fury,” he said. “You call to check on our honoured guests.”
“I call because one of our honoured guests once negotiated a hostage release from inside an active bank robbery and the other has a history of chasing anomalies into deserts.”
Thor’s grin widened. “They are well.”
“Define well.”
“Jane has argued with three royal astronomers, impressed two, offended one, and been invited to debate the High Sky Keeper at tomorrow’s evening meal. Darcy has become beloved by the kitchens, feared by the junior pages, and banned from the east gallery after a misunderstanding involving ceremonial helmets.”
Fury closed his eye.
“For how long?”
“The ban or the misunderstanding?”
“Both.”
“The ban lasted one hour. The misunderstanding has become a song.”
Fury looked at the ceiling.
Thor laughed. “She thrives, Director.”
That was, unfortunately, what Fury needed to hear.
He did not say so.
“Any threats?”
“None that have survived her charm or my guards.”
“That’s not a complete answer.”
“It is the answer of a prince who knows his palace.” Thor’s expression sobered. “They are safe. They are also happy.”
Fury said nothing.
Thor’s voice softened. “Your Tower feels empty.”
Fury’s eye opened.
Thor smiled faintly. “Mine feels full.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Too late.”
Fury ended the call before the prince of Asgard could look any more smug about being emotionally perceptive.
Hill entered thirty seconds later.
“They’re fine?” she asked.
Fury picked up a file. “Operationally stable.”
Hill’s mouth twitched. “That means fine?”
“It means operationally stable.”
“Of course.”
He ignored her.
That evening, a package arrived by whatever ridiculous inter-realm courier system Asgard used when it was not flinging people through rainbow bridges. Inside were two things: a sealed packet of Asgardian tea marked for Banner and a small carved token shaped like an eye, accompanied by a note in Darcy’s handwriting.
For Fury. Because Thor says Asgardian guest safety requires a watchful symbol and I said you already had the aesthetic handled, but apparently this one is “less emotionally constipated.” Put it on your desk or I’ll know.
Fury stared at the note.
Then at the token.
He did not put it on his desk.
He placed it on the shelf behind his desk, which was entirely different.
Hill noticed the next morning.
She said nothing.
Good woman.
Bruce
Bruce had thought the absence would be peaceful.
He felt guilty about that after the first day.
Not because he wanted Darcy and Jane gone. He did not. He loved having them in the Tower in the quiet, careful way Bruce loved things he was afraid to hold too tightly. But Jane’s intensity and Darcy’s governance created momentum, and momentum could be tiring. Bruce had imagined a month of calmer labs. Slower mornings. Fewer emergency snacks. Less yelling about fibre.
Instead, the quiet felt like a held breath.
He missed Jane’s arguments. He missed Darcy’s interruptions. He missed being told that cold tea was “leaf sadness” and should not be tolerated. He missed the way Darcy could redirect Tony without making it feel like control. He missed mandatory dance time, which was humiliating but apparently neurochemically useful.
Lunch became optional again.
Bruce did eat. Mostly. But not at the right times. He would look up and realise the day had folded itself into late afternoon without anyone shouting, “Bodies are not optional accessories!” from the doorway.
On day eight, JARVIS dimmed the lab lights at noon and announced, “Miss Lewis scheduled a meal reminder.”
Tony looked up. “She’s not here.”
“Correct, sir.”
“That’s creepy.”
“She scheduled it before departure.”
Bruce smiled despite himself. “Of course she did.”
A second later, Darcy’s pre-recorded voice filled the lab.
“Hello, emotionally unsupervised science gremlins. If you are hearing this, it means I am off-world and cannot physically remove tools from your hands. Tragic for me. Dangerous for you. Please proceed to the nearest food source and consume something with protein. Tony, frosting is not protein. Bruce, tea is not food. JARVIS, enforce shame protocols if needed.”
Tony stared at the ceiling. “She recorded shame protocols?”
“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said. “Would you like to hear the next escalation?”
“No.”
Bruce stood. “I’m going to lunch.”
Tony glared at him.
Bruce smiled gently. “Darcy would be proud.”
Tony groaned, but followed.
It was not the same as having her there.
But it was something.
Jane
Asgard was impossible.
Jane had used that word before and meant it as a challenge. Impossible was what people called things before data arrived. Impossible was a door with bad hinges. Impossible was often just arrogance wearing a lab coat and refusing to look properly.
But Asgard was impossible in the old way.
Beautiful. Irritating. Vast. Infuriatingly under-documented by Earth standards. Its skies did not behave like skies should. Its stars were not merely stars, or not only stars, or maybe stars plus realm-linked phenomena that made three separate Asgardian astronomers argue with her until midnight while Darcy sat nearby eating sugared fruit and taking bets with palace guards on who would win.
Jane was happy.
So happy it frightened her a little.
She missed the Tower. She missed Bruce’s tea and Tony’s arguments and the lab she had fought to build. She missed Phil’s dry comments and Natasha appearing like a myth near doorways and Clint leaving snacks in places snacks did not belong. She missed Fury pretending not to care so badly it became a full-time performance art.
But she was happy in Asgard.
And Darcy—
Darcy had become a palace phenomenon.
By day three, the kitchen staff adored her because she asked questions, remembered names, and reorganised one spice shelf in a way that made three cooks weep with efficiency. By day five, the junior pages followed her in clusters because she taught them Midgardian card games and told them that mischief without cleanup was simply poor project management. By day six, a courtier complained to Thor that Lady Darcy had “disrupted the dignity of the west corridor” by starting a skipping race with two guards, one page, and a visiting scholar.
Thor had looked delighted.
By day seven, palace gossip had renamed Darcy “the Little Comet.”
She hated it.
She loved it.
Jane could tell.
Darcy ran through Asgard like the palace had been waiting for someone to open the windows. She learned where the best pastries were kept. She charmed the old archivist who snarled at everyone else and was allowed into a restricted reading room because she brought him tea and asked about his knees. She got banned from the east gallery because she tried on a ceremonial helmet and accidentally began a rumour that Midgard had claimed succession through headwear. She wrote letters to the Tower every night, sometimes serious, mostly ridiculous, because Darcy understood that absence needed feeding too.
At night, they shared a balcony outside their guest suite and looked at the stars.
Jane studied them.
Darcy admired them.
Sometimes neither spoke.
On the tenth night, Darcy leaned against the balcony rail, Phil’s Hermes bag resting safely inside their room with its thundercloud charm gleaming faintly in Asgardian moonlight, and said, “Do you think they’re eating?”
“No.”
“Dance parties?”
“No.”
“Emotional regulation?”
Jane snorted. “Absolutely not.”
Darcy sighed. “I scheduled reminders.”
“That will help.”
“For two days.”
“Maybe three if Bruce feels guilty.”
Darcy looked at her, amused. “We left them unsupervised for one month and the Tower is going to become a cave with Wi-Fi.”
Jane looked up at the impossible sky.
“They miss us.”
Darcy went quiet.
Jane glanced at her. “You miss them.”
“Yeah.”
“Phil?”
Darcy’s smile was small and private. “Yeah.”
Jane bumped her shoulder. “Not casual.”
“Shut up and look at your stars.”
Jane did.
Darcy stayed beside her.
Asgard glittered around them, full of gold and old songs and people who already loved Darcy because apparently that condition crossed realms without needing translation.
For a month, they belonged to the stars and the palace and Thor’s enormous, joyful protection.
But every night, before sleeping, Darcy sent one more message home.
Darcy had expected to miss the Tower.
She had not expected to miss it like a sound.
Asgard was glorious. Ridiculous, golden, drafty in places, politically complicated, and full of people who said things like “the third moon feast” as if that explained why everyone was wearing silver belts, but glorious. Jane was incandescent here. Not happy like a normal person, but luminous with data, surviving almost entirely on star charts and Darcy-enforced meals. Thor was everywhere and somehow never in the way, bringing them to observatories, introducing them to scholars, feeding them strange fruit and stories and enough affection that Darcy sometimes had to walk very fast down palace corridors to avoid having feelings in public.
The palace loved her.
This was not Darcy being arrogant. It was simply impossible to ignore after the third cook kissed her forehead for complimenting a stew, the second guard asked her to judge a helmet-polishing competition, and a cluster of pages began appearing every morning to ask whether Lady Darcy would teach them another Midgardian phrase. She taught them “absolutely not,” “emotional support snack,” and “that sounds like a management problem.” Thor said she was creating diplomatic consequences. Darcy said diplomacy needed flavour.
She got into trouble.
Often.
Not dangerous trouble. Fun trouble. Palace trouble. The kind involving locked garden gates, an accidental pastry theft ring, one minor diplomatic misunderstanding with a visiting dignitary who did not appreciate Darcy calling his hat “structurally ambitious,” and the east gallery helmet incident, which she would defend until death because nobody labelled the helmet as succession-adjacent.
She was adored.
It was weird.
It was lovely.
It did not stop her from missing home.
Home, apparently, had become a category large enough to include the Tower, Jane’s lab, Tony’s terrible dancing, Bruce’s tea, Natasha’s quiet couch presence, Clint’s snack diplomacy, Fury’s grumpy check-ins, and Phil’s apartment where her book still waited face-down on the coffee table.
Phil sent messages with the restraint of a man communicating across realms and also trying not to become a nineteenth-century letter-writer.
Phil: Stark attempted dance time. It was reportedly unsuccessful.
Darcy: reportedly??
Phil: I was not present.
Darcy: coward.
Phil: Sensible.
Darcy: did they eat lunch?
Phil: Eventually.
Darcy: that word is doing crimes.
Phil: Yes.
She missed him most in the quiet moments.
Not when everything was exciting. Excitement filled its own space. She missed him when she saw something beautiful and wanted to turn to him with the version of herself that did not need to perform delight because he would see it anyway. She missed his sighs. His hands. The way he said her name when he was amused and trying not to be. The way he looked at her like wanting things simply because they were beautiful was not indulgence but evidence she was alive.
On day twelve, she found his rock.
It was smooth, dark blue, threaded with silver, small enough to fit in her palm. It had fallen from a cliff near one of the observatories, and when Darcy picked it up, it was warm despite the cold air.
“Is it cursed?” she asked Thor.
Thor examined it seriously. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“It carries memory, not curse.”
“That sounds like the beginning of a curse.”
He smiled. “It remembers the sky.”
Darcy closed her fingers around it.
“That’s disgustingly poetic.”
“Aye.”
She packed it carefully.
Then she sent Phil a message.
Darcy: found your rock. not cursed according to thor, who may have different standards than us.
Phil: Does it glow?
Darcy: only emotionally.
Phil: That is not reassuring.
Darcy: it remembers the sky.
There was a long delay before his reply.
Phil: Then I’ll keep it safe.
Darcy stared at the message for a while.
Then she tucked the phone against her chest like an idiot.
From the bed across the room, Jane said, “Jane Austen.”
Darcy threw a pillow at her.
It missed.
Asgard was affecting her aim.
By the end of the second week, Stark Tower had not fallen apart.
Not technically.
The lab still ran. The kitchen still functioned. S.H.I.E.L.D. coordination continued. HYDRA leads were followed. Pepper called. Fury checked in. Natasha and Clint appeared and disappeared. Bruce made tea. Tony ate enough to avoid Darcy’s scheduled shame protocols. Phil slept some nights. Everyone continued.
But the Tower had learned something uncomfortable.
Darcy and Jane had not simply been living there.
They had been animating it.
Without Jane, science became work instead of discovery shouted through walls. Without Darcy, care became effort instead of atmosphere. Meals had to be remembered. Laughter had to be started manually. Dance parties required courage no one had without her on the couch laughing first. Incident reports decreased dramatically, which should have been a relief and instead made Tony stare at the empty couch like he had been cheated.
The quiet was not peace.
It was absence wearing socks.
On day fifteen, JARVIS activated another scheduled message at noon.
Darcy’s voice filled the communal kitchen, bright and bossy and slightly echoing, recorded before she left.
“Hello, Tower gremlins. If I have timed this correctly, you are approximately two weeks into pretending you are all fine without me. You are not. This is not an insult, this is data. Please eat lunch. Please open a window if the air outside is not actively toxic. Please do not let Tony decide a smoothie counts as salad. Please tell Bruce his tea is getting cold. Please tell Natasha the blue tin has been refilled. Please tell Clint vents are not dining rooms. Please tell Fury that pie is not weakness. And someone please tell Phil—”
The recording paused.
Everyone in the kitchen looked at Phil.
Phil looked at the ceiling.
Darcy’s voice softened through the speakers.
“—tell Phil I’ll come back.”
No one spoke.
Tony looked away first.
Bruce stirred his tea slowly.
Natasha’s expression became unreadable.
Clint rubbed the back of his neck.
Fury, who was on the secure screen for another alleged check-in, said nothing at all.
Phil stood very still.
Then JARVIS added, in his calm voice, “Miss Lewis also attached a lunch menu and specified that noncompliance would be reported interdimensionally.”
Tony cleared his throat. “Well. Can’t risk realm-based tattling.”
Bruce smiled faintly. “No.”
Clint opened the fridge. “Lunch?”
Natasha reached for plates.
Fury grunted. “I have a meeting.”
Darcy’s recorded voice immediately played again, louder.
“Fury, if you’re trying to leave before lunch, sit down.”
Everyone turned to the screen.
Fury stared at nothing for one long, murderous second.
Then he sat.
The Tower laughed.
Not as loudly as when Darcy was there.
Not as easily.
But enough.
Phil looked up toward the ceiling.
“She planned that,” Tony said.
“Yes,” Phil said.
“From another realm.”
“Yes.”
Tony shook his head, half-annoyed, half-awed. “Her governance is interdimensional.”
Phil smiled, small and helpless.
“Yes,” he said again.
And for the first time since the Bifrost took them, the Tower felt a little less empty.