A/N: The worst? Oh, right. That'd be me.

I know how annoying it is when authors never update. I hate waiting for stories to update, so, I apologize for the wait. I know other authors go on about how busy their lives are, but, well, I'm just a very lazy person who couldn't be bothered to write.

Thank you so much for such a positive response to Chapter 1. Seriously. Holy moly.

I was surprised people were so anti Jane. I didn't mean to portray her as a shitty friend. Just a flighty one. She loves Darcy, but the Science, it sings her siren song and she just can't help getting pulled away.

*BEEP!BEEP!BEEP! BE-THWACK*

After Hulk-smashing her alarm clock into submission, Darcy let out a sound reminiscent of one of Jane's janky creations in protest of having to function.

"Nnnggggaaaarrrrrbbblllrr."

Darcy Lewis was not the most enchanting of creatures at the horrific hour of 4:30am.

Despite having spent most of yesterday in her pajamas, sleep had proven pretty elusive. Instead of counting sheep, her brain had decided to count all the ways in which her life currently sucked. The last time Darcy had dared to look at her clock, 2:30 a.m. had glared back at her.

Ugh, she did not want to get up. She could feel a headache beginning to bloom behind her eyes from stress and lack of sleep. As Darcy laid in bed contemplating how awful the next 14 hours were going to be, exhaustion crept in unnoticed and gently pulled her eyelids closed. When she next opened her eyes, she felt a little more rested and peered over at her dented alarm clock only to let out a "Holy Fucking SHIT!" at the time – 5:00 am! She had to be at Stark Industries for 6:00am (realistically, 5:50am if she wanted to make a good first impression). Meaning she only had 30 minutes to shower, do her hair and make-up, dress to impress, and eat. The trek would take her 20 minutes at a steady hustle on foot. She and Jane hadn't had time to learn the subway system, and at this point in her personal economic crisis, her finances were basically in the red so a cab was not an option.

Multitasking her way through her morning routine proved a bit above her skill level. Attempting to iron her shirt while brushing her teeth resulted in the back of her blouse sporting a gnarly iron burn. And if someone were pervy enough to examine her blouse's armpit, they would encounter a rather sizeable splotch of toothpaste, which, in drying, appeared to the ignorant eye as a discoloured sweat stain incongruently smelling of Arctic Mint.

Finally ready to leave, panic spiked through her when she saw the time - 5:40a.m. Considering every minute was precious at this point, she was so frigging late.

The morning walk to Stark Industries was jarring. It was the beginning of October so the city wasn't as brightly lit as she would've liked; the sun still working on rising over the horizon. She walked past a few rather unsavoury characters who threw out such classics as: 'Hey sexy', 'Morning Mama', 'I've got just the thing for those DSLs', and one super gross dude pissing in an alley yelled out a garbled 'Thiccc!' at her, belched, and then threw up all over himself.

It wasn't even like she could be victim-blamed for wearing provocative clothing. Unless wearing a grey, slightly wrinkled pantsuit, purple velvet sneakers, and damp hair tied up in a tight bun was the new sexy. Also, she hadn't had time to mess with her contacts so her sight was granted through the lenses of a pair of butt-ugly glasses her Mom had picked out for her in highschool.

Darcy arrived at Avengers Tower feeling honestly kinda violated and uncomfortable. Her posture hunched as she found herself turtling down into her blazer out of self-consciousness. The 20 minute walk/jog had felt much longer. Standing outside on the curb, she wondered what Jane was doing at that very moment inside the tower. Probably nice and cozy in bed with her thunder god or, in true Jane fashion, was wide awake and having the scientific time of her nerd life in her shiny new lab.

The building was so tall that Darcy had no hopes of seeing Jane's floor from the street. Her view point was so low that the perspective made the residential portion of the building nothing more than a spec of light.

Before entering, she swapped out her sneakers for the work appropriate shoes stashed in her bag, thankfully she was completely ignored by the multitude of SI employees rushing past her. Walking through the doors, she immediately saw what could only be her supervisor – an attractive, yet highly annoyed looking man waiting at the reception desk. Checking the huge platinum clock on the wall revealed she was almost 5 minutes late.

Rushing over, she extended her hand, "Good morning, sir. I'm Darcy Lewis. I apologize for being late. I assure you, it is not the norm."

Shaking her hand, he introduced himself, "Paul Manning. I'm just going to say it now, Ms. Lewis - Stark Industries has a strict attendance policy, the details of which should have been provided in your packet from HR. You get three tardies. You're now down to two."

He released her hand with a slight grimace which Darcy found extremely insulting and rude. It's not like her hand was disgusting or sweaty or…nevermind. A quick glance at her appendage proved it was in fact glistening and clammier than a mollusk. God, why was she so gross. She discreetly wiped it on the interior of her pants pocket.

"You have to be through those doors by 6:00am on the dot. The surveillance system within the tower will monitor your badge activity, automatically clocking you in and out and sending me notification if there is a tardy. This morning you will have your photo taken for your ID badge. Please follow me."

Stepping into the elevator, Darcy watched as he pressed B5 for basement (she could see the end of his soulmark peeking out the cuff of his sleeve – just the letters 'ing' in loopy cursive) and listened as he gave her a bit of a rundown. The mailroom spanned two levels – B5 and B6. She had clearance up to level 30. After 6 months, her level of access will be in direct correlation to her level of performance. After 2 years she could potentially be approved up to level 75. Levels 75-80 were accessible by only a select few mailroom associates (minimum of 5 years) as they housed the labs of Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. Level 81+ were the residential floors and she would never have clearance for those levels.

Darcy was finally realizing how everyone else felt in relation to the Avengers. She had been so up close and personal with Thor and his chaos that she hadn't realized just how untouchable he was to normal people. The descending elevator seemed to represent her life's trajectory - further down and further away from her friends and goals. She shook her head. Wow, she was melodramatic for 6:15 in the morning.

Once her photo was taken, she looked at her ID badge in dismay. Replace the words "Stark Industries" with "New York City Police Department" and it could've passed as a mugshot. Smiling had been prohibited and the resulting resting bitch face made her look criminally insane.

Supervisor Paul swiftly covered up his laugh with a cough. "It's alright. Almost everyone has terrible ID photos. You can get a new one in a year."

The thought of still working in the mailroom after a year was a tragic prognosis. Before Darcy could further lament, she was promptly escorted out of the room, down a maze of hallways, and into her new work environment.

When Darcy envisioned her stint in the mailroom, she just automatically assumed the place would be dark, dreary, windowless, and smokey (either from a firey furnace or from old men smoking while wearing bowler hats and suspenders. She admittedly watched too much era-specific tv). However, instead of a dank hell, the mailroom at Stark Industries was huge and insanely bright due to the numerous floor to ceiling "windows" which turned out to be highly convincing computer screens displaying a view as if they were 40 floors up. She watched impressed as New York was projected in real-time.

"Each screen had a different view corresponding to the view of a window 40 floors up. All the windows on the 35th floor have a camera attached so the employees in the windowless basement levels don't go insane. Soon you'll forget that they aren't actual windows. The amount of times people have attempted to open them is embarrassing. As you would expect, this building is state of the art. On your own time, I encourage you to reference the map on the employee intranet and explore all the various amenities found on the different floors."

Following Paul around the office, it appeared everyone had their own cubicle. Paul explained the ins and outs. It wasn't rocket science by any stretch, but it was a sophisticated system.

"There's approximately 3000 employees filling the floors above and below us. We are responsible for coordinating the incoming and outgoing mail for each one of them. The mail department has 40 coordinators, and while that may seem like a lot, believe me, it's not."

He showed her around the department – where the mail came in, where outgoing mail went out, her circulation schedule, how to handle expedited correspondence, packages, etc. Finally he arrived at a lone cubicle stashed away in a corner. Unlike the majority of the cubicles in the room, it had high walls and wasn't connected to another cubicle. Darcy looked at it in slight dismay and opened her mouth to issue a complaint about being so isolated from everyone else, but quickly closed it. This wasn't permanent. She'd be fine. She'd keep her nose to the grind stone and she'd be fine.

"Today and tomorrow will be dedicated to online training, for the rest of the week you'll shadow a few people, and then next week you'll be on your own."

Ignoring the fact that she already felt like she was on her own, Darcy pasted a smile on her face and issued an enthusiastic, "Great!"

Paul simply said, "yeah" and set her up with her computer and the training information she needed to go over (there would be testing at the end of tomorrow).

Darcy had never been inside an office cubicle before, but it was just as dull, grey, and boring as she'd imagined. Standing up, she peered over the edge of her cubicle walls to take in the rest of the floor. Thankfully it appeared as though they were allowed to decorate their dreary little dens with personal knick-knacks. The amount of cubicles bedecked with Avenger baubles (specifically Ironman figurines) was definitely fanboy overkill. As her eyes roamed the room, they crossed paths with a group of employees standing in one of three break areas staring at her. She smiled at them and shot a quick little wave. Excited to meet some co-workers, Darcy made to go introduce herself, but the group shot her a collective stink-eye and actually turned their backs to her before she could step outside of her cubicle. Bewildered, Darcy slunk down into her seat. She looked down at herself – maybe the armpit toothpaste stain was showing? A swift check showed the evidence of her disaster of a morning was all still hidden by her blazer. She stood up again and took another look around. Apparently blessed by the same beautiful god as Maria Hill, every person she laid eyes on was good looking. Like intimidatingly hot. Even Supervisor Paul was a hot one. Tall and blonde, he looked like he should be walking a runway or something much more glamourous than being a mailroom grunt. Even if he was Head Mailroom Grunt.

Needing the promise of a friendly face, Darcy got out her phone and shot off a quick text to Jane: Hey Janey! I'm down in the mailroom (floor B5). I know the call to Science is hard to ignore, but at some point today wanna grab lunch with me? I get 60 mins which I can take whenever. Just lemme know when works for you and I'll make it work for me too J

Aware the text was tinged with a slight air of desperation, Darcy tacked on some levity: Everyone has decked out their cubicles with Avengers crap. On a completely unrelated note, do you think Thor would let me borrow mew-mew for an undisclosed period of time?

Resolved not to look at her phone until she heard her text notification, Darcy got to work.

It wasn't until her stomach started rumbling that she looked up from her computer to see it was almost 1 o'clock. Her phone displayed no new messages.

Hoping against hope that Jane was in the mood to answer her phone, Darcy called her friend's cell phone. After three rings, a male voice with a rather dapper British accent came on the line.

"Hello, Ms. Lewis. I am JARVIS, Mr. Stark's AI. You've reached Ms. Foster's mobile phone. Unfortunately, she is otherwise occupied, but has asked that I accept the call on her behalf. Is there anything I can assist you with this afternoon?"

Flummoxed, Darcy took a second to respond, "JARVIS? You mean the bastard who replaced me!"

Silence met her statement.

"Okay, I'm sorry. That was rude. It's not your fault I've been demoted to the mailroom."

"That's quite alright, Ms. Lewis. I take no offense."

"Can you even take offense, Skynet?"

After a deliberately chilling pause, Jarvis asked, "Is there anything I can do for you, Ms. Lewis?"

Realizing she had her answer, Darcy quickly moved along not wanting to get on the wrong side of the AI, "I wanted to ask Jane to lunch with me. That girl needs to eat. Can you wrangle her away from whatever shiny thing Mr. Stark has dangled in front of her?"

"Unfortunately, Ms. Foster is currently conducting a conference call to assist with a rather urgent matter in a lab overseas."

Darcy's interest was piqued, "Ooh, really? What's going on?"

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information, Ms. Lewis. Would you care to leave a message for Ms. Foster?"

Oh. Right. Darcy was no longer privy to that sort of stuff. That was fine. Darcy was fine with that. I didn't feel like a kick in the teeth.

"Umm…could you get her to call me when she has a chance, please?"

"Certainly, Ms. Lewis."

"Thanks. Uh, hey, Jarvis, do you know where I'm supposed to go to eat in this place?" Too lazy to reference the building map, she figured it couldn't hurt to ask the multi-million dollar Artificial Intelligence where she was supposed to get the foodstuffs.

"There are 5 different cafeterias located in Stark Tower. The closest to you would be on floor B1. I believe the special today is lasagna."

Stomach rumbling at the mere thought of cheesy, tomatoey, noodley goodness, Darcy quickly put her computer to sleep and stood up. "That's the best thing I've heard all day."

"Very good. Will that be all, Ms. Lewis?"

"Yeah, that's it, Jarvis. Thanks for your help. You're a lot less douchey than I pictured."

"I do my best, Ms. Lewis."

Darcy snorted out a laugh as she hung up.

As she made her way down the hallway towards the elevators, she was happy to see a group of co-workers clearly also going to lunch. Glad to finally meet some people, she stepped up behind them only to hesitate when she noticed it was the group from before that gave her the stink-eye. "Umm, excuse me?" They stopped talking and turned to look at her. Determined to make a good impression, Darcy smiled, open and friendly, "Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to introduce myself and say Hi. So…Hi!" (insert awkward wave here, like an idiot) "I'm Darcy! I just started here this morning."

She was surprised and offended when eyes were rolled and glances were shifted among the 6 people in front her. It was the 5'9" glamazon in front who responded, "Yes, we know who you are."

Bewildered, Darcy asked, "Did I do something to offend you?"

Stepping closer, the woman revealed, "Listen, Lewis, we all know how you got this job and we're not interested in being associated with leeches."

Flabbergasted, Darcy could only stare as they got on the elevator, making it clear she was not welcome to step on. The doors closed in her face. After a moment, the shock gave way to hurt. Darcy considered herself a strong, independent woman, but these last two days were really making her re-evaluate her opinion of herself. Feeling a slight sting behind her eyes, she swore, and made her way into the stairwell adjacent to the elevator. She would not cry at work. She was a goddamn professional. Sitting down on the bottom step, she took deep breaths to push past the hurt. This felt a whole lot like high school and she refused to be bullied again. Marta was clearly an asshole and Darcy would not be made to feel less than. While trying to convince herself she was better than the likes of Marta, it was hard to tune out the thought that it was only her first day in the mailroom and already she managed to make an enemy. If her self-worth hadn't still been reeling from yesterday's events, Darcy would normally be able to bounce back from the likes of Marta. But unfortunately, she was left contemplating just how capable she actually was without Jane's coattails to ride. The stairwell was thankfully empty and the only sound was her breathing which had begun to grow ragged as she fought back tears. Until:

"Christ, what a toad. I'm pretty sure she was spawned in a bog."

Darcy shrieked and managed to flail herself off the bottom step as a voice began speaking to her from the walls. She looked over, heart racing, as the cover to one of the vents in the wall popped open and a leg emerged, quickly followed by the rest of one Clint Barton.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Barton! You scared the hell out of me." Stepping closer she crouched down to look into the black hole. "The heck are you doing crawling around in the walls?"

Ignoring Darcy's very legitimate question, Clint said, "Don't listen to her. Marta thinks she's the shit because she's friends with Maria Hill and is one of the few mailroom associates to have access to levels 75-80."

Registering Clint's words, Darcy blushed in embarrassment and discreetly made sure there were no tears running down her cheeks, "You saw that?"

Brushing dust and an assortment of vent debris off his black t-shirt and purple sweat pants, Clint threw an arm around Darcy, "I'm Hawkeye. I see everything."

Rolling her eyes at that load of bullshit, Darcy poked him in the side until he was forced to remove his arm (Ow! Hey, watch the merchandise!), "How do you even know about Marta and mailroom drama. You're an Avenger, why would you give a shit?"

Clint turned serious has he said, "A few years ago, Hydra infiltrated the mailroom. They managed to do quite a bit of damage from down here. Even though SI has implemented a much more secure vetoing system, I still like to keep an eye out. In the beginning, I suspected Marta would be an issue, but after watching her it soon became clear she's here mainly to try to get into Cap's pants."

"How does working in the mailroom translate to shacking up with Captain America? Not only that, he's Barnes' soulmate – does she plan on hooking up with both of them?" Laughing at the utter delusion, Darcy was officially out of her slump.

"Yeah, I dunno if she's thought that far. Her main ploy is to hopefully bump into him someday and basically he'll be unable to resist her charm. But it's been 5 years and she's not bumped into him once."

Darcy shook her head at some people's idiocy. Everyone knew Captain America and the Winter Soldier were soulmates. Thanks to the files Black Widow released onto the internet, everyone also knew that the two of them had a third soulmate which they had yet to meet. Soulmarks were to be kept covered until you met your soulmate. Unbeknownst to Widow at the time, the files she released contained multiple images of Rogers and Barnes' third soulmark. The media went nuts when it was discovered that they carried identical marks, meaning they would meet their third soulmate simultaneously. The words had been ruthlessly scrutinized and mocked: "Oh, shit! Sorry! I am so sorry, I didn't see you! Though, really, how the hell I managed to miss you both when you're so goddamn huge, I have no idea." The fumbled apology was borderline insulting and ran down their backs in a bubbly cursive which Darcy had always found eerily similar to her own penmanship. Although Darcy knew she was in for a shitty soulmate experience, she shook her head at the thought of matching with Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Hot as they were, that would be way too much drama.

A poke to the forehead prodded her out of her thoughts, "Earth to Lewis!" He'd clearly been saying something which she had missed while deep in thought.

Smacking the offending digit away from her face, Darcy said, "Oh my god, Barton, what?"

"I said, do you want to go get some lunch? There's a great burger joint a few blocks over."

Perking up at the mention of burgers, Darcy was about to say hell yes, when she remembered lasagna, "I would, but Jarvis said the cafeteria was serving lasagna, which I'm a complete sucker for."

"Ooh! You've met Jarvis? Jarvis, why didn't you tell me you met Lewis?"

Darcy looked at Clint as if he was deranged as he seemingly directed his question at the stairwell in general. She was floored when Jarvis' soothing voice came from all around them.

"I don't recall you asking, Mr. Barton."

"Jarvis?! What the hell are you doing in the stairwell?" Like an idiot, Darcy instinctively began looking all around her as if she could actually see Jarvis lurking about.

"I am the building's AI, therefore, I am accessible anywhere throughout the building, Ms. Lewis," Jarvis explained. Darcy was sure she wasn't imagining his smug tone.

"Only a few people are aware that he's everywhere." Clint warned, "Tony doesn't want a bunch of people to know, something about not freaking out the masses."

"But if I'm discreet, I can talk to you whenever I want?" Darcy asked Jarvis excitedly.

"Yes, Ms. Lewis. If you require assistance, please do not hesitate."

Looking at Clint, she couldn't help but say, "Wow! This is one of the coolest things I've seen. And I've seen evil elves, mew-mew, and Thor shirtless."

Jarvis, clearly pleased, said, "Thank you, Ms. Lewis."

Clint just huffed out a laugh at her enthusiasm, not that he couldn't fault her for it. Jarvis was pretty impressive. "Yeah, Jarvis is a good bro, but I'm starving so let's go get burgers. You can have lasagna some other time. I'm not normally free for lunch."

"Fine, lead me to the burgers."

"Great!"

"Wait, what are you doing?" Darcy watched as Clint started to crawl back into the vent. "I'm not worming my way through the air ducts, Barton!"

Petulantly, Clint abandoned the vent, "Fine. God, you people and your doors."

A/N: Sorry if I dwelled too long on the mailroom crap. I just really wanted to hammer home how boring and monotonous this is compared to the excitement of working with Jane and being up with the Avengers.

Original characters are NOT my cup of tea so Marta isn't going to be featured a lot.

I love Jarvis!

Hopefully you enjoyed that. I'm not super pumped with how it came out, but I'd still love to know what you think. Thank you!