Was it possible to be stuck in both Heaven and Hell at the same time? Ruby asked herself this as she soaked in the garden tub of the safehouse she was now confined to. Bruce and Fury had turned her over to a couple of generic agents at the safehouse in the wee hours of the morning and promptly disappeared. Which was fine by her; she wasn't in any condition to answer any questions and had immediately collapsed face down in the bed and went to sleep.
When she woke up much later in the morning, the pair still had not made an appearance, but her guards had changed. At least she thought they changed but it was hard to tell them apart in their bland black suits and regulation haircuts. However, she seemed to recall that both were men when she arrived and one of them was a woman now. Maybe she had missed the woman, but she was hardly worthy of three agents guarding her.
"Hey," the female agent rapped on the bathroom door, "are you okay in there?"
"Yeah, I'm about to get out," Ruby replied as she reluctantly sat up in the still warm water and reached for the drain plug. This was the third time the agent had checked on her. Heaven forbid she get to relax for fifteen minutes without interruption.
With a towel wrapped firmly around her, she left the bathroom and crossed the bedroom to the door, which at the insistence of the agents had to remain open while she was in the bathroom with the door shut. Letting them know she was out, she shut the door, giving herself more privacy.
She supposed she should have been grateful for the protection SHIELD was providing, and the safehouse was better than she had expected. Somehow, she had never pictured a safehouse as a nice home in a residential area. She had always envisioned a seedy hotel or a hovel in the middle of nowhere. That just went to show how clueless she really was when it came to this kind of thing.
The agents watching over her had been courteous and she could find nothing to complain about with the entire setup. Still she was irritated and on edge. Not just from the stress of having to hide from Hydra. Or being cooped up in the safehouse. Of course not, she thought, frustrated with herself. After spending several days exclusively in Bruce's company, suddenly being abandoned at this house by him was grating on her. And as the day wore on and there was no word from either him or Fury, her irritation had grown to the point that she found herself taking it out on the undeserving agents assigned to her.
After she had snapped at the male agent when he asked her what she wanted for dinner, she had retreated to the master bedroom and then to the bath. She had wanted to take matters into her own hands, so to speak, to get rid of some of the tension, but when the female agent had informed her that the bedroom door had to stay open, she had been too embarrassed to do anything. Now, she was even more frustrated.
Dressing in the jeans and tee shirt SHIELD had provided, she took a bracing breath and stepped out into the main room to find out what they had ordered for dinner, only to stop abruptly at the sight of a different agent in conversation with her two guards. Dressed in a nicely tailored suit in a shade of blue that brought out the color of her eyes, Ruby knew this newcomer was not just another generic agent.
"Ah, Ruby," the new woman smiled and came across the room to greet her. "I'm Agent Thompson and I will be debriefing you."
Ruby shook the proffered hand. "Hi." Maybe now she would get some answers.
Dinner had arrived, so Ruby helped herself to a plate and sat at the dinning table with Agent Thompson across from her.
"I had time to read through your statement," Thompson said, opening a folder and shuffling through several sheets.
Ruby could make out her handwriting on the pages. After she woke up, she had spent two hours writing down everything that had happened from the moment Bruce had walked through the door of her office.
"You were very thorough," she continued. "But I have a few questions."
Of course, she did.
"What projects were you involved in at the institute?"
"None," Ruby answered simply.
"None?" Thompson raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "I find it hard to believe that a mathematician of your caliber would not be involved in several, if not all, of the projects at the institute that your father funds."
"First," Ruby put down her fork and glared at the agent, "my father isn't the sole patron of the institute…,"
"But he does contribute nearly seventy percent."
Ruby gape, "seventy percent? I had no idea it was that high."
"And it is named after your mother."
"My father did pay for its construction," she admitted. "But that's not the point…,"
"That is the point, unfortunately," Thompson interrupted her again. "Why would the daughter of the person that built the institute and pays almost all its expenses not be involved in any of its projects?"
Ruby's face burned as the agent pinned her with cool blue eyes.
"Because none of them think I'm any good," she wished the ground would open and swallow her. "They think my father bought my degree."
"Did he?"
"No!"
"Why would they think that?"
"Because I dropped out of MIT and, when I finally went back to school to complete it, it was at a smaller, local university here in Houston."
"Why did you drop out?"
"My mother got sick," she said in a small voice.
Agent Thompson paused in her questioning before continuing.
"If you weren't working on any of its projects, what was your role at the institute?"
"I didn't have one," Ruby admitted, refusing to look Thompson in the eyes, not wanting to see same disdain she had faced every day there. "They gave me a small office out of the way and left me alone."
"How did you get Stark's formula?"
"I was bored and looking for something interesting. A while back I found the Abandoned Projects file on the server and it had some interesting stuff. That's where I found it."
"Do you remember any of the other files?"
Ruby nodded and Thompson slid a pad of paper and a pen across to her.
"Can you make me a list of what you remember?"
"Yeah, sure."
Ruby quickly wrote what she remembered then passed the pad back across the table.
Without looking at it, Thompson tucked it into the file and continued with her questioning.
"What do you know about your father's business?"
"He runs a private equity firm. I know that means he invests in different businesses around the world, but I don't know much more than that."
"So, you're not involved in any of his business dealings?"
"He wants me to be, but I don't understand how any of it works, so I've been avoiding it."
"But it's math."
"No," Ruby shook her head, "it's statistics. Everyone makes the mistake of thinking they are the same thing, but they aren't. They have completely different goals. In mathematics, the goal is to have both sides of the equation balanced. They have to be equal. Statistics goal changes depending on the purpose of the equation." She shuddered, remembering the two classes in statistics she had been forced to take. "It doesn't feel right."
Thompson just looked at her following that statement, as if trying to figure out what planet she was from. Ruby felt like a specimen under a microscope, as if the agent could see all the minutia of her pitiful little life.
After that, Thompson only had a few more questions for her, all clarifying her statement. Before she left, she warned that she might have more questions."
"Well, I'll be here," Ruby responded with forced brightness, eager for the agent to leave. That gained her another odd look from the woman.
The next day brought another unwelcome visitor to the safehouse as Nick Fury strode through the door after breakfast with the impact of a tornado.
"Alright, everyone, let's get this place packed up. We're wheels up in two hours."
The two agents watching over her that morning, Cox and Hardin – Ruby had made an effort to learn their names and be more friendly towards them – scrambled to do as he directed. Relief flooded her, she could finally get out of this comfortable prison and go home. She turned to go pack her few belonging, but Fury stopped her before she could make her escape.
"Leave it, they'll pack it up for you. You're with me."
Ruby turned to him, uncomprehending, "what do you mean?"
"I mean, you are leaving now. With me." He held the door open for her to proceed him through it, "let's go. There's a stop we need to make on the way to the airport."
Ruby held her ground, letting the agents go around her as they gathered up. "I'm not going to the airport with you."
Fury frowned, "I need you to come with me to the institute. Banner's already there and he wants your input on a couple things."
"Ok, I guess," she couldn't really refuse them any help. And she had personal items she needed to collect from her office. "But I'm not going with you to the airport."
"Young lady," Fury glowered at her with his good eye, "I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. Hydra is building a spaceship in order to beat us in this new space race and you are smack dab in the middle of it. You are going with me to the airport and then to New York willingly, or I will have these agents tie your ass up, stuff you in a crate, and you will still go but a hell of a lot more uncomfortably. Get it?"
What little courage Ruby had mustered fled at his threat and she meekly walked through the door and got into the black SUV waiting outside.
At the institute, Fury steered her in the opposite direction from her office towards the main workspaces that the others had used. Inside one of the larger rooms, Bruce stood, directing agents taking pictures and loading files into boxes. When Fury and Ruby entered, he looked up and smiled widely.
"So, the threat worked?" he asked Fury.
"Yeah," the director nodded and pushed Ruby further into the room. "You forget how convincing I can be. It's a shame, I was looking forward to Cox and Hardin having to tie her up."
Bruce pulled his wallet out and handed a bill over to Fury.
"What?" she sputtered. "You had a BET?"
"Don't look at me," Fury held up his hands, "Banner is the one that thought I would have to hog tie you to get you to go to New York."
She crossed her arms and glared at the two men, "you still haven't gotten me there yet."
"I like her," Fury laughed. "Now, show her so we can get out of here. I've got a call to make."
With that he left the room.
To break the awkward silence that followed, Ruby muttered, "I don't want to go to New York." She didn't do well with new places and new people.
"Hey," Bruce came over to stand by her, "I'll make you a deal. Come take a look at what I found. If, after that, you still don't want to go, I will try to talk Fury out of making you."
She raised her eyes to meet his and saw only honest concern in them.
Nodding, she agreed, "fine. I'll look, but I don't think anything will make me change my mind."
Leading her over to a white board that took up an entire wall, he pointed at it. "Tell me what you see."
Ruby frowned. The board was covered with sketches, notes, and formulas. Starting on the left, she worked her way across. Two-thirds of the way, she stopped in her tracks.
"What the heck?"
Coming to stand by her side, Bruce pointed at the formula that had caught her attention. "That's the same formula from the files you were working on."
Ruby couldn't believe her eyes, he was right. It wasn't just the formula; it was her work on the formula. It was just sitting there, waiting for her to figure out what was wrong and complete it. And it was tied back into another formula on the board. Not the academic formula she was trying to solve back in her office, though.
"What is this?" she asked Bruce.
"That is the equation for figuring out the final bit needed for this propulsion system." Bruce turned her by the shoulders to point her at another board, this one free-standing. On it was a mechanical drawing of some kind of engine, but that wasn't what caught her eye. On yet another board, set back behind it, another equation was partially visible.
Ignoring Bruce, she went to the board with the drawing and pushed it out of the way. Her heart pounded in her ears as it was revealed.
"This is mine also," she whispered.
"What? Are you sure?"
She nodded, "I know my work. This was from over a month ago."
"Why were you working on it?"
"I was bored and found it in the same files as the other."
"Ruby," Bruce took hold of her shoulders again and turned her around to look her in the eyes, "are there any others that you got from those files that you solved?"
She nodded mutely.
"Look around," he instructed. "Are any of them in here?"
Turning in a full circle, she looked closely at the rest of the work on the white boards that lined the walls of the room.
"That one," she pointed. "And that one."
At that point, her legs failed her, and she sat down hard on the floor. Pulling her knees up and hugging them, she buried her face in them. All this time, she had thought the others were just ignoring her, which was bad. Instead, they had been using her to help them build a spaceship. This was far, far worse.
Bruce was torn. On one hand, he wanted to pick Ruby off the floor and comfort her. She had no way of knowing Hydra was using her work to their own ends. He could only imagine how violated she must feel. On the other hand, he needed to let Fury know that Hydra had used her to crack some of the most complex problems facing those that wanted to win the space race. SHIELD's scientists were woefully behind, thanks to Ruby.
Fortunately, they now had Ruby, if they could convince her to help. That thought helped him make up his mind. After all, the damage was already done. Ruby had to be their primary concern now. And his.
Going over to where she huddled on the floor, he sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms. She didn't resist and curled up against his chest, burying her face in his shirt, sobbing. Hugging her to him with one arm, he stroked her back in what he hoped was a soothing motion and murmured into her ear, "it's okay. It's okay."
That's where Fury found them when he burst back into the room.
"Banner, what the hell is taking so long?"
Sitting on the floor, the two were hidden from his view from the door.
"We're here," he called out to the director and waved his free arm in the air.
"What the hell is going on?" Fury sounded pissed as he came into the room and spied them on the floor.
"We found something alarming," Bruce said over Ruby's head.
She pushed away from him, "it's okay. I'll be okay."
As Ruby got shakily to her feet, Bruce stood and faced a perplexed Fury.
"I was right," he started. "They were monitoring Ruby's work and probably feeding her equations that they needed her to solve by hiding them in the Abandoned Projects file. Besides that one," he pointed to the equation he and Tony had created, "there are at least three others in this room."
"And she solved them all?"
"All the ones in here, yes."
"Did they get everything in here documented?"
Bruce nodded.
"Then grab her and let's get our asses to New York and start un-fucking this mess."
"Hold up," Bruce stopped him and turned to Ruby. "Do you still want to stay here?"
"Banner, what are you doing?" Fury demanded.
"I promised Ruby that I would talk to you about her staying."
"That is out of the question."
"She's not one of your SHIELD agents or an Avenger for you to boss around like you own her!"
"No, but she's neck-deep in some serious shit and I can invoke my authority and make her go whether she wants to or not."
Bruce felt that familiar anger rising to the surface at his callous disregard of Ruby as a person, but a cool hand on his arm stalled the rise.
"It's okay, Bruce. After seeing how I was used, I don't see a choice. I need to go so I can fix this."
He looked down at her upturned face, her eyes red from crying.
"Are you sure?" His voice came out almost as a growl.
She nodded and gave him a weak smile, "I'm sure. It's time for me to quit hiding from everything and do something that matters."
"I knew I liked this girl," Fury said with a smile.
