Chapter 32
The ride back to the tower was nice, just listening to the casual banter of the team. This is what she had imagined the team was like all the time, teasing and chatting and just at ease around each other. She hoped her arrival was only a momentary hiccup in their normally well oiled machine.
Celia sat tucked up under Steve’s arm, holding her left hand carefully in her lap. It felt a lot better after Clint reduced it, but she knew it was going to suck during the healing after she fell asleep. She didn’t even want to think about how bad her jaw was going to hurt. Celia hoped Bruce was wrong about the possible fracture, but she didn’t think a bruise would hurt this much.
When the car pulled into the garage of Stark Tower, Celia felt a wave of contentment. It was so different from how she felt the last time she was in this garage, right after the shooting. She was so scared about what had happened to her and what would happen in the future. But after today, she knew she wouldn’t have to go through it alone.
They all climbed out of the car, Steve sticking next to her like glue. It was still weird for her to think that tomorrow, there would be no physical evidence of what happened to her. She was glad for that, but she wished the healing took care of the emotional scars left over too. But it wasn’t like there was anyone she could talk to about this, mental health professional wise. Even with privacy laws, she could never tell people this secret. And talking to Steve about it would bring out those sad, guilty eyes that she worked so hard to get rid of. But maybe this would get easier in time. It wasn’t like healing a broken jaw would be the norm for her. Just the usual day to day living wear and tear.
“You want to head back to our floor?” Steve asked, before stepping onto the elevator.
“Sure,” Celia agreed, not commenting on Steve using the term “our floor” when talking about his own.
“Make sure you ice your jaw, if you aren’t planning on going straight to bed,” Bruce reminded her.
“Oh, I don’t think I have ice in my freezer,” Steve said with a frown.
“We’ve got some on the common floor,” Tony said, directing Jarvis to take everyone there. Celia just accepted it, leaning against the side as the elevator took them up. She didn’t really care about her fear right now, figuring Tony wouldn’t do anything weird while everyone was in the same car.
The doors slid open and everyone got off, spreading out in their own directions. Natasha and Clint went to the couches, Tony went to the bar, and Bruce walked off to the kitchen. Steve stayed by her, depositing her in a dining room chair before sprinting off in search of ice. Celia raked her eyes over the files still sitting on the table, drawn to the one with her face on it. Did she want to open that can of worms? To see what all could be found out about her? She could only imagine the sob story her parents would put on a missing persons website about her.
When she had left home at eighteen, she never looked back. Not even during the worst times. She had left for a reason and nothing good would come from her backsliding into that situation. She’d even stopped herself from looking up any info on them. That part of her life was over and it was smarter to keep it that way. Celia was sometimes able to forget they even existed, and she preferred that. But now, being confronted by even the smallest bit of that part of her life, it was hard to ignore.
“You know, sometimes I wish my life could’ve been a bit more private,” Tony said, stepping over to the table. “Growing up like I did, in the public eye. All those expectations, everyone around to witness every failure. As I got older, I stopped caring. If people were going to watch my every move, I was gonna give them something worthwhile to look at. There isn’t really anything about me that you can’t find online. Now, I know that’s not the same for everyone. The wonder twins have their pasts locked down tight, but I know the kind of dark things that lurk in their shadows. So I can accept less than savory choices that were made in the past, if that person is up front about it in the present. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You want to know if I’m capable of murder? So you aren’t blindsided if I do it again?” Celia asked bluntly, thinking she had a good read on what the man was saying in a roundabout way.
“Pretty much. We all know what we’ve done and what we’re willing to do. It would help me rest easier having you in my tower if I could say the same about you,” Tony said, closing all of the folders and sliding them to her. “As much as I love having all the details, I don’t need to know everything. I have enough of an idea of your background to understand why you’d want to keep it private. But I think you know what I do need to hear. What we all need to hear.”
Celia blew out a breath, knowing Tony had a point, but scared to tell this secret. Would Steve look at her differently after? Would Tony insist she leave and never come back? There wasn’t really any avoiding this now that Fury opened up Pandora’s box.
“Okay,” Celia agreed quietly, running her finger along the stack of papers. Why not make this shitty day worse?
“What happened?” Steve asked, coming into the room with her ice pack. He must’ve noticed the look on her face. He gently pressed the cold bundle to her cheek, wincing in sympathy when she grimaced in pain.
“Tony and I were just talking,” Celia said, taking the ice pack from Steve to hold against her jaw.
“About what?” Steve asked, glaring at the other man. Tony backed away with his hands up, gesturing to her to take care of it.
“I owe you guys an explanation about this,” Celia answered, tipping her head toward the files.
“That can wait. You should go heal first,” Steve argued, cutting his eyes over at Tony again. Tony shook his head and left the room, not wanting to be anywhere near an angry Steve right now. They had all heard the screams of Agent Miller.
“No, I want to do it now. It’s going to be hard enough to force myself to go to sleep, knowing what’s in store for me. I can’t have this looming over me as well,” Celia admitted, tapping her foot a little. She was nervous, but also ready to have this out in the open.
“Okay,” Steve reluctantly agreed. “Do you want to do this here?”
“Let’s go back to the main room. We should all be comfortable for this, right?” Celia said with a chuckle, letting Steve help her up, even though she didn’t need it. She was steady in her resolve.
Everyone was already on the couches when they got there, Natasha and Clint arguing about something in a language she couldn’t pinpoint, and Tony and Bruce looking over something on a tablet. Celia walked over to stand in front of the windows, her anxiety making her too restless to sit. She nudged Steve to go sit with the rest of the team, needing to be on her own for this.
“So before we start this, I need to ask for a favor,” she started, getting everyone’s attention. “I need you to promise to not look into anyone I mention in this story. That if you feel someone needs to answer for anything, it’s me.” Celia stared at Tony, knowing he was most likely to snoop.
“Okay,” he agreed warily, glancing around to the other people in the room. She figured that was the best she was going to get, so she began.
“One of the things abusive people like to do is isolate their victims from loved ones. It can be done in a lot of different ways, but the end goal is the same, to make themselves the only person the victim has and to make it harder for them to leave. That’s where someone like me comes in. I joined up after they helped me get back on my feet and I saw how important the work was that they were doing.
My first ‘client’ I guess you could call her, was only a little bit older than me, but our stories were so similar. She left home young and got married because she was so in love. At first it was like a fairytale, but over time, things started to change. A harsh word here, checking a cell phone there, then maybe a push that was just an accident, but maybe you deserved it. Then it gets a little worse and you threaten to tell, threaten to leave, but they tell you no one will believe you, because they have the powerful job and important friends. So you try to keep your head down and try to keep the peace, but it doesn’t work, because you were never the problem to begin with. And then things escalate and you know it’s time to run, but you don’t have anyone to turn to, so when you hear about a group that will help women like you, you take the leap of faith and ask for help,” Celia said, pausing to turn the ice pack on her jaw. She didn’t really need to do it, but she was getting to the hard part of the story and needed to collect herself before continuing. Would it be cowardly for her to face the window for this next part?
“We had everything ready, it was all perfectly planned out. I was picking her up from her apartment, she had insisted she needed this chest that had been passed down from her grandmother and she couldn’t carry it herself. He was an hour into a ten hour shift and there was no reason for him to be home, but he just showed up. We tried to play it off like I was a new neighbor stopping by, but he knew we were lying. When I thought about it later, I figured he must have had a camera hidden that sent him an alert, because the timing was too perfect.
So he started grabbing her and shaking her and she was crying and I didn’t know what to do. He was a police officer in uniform, he was carrying his gun and everything, but I couldn’t do nothing, so I tried to pull him off. She just needed a chance to get away. I don’t remember much of the next part and I don’t know where he got that knife, but as I was laying on the floor bleeding out, she started begging,” Celia broke off to take a shuddering breath, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to see the team’s faces. “She hadn’t told me she was pregnant. I don’t know what I would’ve done differently if I had known, but it might’ve changed something. The last thing I saw was her begging him to spare their baby and him kicking her in the stomach.”
Celia did turn around now, facing the window while she muffled her sobs with her hand. Of all the things that had happened to her in her life, this was the thing that haunted her the most. That poor girl, so close to freedom, to a new life with all the possibilities in the world, murdered in cold blood while she pleaded to save the life she was growing inside of her. Celia took a few moments to collect herself, wiping at her eyes before she faced the team again. Bruce looked horrified, while the rest of them looked angry. Steve looked like he was debating getting up to comfort her, so she got on with her story before he could. She didn’t want to be touched right now.
“You guys already heard about him avoiding charges, so I’ll skip that, but when I found out, I was furious. I didn’t care about what he did to me, but for her to not even get justice, I couldn’t let that slide. So I started digging into his past, looking for anything I could find to bring to the courts, just to make him face the consequences for something. But everything was wiped clean, not even a reprimand. I tried to let it go, because obsessing over him was killing me, but when I saw him out one day with his arm draped over another woman’s shoulder, I knew I had to do something. This was not going to happen to another person if I had anything to say about it.”
Celia’s jaw was throbbing from all this talking, but she couldn’t stop now. She was finally getting to the part that could ruin everything she had, but she couldn’t run out of steam now.
“I never knew why she wasn’t in contact with her family, if it was due to her husband’s influence or that it was a bad situation, but it didn’t matter at this point. No one could hurt her anymore. I found her family and contacted them. One person I talked to took it particularly hard, which was to be expected. They asked for his address and I gave it to them. Max Turner was never heard from again.”
“Is that it?” Tony asked quietly, glancing away from her.
“If you want me to leave now, I understand. And if you want to call in Shield or the regular police, I won’t fight it,” Celia declared, ready to accept whatever repercussions they saw fit. What she wasn’t going to tell them is that she didn’t feel guilt over what she did. If she could go back, she would still call that man. And the only thing that got her back to sleep at night after a flashback of that poor woman’s murder was the hope that he felt how his wife did when she died.
“Before I was kidnapped, if you had asked me if I was capable of taking someone’s life, I would’ve said no, of course not. But after they did what they did, the need for vengeance was all I could think of. Does it make it right? Maybe not. But it’s understandable,” Tony said, looking at the others for any arguments. They all seemed to accept his reasoning.
“So now what?” Celia asked, not sure where they would go from here.
“Now we figure out where to put you. You still don’t want your own floor?” Tony asked casually, scrolling through his tablet.
“What? Just like that?” Celia questioned, bewilderment all over her face.
“Are you responsible for any other deaths?”
“Well, no.”
“Are you planning on killing anyone else?”
“Of course not!”
“Then yeah, I think that covers it. Now, I’ve got work to do. And you should probably go do your healing thing, because you look like shit,” Tony laughed, standing up and gliding out of the room.
“I need to go punch something. Cap hogged all the action,” Natasha moaned, slinking out of the room with Clint on her tail.
“I guess I’m going to get punched!” Clint called out, throwing his hands up in exasperation.
“I’m gonna go do some more stuff with your blood,” Bruce said, scrunching his nose when he thought about what he said, then shrugging it off and walking away. Celia looked toward where Steve was still sitting, worried about what he was thinking. He hadn’t said anything since she had started her story. Would he feel differently than the team? Would he want her to find somewhere other than his floor to sleep?
“If you want me to leave, I understand,” Celia whispered, giving him another chance to tell her his true feelings. Steve stood slowly, walking to stand in front of her. She looked at the floor, not wanting to look into his eyes if he was about to tell her to leave. He put his arms around her, pulling her into his chest.
Celia let out a sob of relief, letting go of the fear that she would be cast out after her past was revealed. He held her while she hiccuped and moaned, the pain of the last few days, the last few years, her whole life was purged out of her soul. They stayed there for a few minutes until she quieted down, pulling away and replacing the almost melted ice pack on her jaw. Steve wiped away the tears on her face like he had in the bathroom on the first day, smiling softly down at her.
“Let’s get some sleep.”