Tony’s loud banging startled Darcy out of her trip down memory lane. Reflexively, she reached forward to whack him on the back, but he had already choked most of the cookie down it seemed. So, she went about quickly pouring him a glass of water, instead. It was hard to look at Tony as she down the drink in front of him, but wasn’t about being embarrassed about the incident anymore. Clearly, this was not the first time Hartmut’s name had been introduced to Tony. She couldn’t decide whether this was good or bad news. “Yeah…he’s – you know him?” She watched in confusion as Tony moved to the next box of food. Either whatever he already knew about Hartmut was so unproblematic that this issue was no longer relevant and they could now sit back and feast or Hartmut was a hundred times worst than she already thought and there was no hope and so they might as well enjoy simple pleasure while they still could. Darcy couldn’t decide which she would prefer between those options, either. “Really? Where?”
If the name was half the game, was the location considered the second part? Finding and taking Hartmut into custody seemed at least like the traditional idea, if not a good idea; if he was kept in a secure location, unable to run or cause more harm, then they had a chance to work up a case against him, forcing him to face justice for his villainous history. This must be the right thing to do. It had to be. Darcy couldn’t bring herself to fully agree with any other possible ramifications against Hartmut, especially any of those that resembled anything close to harsh revenge.
Darcy scoffed at Tony’s compliments, but smiled nonetheless. “Yeah, that’s totally how he’ll described it,” she remarked, as her chuckles turned into peels of laughter. She was so lucky to have such funny and light-hearted friends. With them around, she was sure that she’d get over this incidence soon. At least, she hoped it would happen soon; it wouldn’t be good to have to continue moping around instead of moving on and possible fixing this situation. After all, it was now her turn to help a friend.
“His name is Grant Ward, and he’s about a 7, I guess? Sometimes an 8.” Admittedly, Darcy wasn’t the type to “fix bad boys,” but Grant wasn’t bad or broken for that matter. At most, he just needed someone to see him with fresh eyes and was willing to lend a helping hand. Luckily, she had met those qualifications and was able to help him. Now, he’s sacrificed with cover to help her, so it was only fair she return the favour. “Is there anything we can do to help him?”
“That’s uh…bigger problem. I’ve got where, not how,” Tony said. He was not quite sure what the protocol was here–did you rat out your friend’s boyfriend when they were several irreversible months into their happily-ever-after with a child, or hunt down the boyfriend in question when he also happened to double as a psychotic kidnapper–also of a friend. Feeling a headache on the horizon, Tony reached for another fortune cookie if only to give himself something to do with his hands and cracked it up open while he chose and organized his next words carefully. “Monster’s a sort of friend of the family.” He paused–no, that wasn’t it. “Yeah, bad choice of words. He’s uh…Not a friend. He’s…” He set the two hals of the cookie down, meeting Darcy’s eye as he continued. “You know Ginny? Very…preppy, very friendly, very pregnant clothes designer at SI? Great girl? Around the tower a lot? He’s sort of the father of her kid. We’ve met. Had a meal.”
Viktor was interesting to say the least–never going to be Tony’s favorite person, not for all the money in the world, not least because of the way he looked at Steve, like he’d enjoy nothing better than to see his head separated from his body–and now this. Darcy was never supposed to get hurt, never supposed to get caught up in the mess of who-knows-who and who-wants-to-kill-who that had become the every day commotion of being a super hero. (Wording still weird even to Tony’s ears, and he’d been in the business for over five years now.) Some things you never got used to. But Darcy? Darcy shouldn’t have to get used to it, shouldn’t have been dragged down in the first place, and that? That was on him, on all of them, on their inability to protect her when they’d promised her a safe space, a fortress of a tower, not a facade.
“Point is,” Tony said, rising from his seat now to investigate the windows closest to the table, then the door. “Yeah, I’m installing new locks,” he intercepted his own idea, then continued as though there had been no side-tracking, “It’s going to be difficult to just show up at his door and lock him up. Not that I’m not taking this seriously,” he added quickly, fingers running over the bottom of the frame; he could install a couple of deadbolts, or better yet, remove the entire thing and start over–make it stronger, indestructible. No one would get through the windows or doors when he was done with it. She’d be safe here at least–the one thing he could do now, the least he could do. “I’ll work on it. I promise you that, alright? And there’s no way on god’s green Earth he’ll be hurting you or anyone else again, okay? That’s a guarantee.” He extended his pink to seal the deal.
He leaned against the nearest wall, listening to her describe her “savior” when the name caught his attention, and he was very glad that this time at least he was not eating. “Grant Ward is your knight in shining armor? The sold-out-his-team, strangely kind to puppies Grant Ward? Tried to blow up my tower Grant Ward?” He scratched his head–nothing about this conversation had been simple, and yet it seemed they were still nowhere near to any semblance of a solution. “Help him? Uh…let me think that over, yeah? Fucking hell, of course it’s Grant Ward.”
