As promised - this is a follow piece (in 2 parts) to The Space Between.

It all started with ice.

Well, no, it actually started before that, but the ice was the damn tipping point, the auditory chunk of frozen what that ripped a huge hole in the prow of the ship.

But that's not just cart before the horse where this story's concerned – it's the last chapter before the first page has been read. No – to really understand what happened, it's necessary to go all the way back, long before the photo, the whole joke about capes, back before the ice and that goddamn little quirk with the lip, all the way back to how Darcy's hang up got this whole ball rolling in the first place.

O-O

To be fair, Darcy knows she's illogical, but some things are so ingrained in her psyche that it's almost impossible to realize when they're happening, let alone how to disarm the situation. There is no easy way to turn off twenty –four years of defense mechanisms.

He loves me, she tells herself over and over again. He loves me, and this is something perfectly normal between two people who are in love.

Love.

Making love.

If the former is a foreign concept, then the latter is downright alien. How does one 'make' love? Making assumes that the discreet participants know exactly what what's involved in the care and feeding of said emotion. Love to Darcy Lewis is fairy tale, the type of thing read about but never directly experienced. How the hell is she supposed to make something that, up until a few months ago, she didn't think existed? Is there a recipe somewhere, some magical, chemical or biological equation that transcends beyond inserting tab A into slot B, because that's all she really gets. Knocking boots? Fine. Bumping uglies? Been there, done that. Fucking, shagging, boinking, balling, boning…God, there are a million different ways for her to refer to or think about sex, and not a single one spooks her because it's just sex. Everyone involved goes in with the same expectation, and, if everything goes according to plan, and the whole A/B thing works, then wham, bam, thank you ma'am, everyone is happy in the end.

But that's sex, and sex is easy. Love – love is something much messier, something more mysterious than Einstein-Rosen bridges and bifrost and squeezing into black cat suits and always looking fabulous.

It's complicated enough when Darcy gets all caught up in her head, lost in the will she won't she debate between the angel and devil perched on each shoulder. And then he comes swooping into the room – Steve Rogers with his gorgeous smile and brilliant blue eyes and a body DaVinci wishes he could've carved. It would be so much easier if Steve weren't such a good guy – jerk, arrogant, stupid – Darcy knows how to deal with those, but not good, and definitely not respectful. Steve goes toe to toe with her, challenging and pushing intellectually, but then thanking her and holding the door open and always popping the cap off beers for her. Any woman would have fallen hard for that, but for Darcy? It's a lethal combination, sinking her faster than the Titanic. But that's the ice, and that's getting ahead of the whole story.

The reality is, while no one dares say boo to Darcy when Steve is around – their respect (or awe) of him is too great –the minute he's out of earshot, it's game on. They crack jokes and tease her endlessly, but that's okay, she knows how to handle herself. Darcy grew up sharper barbs than anything anyone could ever throw at her – the snide comments flick away like flies.

"That has to get old," Bruce says one day. With Jane otherwise occupied, Darcy has defected to his lab, happily filling the role of research assistant and overall grounded human presence in his lab. Outside of the 'core team' as Bruce calls it, most people are too afraid of 'The Other Guy' to volunteer willingly to work side by side with the brilliant scientist.

Darcy is the opposite.

She likes working with Bruce. She likes his honesty, she respects his intellect, and most importantly, she has a mad appreciation for his wicked sense of humor. Rare are the people who could 'out dry' her, and Bruce Banner is downright droll with a healthy dollop of caustic on top. While he's night and day different from Steve, he has a wonderful heart, and has become the closest thing to a best friend that Darcy's ever had.

That still doesn't stop her from holding things close. She likes Bruce, and she trusts him, but there are some things she just can't talk about.

Darcy doesn't look up from the notes she's transcribing. "Is this a t or an f?"

Bruce leans over the counter, pushing his glasses further up on his nose. "F. And I said that it has to get old the way everyone teases you."

"Meh, I just ignore it." She doesn't look up from the paper, her fingers flying effortlessly over the keyboard. "If I let everything everyone said get to me, I would've bitten it a long time ago. Dog eat dog world, Milkbone underwear, you know the drill."

She continues to type, hoping that the glib response is enough to slam the door closed, hard. For anyone else, it would work, but this is Bruce, and because he is such a good guy, he's not going to let her get off that easy. But maybe that's the problem, getting off is easy, it's always been easy, but now, when it's so damn complicated, she can't walk away, but she can't really move forward, either.

Darcy Lewis, chicken shit, at your service.

Bruce slips something out of his folder, a thick piece of shiny paper that's been crumpled and smoothed back out. Darcy knows what it is before it hits the counter – and immediately wishes she'd torn the picture up instead of just crushing it. Darcy found the 5x7 propped against her monitor this morning, a press shot of Steve in his "Cap Wear,' as she calls it. Someone has scrawled a message in garish red ink: To Darcy, All My Love, Cap followed by oversized x's and o's.

"That's crumpled pretty violently for just ignoring it."

Instinctively, she slides the photo closer, trying to smooth out a crumpled edge. It's just a stupid practical joke, someone messing with her for fun. Honestly, if had just been the note, she wouldn't have wasted time crumpling it up at all, hell she might have even tacked it up on the wall, laughing at how the joke backfired.

But whoever did it (and she suspects Barton's handiwork) hit below the belt with the picture.

"He's a lucky bastard," Bruce says, turning back to his microscope. "The camera loves him. Our pictures are all over the place, but he's head and shoulders above the rest of us. The bodega down the street actually has a picture of him up on the wall-"

"And all the teenage girls kiss it on the way out," Darcy says quickly. She'd gone in the same store two weeks ago, on a mission for something decadent and chocolaty, only to find two fifteen year olds with skinny legs and short shorts kissing their fingers and pressing it to the picture of her boyfriend. Everywhere she turned, people were in love with Steve, idolizing him, lusting after him - beautiful women without any baggage.

She can't hold a candle to that.

"That poster actual has lipstick marks on it, you know." She can't look at Bruce, because she doesn't want to see the inevitable – the look of pity on his face. Poor Darcy, in love with the guy who's so far out of her league he's in another galaxy. Instead, she keeps her head down, her fingers flying across the keyboard, maybe even striking the enter key a little too hard.

I don't blame them for wanting to touch him, she thinks. I want to, too. I want to do a lot of things, actually, but I'm too chicken shit to try.

"Are you done abusing the keyboard?"

Darcy jerks her head up, ready with a smart-ass retort about where he can shove the keyboard, but the snarky comment dies before it can ever completely form. Bruce is standing with his hands braced on the counter, and he's looking at her the way that the Dad's in teenage movies do, all sympathetic and soft around the edges. It kills her to think that people are afraid of him, because they miss out on all the good underneath. Before that thought completely processes, she's jumped track, realizing that her own father has never looked at her like this. It should feel good, to know that someone cares that much, but it only highlights all the other failures, all the points where she hasn't been enough. Maybe she never will be – what if Steve finds he sea legs, gets comfortable in this new world, and realizes that she is only a crutch, that there is bigger and better out there.

"You need to give yourself my credit, Darcy." Bruce is looking at her, directly into her eyes, and it's like he can see all the way, deep inside, like he gets her. "Those battlements of yours are high, and they do a good job of keeping the arrows out, but if you don't watch it, they'll keep the people out too."

"Funny," Darcy says, glancing away. "I didn't take you for a Sting fan."

He laughs softly and turns away. "Any man who can keep it up for six hours deserves a few props in my book."

"Can't you make a serum for that?" The joke does its job, killing the awkward tension that hovers in the lab. Bruce laughs, and goes back to his microscope, leaving Darcy with that cloying song stuck in her head along with the image of teenage girls pressing kisses against Steve's photographic copy.