Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and its characters belong to ABC Studios, Marvel Television, Mutant Enemy Productions, among many others. What If…? belongs to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for my love of this film/television franchise.
A.N.: Hey, guys! Sorry for taking so long with this update. I had a few days where I needed to focus on my family, as my dad will need to go through an operation for a herniated disc tomorrow. I'll keep writing, as it's my source for stress relief anyway, but I may be a bit later than usual until everything settles down at home and he's properly on the mend. Thanks for sticking with me and all the reviews and favorites! This is a little bit of a shift in gears from the last chapter, but bear with me and my shipping heart.
Avengers Initiative: Reset
12. Reflections
With Coulson and May out chasing down a lead almost immediately after Simmons had been stabilized, Natasha had been left in charge of the team at the base. With everyone else out of the lab for the moment and working on other things, she stood by at the medical bay watching as the printing device worked as it should for a very long time, knowing it was doing its intended job but not completely trusting it ─ as if by staying put and watching it print tissue back into the young agent's abdomen would be helpful somehow or that she would be able to prevent something going wrong. Not entirely rational, she knew, but she felt responsible in ways she couldn't entirely comprehend or explain, even to herself.
"See, it's working out perfectly," Jemma said from her position lying down on the bed, craning her neck a little to inspect the work with a critical eye. "The cells are bonding with simulacra, instantaneously affixing to the existing tissue. After a while, the biodegradable scaffolding will be absorbed and the cells will remain in place, just as the other ones that were generated naturally by my body. It won't know it's any different."
"Hmm," Natasha murmured in reply, a delicate frown still marring her features a little. She trusted the biochemist to know more about it, especially since she was the one who had helped perfect the design from another brilliant researcher's original specs. "How is your pain?"
"Loads better," Jemma sighed as she relaxed a little and let her head fall back to the pillow under it. Once they had been reassured the device would work as intended, she'd let them up a little the dosage of painkillers and had also received a local anaesthetic to numb the area where the device was working, but she was still far from being loopy on opioids ─ she still felt the need to be more sober in case something else happened and they needed her knowledge as the team's medic.
Jemma paused in her inner thoughts and looked up at the other woman for a moment. "You don't need to stay and keep me company. I'm sure you have other things to do."
Natasha raised an eyebrow at that. "Is this your way of telling me you're giving me the all clear to get back to training and field work?"
"Um, no." Jemma said, chuckling a little then grimacing as the movement had jostled her somewhat and she took a steadying breath in to relax into her former position. "I may be bedridden myself now, but you're still on light duty. I just mean maybe you need to take care of other things. Light, non-strenuous things, like paperwork or investigations. Computer-bound investigations, that is."
"Skye is working on the investigation," Natasha replied easily, as the former hacktivist had caught up quickly to what they needed to do and honestly she was a natural at it, considering her field of expertise. "And I don't have paperwork to do. That's actually still Coulson's. I'm just taking care of the base until he and May are back."
"You really have no clue where they're gone?" Jemma asked with curiosity. "It seems so strange that they would just go out like this without the rest of the team."
"I know he's been chasing some leads of his own about the Asgardians," the redhead said, shaking her head a little. "He said they'd be back soon and to hold down the fort. Meaning no one else is getting into jeopardy on my watch, got it?" She said, arching an eyebrow back at her.
"Yes, ma'am," Jemma said with a smile, watching as Natasha narrowed her eyes a little before turning serious. "Now you know what I felt like when I needed to take care of you after that re-bleed scare."
"Hmm," Natasha murmured noncommittally as she averted her eyes.
She knew her attitude now was very much at odds with how flippant she'd been previously regarding her own well-being and possibly straining herself. But she'd lived with danger her whole life, it was second nature to her and she didn't spend a lot of time actually thinking about how much she put herself at risk while doing her job. But being put in a place where she was responsible for the well-being of others was something completely different. Of course, she'd done it before in missions where she needed to rescue victims, assets or persons of interest. But this wasn't just a mission with a target. It had only been a few days actually, less than a week, but she'd already got to know these people and they were no longer just faces that would go into a file once the mission was done and be completely out of her mind by the time she was out on another assignment. These people were more real, somehow. And this thing she'd always had inside of her that had driven her to want to protect people even after a literal lifetime of others trying to snuff it out of her had become even more alive. She still wasn't entirely sure how to handle it.
She noticed the other young woman watching her attentively and turned her eyes back to her, letting her mind wander away from her own confusing thoughts to consider her again. "I heard what you did," Natasha said in a soft tone then. "It confirms my initial assessment that you'd actually make a great field agent."
"Me, a field agent?" Jemma replied, her eyes going a little wide. "Well, that's just ─ I mean, why would you even ─ I've never really thought about it─"
"God, you're a terrible liar," Natasha interrupted her rambling with a light, easy chuckle. "That's an area we would really need to focus on, in case you ever decide to pursue it."
"Field work?" Jemma said, biting a little on her lip before she relented with a soft sigh. "Alright, I had thought about it. Maybe not right now. I do love my job and everything we get to do at our lab. But the world is such a vast place and working in the field seems like an opportunity to go out and see all the good we're doing in the world, you know?"
"I get it," Natasha nodded back. She never got to work the field per se, being a SHIELD shadow. Undercover was her thing and she loved it ─ she got to wear different masks, literally and figuratively. Be someone else for a change and forget a little about her own sins and the red on her ledger. But she understood that same drive, working to do some good to counteract the bad in the world. "Anyway, it seems you'd be good at it. You already have the right instincts, which is the hard part. With some training, I think you'd be really good at it."
"I don't know if it's instinct," Jemma said in a quiet voice as her eyes drifted a little to look up at the ceiling, furrowing her brow delicately in thought. "I can't explain what it was. I don't know why I chose to look back right at that moment, if it was the sound of the gunshot or something else. It's strange that my brain even had the time to process what was happening, but I just knew the bullet was headed our way and… I don't remember consciously thinking about it, I just did it."
"Rogers told me you pushed Fitz out of the way before you got hit," Natasha said with a quiet smile and Jemma's brown eyes flitted back to her. "That's called instincts, Simmons."
They remained in silence for a few seconds as they just looked at each other. Jemma opened her mouth as if to say something else, but before she could they heard footsteps approaching and Fitz walked into the lab and then into the medical bay holding a bag of blood.
"Found it," he said as he approached the bed, hooking the bag on a stand and grabbing the line to insert it into Jemma's left arm, as her right already had the saline in. "One bag of type-specific O positive coming right up. That should do it, right?"
"Thank you, Fitz." She smiled appreciatively at him, knowing how much he hated the sight of blood and other squeamish aspects of her field of expertise, but he never hesitated as he found her vein and pushed the needle in. She remembered how she'd shown him how to do that when she'd been taking the course to be a medic and she'd convinced him to help her study by saying it was useful knowledge that anyone should have and he'd begrudgingly agreed, practically grumbling about it the whole time ─ yet here he was, executing the technique to perfection (because of course he would). "How's the rest of the cradle coming up?"
"Skye and Stark are at the workshop taking care of it, now that he's got a bigger range of motion throughout the base." He said as he pulled a stool to sit next to her bed. "They did quick work of the sensors while we were out. I'm sure they're fine."
"You don't want to oversee the building process yourself?" Jemma asked with a raised eyebrow, a little surprised that he wasn't headed that way.
"I can oversee it from right here, on my tablet." He said, gesturing at said tablet that he retrieved from the top of a cabinet as he tapped in and pulled the security system. It was clear that he had no intention of leaving now that he'd returned.
"Well, it's a good thing you're back as I need to check on Rogers." Natasha said as she moved off towards the door, subtly trying to give them some space. "Let me know in case anything changes here."
"Will do." Fitz told her with a curt nod before looking down at the tablet again while Jemma smiled and nodded back at her.
The two best friends remained in comfortable silence, only the whirring of the printing machine working to reconstruct the tissue in Jemma's abdomen and the soft taps and beeps from Fitz's tablet as he worked on it filling in the room. Jemma thought about her previous conversation with Natasha as she just looked up at Fitz sitting next to her bed, a frown marked between his eyebrows as he looked at something in the tablet. She knew that if she ever got the nerve to apply for field work she'd only ever do it if he went with her, as she couldn't imagine not working with him anymore. She knew he had his reservations and wasn't at all keen on it, but if anything today had proved he wouldn't be half bad at it, either. But she also wasn't sure if after today he'd ever want to go for it.
"Fitz." She said in a soft voice, thinking about bringing it up and checking his thoughts on it, but when he trained his eyes on hers she just felt an almost overwhelming wave of affection for all that he was and all that he'd done for her. "Really, thank you. You were wonderful today."
"Yeah, right." He said with a scoff and roll of his eyes. "If Captain Rogers wasn't there─"
"Yes, he helped out a lot." She said, agreeing to it with a nod before she smiled encouragingly up at him. "But you knew what needed to be done. You did," she said firmly, interrupting his would-be-protest when she saw him open his mouth and frown back at her. "And if he weren't there I'm sure you would've taken great care of everything by yourself."
He kept looking back at her with that frown, working his mouth yet no words came out on the first couple of attempts before he sighed heavily. "Let's just─ Don't ever make me do that again, yeah?" He interrupted his initial response, running a hand exasperatedly through his hair and ruffling his curls a little as he fixed his eyes on her with a fierce expression that she'd never seen before, causing her to blink her eyes up at him. "I mean it, Simmons. You can't put yourself at risk like that. I don't know what you were thinking." He finished with a slight shake of his head as his eyes drifted away.
"I wasn't, actually." She replied softly, the words rolling out of her tongue almost without her conscious thought and she smiled a little when he looked back at her. "It was instinct."
For a moment, she thought he looked torn between smiling fondly back at her and rolling his eyes in exasperation, so apparently he compromised by shaking his head once more, avoiding her eyes by looking down at the tablet again as a hand went up to fidget lightly with one of his ears. "Just promise me you won't do something unbelievably reckless like that again."
"Alright." She agreed readily with a nod. "I promise I'll try not to."
He lifted his eyes back to her with another exasperated frown. "Jemma─"
"I can't promise I won't ever, Fitz." She interrupted his protest with a serious look in her eyes. "Because if I had to, I would do it all over again."
He looked like he wanted to protest further, but at the last moment decided against it and relented with a sigh. "Well, let's make sure you don't ever have to do it again, then."
She just smiled up at him, deciding to leave the subject of future field work for later on and after a moment he went back to working on his tablet as another comfortable silence enveloped them. Jemma closed her eyes and tried to get her always racing mind to just stay still in the moment, focusing on Fitz's reassuring presence and in the fact that in quite an unbelievably short time later her body would be healed after what had been a harrowing day.
After quickly checking in on Skye and Tony on their progress at the workshop, Natasha wandered through the base and found Steve at the kitchen corner of the lounge making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He saw her approaching and gestured as if to hand over the plate with the sandwich over to her.
"No, that's okay." She said with a slight shake of the head.
"How long has it been since you last ate something?" He asked with a concerned frown.
She paused and looked up for a moment as she thought back. "Probably this morning," she answered truthfully. She wouldn't generally have regular meals, more used to running on power bars or any irregular food breaks during her missions ─ although she had grown more used to it while stuck on bedrest and having Simmons checking in on her regularly and forcing her to eat healthy meals as part of her recovery.
"Right," Steve said with a determined gleam in his eyes as he moved to the fridge. "Then it's about time you eat something else. We can't all be running on fumes if we're about to go up against these Asgardians."
"Okay, fine," she said with an exaggerated sigh and motioned for him to get back to his sandwich. "I'll fix myself something to eat. Wouldn't want to drag you away from your own meal."
He nodded back at her with a smile and sat down at the counter as she moved about grabbing ingredients to fix dinner. "Probably best you do it, anyway." He said after swallowing a bite. "I've never been much of a cook, to be honest."
"I'll bet it's more to do with the 40's cooking," she told him conversationally. "You guys used to boil everything. That just takes the taste away."
"Really? I see there's still a lot I need to learn that wasn't in Coulson's package on catching me up to the 21st century," he commented in a light tone.
"Coulson is actually a really good cook," Natasha said looking at him over her shoulder as she moved to the stove. "And I'm sure he wouldn't mind teaching you, if we ever have the time. Have you signed his cards yet, by the way?"
"No, not yet," he said with an amused smile. "So you like teasing him about it even when he's not in the room?"
Her answer was a shrug and a smirk pulling at her lips as she turned back around and focused on her cooking. They spent the next few minutes in companionable silence as Natasha put her dinner together and Steve ate his sandwich. He was a little surprised when she slid a plate in front of him piled up high with an enormous steak, stir-fried vegetables and a mountain of mashed potatoes before she sat down opposite him with a smaller plate of her own.
"Dig in," she simply told him. "I doubt that sandwich even made a dent in your appetite."
"Thanks," he replied with a smile and did just that, murmuring in appreciation as he took a bite. "This is really great, Natasha."
She smiled back. "I also know my way around the kitchen, even though I usually don't bother with big, proper meals," she said. "But Simmons has been nagging me about it."
"I guess it's her way of taking care of us," Steve said, remembering how his mother used to be like that, always wanting to take care of everyone around her. Sarah Rogers had been a fierce woman, too, just like he could see the young SHIELD scientist was, especially after everything that had happened today.
"I know," Natasha replied then looked up at him with a gleam in her eyes. "And I used to live with someone who had a super serum, a long time ago. I know you guys can eat like you've been starved for a week on a regular day."
"Really?" He said, arching an eyebrow in curiosity. He'd never actually met anyone else who had received a super serum ─ except Schmitt, of course, but they'd never had any time to chat about their eating habits during their few encounters in the war.
"Yeah. He was the USSR's response to Captain America," she told him quietly, thinking back on that time in her life. It all still felt too surreal, to be honest, when she thought about those years she spent living in Ohio with her pretend family. She also had no idea why she was telling Steve all of this. It wasn't like she was the most open person in the world. She usually kept things too close to the vest, but there was something about living in this base and about him that made it easier to open up. She had already voluntarily told him more about herself than during the weeks she'd spent being evaluated by SHIELD's shrinks when Clint had brought her in after Budapest. She almost smiled to herself, remembering how May's (then) husband had been visibly frustrated after their sessions when she wouldn't give him anything other than what she wanted him to know and how he couldn't see through her despite his best efforts.
"I read about how the world never stopped trying to replicate Dr. Erskine's formula," he said with a soft frown. "I wasn't aware that there had been successful results."
"It's not widely known," Natasha told him. "You were the world's first super soldier, but you can bet you weren't the last." She paused, thinking back on the investigation she had done following Hope Van Dyne's death on that mission and some other things she had uncovered along the way. "In most cases, this was kept secret because it wasn't to everyone's best interests to broadcast it."
"No doubt other people would be coming in to steal that formula, just like before," Steve said with an understanding nod. "And it wouldn't be an advantage to let the public know that the country we were at war with had a super soldier when America's own was missing, presumed dead."
"Bingo," she replied with a smirk, not surprised that he'd caught on to what she hadn't said in between the lines.
They lapsed into silence for a few minutes as they carried on eating their food, then Steve looked up at her again with something of a calculating look in his eyes. "Skye told me how things got a bit intense between you and Tony just before we got back."
"Yeah," she replied as he furrowed the space between her eyebrows as she thought back to her earlier outburst. "Not my proudest moment of self control." That was another example of how she'd been different lately. Perhaps this whole nearly dying, losing her best friend and then having a teammate shot so close together was starting to be a little too much for her.
"Well, I haven't known Tony for long, but even I can appreciate how he can be aggravating," Steve said in a conceding tone. "And I know tensions are running high with everything that has happened lately. But we really need to work together as a team if we want to have any fighting chance."
"I know," Natasha replied readily with a nod. "I'll make nice with Tony before we need to go out there again. It's just…" She paused and sighed heavily for a moment.
"Yes?" Steve inquired gently as he kept looking back at her.
She looked back at him, for a moment thinking of how easy it was to just talk to him and be so genuine, so honest like she wasn't used to. But the more she thought about it, the less she liked this notion of being so vulnerable and how she was becoming something she didn't recognize, like she was losing control, somehow. Instead of going deep and opening up more to him, she took the opposite route and slipped behind one of her masks, something that came so naturally that was almost reassuring as she lifted an eyebrow and let a smirk form on her lips. "You have no idea how annoying it was to be undercover as his secretary. Seriously, that man had the most ridiculous whims of anyone I've ever known."
He huffed out a soft laughter at that and smiled back. "I'll take your word for it. If he's anything like his father was, I have an idea what you had to deal with. Peggy was always complaining about Howard's ridiculous ways."
She saw a pang of sadness cross his face as he let out those words, almost as if they'd slipped by unconsciously and she guessed somehow he was also having a hard time keeping up any barriers between them. Interesting.
"Did Coulson tell you how the two of them and Chief Sousa personally oversaw the building of this base?" She asked, trying to smooth over his apparent discomfort and keep the conversation flowing.
"Yeah," he answered and smiled a little after a moment. "1949, right? He told me that when I saw Peggy's portrait upstairs in the office. It looked like this was their base of operations in DC in the final years of the SSR."
"Yes, before they officially founded SHIELD and moved their base to what is currently the Triskelion," Natasha continued with a nod, having heard Coulson tell that story enough times now ever since they'd moved there and started using it as their secret base of operations.
They kept on chatting amiably as they finished their meal, glad for a moment of respite in their hectic day.
A.N.: Have I said how much I love obviously-and-obliviously-in-love-Fitz-Simmons? Just in case that wasn't already clear somehow. ;)
And I realized I was making Natasha way more honest than she was at the beginning of the MCU because I got used to writing her like that around Steve (and Tony, to some extent), so some explanation on this OOC behavior and maybe some developments thrown in, too for good measure.