I worked for Tony Stark, nothing scares me

Jemma had been getting frustrated by the labs she had been running. They kept turning up with contradictory results and she felt herself getting worked up. She took a deep breath and tried to think of the best course of action. She decided the having tea and looking over some notes that had been passed to her would be most beneficial. She had drank through two cups and almost finished a pastry when she heard a knock on the door.

She smiled at Pepper standing in the doorway. Jemma felt ashamed of the way she had treated the woman when she was at her worst and still felt like she owed her numerous apologies and thank yous. Pepper had really helped her get started on her healing process.

Jemma hummed, popping the last bite in her mouth. “Sure, I could really use a break from these disastrous results,” she laughed.

@armoredrescue

“Fabulous.”  Pepper’s smile widened as she waited for Jemma to wrap up her work.   “Sometimes I just need to walk away from things before I throw something.  You know that feeling?”  Throw something, break something, get caught up in worries or concerns, all kinds of negative things.   

It heartened her to see Jemma doing better.   One of the things that gave her a sense of satisfaction.  The scientist put all the hard work in for turning things around.   Pepper hoped that she did her best to support and yes maybe push for this but in the end the other woman made it happen.

1. fooled obadiah stane to steal classified files from his office that let tony figure out who was selling stark industries weapons in the black market

2. went with a group of highly trained shield agents to arrest obadiah and almost got herself killed. but she stuck around to help tony at the most crucial moment to take down iron monger

3. took over the most valuable tech conglomerate in the mcu and survived her first six months on the job, which essentially made her the marvel equivalent of tim cook

4. told happy to charge straight at whiplash in monaco to a) buy tony time and b) give him the suit

5. kept stark industries, a high profile public company, from going belly up because of tony’s reckless behaviour as well as sabotage from justin hammer and vanko

6. inspired tony to take his miniature arc reactor tech and use it to build a clean energy source (“all of this came from you…stark towers is your baby.”)

7. had her morals in the right place to deny AIM funding for the extremis research, therefore forgoing potential revenue sources for her company, because she was concerned it could be weaponised

8. survived getting blown up in her own home because her boyfriend gave out their home address to a high profile terrorist and use the suit to save him from falling debris

9. repeatedly survived attempts on her life (she faced down iron monger ffs), which included getting kidnapped and experimented upon using a highly unstable, potentially lethal virus

10. fell 200 feet into a blazing explosion and not only did she survive, she killed a fire-breathing supersoldier and, once again, saved her boyfriend, and she did not hold any grudge against him for his recklessness

11. reconciled with her boyfriend after he lost his team and was at his lowest point in the mcu, and despite everything she’s gone through, agreed to marry him

12. endured her fiancé’s decision to climb on board a space ship and disappear for three weeks while the world went belly up, and then nursed him back to health, married him and started a family with him

13. gave him her blessings to go be a hero because she was empathetic and knew he wouldn’t ever be able to live with himself if he didn’t try—she put his feelings, the avengers’ feelings, and that of the grieving world before hers despite knowing there was a chance he might not come back

14. suited up without hesitation and showed up to the fight because someone had to watch her husband’s six, and the last time he fought the aliens, he almost died from starvation and dehydration

15. consoled her dying husband with a lie if only to make his passing easier, and waited till he was gone before she broke down, after watching her worse fears come true

16. stayed strong for her daughter and carried on her husband’s legacy by helping people with her resources—the fat cheque she wrote for may parker’s fundraising to help those who were displaced in the snap

Jemma’s lip quivered when she considered whether she’d answer the question honestly. Her voice was barely audible. “My kidnappers fed me well… as long as I could show results. Most days I ate my food.”

Jemma rested her head back on her knees, letting out soft sobs as Pepper spoke to her. “I don’t want to be a monster anymore,” she choked out. “I want to make up for what I did. I want to fix things.  I want to fix things.”

After a few more moments of sobbing, Jemma spoke again. “Shield made me talk to a psychiatrist before for PTSD. Talking didn’t really help. Action did. Returning to a sense of normalcy did. But, I know if our positions were reversed, I’d recommend it too,” Jemma confessed with a deep breath.

Normally even thinking about this would send her into an episode, but right now she was so exhausted she felt numb more than anything. She took a couple more minutes to steady her breathing as much as she could.

She tried speaking again as evenly as she could, but her voice cracked anyway. “I just can’t face being alone right now. I-I can’t.”

Jemma picked her head back up to look Pepper in the eye, “If I agree to go see Bobbi, can you promise not to tell her what’s happened here? I don’t want her to worry. Please?”

Pepper gave her a considering look.   There could be a compromise here.  “I don’t intend to tell her, but I won’t lie to her either.  Odds are it won’t come up today.”  It may come up in the future but that would be a different thing.   

“Jemma you don’t have to be alone.   That’s what your friends are for.  We have people here in Haven that could use company as well.  You just might be able to help someone else too.”  Pepper couldn’t and wouldn’t force the scientist into anything.   Just do her best to let her know what options are available. 

“The difference is this new you isn’t a monster. This new me is. I could have started a whole new wave of death just to save myself. Only a monster would choose an action like that.”

Jemma swallowed hard. She felt a huge lump in her throat, but it was so dry she couldn’t swallow it down. The last time she had gone through something traumatizing the had made her talk to a psychiatrist. She knew he thought she had PTSD from being kidnapped by an alien rock and transported to a planet where she was alone in darkness without food and very little water for weeks before she found another person. After months of it it being just the two of them living in fear and isolation, she started falling for him, and then he ended up sacrificing his life for her when Fitz found a way to bring her back. Therapy hadn’t helped then and that hadn’t even been her fault. How would therapy help now?

“Help me? Help me what? Help me be okay with the fact that I’m a villain? I don’t want to be okay with that. I can’t be okay with being a monster.”



Jemma began shrinking into herself again. Anytime she was told she had to do something she felt her body shut down in resistance, even if she knew it was the right thing to do—even if she wanted to do it. She’d even try yo pep-talk herself into doing it—like when May brought her food. Even if she knew the consequence of not doing it were bad. But somehow she couldn’t convince herself to go through with it, despite intent. She took a few deep breaths and tried to prevent herself from shrinking away from it.

She nodded to Pepper, more tears streaming down her face. “I’ll try. I will.”

“The body can go about three weeks without any food. It’s not all that dramatic.”

“When is the last time you were eating regular solid meals three times a day?”  That little tidbit had been used on Pepper before and she knew exactly how to counter it.  “The brain needs a balanced nutritious meal to help work at optimal levels.  If you haven’t been eating properly then your brain will not be working at its best.”  Or the rest of the scientist’s body. The brain is just what they focused on the most.

She did her best to keep her tone and mannerisms gentle.  “Jemma I’m trying to give you options.   This won’t work unless you choose to do it.   At the same time I’m trying to let you know the potential consequences of your choices.  I want you to make informed decisions.”  Often people needed to feel in control.  The best way to do that was to lay everything in front of them and let them choose what happened.   Maybe limited options, but they all faced that these days.

“They can help you deal.  If you think you are a monster, you don’t have to stay that way.   Regardless of what you think you deserve, I know this place needs another scientist capable of helping fix things.   Again the choice is yours.”  Pepper wouldn’t force her to do anything really.  If Jemma truly wanted to continue in this wallow, she could.  Just not in the labs.  Pepper was betting she wanted to make things right more than she wanted to remain in the pit of depression and self-recrimination.  

“There’s nothing else to be,” she said softly, trying to be distant so she didn’t break down again. “The person who I used to be is gone and this is what’s left–a broken monster. The only thing that I can do is science. I can reverse what I did, help Bobbi with a vaccine, and then I don’t care what happens to me.”

Jemma took a deep breath. She really didn’t want to argue anymore. It was all she could do not to collapse in exhaustion. Lying and deflection hadn’t worked with the woman. Normally she would hide her episodes from people the best she could, hold them back until she could escape, but the cat was already out of the bag with Pepper, so maybe more honesty would help.

“Those things generally require being alone and the episodes are worse when I’m alone,” Jemma said, trying to keep herself distant, but the tears came anyway. This time they were gentle and there was no anger backing them up.

“Last time I showered I had a bad flashback. It wasn’t even from the horrid lab they kept me in or the infected afterward,” she said wiping her tears away. “That’s the dumb part. It’s from something that should have healed years ago. And I had a panic attack. I nearly drowned. I don’t know how I got my wits back enough to get out but,” she trailed off.

“Sleep is worse. Much worse. Though, admittedly, it isn’t as bad when May and Coulson sit with me, but they have a family now. They can’t sit with me as I sleep on a daily basis. And I still could only sleep a couple hours at a time with them there. the terrors still come. And sleep aids make the terrors so much worse.”

“I’ll try some of your bloody broth, if it makes this stop, but I can’t promise it’ll stay down,” she sighed. If she let Pepper have one point, maybe she’d realize that she wasn’t putting on a show to make her life more difficult.

“Eventually they’ll learn to hate what I’ve become as much as I do and they’ll stop worrying. Because I’ve tried to get the old Jemma back but she died the moment I set the virus free. I killed her with that. And I’m not worth saving.”

“I don’t think any of us are the same person we were before all this.   I know I’m not.”  Pepper didn’t know if she would follow this line of reasoning or not.   She wasn’t a therapist.  Which gave her an idea.

“I’m not the person that could help you sort this out.  I would strongly suggest you talk to the psychiatrist.   They would be the best person to help you.”   Certainly know how to help Jemma process everything.   And hopefully end up healthier both mentally and physically.    

If the scientist rejected everything, entirely possible unconsciously she would make herself throw up.  “We’ll start with the broth, but you have to try Jemma.   If that doesn’t work we’ll have to have the doctors and nurses check you out.   You need nourishment if you want to help fix things.”   IV’s at a minimum.   

Jemma rested her head back on her knees before attempting to breathe as Pepper instructed. Somewhere in her head, she knew she needed to listen to Pepper on at least this point. But it wasn’t as easy as it should be. Her head was spinning, she couldn’t stop shaking, she lost Pepper’s voice, and she couldn’t get air in. She had no control of her body. She had no control of anything.

She tried to breathe in slowly but it was so shaky it felt like she was drowning. She gasped again multiple times before having a coughing fit. More tears followed. She needed to regain control. ‘Just focus,’ she told herself. She wasn’t sure why it was the first thing to come to mind, but she heard her a memory of dad in her head. She had been panicking over something trivial—school related probably— and he made her begin listing the constellations they would look at when she was a kid. She began listing them, unaware that she was whispering them aloud. And after a few moments she could hear Pepper’s voice again and, listening to it, she slowly began controlling her breathing again.

“I don’t want to be this way,” she said softly after a long while. But now that she had calmed down, her body was exhausted and she wasn’t sure how long she could keep fighting this woman.

“Then let us help you not be this way.   Only you can make that choice.”   Pepper continued to sit with her.  As good as it was that she calmed, she couldn’t afford to coddle Jemma.   It would just risk even worse problems down the road.

“I want you to be able to help us.  But you need to choose to do the things that will make things better.   You need to choose to sleep, shower, to work with us on eating better.”  While Pepper could, would, and will prevent the scientist from doing risky behavior in the labs, she couldn’t do much about what happened outside of it.   Or getting Jemma to contribute to the work as a whole.

“It’ll just come back up,” Jemma tried to explain as evenly as she could. “May brought me some soup not too long ago. I tried.”

Jemma curled further into herself as Pepper’s words poured over her. She couldn’t understand why Pepper wouldn’t just let her be. This all hurt so much–making her feel all these things. They were better locked up deep inside of her and never revisited so she could do her work.

Jemma looked up, anger setting back in. “I am one of those monsters,” she shouted. “How do you think I escaped? I released that super-virus on those men. I turned them into those things. And maybe it didn’t leave that lab, but what if it did? I’m no different than those monsters.”

She was having issues breathing again. The dizziness was getting worse. She was afraid she was was going to pass out. She gasped for breath.

Jemma certainly proven to be a tough nut to crack.   Not that Pepper inteneded to give up.  One way or another she would get the scientist on the road to self care.   At a minimum the equipment already in lock down mode.  That wouldn’t be lifted until basic requirements had been met.   

Of course Jemma ending up in the medical area would only delay things.  Not something she wanted.  Despite whatever she thought, Pepper did care about her well being.   Wanted her to get better, be better, believe in herself.   

“Friends don’t bring their friends down with them. They have their own problems to worry about,” she said hesitating again. “And they won’t be my friends for long once they see who I’ve become.”

Jemma could not accept what Pepper was saying. She began losing control of her anger again. “No. No! I don’t matter,” she cried out. “If the monster I’ve become matters then how do you differentiate me from the monsters outside the walls? You can’t pick and choose which ones to save. To protect the people inside the walls, we have to eliminate the monsters.”

She was getting dizzy again and breathing was difficult. “I don’t want food. It makes me sick,” Jemma snapped before a fresh wave of tears came.

Her head was spinning. She couldn’t handle this. She put her head on her knees. “You don’t care. You’re just here to prove a point. But you should focus on Bobbi. She’s going through a lot. She can be helped.”

“It makes you sick because you are becoming malnourished.   Which is why I am saying soup.   That will be a good start, even if its just broth.”  Yes this was getting frustrating but Pepper kept the same calm patient tone.

If they were going down this route, well then Pepper would be blunt.  “If I didn’t care about you I would just let you work until you are unconscious and then have you hauled off to the medical area and leave you in their hands for a couple of weeks.   I don’t want that to happen to you.”  For multiple reasons.  It would be rougher on Jemma and everyone.  

“There are monsters out there.   But you aren’t one of them.   The zombies aren’t even the real monsters.   They are victims.”  She would continue to repeat this as much as necessary.  “The real monsters are the people that set the virus loose on the world.”

The retching finally stopped. The shaking and crying did not, but her body was tired. She wanted to believe what Pepper said. If it were the truth, maybe she could live with what she had done. Maybe she could change who she had become. But from what she experienced, people rarely changed for the better–not permanently anyway. But if pretending to return to who she used to be was the only way they would let her make up for what she did, then maybe it’s what she needed to do. Except, she was never any good at lying. 

She wasn’t sure what Pepper had said to get her to admit it, perhaps her body couldn’t handle the fight any longer, but the honest answer finally fell from her lips caught up only by her tears.

“J-just the thought of food makes me ill,” she said in a voice excruciatingly small. “And if I leave the lab I’ll be utterly alone, which is the one thing that’s worse than being around others. I get lost when I’m alone.”

She didn’t expect it to make sense. Until that moment she couldn’t even articulate it. She wished she could take it back, but instead one more admission came from her mouth without her permission. “I’m so afraid of what’s left of me.”

“You won’t be alone.   You have Bobbi, Phil, May, they are your friends right?”  Of course she needed to make sure Jemma knew something else.  “ You have me too.  I’m here for you guys.  That is why I am so  insistent on you taking care of yourself.   You matter too.  Not just what you can do.”  It might take her a bit to believe that but Pepper would not give up.

“So, we start with soup, or something easy for your stomach to handle.”   Not a good sign.  Undernourished or malnourished with the possibility of eating less than premium food by the fact it went stale waiting to be eaten.   “Of which the kitchen always has for newcomers, they need something their stomachs can  handle too.  So they always have plenty ready to go.”  

So Jemma couldn’t protest that it would be extra work for anyone.  Or depriving anyone of anything.  Pepper knew the various potential stalling tactics or protests.  So cutting them off before they could get started.

Jemma’s head dropped down. Her arms were still held up and she began crying. This time it was not angry tears. She didn’t have energy for angry right now. She didn’t have energy for anything. She just wanted to give up. What was she fighting for really? She didn’t have anything left. She lost her best friend in the world and boyfriend. Her parents wouldn’t have survived the outbreak. She lost her morals and integrity. She lost her sanity. She lost her hope. What did she have left? Her genius. And now they were taking away the only thing she could do with her genius.

“No,” she cried, barely getting the words out. “I’m a bad person… I hurt people…. I let so many people die and I caused it. I could have prevented it but… I saved myself instead. I don’t deserve…anything but punishment.”

She began retching and shaking. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in Fitz’ arms at the moment, but even if that were possible, she didn’t deserve it.

“Just throw me outside the walls,” she shuddered out. “Save everyone the hassle for someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

After another moment’s pause she couldn’t help but ask, “How many did I kill?”

Another thing Pepper dealt with before.  People taking the weight of world on their shoulders.  Assuming responsibility.   The real bad guys never did that.   Never felt the weight of their actions.   It was a sign of someone that cared.  “I would say the people released the virus would be the ones that killed so many.”  

She kept her tone gentle.   Arguing too much wouldn’t do so good when someone was so dead set in seeing things a certain way.  Experience taught her that.  Some needed a kick in the pants, some needed kindness.   Hard to say which would work for Jemma.

“Saving yourself doesn’t make you a bad person.   Taking responsibility for your actions doesn’t make you a bad person.   You are trying to make things better.   A bad person wouldn’t care.”  Often things managed to be more complex.  Bu this time it could be reduced this simply.