Hello everyone, I just want to say thanks to a few people before this chapter starts. First "Hanna pond" for being the first to review. Thanks, even if it was anonymous. Second, I want to thank my two betas: Ivory Winter and Fish Wishes. The two of you have been a great help so far. Third is all of you who have favorited or subscribed to this story. Anyways I hope you all enjoy this, I'd love it if you could review. Without further ado, I present chapter one.

Chapter One

Working

Rosa stood in her small apartment in front of a dirty mirror, buttoning up her white blouse for another workday at Stark Tower. With her dark hair wrapped in a tight bun on the top of her head, she grabbed her small brown purse and exited her home.

Because of her financial situation, Rosalind lived on the bad streets of New York, where muggings and drive bys were almost a typical occurrence in her neighborhood. Her apartment was grungy and smelled of mold, with plumbing that never quite worked right. But with a little bit of rigging, Rosa managed to get her lights working correctly and the plumbing to allow as much hot water as she wanted. Of course, it didn't change the fact that her spring bed had holes in it, or that mice darted through the hallways as she passed, eager to find some dropped crumbs by the equally ratty tenants.

After returning home from her afternoon shift at a café in Midtown (which thankfully didn't take too much damage), she quickly changed and set off to Stark Tower on foot, following its glowing sign like the North Star. This was the job she really needed, and when the attack on Earth happened, she prayed Stark would hire her once again. Despite the fact that it was just a custodial job, Tony paid all of his employees generous amounts of money simply because he had the right to do so. When the tower was built, Rosa was the first janitor to get the job. In fact, Rosa and two other older Hispanic men were the only cleaning crew that Tony hired. To get the job done efficiently they each had a specific job to do. Ricardo took the bathrooms and lounges, Ramon the public areas, and Rosa the private quarters and labs. The system worked out well for all of them, especially Rosa.

When she arrived at Stark Tower, the sun was beginning to fall from its perch in the sky. With a glance at her watch, she flinched, realizing she was two minutes late. Though she drew almost no attention to herself while working, Tony kept extensive records on all arrival and departure times of anyone who walked into the building, so of course her tardiness would be noticed.

As she approached the front desk to retrieve her access keycard (which she had to hand in at the end of the day for security purposes), Rosa was surprised to find Tony Stark leaning lazily over the counter, his chin in his palms and an idle expression on his face. The security man behind the desk looked at her with alarm, his eyes darting to Tony and back.

A surge of ice ran through Rosa's veins. So Mr. Stark was looking for her. Rosa had always made it her priority never to speak with the genius, because truly staying under the radar meant she stayed at the bottom, and he stayed at the top. Their worlds should never have to mingle. Period.

As she approached, Tony looked up with raised eyebrows, glancing at his watch in exasperation. "Hey, Maria," he said, speaking low and quickly the way he always did. "Yeah, just wanted to let you and the crew know that there was a spill on the 3rd floor. Really ugly, bad chemicals, dangerous. So it's being quarantined, er, closed for the night." Rosa bristled when he called her Maria, but she didn't let it show on her impassive face. "Do you understand?" he asked, making himself slow down for a few words. Another shot of anger exploded through her, but she just nodded.

"Yes, Mr. Stark," she replied, her accent now extremely thick. "Bad chemical spill. 3rd floor closed." she repeated, her words choppy and the accents off, as if she couldn't speak proper English. An easy task, because at one point in her life she really couldn't. Tony's eyes looked in her direction, but they didn't actually see her, just stared through her. He nodded and turned to walk away, his business with her over. As Rosa watched him leave, his expressive suit swishing behind him, she sighed.

The man behind the desk spoke up. "Sorry Rosalind, about the name," he said sheepishly, apologizing for Tony's blatant stereotype. Rosa nodded but still felt a pang of anger in her chest. For Christ's sake, he could've taken a moment to glance at her nametag. "Normally I would've passed that information on to you," he continued, "but Ms. Potts has been pressuring him to interact with his employees more. So you can expect more half-baked attempts at communication from the boss."

Rosa nodded and smiled at him. He and Stark had a lot more interaction than anyone else in the building, and that made him the unofficial spokesperson for the lower-class workforce.

"Gracias," she said with a smile, taking the keycard he held out to her. With a wave, she was off, grabbing her cart and heading into the elevator to begin her work.

There were 93 stories in Stark Tower, which all had to be cleaned and ready for the next day in 8 hours. But since the top 15 floors were Tony's private quarters, he had machines (or Ms. Potts) do his cleaning for him. Most of the bottom 15 floors were all conference rooms and public areas, which Ramon handled. About 30 floors were uninhabited; labs or rooms that Tony was slowly filling as he selectively hired scientists and engineers to work alongside him. Before the destruction happened, she could get the rest of the small floors cleaned with an hour or two to spare. But now, with another 20 stories out of commission or being reconstructed, all her work was finished just as Tony Stark and Ms. Potts were going to sleep.

"JARVIS," Rosa called from inside a laboratory after the sun had been set for a few hours, "is everyone asleep?" At this point she had nothing to do but wait until dawn so she could go home.

"No Ms. Hernandez," he responded. "Master Stark and Ms. Potts have retired, but Dr. Banner is still working on the 3rd floor." Rosa raised her eye brows in response. She had skipped over the 3rd floor, which was one large laboratory, because of the chemical spill. Obviously Tony was either mistaken or straight lying to her, which wouldn't be much of a surprise.

"Which chemical spilled?" she asked. After reading through Stark files a week before the attack, she knew every project that was going on in the Tower. There was no chemical in the records that could've spilled to close off the area. JARVIS didn't respond immediately, so Rosa knew something was up. Despite him being just an AI, she thought of him as human. And with that came social queues that let her know if JARVIS was lying. "I know you're about to lie, JARVIS," she said threateningly, "Come on, I thought we had gotten past this." And she thought they had. When she first started working at Stark Tower, he was tentative to speak to her. But since he was just a computer, he didn't treat her like the rest of the people here did. He spoke to her in the same manner he spoke to his master, and for that she was grateful.

"I'm afraid Master Stark fibbed about that," he responded wearily. "The floor was given to Dr. Banner as a work space. He requested to be alone, and Master Stark agreed that was in his best interests." Rosa nodded. Of course a man with a beast inside of him wouldn't want to work around ignorant frustrating people, as so many were these days.

She pushed her cart into the elevator, clicking the 55 button. "I'm going up to the library," she announced to JARVIS, "thank the Lord it wasn't destroyed. Then I would have to converse with you for hours." She chuckled and waited for his sarcastic response, but the AI didn't speak for quite some time.

"I didn't realize I was such a bore, Ms. Hernandez," his automated voice said curtly. She looked up in surprise, shocked by his words. Of course she was only joking, but an immediate feeling of guilt ran through her. JARVIS, despite the circumstances, had become a close friend. Weeks and weeks of being one of the only people awake in the building made her lonely and after a while JARVIS just became a natural part of her night.

"I didn't mean it like that," she said softly. "I was only joking. You know I enjoy speaking with you, JARVIS." He didn't say anything, so she sighed. Before she could speak again the elevator doors opened, leading into a large room that was filled to the brim with books. Towering shelves made up the walls and separated the room into sections. The back wall was just one large window that let the moonlight stream in, illuminating the chairs set out for readers in the back. This was Rosa's haven; her place to escape from the outside world and learn everything she ever wanted to.

"I think I'll do more research on Norse mythology…" Rosa said, slightly to JARVIS but mostly to herself. She walked over to a large collection of bookshelves and began looking through the titles. With the organization system already memorized, finding the book she wanted came easy.

Snatching a large encyclopedia of mythology, Rosa settled into a large chair in the back, quickly losing herself in the words. Loki… Thor… Odin… After reading Thor's file over and over again, she'd become familiar with his legend. It made her curious when his brother happened to be the evil behind the recent attack, and she resorted to books to find out why. Of course, there was no telling what was true and what wasn't, but at least she had a basis of knowledge to go from.

"Ms. Hernandez," JARVIS said sometime later. By now Rosa had finished two books on mythology and was beginning a book on gamma radiation. She concentrated intensely on the book for a long time, her eyes furrowing in concentration as she tried to understand the complexity of the subject. When JARVIS called her she didn't look up, just kind of grunted that she was listening, her mind still soaking up the words on the page. "Dr. Banner is on his way up to find a book… In fact, the book you are currently reading."

Rosa's panicked a bit. She had never been in a situation where she could possibly be caught doing something divergent of the norm (things she did on her usual nights, like reading complex books and combing through restricted files), so she jumped up and grabbed her books, rushing to put them back where she got them. "Dr. Banner is getting on the elevator. Estimated time of arrival is thirty seconds," her automated friend informed. With the two mythology books back in their place, she looked around for where to return the radiation one. Her finger was still wedged in between two pages, hesitant to let go and lose her place. But when she found the spot where the book belonged, she reluctantly did, sliding it into its position. Rosa ran to her cart to retrieve some sort of cleaning materials so it would seem like she was doing her job.

"Your badge, Ms. Hernandez," JARVIS scolded, as he had to almost every night. Rosa hated wearing it. Her nametag was a big sign on her chest that said how invisible she was, how worthless, how unimportant. If the doctor caught her in here without it she would be of some interest, but the second someone knew her position their eyes glazed over and looked right through her.

As she pinned it on and pulled a feather duster out of her cart, the elevator doors swung open to reveal a tall handsome man who wore glasses and a purple button up shirt. She busied herself with dusting off a globe perfunctorily, watching the man out of the corner of her eye. His face matched the one she remembered from the files the night before, but something was different. Though he still looked anxious, the man in front of her looked more at peace. The man she now knew as Bruce Banner looked happier.

As he stepped in, he wrung his hands in front of him, his eyes nervously sweeping the room. When they fell upon her he started a little, but as he noticed what she was doing he calmed down, merely looking through her like everyone else did.

"Hey," he mumbled, but was already beginning to look away. At least he was polite enough to greet her. Rosa nodded at him and he shuffled off, eyes darting anxiously once again.

Rosa sighed and wheeled her cart into the elevator, desperately trying to get away from Bruce Banner, but simultaneously wondering why he was awake so late into the night.

Please review? :D