Elevated

Nora had almost managed to convince herself that she wasn’t nervous. She’d been working in R&D for years. She had a doctorate. She had spent nineteen months in the middle of nowhere Greenland researching extra-planar radiation, and she had been successful. When she had gotten back, eight separate colleagues had read her paper and been struck dumb at how she’d made the leap from the Dunlop-Stroud to the-

It didn’t matter. She was capable. She was smart, and worked hard, and understood the research backwards and forwards. She was the best candidate for the job (What like Fowler was going to get it? The guy couldn’t tell spectrometer readings from magnetometer readings) and she was going to get it.

But then she got in the elevator.

There were two men already on it, both absurdly tall and both she thought she kind of recognized from somewhere, but Jackie had insisted she wear contacts instead of her glasses and everything was a little fuzzy. She really didn’t have the brain power to figure it out anyways. She thought about the research; the numbers that she’d spent weeks drilling into her skull so that she could recall them from memory.

Usually that did it. Usually running complex radio-projection equations in her head was enough to distract her. Except despite her best efforts, she was actually nervous about the job, and apparently the extra little touch of nervousness was enough to do it. The numbers sailed right out of her head. Poof. Just like that there she was, mind empty, with the narrow walls of the elevator closing in around her.

She could feel her palms start to sweat. The SI elevators were notoriously fast, but time stretched horrifically in the face of her fear. The little red numbers on the panel counted up. She wanted desperately to wipe her hands on her pants, but her arms were full of papers. Jackie kept trying to tell her to go paperless, why hadn’t she listened? She shuffled, tried to take a deep breath, and didn’t really succeed. Her chest constricted painfully.

She really wished the doors would open, just for a second, just to let in some air because suddenly the little box was stifling. She was pretty sure it could fit eight more people, but it really felt like the walls were pressed right up against her. But the elevator didn’t stop. It was like for once nobody else had anywhere to go. She’d never ridden an elevator in the tower that didn’t stop at least four times before, why was it suddenly determined to get her where she needed to go?

She really wished the lab wasn’t on like, the billionth floor. R&D was on eighteen and she routinely took the stairs because she couldn’t bring herself to get in the metal coffin for the two minutes it took to go that far. She had to allot an extra twenty minutes into her commute to do it, but her calves were amazing so that was okay.

There really was no air left. Someone had sucked it all up. Her chest twisted a little further. She shot a glance over her shoulder at the two men who apparently were riding the elevator even further than her, despite the fact they didn’t seem to have chosen a floor to get off on. There wasn’t any buttons lit on the panel anyways. That didn’t mean a lot, there were lots of restricted floors and FRIDAY just delivered people to them anyways.

The man on the left, who was blond, shuffled when she looked. The man on the right, who was not blond, stood very still. Nora tried to suck in a breath and turned back to the slowly counting numbers. She was at least a little sure they could tell she was freaking out, and that was freaking her out even more. It was pretty embarrassing to have a panic attack in public because she was dumb enough to get on an elevator despite her crippling claustrophobia. But the lab was on the ninetieth floor, there was no way she could climb that many stairs.

Maybe she didn’t want this job after all. Yes, the lab was sure to be amazing, the research was insane, and she’d dreamed of exactly this opportunity for years, but if she couldn’t manage to ride the stupid elevator-

The doors slid open. Nora scrambled through them, hauling in the suddenly extremely normal amount of air that occupied the hallway. Right, she was fine. People didn’t just spontaneously die from being in small spaces. She forgot that every time. The doors slid shut behind her. She took a minute to gather herself, glad that the hallway was empty and the witnesses to her freakout were gone and she’d probably never see them again.

She started down the hall. On both sides of her were huge reinforced-glass windows. She scanned the labs behind them with interest. The one on the right was full of extremely high-tech equipment. The sort of things that took excessive millions to collect and which one generally only found in a handful of places. It was breathtaking. And empty. She felt a little flop of outrage despite herself. The things that could be done with that equipment and it was just sitting there, collecting dust.

The lab on the left was also full of equipment but looked a little bit like a garbage dump. Nora eyed it curiously. Most of the devices looked like they’d been cobbled together from a rummage sale and things were stacked, leaned, and collected on every surface. There were huge whiteboards with endless equations that she couldn’t see (Why did she listen to Jackie?) but really wanted to, and they spilled off onto the glass in several places. Two women were visible working. Or one woman was working, scribbling intensely on a board and waving her arms wildly, the other was lying across a desk eating a granola bar. They were both dressed like they were supposed to be spending the afternoon in a coffee shop.

Nora found herself intensely jealous. She hated pantsuits and she really hated heels, both of which were apparently required on level eighteen.

The third lab was not behind glass. The door was at the end of the hall, a massive metal thing that someone had painted white in an attempt to make it look less like it was built to withstand a nuke. It didn’t really work. Nora fidgeted outside of it for a second, and then it whooshed open. She wished FRIDAY understood body language a little better so she could have another second to collect herself, but it was already too late so she stepped through the door anyways. It whooshed shut behind her.

If the lab was anything else; a bank, a restaurant, a store, she might’ve freaked out. It was, after all, very opaque with very thick walls. It was almost like someone had designed it to inspire claustrophobia. Except that it was absolutely cavernous. It was also beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful space Nora had ever seen. It had everything. There were counters and tables covered in computers and delicate sensors. There was a radiation chamber at one end. There were whiteboards here too, but they looked less like someone had let a sixth grader go wild. Even without her glasses she recognized the math, not because she could see the numbers, but because she recognized the shape of it.

Nora knew suddenly that she would suffer the elevator ride because there was no way she could go back to eighteen after seeing this lab. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could ever step foot in the tower again if she didn’t get the job.

“Tony, you know why I can’t have-“

“Nonsense, it’s fine.”

“It isn’t Tony. You can’t just send someone in here and expect them not to-“

“Dr. Silver,” Nora managed to drag her eyes from the electroscope that was just sitting there to Pepper Potts who was standing nearby and had been watching a fairly intense looking argument between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

“Ms. Potts, hi,” She could’ve died at her own awkwardness, but then she’d never get to touch the electroscope so she stepped forward to shake the woman’s hand instead.

“You’ve met Tony?” she asked, gesturing to the disheveled man in the Black Sabbath t-shirt.

Nora nodded, feeling her face go hot. She had met Tony Stark on exactly one occasion. He had come into the lab on eighteen and started strolling around like he owned the place. Which, she supposed he did, but she didn’t think that gave him the right to be a menace. She had watched Fowler and Shmidt both trip over themselves to try and impress the man, as Stark had run around and ruined months of work. He erased calculations from the boards, upset papers, knocked the calibration off equipment, and talked the whole time about how their research was stagnating. And then he’d made it to her corner.

Nora had fought for every inch of her corner. Neither Fowler nor Shmidt had any respect for her research, or her as a person, and had constantly upset her experiments out of malice or sheer idiotic negligence, until she managed to carve the space out. Everything she did, she did in her corner. She’d be damned if she let Tony Stark wander in and touch any of it.

She strode right out of her little fortress of tables and planted her feet in front of him. He didn’t even have the decency to look at her, just sidestepped like he was going to breeze past and upset all her hard work. She stepped with him. He glanced at her, gave her a little grin he probably thought was charming, and stepped the other way. Nora stepped with him. That got his attention. He kind of squinted down at her and said, “I’m here to look at your work,”

And she said, just like she used to when she nannied in university, “We look with our eyes.”

He looked at her for a long time, then laughed. Then he patted her shoulder like he thought she was funny, turned on his heel, and left. Fowler and Shmidt had both been furious. They sniped at her for days about running Mr. Stark out of the lab. But the delicate readings she was taking finished, proved the formula she had been running, and their research was suddenly no longer stagnating, it had instead taken a giant leap forward. And then they took all the credit. Assholes.

“Dr. Silver,” Stark greeted, grinning, “Impressive work with the Elset Principle. Of course, I’m sure you could have proved it a little quicker if you thought to use gamma-spec numbers and ran it through the Bore calculation,”

That was an absurd thing to say. Tony Stark apparently thought she was an idiot. “The Bore calculation doesn’t account for any deviation in extra-planar radiation, it’s basically useless.” Okay, maybe it wasn’t useless. It had helped to prove a bunch of very interesting scientific theories on a broad scale. But her work was precise, and without allowing for flexibility in data, she couldn’t get the numbers she needed. She had explained that about a dozen and a half times to men who specialized in the same field, and all seemed to think that the calculation would work fine anyways.

Stark waved a hand at her, “See?” He said to Dr. Banner who was looking at her with a weird sort of expression on his face.

“That’s-“ Dr. Banner took his glasses off and wiped them with the hem of his sweater, “Alright. But that’s not the problem Tony and you know that.”

Stark flapped his hand dismissively, “It’s fine.” To Nora he said, “You’re hired.”

Nora blinked, “I am?”

“Yeah,” Stark said. Ms. Potts shot him a firm kind of look that he ignored.

“Tony!” Dr. Banner looked frustrated. He turned his attention to Nora, “I’m really sorry Dr. Silver, I’m not actually looking for a research-”

“He is.” Stark said loudly, cutting off whatever point Banner was trying to make, “And you’re it. You start tomorrow.”

“Tony-“

Nora knew instantly that Tony Stark was steamrolling Dr. Banner the same way he had come in and steamrolled Shmidt and Fowler. Banner clearly didn’t want a research assistant. From the way they started arguing over top of each other, he really didn’t want a research assistant. She watched them argue for a minute, then Ms. Potts nudged her gently towards the door. Nora took the hint, following her out into the long white hallway.

“He doesn’t want an assistant, does he?” Nora asked.

Ms. Potts surveyed her. After a moment she said, “Are you familiar with Dr. Banner’s situation?”

“Of course. He’s the leading mind on gamma radiation and micro-“ Ms. Potts was giving her a strange look. Nora realized what she was actually asking, “Oh. You mean the Hulk thing?”

Ms. Potts looked a little surprised, “Yes. Dr. Banner is reluctant to share the lab in case of an-“ she searched for a word, “episode.”

“Right.” Nora let that turn over in her head. That did explain why the lab looked like a bomb shelter. Everybody knew about the Hulk, he’d leveled half a university once. Or the military had leveled it trying to contain him? The whole thing had seemed a little off to Nora, “But he needs an assistant?” After a long searching look, Ms. Potts nodded. “And Mr. Stark says I’m hired?” She nodded again, “So until someone says I’m fired,” she trailed off.

Ms. Potts stared at her hard. Nora thought she was looking for something in her face, but she didn’t have a clue what that something might be. Eventually she said, “Welcome to the ninetieth floor Dr. Silver.”

Bucky couldn’t shake it.

The cold, coiling feeling of shame. He was sick with it.

The morning had gone so well. Or, not well. But better than usual. He had woken from a nightmare, sweating and shaking, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it had been about and that made it easier to shake than the ones that he could. He’d spent a few hours training with Steve and then his friend suggested they leave the tower. Just for a little while.

He made it a block and a half before he started to feel like he was drowning. There wasn’t much of a crowd, but it was just enough, unfamiliar faces streaming by and nearly bumping him in their rush to get wherever. Steve had seen it, the change in his posture or his expression, and turned around. He gripped Bucky’s jacket in a fist the whole way back, which seemed to take forever. He managed to make it back to the tower and into the elevator and finally felt like he could take a breath.

And then the woman got on.

FRIDAY didn’t usually let other people on with him. He wasn’t sure what programming did it, or what had changed this time, but the door slid open and a tiny brunette woman in a pantsuit and heels got on.

That didn’t describe it correctly. She hesitated. She shot a nervous, panicked look, between he and Steve. And then she got on. Bucky knew, the second the door opened and she looked at him like that, she was terrified. The fear spiraled slowly out of her, choking the air out of the little space. It wormed its way under his skin. She fidgeted, her breath coming out quick and short. She shot a single, fearful look over her shoulder. Steve edged a little closer. Then the door opened and she practically scrambled off.

Steve seemed determined that they should forget about it. He steered Bucky off on their floor and started talking about a movie that Sam said they should watch.

But Bucky couldn’t forget the look on the woman’s face. Couldn’t forget exactly how afraid he had made her.