Virginia "Ginny" Potts is almost seventeen years old when she graduates from high school early and decides to attend university in Berkley. The product of a broken home with nothing to show for it but scars and a hardened heart Ginny knows that she will never be married. She thinks that she could never trust or love a person enough to say those vows before God and man.
Baptized and confirmed Ginny has not set foot in a church regularily since her mother died when she was ten. But every year she still does what her mother would have wanted her to do and goes to Christmas and Easter mass. She sits in the pews and in those few moment she feels her mother Louise with her.
Ever since she was a child and growing up in a home where her father's drunken fist ruled Ginny has learned to hide any traces of emotion that could be seen as weak. That resulted in broken bones and bruises and wounds that she still thinks has not scarred over yet. She hides them well but sometimes she imagines they are there; hidden beneath her hard exterior. Open and gaping and something that will never completely go away.
Ginny enters into accounting because she has always been good with numbers and there will always be a job for that in todays market. It is on her first week of classes at a party she attends with her roomate Sarah that Ginny meets Ric.
While his actual name is Alaric Silas Wells but he tells her to call him Ric for short. He is six feet with sandy blonde hair and tanned skin. He is a medical student who is the son of an army man and a nurse. He grew up mostly in the fields of Oklahoma and he understands the value of a hard days work. His hands are steady and callused from work on the farm. They bond over their hatred of their given first names and soon after that Ginny Potts leaves the party with him to go out for coffee. And just like that Ric seems to enter her life in a way she never expected him to.
The last thing she was looking for was a relationship with anyone let alone a man who is years older than she is and has already done a tour overseas and wears his tags like a badge of armour and plans to join up once more when he is done medical school. She is hardly looking to care for a man who comes from a loving home and has never had a broken bone save for the time he fell out of a tree when he was nine. But somehow someway they seem to fit.
After nine months together he proposes and Ginny says no. She tells him that she cares for him but she will never marry him and that if that is what he wants he needs to look elsewhere. He looks at her with those bright blue eyes and asks her if she is planning on going anywhere. She is confused and tells him that she still has another three years left of school. He clarifies and says he asks if she is planning on leaving him. She surprises herself by saying no.
He smiles and says that neither is he and that is that. He says somewhat hesitantly that it is enough for now. He then shakes his head and smiles at her. She returns it softly and then they go back to their date and the proposal is forgotten. And when she meets his parents for the first time that summer and sees that disproval in his mtoher's eyes she cant help but wonder if she is setting herself up for heartbreak later on. But when she looks at Ric, dependable and strong Ric who is like a breath of fresh air for her and just what she knows she needed, Ginny shakes off the feeling that she is settling and decides then and there that she can be happy and that she will learn to love him more.
Ginny thrives on control and order. She thinks it is due to the chaos of living with an abusive father and medically weak mother who knew if she left him it would be the end of herself and her daughter. Ginny loves numbers with their order and sense. They are either right or wrong. Growing up if things were in order their would be no punches or hard words. She tells herself she needs someone who is like her; dependable and who will never let her down. She is done with chaos and messes and diaster. Ric is just what she needs and wants.
She learns to love him and his duty and his need to help others. He is a good man. He is just the kind of person she can see herself with twenty years down the road. And yet something always seems to be missing from the equation. She sees it with Ric's parents Ron and Betty. Hell, she even saw it in her own parents. And in the end of it all she just decides she is much too guarded and broken to love like that. So she makes do with what she has.
And when she graduates with her BA in accounting she packs up and moves to Boston so that Ric can intern there and she takes up working at a firm. Years pass and Ginny slowly becomes a woman not easily intimadated and she goes back to school to earn her Masters in business. By this time she and Ric have come to a sort of plan. They have chosen to be together. Both of them are focusessed on their careers.
Kids are off the table and she has no desire to ever be a mother. She thinks Ric would be a good father but she doesn't think her heart is big enough t o be a mother. So when she graduates with her Masters ar age twenty-four Ric renlists in the army and is sent to Afganistan. And so once more Ginny is left alone in a way that doesn't seem to bother her that much.
Yes she misses Ric but she gets alone get fine without him. They talk when they can and she sends him letters every day. He is saving lives and she is saving money. When he comes back almost a year later on leave it is then she meets a friend of his names James Rhoades at a dinner. Ric and Rhoadey as he is called are old buddies from somewhere and while Ginny normally doesn't open up to new people there is something about James that makes her smile easily.
He is a hard working man that worked him way from the hard streets of Philly to attend MIT and get his Masters. He has not had an easy life. He carries the scars on hi hands. He is a survivor like she is. His hard and cautious eyes give them away. And so she gets abit drunk and when Ric has to leave the next day she has coffee with James and somehow forgets to take a pill.
Seven weeks laters after fainting in her office she is informed she is pregnant. She panics and debates whether she should just take care of it or if Ric should even know. Would she be a good mother or is she too cold and guarded to even love her child. In the end she calls Ric. When she tells him silence falls on the other end of the line before he tells her it is her choice and he will support her either way. But what alarms her is the plain longing in his voice. He wants this child. She is the one who is unsure. She knows he will support her choice but she knows if she terminates she will lose a part of him for good.
One month later she sees her baby for the first time and hears its heart beat and all of her worrying and panic goes out of the window. This is her child. It is hers. Made by her and Ric, the man she loves. And she doesn't know if she will be able to be a good mother but she knows she can try. And doesn't know if she is capable of loving it the way it deserves to be but she can guide and raise and protect it the way she never was.
So she sends Ric the ultrasound picture, packs up her bags, and moves to the West Coast to live with Sara, the only other person she cares about in this world as more than an aquaintance, and moves to LA. James calls out of the blue saying that he has a job for her is she wants it. She thinks that Ric may have called in a favour and while she hates charity and hand outs she takes it for the childs sake.
And it is one week later she starts her job at Stark Industries. And it is two weeks later she catches the error and after spending a day trying to correct it and being sent on a wild good chase she decides to go right to the source of the program.
She takes down a bodyguard with pepper spray and shows an astonished Tony Stark his error. She heads back to her cubical expecting to be fired. Instead the next day she is promoted. The next day at almost four months pregnant Virginia Potts begins her first day as the personal assistant to Tony Stark. She thinks it will be a good job until the baby is born and a good reference on a resume. She thinks it will be a hard job but nothing she can't handle. Tony Stark is simply another entitled playboy she can deal with like any other day of the week. She thinks this will mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. He thinks she will be gone by the end of the week. Little did either of them know how wrong they are.