One
From the outside, Bruce's house looked like an old hunting lodge, tucked away between the trees. It was only when Pepper got out of the car, stretching, that she noticed the rather more modern concrete building tacked on to the back of the hut - probably his lab. Before she had time to knock she heard someone call her name.
"Hello?"
"I'm up here!" Pepper heard leaves rustling, and Bruce's head and shoulders appeared from between the branches of a cherry tree by the house. He had twigs in his hair, and a pair of clippers in his hand. "Go on in, I'll be right down!"
Pepper put her bag down in the corner of the kitchen-living room. It was sparsely but comfortably furnished, with a couple of sagging armchairs arranged around the fireplace and a bowl of apples on the oak table. Bruce followed her in, pulling off his gardening gloves.
"Perfect timing. I was just about to make coffee," he said. "How was the drive?" And they chatted lightly, until after a while Bruce asked, "And how are you?", leaning forward in his chair.
"Are you asking as Bruce, or as Dr Banner?" Pepper enquired. Bruce smiled wryly.
"As a friend. I thought maybe we could start the examination in the morning."
"Okay. In that case, I'm - alright. Holding up, I suppose. Tony's been helpful, insofar as it's possible for a rampant egomaniac to try to help anyone other than himself."
"Hm?" She was almost certain that was a mildly-concerned-doctor face Bruce had on, but decided to let it slide.
"I'm just kidding. He's been great, really." Bruce returned her smile but he didn't look convinced. Pepper thought, briefly, about telling him everything; but now wasn't the time. "He built me a fire-proof room. - I mean, I asked him to. And it's not like he locks me in there. But it's good to have, as, well, as a safety measure. Just in case." She imagined Bruce noting down 'rambling' in his list of symptoms.
"Has it been necessary?"
She thought for a moment. "Not really. I haven't gone full-on fireball since Miami." (Since Tony dropped me into a vat of burning oil, she thought.) "I go there when I feel like I might accidentally....heat up, but usually nothing happens."
"That's good. You're going to be sleeping in one of the guest rooms, and it's not entirely heatproof."
"One of the guest rooms?" Pepper glanced around the tiny cabin.
"How about a grand tour?"
Only the living room was left of the old lodge, Pepper quickly found out. Behind and below - several storeys below - were layers of modern rooms, designed to provide housing and workspaces for a whole team of scientists. Her room was on the first floor, with a window that looked out across the cabin roof into the trees. Bruce's lab was at ground level - "I prefer daylight," he said with a shrug - and the lower floors were unoccupied.
"It's quite a place," Pepper said.
"It's an old Shield facility. They offered me work here in the early 2000s, on some sort of super-soldier, genetic enhancement, blah blah programme - this was before they dug Steve up, of course. Fury was trying to start up the Avengers Initiative. He wasn't desperate enough back then to want the Other Guy on the team, but he was desperate enough to ask for my help engineering new problems."
"And you refused?"
"I was in India. I didn't want anything to do with Shield, or with inflicting my mistakes on other people."
"Mm."
"But anyway. Since Shield collapsed, a lot of the old facilities were left empty - Hydra moved their lab boys to where we couldn't find them. So now," he spread his arms, "I bid you welcome to my dusty kingdom."
"I'm honoured."
"As well you should be. Now. Are you hungry at all? I'm going to make pasta. Nothing fancy, but it should be edible."
The though of food made Pepper nauseous. She told Bruce she'd eaten along the way, and excused herself, planning to read for an hour or so before bed; but she suddenly felt exhausted, and before she knew it she was asleep.
---
Her examination began the next morning. Bruce measured her, weighed her, checked her eyesight and her hearing, listened to her breathing, took her blood pressure and her pulse, made her jog on the spot and took all the measurements again, and took a blood sample. Then he sat her down - Pepper was glad of the rest - and read her a list of symptoms.
"Unexplained muscle or joint pain?"
"No."
"Unusual skin rashes?"
"No."
"Do you often feel twitchy or jittery, or have trouble concentrating?"
"No."
"Loss of appetite?" Bruce looked at her over his glasses.
"Yes," Pepper admitted. "I feel sick whenever I think about food."
"Is that a yes to nausea, then?"
"Yes."
"Do you often feel listless or tired?"
"Mhm. Yes."
"Mood swings?"
"Not really, not more than normal."
"Do you often feel unnecessarily nervous or paranoid?"
Pepper laughed. "I don't know about unnecessarily. I mean, I could turn into a walking, talking bonfire at pretty much any time. So yes, I feel nervous a lot, but I don't think that's anything strange."
Bruce made a note and went on. It was lunchtime by the time they finished the questioning. Bruce made sure Pepper ate all of her sandwich and then sent her upstairs to rest, which she was quietly glad of - she didn't want to admit just how easily she seemed to get tired.
In the afternoon, Bruce took her past the lab door to the end of the corridor, and into a large, empty room. It was essentially a concrete box - reinforced concrete, Pepper guessed - with mirrored glass windows set high up into the walls.
"So," Bruce began, "How much have you practised?"
"Practised? I've mostly been trying not to practise," Pepper replied.
"Hm. Well. I would like to know - for investigative purposes - how far your abilities go. Extremis seems to vary widely from subject to subject." Pepper nodded, nervously. "And also - I hope I will be able to remove it from your system, but it's not going to be easy and it's going to take time. Meanwhile, being familiar with what you can do will help you to control it."
Pepper bit her lip. "What if something goes wrong?" Although, looking around, she had to admit that it didn't seem like she could do much damage here.
"This room is Hulk-proof," Bruce said. "And I'll be up in the control room, watching."
"I still don't know," Pepper said, fretfully. Bruce put a hand on her shoulder.
"Like you said, it's natural to be afraid. But fear - nothing good comes from fear. Fear will control you if you let it. So my advice would be - don't get scared." He smiled. "Get angry."
After a long moment, Pepper nodded.
"You'll be there, right? And you can hear me? This place is miked?"
"Of course. And you can stop whenever you like."
"Okay." She took a deep breath. "Off you go, then."
Bruce closed the door behind him, and she heard the bolt slide shut.
It had all happened so suddenly, in Miami. She had been falling, and then - heat, and pain. But only briefly. And then - there had only been heat.
She looked down at her hands, and watched the white-hot glow spread from her fingertips and up her arms. The pain was less than she had remembered. And how had she forgotten the surging energy, the feeling of 'power'?
Bruce, up in the gallery, saw Pepper start to laugh as the flames spread through her body. He pushed his glasses up his nose, picked up his pencil and wrote: that's either good, or very bad.