A/N: Okay, I messed up, I know. It's been about a month and a half since my last update, I think, and it's thoroughly my fault. School started, and then I was freaking out, and then I was freaking out some more, and I just didn't write anything for about a month, and I'm so so sorry. I hope this chapter is enough to make it up to you, though.
The one week SHIELD promised Jess went by far too quickly for her liking.
If Jess had been asked to give proof to why life was incredibly messed up, she wouldn't have had to even think about it, because proof was right there in front of her, staring into her eyes since the moment she left that cell. Life was messed up because before, she was entirely capable of meeting with the same people for months before ever having a proper conversation with them, and sometimes she never got around to learning people's names. She wasn't just capable of it; she was quite good at it, too, and that was how she lived her life and never thought twice about it. It wasn't that she didn't like people, not necessarily; she just never got around to asking. Yet during the past week she has been more socially active with people she didn't know than she was throughout the whole of middle school.
And if she stopped to think about that, then things started making even less sense, because she never cared for being overly social. She loved being a loner, and she loved awkwardly sitting in a corner with a book in social events. She didn't have anything against people, not by default and definitely not all of them, she just liked the quiet.
And the reason that made things strange was because once she got over the initial awkwardness and hesitation that came with most first meetings, she didn't even have to think about socializing, she just did. She didn't find herself in need to filter what she said or what she joked about, which was something she only ever got to do around Amy and Charlie, and they thought she was dead.
She really missed Amy and Charlie.
They were another one of the things she didn't want to think about.
Incidentally, they were the one thing she didn't seem to be able to stop thinking about, more than any other crap that was screaming in her head.
And now the week was over and she was back in SHIELD headquarters, wondering if this was the time to tell them she had stage fright so if they could all just stop staring at her like that please and thank you.
They were all back in the room to which Coulson took her right after the defeat of Lawrence – all of them. Bruce was nervously toying with a pen in his hands, Clint and Natasha gave her identical looks of stone, Thor and Steve looked just a little bit lost and the look Tony gave her was so raw with an unidentified emotion she found it almost impossible to meet his gaze. While the team and herself were sitting at the long table, Coulson stood by the door, his arms crossed and his expression strictly professional, though Jess thought she saw something of his unmoved demeanor slip momentarily when he saw her. That might have been just her slight tendency to narcissism, though, causing her to imagine things.
There was another man standing at the head of the table, someone named Nick Fury who Natasha has very seriously told Jess not to piss off. He was generally intimidating with his eye patch and his 'I'm in charge' posture, but Jess didn't mind that nearly as much as all the staring.
"Miss Cory," said Fury, his voice deep and serious. "Do you know why you're here?"
"Well, I figured you wanted to know some stuff about my dad," answered Jess. "And maybe, if you guys care about that sort of thing, about the whole cell thing? Things that happened since my dad flipped out?" She looked at Fury with raised eyebrows, waiting for confirmation. "Something like that?"
"If you wouldn't mind," said Fury, not unkindly.
"Well, it has to come out at some point and it's either you or a therapist, so sure, yeah," joked Jess, attempting to lighten up the air. No one smiled. Maybe it was because she was still not looking anyone in the eye. Or maybe she just wasn't very funny.
Fury reached out and clicked a recording device on the table, causing a light on it to go red. He looked at her in a gentle way she didn't expect, as if challenging – no, encouraging her to say something if she minded. She didn't, so he went back to using his diamond hard expression. She had a feeling he was actually just more naturally grumpy than anything else.
"So," she sighed. "Where do you want me to start?"
"We want to know as much as possible of the crimes of Lawrence Cory, both against the general public and yourself," said Fury. "Miss Cory, what do you know of your father's mutation?"
"Not as much as I would've liked," admitted Jess. "Probably not more than you already do. I knew there was some accident before I was born, but not the details."
"Did you ever get the feeling he was deliberately avoiding the subject of his accident?" asked Fury.
"I don't think so. I mean, he didn't talk about it, but there was no real reason. It just didn't seem important at the time, when it looked like there were no lasting effects."
"Miss Cory, do you know how long you were held hostage?" asked Fury.
Jess didn't tell any of the Avengers how long it's been. She kind of wanted not to, but she knew this was important, even if she wasn't all that sure why. "Yeah," she said uneasily. "It was, uh, ten months." She was staring at her feet, but from the corner of her eye she could see Tony going tense, Steve fidgeting in his seat, Bruce gripping his chair with anger momentarily. "And it's not Miss Cory," she added quietly as if it mattered. "It's just Jess."
Just Jess.
Tony straightened up in his chair. "Yeah, this is just not gonna cut it," he informed Fury, who raised an eyebrow at his outburst. Jess looked at Tony curiously. "Director, if you don't mind, I'd like to propose a slightly different questioning technique."
There was something in the stare Tony and Fury shared then that reminded Jess of cats, both tense and ready for a fight, watching each other and waiting for one to make a move. Then she realized she was comparing Tony Stark and Nick Fury to cats and tried to stop thinking about it.
"Fine," said Fury indignantly. "What is your proposal?"
"Jess, can you just tell us everything that's happened?" Tony asked Jess, looking at her with a soft look in his eyes. Jess, who was trying to avoid eye contact at the moment, found herself feeling guilty for it. "You can stop if it gets too much. No one will pressure you into saying anything you're not comfortable with." Tony didn't know if what he was saying was true. He had no idea to which extent SHIELD would go to find out the truth, but as much as he liked hiding it, he trusted Fury, at least to a certain extent, and he didn't think he would deliberately upset Jess.
"Okay," said Jess quietly, feeling the weight of the question deep in her chest, trying to pull her down. She ignored it and cleared her throat, raising her voice slightly (and as much as she could) so that she was heard. She didn't want to have to repeat anything she was about to say.
"He's always been a drunken piece of crap," said Jess. "I didn't know until my mom kicked him out when I was nine. I didn't really get what it meant back then, so for a while there I thought it was just going to be an ordinary divorce and that I could have a normal relationship with him. But he was never really around, so that kind of went down the toilet.
"One night he comes to my mom's house and rings the doorbell." Jess took a deep breath. "I let him in. I didn't understand what was going on until it was too late."
She stopped for a moment, fighting down the choking sensation in her throat. She didn't get to the worst part yet, and she needed to keep it together until she's not in a room full of people. "At first I thought he was drunk," she continued. "Maybe he was, I don't know, but I think it was just his madness. He walked in, barely giving me a second look, and grabbed my mom. Then he shot purple through my mom's throat and she was dead."
She had to stop again. Memories were flooding through her brain and Jess wanted to burn them all until she was nothing but an empty shell rather than a really screwed up teenager.
"What were you doing when he attacked your mother?" asked Natasha gently.
A small, humorless chuckle escaped Jess's lips. It sounded so ridiculously, cruelly perfectly timed for her to ask that now.
"I was covering my little brother's eyes," she said bitterly. "While my mom was being murdered, I held a ten year old boy so that he wouldn't see."
"You have a brother?" asked Thor with raised eyebrows.
"Had."
Jess could feel the tension in the room building up, weighing down at her like a world on her shoulders. She stared at the floor, not wanting to see anyone's face. She didn't want to imagine what they must have looked like, but that was a much more difficult thing to accomplish than just looking away. In her mind she could still see them, and that hurt like hell even though she only knew them for several days.
"When my mom was dead," Jess continued, still determinedly looking down, "and her eyes became empty of everything that was her until she wasn't my mother anymore, he took us. He forced us into a car and he drove to the building in which you found me.
"At first I didn't even know about the cells downstairs. He let us wander around the building as long as we obeyed him, and he fed us more or less regularly, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Not straight away. When I wandered down to the basement and found the cells, he said it was in case we misbehaved, and all I could think about was how small these stupid cells were so I didn't act out and I did all I could to keep my dad calm.
"It was hard. He'd drink to get drunk and then grew a temper, hence the burns. I mostly tried to keep away from him, but sometimes that wasn't an option. Sometimes he'd call me to sit beside him while he drank. I think he considered me a trophy, a proof of his dominance, because I was his daughter and was bound to him. Then pleasing him became almost impossible, because his mind worked on whims, and when they weren't instantly fulfilled he got angry, and Emmett… Emmett was never an easy kid. Not ever. He was hyper, moody, easily bored and naturally cheeky. I guess I couldn't really expect his story to end differently."
Jess took a deep breath, swallowing hard at the lump in her throat and blinking several times, before she continued. "One day Lawrence was in a fury. It wasn't uncommon, but I've never seen him go off like that. Emmett was already bruised and cut and skinny. He was the only one Dad ever hit instead of just burning, and the first one he starved. And he talked back to him, and shouted, and talked about Mom, and cried and screamed. And my dad looked at him and he stopped shooting purple fire everywhere. His eyes stopped glowing and he was no longer tense and for a moment I thought that maybe we were going to be fine after all. But that moment was gone and Lawrence took him outside, pushing me away when I tried to stop him. He came back an hour later and Emmett wasn't with him. That was also the day I got put in the cell. I came at him with a knife."
Jess's small hands were clenched into fists, so hard her knuckles were white.
The room was nearly silent for a full minute after that. The deep quiet that threatened to swallow Jess whole was only prevented by the sound of her breathing, forced-calm and shallow. Besides that the only thing she could hear was the noise inside her head, screaming and thumping against her skull.
"After that, things were more or less the same," said Jess, so softly it was barely more than a whisper. "I spent some time in the cell and then you guys showed up."
The large room was suddenly too small for Jess, with all the staring and the talking, and she just wanted to shut her eyes, curl up in her old bed back home and cry. But she didn't have that old bed anymore, and her entire family was either dead or insane.
Maybe I'm insane, too, thought Jess grimly. I was already half crazy when Mom died, and there would be no logical explanation to me being sane right now. Then again, there's no logical explanation to how a life can escalate and become this bad this fast.
"Is there anything else you can remember?" asked Fury. "Anything that might be of importance?"
Jess shook her head, not trusting her voice not to crack if she tried to speak any more.
"Miss Cory, I truly am sorry for having to ask you this, but would you say it was possible that you have inherited any of your father's abilities?"
Jess's head shot up at the question as she stared at Fury with shock. "I- I don't think so," she said, shaking her head. "Why, is that possible?" She felt the all too familiar claws of panic in her throat and chest.
"We're not sure," said Coulson. "We're trying to work it out, but as far as we know there is a possibility for those abilities to be genetic."
Jess blinked and ran a shaky hand through her hair, trying to comprehend the new information without freaking out. Her vision was going blurry around the edges, the room and its residents becoming somehow insignificant in relation to the understanding that Lawrence's torment might be far from over. She wasn't paying attention to her breathing pattern anymore, which turned irregular and just a tad too fast.
"Director, I think we're done here," said Tony sharply, noticing Jess's distress. "If that's alright by you, I think we'll be going back to the Tower now."
"I'm afraid Miss Cory isn't going back to the Tower, Stark," said Fury. His tone was harsh, but he sounded apologetic simultaneously. "She has stayed the week but a permanent residence needs to be arranged. She will stay here until such arrangements are made. Do not argue with me on this, I don't like it any more than you do."
If Jess was calm enough to look at Tony she would have been touched by the angry expression on his face, reflected nearly perfectly on the rest of the team's. However all her concentration was currently being focused on the effort of keeping tears from forming in her eyes, or at the very least stopping them from falling onto her cheeks. She didn't say a word as Agent Coulson gave her an expectant yet sympathetic look, politely asking her to come with him. Jess stood on a pair of shaky legs and followed Coulson into an elevator that was in the room.
Turning her back to the inner wall of the elevator and looking at the Avengers, Jess could see that they were all standing up as well, looking unhappy. Her watery gaze went silently from one team member to the next, and the elevator's doors closed.
Jess wondered if she was ever going to see the Avengers again.
Steve was mostly known to the American public for his strength and military actions, and that was fine with him. Yet with all the focus going to his physical traits, people often forgot that his mind wasn't half bad, either.
Steve Rogers wasn't stupid. He was in fact rather smart.
And as a smart man should, he was piecing things together.
Steve barely waited for the elevator doors to shut before going directly at Fury. "Are you out of your mind?" he snapped at him. "You're gonna experiment on her, aren't you? See if she has her dad's powers? Poke her til she pokes back? She's just a kid!"
"Take it easy, Captain," Fury snapped back, though in a more collected manner. "I never said that."
"No, but you're going to, aren't you? Tell me, did the lab work out what makes her dad tick yet, or are they just gonna do trial and error with her?"
"Calm down, Steve," said Natasha, but she was looking at Fury with an almost accusing look herself.
"What are your plans for Jess?" asked Thor. "Tell us."
Fury sighed. "If you must know, I don't know yet."
"What do you mean, you don't know?" asked Steve. "You're the director, you're almost as high up as it gets!"
"I am not the highest in the chain of command," said Fury calmly. "It's out of my hands, Rogers, the Council will decide what will happen to the kid next, not me."
"The Council?" repeated Tony. "What do they care about Jess?"
"They've taken interest," explained Fury. "I assume it's because if Jess does have her father's powers, that would make her extremely powerful, and therefore a potential threat or ally to SHIELD."
"She's neither of those, she's fifteen," said Bruce angrily, his fingers fidgeting as he fought to control his emotions.
"You can't just lock her up here like she's some sort of criminal and not a victim of one," insisted Steve.
"I am aware of that," said Fury impatiently. "Look, I'm not happy about the situation, but there is nothing I can do."
"Bullshit," said Clint bluntly.
"The questioning is over," said Fury drily. "Your job here is done. Unless there is anything else, I suggest you leave."
And they did, but not without giving Fury a last dirty look each. In the last moment before the door of the room closed, Fury spoke again.
"I can tell you the Council's decision once one has been made," he said, turning away from them. Behind him, he heard the door close, but it didn't worry him. He knew they've heard.
But he wasn't lying. He really wasn't happy with the situation. He didn't trust the Council, and he still remembered New York; the Council's order to blast Manhattan still made him lose sleep at times. He didn't trust the Council with a city, and he didn't trust them with an antagonized teenager.
The Avengers were called upon again three days later by Fury, who said the Council has made its decision and if they wanted he was willing to discuss it with them. It was much kinder than Fury's usual behavior, and nobody considered not coming. All of them, Pepper included, were concerned about Jess's faith if left in the hands of the cold and emotionally detached Council members. Whatever the decision was, they needed to know.
And so they returned to the conference room for the third time in a week and a half, with Fury standing at the end of the table as he always have.
"What has the Council said?" asked Thor. "Will they let Jess leave?"
Fury eyed Thor for several moments before cautiously replying, choosing his words with care. "Not right away," he said. "They want to see if she has her father's abilities."
"How will they check?" asked Bruce immediately, not feeling overly surprised. "Did they learn anything from Lawrence?"
"They did not," admitted Fury. "It seems it would indeed be trial and error, and that some time may pass before a conclusion is reached."
"How can they do that?" asked Steve angrily. "You people are supposed to be the good guys. Let her go home!"
"Miss Cory doesn't have a home," said Fury. "That was the Council's main argument; there is nowhere for Jess to go back to. If she did, maybe things would have been different."
"Yeah, but she doesn't," said Tony. "And that doesn't give them the right to –"
"They have every right, that's not what I'm saying," snapped Fury. "If Jess had a home, legal guardians, anything like that, the Council would be forced to let her leave and SHIELD would need her consent before running tests. We are the good guys, Captain Rogers. And so are you. The Avengers were created in order to do many things but their first and ultimate purpose is to help and protect the innocents. And that is what you need to do now." He looked at Tony meaningfully. "Do you understand?"
Natasha sat up in her seat, being the first to work out Fury's meaning. Tony stayed absolutely still and didn't look back at Fury, but he understood just fine. Everyone else was still wondering.
"This meeting is over," said Fury. "Consider yourselves dismissed." He walked out of the room, his long black coat nearly touching the floor as he did.
"What did Fury mean?" asked Clint the moment the door closed.
"He meant we can help Jess," said Natasha, staring at Tony.
"Help her? How? He said it himself, the Council said –"
"The Council said Jess stays because she's got nowhere else to go," said Tony.
"Well, exactly, then –"
"Then what if she did have somewhere else to go?" Tony explained. "What if she had a home?"
"Then SHIELD can't touch her without consent," said Bruce quietly. "Are you suggesting…?"
"I'm not suggesting anything," said Tony. "Fury is. But the point stands."
"And the point is that what? We should adopt a teenager?" asked Steve, getting the idea.
"Is that even legally possible?" asked Clint. "I mean, adoption by more than two people?"
"I'm sure strings can be pulled," Natasha reflected uncertainly. "That's not the issue."
"And if that does turn out to be a problem, me and Pepper can do it," said Tony, taking everyone by surprise.
"Tony, are you sure you realize the seriousness of what you're saying?" asked Steve. "I know you enjoyed having Jess around, but that was one week. If we adopt her, if you adopt her… that's a lot of responsibility. Especially Jess. She's going to have a really hard time adjusting. She'd need help."
"You don't think I can help her?"
"Most of the time I'm not sure you can help yourself."
"Cut it out, both of you," said Bruce. "We need to think about this, calmly, not argue."
"Fury is right," said Thor. "Jess is our responsibility, has been since we rescued her, and if there is a way for us to help her we have no choice but to take it."
"And it's not like we don't have the resources," Natasha pointed out. "Stark's a billionaire, so that won't be an issue."
"Yeah, but money can't buy everything," argued Steve. "What Jess is going to need now is a family. If we do this…" he took a deep breath. "We would have to be her family. I'm all up for that, but can we do it? Jess needs stability, something she can rely on. That doesn't sound like us to me. Between saving the world twice a week to the amount of crazy our lives add up to, how can we raise a teenage girl?"
"We're only talking about a few years, though," Clint said. "There's not that much raising left, is there? If we go through with this, she'd probably graduate high school before we can blink."
"Maybe, but we can't count on that. And we don't even know how Pepper feels about it. She needs to be a part of this decision, too."
"Look, I get what you're saying, but we might not have time for an hours long debate," said Tony impatiently. "Who knows when they're gonna start testing Jess? And we don't know what they're going to do to her then. We need to decide, and we need to decide fast. There's nothing left to say, let's just vote and get this over with. I say we do it. I think we can."
"I agree," said Thor. "We promised her we'd help her."
"Alright," said Bruce, nodding. "I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, but I think it's manageable."
"Protecting people is our job, right?" Steve thought aloud. "That falls under protecting people. Definitely. Yes. We do it."
Natasha shrugged. "It'd be great to have someone help keeping you guys sane."
"Fair enough," said Tony. "Clint, what do you say?"
Clint smiled. "Well, god knows I like having the kid around. Sure, let's give it a shot."
"So we're actually going through with this?" asked Bruce, just to make sure. "We're actually adopting Jess?"
"That's right, Big Guy," confirmed Tony. "Hell, we're superheroes, we can do this." He looked at them all, his team members, the people he had come to trust. He thought of how lost Jess looked when the elevator closed. He thought about Pepper. "We can do this," he repeated quietly.
Jess only spent four days in SHIELD custody. Three days while the Council debated, and one more in which she wondered why nobody was cutting her open already.
She wasn't overly bored. She was given a small room with only a grey, hard bed and frustratingly dull cement walls which was basically another cell, but it wasn't that bad. Nobody bothered her except for when they brought her meals, and when she asked she was given books. It wasn't that she had nothing to do. She was feeling a little trapped, but nothing she couldn't handle.
But the not-knowing was hard. She was informed of the Council's decision, and while thinking about strangers prodding her with strange devices made her skin crawl, she couldn't figure out why they weren't starting already. It would make sense for them to want to get to work as soon as possible, before she went crazy like her dad. Keeping her cooped up in that room just didn't add up to anything logical.
Just when she started thinking that she may have to throw a fit if she wanted some answers, answers came.
On the fourth day Agent Coulson stepped into her room with a smile. He spoke politely and asked her how she was doing, which was far more than anyone has said to her in four days, and then asked her to come with him one last time.
Jess wondered why it was always Coulson she followed around. Surely he was too important to be doing this? She considered asking him, but settled on a different question instead.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"The Avengers need to talk to you," said Coulson, and she thought she saw his smile changing a little as he said that. It turned from just polite to something more genuine.
"I thought they're not involved anymore," said Jess, confused. "That's what the guy said, the one who told me what the Council decided."
"They weren't supposed to be," agreed Coulson. "But I think you'll find they have a tendency to stick around a bit longer than expected."
"Like that one time everyone thought Captain America was dead and he turned up seventy years later in an iceberg?"
Coulson chuckled. "That was one of the more dramatic times that happened, yes."
Jess smiled. It was nice to have someone with a sense of humor around again.
They reached that same conference room yet again, and Jess felt that she was getting pretty sick of it, despite it being quite nice. That wasn't the focus of her attention, though. The Avengers were indeed there, all standing rather than sitting, and Fury was nowhere to be seen.
"Heya, Jess," Clint greeted her. "SHIELD treating you alright?"
Jess shrugged with a smile. "Well, I can't complain, I guess. They're being pretty detached, but I don't mind that." She couldn't read their expressions. "So what's up?"
Tony stepped up to explain. "Right, so the Council people made a decision – of which you're aware, yes?"
"Yeah."
"Great. And we thought that they were being pretty big dicks about it."
"Tony," warned Steve.
"Whatever, let me get to the point," Tony waved him off. "So Fury told us what the Council said, and we thought, 'well, that's a bit messed up'. And Fury, well, he looks scary but you just know he's really a cuddly teddy bear inside, and he told us that what gives SHIELD the right to violate about every right you've got on your own body is that you're a hobo minor."
Bruce sighed and Natasha rolled her eyes. Jess just raised an eyebrow, feeling slightly amused by the title.
"And this is where we get to the fun part," Tony continued. "We talked to Fury, figured out what strings can be pulled, what the law allows, ect, and it turns out, well, you don't have to be a hobo."
"Sorry, not getting it," said Jess. Then she noticed some papers on the table. "What are these?" she asked, vaguely pointing at the neat pile.
Tony glanced briefly at the rest of the team before locking his gaze with hers. There was something very gentle in his eyes that Jess wasn't accustomed to seeing. "Adoption papers," he said softly. He kept his eyes on her, watching her reaction closely. Jess could feel the others doing the same.
But her coping mechanisms were kicking in and Jess found her brain to be numb. She didn't say anything, just looked at them, silently asking for further explanation.
"Basically, we're all adopting you," said Clint briefly.
"If you want," added Steve.
"SHIELD won't be able to touch you if we do this," said Bruce. "Not without full consent from you and from all of us."
Jess felt too shocked, too touched, to think. "And you're all cool with doing it?" she asked. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm pretty messed up."
"Yeah, well, who isn't?" shrugged Tony.
"We'll have you if you'll have us," said Steve with a smile.
"We'd be happy to have you join our family," said Thor with a wide, hopeful grin.
Family.
It's been a while since Jess had that.
"So, what do you say, kid?" asked Natasha, cracking a smile as well. "Interested?"
She didn't need to think about it for a single second more. Jess grinned.
"Yes."