Elevated

“Bruce?”

Nora glanced up from the tablet she was scribbling on. A tall, broad, blond man had wandered into the lab and was surveying it. He froze when he saw her. “He went to grab some notes from his apartment,” Nora supplied, squinting at him, “Should be back any minute.” The man was wearing a green t-shirt and jeans and something about him was intensely familiar. It really shouldn’t have taken so long. The list of people allowed on the tower’s upper levels was extremely short, and half filled with superheroes, “Are you-“

He winced. Very slowly, like he didn’t want to do it, he crossed the lab to her table, “Steve Rogers.” He offered her his hand.

Nora stared for a second. Then she remembered that she was being rude and stood up to shake it, “Nora Silver. I’m Bruce’s assistant.”

“Right.” He said, “I’ve seen you,” he waved vaguely.

Nora squinted at him again. She was pretty sure she would remember having met Captain America already. He definitely hadn’t been to the lab. Unless- “Oh no. That’s embarrassing.”

He gave her a weird look. His mouth twisted into a frown and he looked almost offended. The door behind him whooshed open, “Steve! What are you doing down here?”

Steve turned to face Bruce, “We’ve got something we need you to look at.” That was vague, but he gave Nora a pointed kind of look so she figured he was being purposeful about it.

Bruce nodded as he strode across the lab, “Sure. Tony’s not on it?”

“He’s a little busy.” That was also pretty vague. Nora decided not to be offended. She didn’t need to be in any superhero business anyways.

“Alright,” Bruce stepped up beside Nora and offered her the papers in his hands, pointing at a scrawled equation in the corner, “Can you run this through the Donner while I’m gone?”

“Sure,” Nora answered considering it seriously, “Don’t you think it’s going to come out a little funky?”

“I’m counting on it,” Bruce answered, grinning. He nudged her arm gently the way he did when he was really excited and bounced off towards the door. Steve shot her one more weird look and followed.

Nora shrugged off the embarrassment of Captain America apparently having seen her lose it in an elevator at some point and plopped back down at her spot to start crunching numbers. If Bruce thought the equation was going to come out funky, he must’ve noticed something interesting. Nora really wanted to know what it was.

She didn’t finish until four. Usually, she’d pack up her stuff around then and wander off to fight with the elevator. Except the numbers didn’t come out funky. They came out insane. Bruce hadn’t come back, but she really needed to freak out with somebody. She picked up her tablet and scurried out the lab door. She made it eight paces, still staring at the numbers in her hand, before she crashed.

She was so focused that she didn’t understand immediately that she’d crashed into a person. She bounced off them and would have gone sprawling on the floor except for the hands that caught her, one on her wrist and the other on her hip. Her tablet did hit the floor with a crack and the glass spiderwebbed. She made a noise that was equal parts surprise and horror. The hands released her. Nora bent and snatched up the tablet, glancing as she did at the person she’d collided with.

She was pretty sure she recognized him and wondered if she was supposed to know him as a superhero or from an elevator. He was big, muscular in the same way Captain America was but with long dark hair and ice blue eyes. He looked back at her for exactly half a second, then turned and fled down the hallway.

Nora opened her mouth to apologize for crashing into him, but he was already gone. She looked back down at her tablet. The screen was ruined, but she could still see her data past it.

“Nora.”

She started. Bruce had half-emerged from the usually empty lab. Behind him were a handful of people that she was definitely supposed to recognize from superheroing; Captain America, a redheaded woman, and a black man with a goatee. They were looking at her which she thought was intensely weird and she felt her face get hot. Bruce was looking at her with a delicate, concerned kind of expression.

With a start she remembered why she’d left the lab in the first place, “Bruce! You have got to see this- like, funky doesn’t begin to describe-“ she waved the tablet.

His face slipped from concern into confusion, “Are you okay?”

“What?” She looked down at herself, unsure for a second why he was asking. Right, she’d crashed into somebody, “Yeah, sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going because I have never seen a calculation come out like this,” She sped across the hallway and shoved the tablet into his hands, “Sorry, I totally smashed this, but look!”

Bruce furrowed his eyebrows but took the tablet, glancing down at it briefly, and then with very focused attention, “This is-“

“I know!” Nora cried. She was practically vibrating.

“We need new readings. We’re going to have to try and recreate this at least a dozen times. I wonder if the Galler Principle-“ Nora nodded excitedly along with Bruce’s rapid chatter.

“Bruce.”

Nora and Bruce both turned to blink at Steve Rogers where he was standing and looking very serious in the middle of the usually empty lab.

“Right,” Bruce said slowly, letting out a whistling breath, “Tomorrow.” He looked at Nora, “We will do that tomorrow.”

Nora’s mouth fell open in surprise. She looked from Bruce to the handful of actual Avengers standing around in the lab. Right. Apparently, there was some sort of emergency happening, “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s fine.” Bruce said, glancing at the tablet like he’d much rather be following her math than whatever he was currently doing, “First thing.”

He didn’t hand her back the tablet so Nora just nodded and stepped back towards the lab. She glanced over her shoulder twice on her way back to the big vault door and found both times that Captain America was still frowning at her. It was extremely disappointing to help make an insane scientific finding, and then have to go home without being able to chase it down. It took her two tries to get on the elevator, despite being able to feel the physical weight of superhero eyes on her back while she fidgeted in the hallway.

The night got worse from there.

The first thing Nora did when she got home every day was always walk her dog. Her dog’s name was Luna and she was the world’s sweetest, and potentially tiniest, yellow labrador retriever. Nora loved her more than anything else in the world, including Bruce’s lab. She liked walking the dog. It was relaxing to wander the neighborhood, breathing in the cool evening air of the city as she went.

Except she was only half paying attention after her afternoon discovery, so she tripped over a curb while trying to conceptualize the Galler Principle at work with the numbers she’d been looking at earlier. It was her second crash of the day and nobody was there to catch her.

Four hours in an emergency room wasn’t her ideal evening.

When she got to the tower the next morning, she felt pretty awful. It took her five tries to get on the elevator from the lobby. She knew she was going to be late. She’d somehow managed to both oversleep and get no sleep at all and was incredibly sore. She’d had to cancel her second date with the guy with the hipster facial hair after her crash and he hadn’t taken it well. She supposed that was good to know early if he was going to be an ass, but she still felt crummy about the whole thing.

When she finally got in the little metal coffin and started rocketing up through the tower, the only thing keeping her from full-blown tears, was the thought of the experiment waiting for her in the lab.

The door whooshed open early and Nora dragged in a steadying breath of fresh air. The two men on the landing she recognized because one was Captain America and one she’d crashed into the day before. She’d really been trying to remember his name and couldn’t. She was about to google it, and then forgot all about it when she crashed for the second time.

Nora opened her mouth to apologize about the day before because she really thought she should, but something weird happened instead. Both men looked at her wrist. She’d picked a bright pink cast because she thought it would be fun, and it was pretty eye catching. Then the one she’d crashed into made a noise that Nora could only describe as horrified, and sort of jerked backwards. Captain America grabbed him firmly by the shoulder and said, “Buck-“

And then the doors slid shut. It was weird enough that she made it the last ten or so floors to the lab without being frightened at all. She gave the elevator doors kind of a bemused look when she stepped off into the hallway. At least Captain America had given her the hint she needed to remember his friends name.

“Nora!” Bruce cried when she stepped into the lab. He too, was giving her wrist a horrified look.

“Sorry I’m late,” She muttered, crossing the room to dump her purse and coat on her chair, “It was sort of a rough night.” There was a new tablet sitting on her table and she scooped it up, “Hey, thanks! Sorry I busted the other one.”

Bruce gave her a weird, confused sort of look as she wandered over to his spot. He’d already started running new readings and there was a whiteboard of complex, Galler-related math behind him, “What- sorry, what happened?”

Nora made an annoyed sound as she tried to parse the math, “I tripped over a curb walking my dog. So embarrassing. I was stuck in the ER for like, four hours. On the plus side,” she waved her arm, “They let me pick my colour. You wanna sign it?”

“Uh,” Bruce stared for a minute, “Sure?”

He was so fucking stupid.

He didn’t know why he had thought he could do it in the first place. Steve had asked him to come to the lab to talk to Bruce about the artifact they’d found and he wanted to go. Wanted to prove after weeks of shame, that he could do something. It was a horrible idea, the labs were difficult to begin with. The memories of cement walls and buzzing equipment hovered just a little bit too close, leaving him feeling like there was electricity in his bones.

But he also knew now that the woman worked on the ninetieth floor. She worked with Bruce, Steve had told him. He’d seen her there himself. He made it ten minutes, slimy anxiety coiling in his stomach, until he had to leave. He stalked right out, ignoring Steve’s call behind him, and then frozen because there she was.

She didn’t notice him until she ran right into his chest and he was right to think he could break her, because he did. He had grabbed her wrist in his metal hand to try and keep her from falling and didn’t even feel it break.

Steve had a hand on his shoulder but he twisted free, an awful clutching horror clawed its way up his throat, breaking free out of his mouth. Steve reached for him again and he dodged the hand, sure that if Steve touched him he would shatter. He turned on his heel and made for the stairs.

“Bucky! Stop!”

He wanted to yell but he was sure if he opened his mouth his heart would fall out so he grit his teeth together instead. He threw himself into the stairwell, the door handle giving way with a screech under his hand. He took the stairs two at a time, up, up, up, until he could throw himself through the second door onto the roof.

He tried to drag in air, failed, tried again.

He was drowning, and he didn’t know how to save himself.