Notes:
So an Astronomical Unit is roughly defined as the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is the distance that sunlight must travel to reach us. AU is also the element Gold, which is often used as a color descriptor for what sunlight looks like.
Story-wise, my plans for SHIELD are very slowly being revealed, so bear with me. It takes a while to recognize, through one's privilege, that a governmental agency might actually not be what they appear! It's even harder when people you come to respect and admire work there.
Chapter Seventeen: AU
Tony settles in at his desk, delegating the acquisition of materials and the overview of wire design for Mark II to his AI. That leaves him to solve the problem of stable flight and power conservation himself, but that's the kind of challenge he's always relished.
He spends a couple hours altering the design of SI's Jericho repulsors to mount onto armored boots. As the design takes shape, though, it's easy to picture the kinds of things that Obie might want to do with it. Tony grabs a flash drive from a drawer and plugs it in, meaning to swap his work over and purge it from the hard drive- and that's when he sees that his workspaces are all connected to his home computer. He'd been gone so long he completely forgot about that protocol, implemented after Stane had snooped into Tony's files and found something he'd been tinkering with but hadn't wanted to implement. One of those projects ended up becoming the Jericho missile, ironically enough. Remote access with nothing stored at SI was the compromise.
Remote access.
The armored suit he envisions is sleek, streamlined- and impossible to get into and out of by himself. There are… sacrifices to his dignity he'd be prepared to make for the journey from Malibu to D.C. to see- and reassure -Emory, but it's more than three hours one way. Ideally, there'd be a middle ground option, like the flash drive.
Then, Tony remembers that there is.
The house he grew up in.
"JARVIS?" Tony leans back in his chair. "How quickly can we get the Stark Mansion habitable?" For the past five or so years, he's stayed at hotels in NYC instead. Womanizing in one's father's footsteps is a little too on the nose. He briefly considers buying something just outside of D.C. as a fuck you to SHIELD and their list of expectations, but Tony doesn't want them to retaliate against Emory. Besides, his mansion should be free of agency influence, and he can't be sure of that in a rental near Washington.
"There are service companies that can be hired to prepare a dormant residence for occupation. Shall I employ one, sir?"
"Set it up," Tony says, pleased. For the past few nights, Tony's had trouble excising the images in his head of a particularly incisive, tech-savvy scientist crouched over hurriedly fastening the suit. Replacing Yinsen with a robotic apparatus is too painful to imagine right now. That would require acknowledging his absence from the world, and Tony's not ready. There's no sense in designing a robot to get him into and out of the suit without knowing the shape of the place he'd be building it into, and now he can put that off for a while yet.
He roughly shoves back from the desk and starts to get up. A sharp pain arcs through his toe and across his foot, forcing him to sit back down, hard. "What-"
Tony picks up his foot and finds that the sole of his shoe has actually detached halfway, hanging loose at the back. Suddenly the entire thing is too tight. He rips it off and removes the sock, finding the kind of angry, purplish bruising he would have expected to have noticed by now. He shakes his head.
"No way did I have this when I landed -?"
"You kicked your tool cabinet with a lot of force at the end of your call with Miss Autumn, Sir. It is now dented. The adrenaline may have obscured-"
"I get it," Tony interrupts. He'd wanted to stop hating how it felt to hurt Emory on purpose. As he stares at his favorite pair of shoes in painful consternation, the door to his office opens. It's Pepper Potts.
"It's barely six AM! Are you still on Afghanistan time?" she splutters, clearly concerned.
"We're twelve hours off, and I hardly need beauty sleep. Wait, are you saying I- never mind." Frowning and definitely sleep deprived despite what he's just said, Tony turns the chair and shoves his feet under the desk. His ruined shoe ends up dragged sideways, its wrecked sole opening wide for her to see.
"If that's the shoe, what did you do to your foot?" Pepper gasps.
Tony swivels back around, lips twisting sideways as he shuffles his feet back into the light. "Might have broken a toe."
"Did you fall? Did they miss a head injury?" Pepper eyes him up and down as if searching for other issues he'd kept from her. It's the kind of presumptuous, caring action she almost never crosses the line for, and it has Tony reassessing how bad his foot looks. This moment feels like home, and fuck, he'd missed his people. Obviously, Pepper has missed him too- she's called him 'Tony' more in the past few days than in the past three years. That thought animates his impish grin.
"I'm fine. No one casts broken toes. Call in Frank and he'll tape it up, stick on one of those fancy ice packs we designed for the troops, the ones that don't burn you and actually stay put."
"Tony, what-"
"I kicked something, okay? Take it up with the, the whatever. Thing I kicked," he interrupts, waving his hand dismissively. It works; Pepper whips out her phone, giving him the stink eye as she presses two buttons. Seconds later, she's speaking to Frank's receptionist, meaning she's got the doctor on speed dial, and that's just insulting.
A quiet beep alerts him to a message JARVIS has wisely flashed onto his screen instead of speaking aloud. A company has been hired to get the mansion cleaned up after twenty-some years of sporadic habitation. In a few days, Stark Industries will send a skilled team out to shift his father's equipment out of the way and fit out the lab space for him. Tony smiles and leans down to take his other shoe and sock off.
"All right. He'll send someone within the hour." She pins him with a look. "You need rest to heal, sir. I can't even imagine what time you got up this morning." Pepper looks unhappy, but softens her frustration with practiced deference. It reminds him of Emory, and that stings enough to make him want her out of there. "Promise me you'll go home for lunch, at least?"
Tony's off-balance, and his sloppy spin around the axis of normalcy makes him defensive. "Sure. Consider my injured arm twisted. You got something for me? I'm in the middle of designing something," he says, turning back toward his computer.
"A new weapon? Something you used to escape?" she asks in a small voice. Pepper sounds confused, and who could blame her? Tony knows he's hard to deal with at the best of times, and this is not that. There are countless design hours, maybe even weeks before he'll be able to even visit Emory, much less rescue her. He's new to this hero business, but it seems pretty clear that he could save his assistant right now by explaining himself.
...maybe building Mark II would be easier, in retrospect. He lobs a distraction grenade and hopes it hits.
"Pepper, I'm sorry I ruined your birthday."
Tony doesn't use her first name at work. It's one of the things she'd asked him to avoid when she'd started, and he'd understood immediately. He'd hired her all those years back because her resume was incredible, so much so that he'd accused her of faking it at the in-person interview. Pepper Potts had shown up in an inexpensive pantsuit that barely fit her, but her makeup had been immaculate, and she was (still is, really) one of the most beautiful non-models he'd ever met. Tony has never told her that he still doesn't know which part was the tipping point, her looks or her qualifications, but he's never regretted hiring her. In retrospect, he's enjoyed watching her expand her wardrobe almost as much as her horizons, over the years.
That thought just reminds him of the image search he'd done of Emory, how she'd always been near Rory, supportive and functionally invisible. Pepper has been that for him for ten years. Has he hurt her in similar ways? He watches her facial expressions alter from concern to gratitude, then tighten into nervousness as if a switch has been thrown.
"Mr. Stark, I've forgotten myself lately, I should apologize. I spent a lot of time with Mr. Hogan during your absence, and he refers to you by your first name-" she stops herself and stands there rigidly, waiting.
She's shut down into business mode. He won't have it.
"Apology not accepted," Tony says, lifting his chin and regarding her sternly. "Tony is my name, and you've more than earned the right. Use it, don't use it, I trust your judgment. I always have."
Pepper looks at him, her 'Stark Industries' demeanor still active but her mouth hanging slightly open. She shuts it and raises her eyebrows. "That was almost nice, Mr. Stark. You must be under-caffeinated. I'll be back."
Tony supposes he deserves that. The message is loud if not entirely clear: not here, not now. To show her he understands, he turns back to his work but thrusts his hand out behind him, snapping his fingers.
"Folder?"
"Are you sure?"
He just waves his hand. Pepper slips it into his grasp, the steady but gentle sounds of her heels against the floor as she walks away hinting that she isn't angry, at least. Tony waits for the door to close before he pulls his arm in and flicks it open.
It's a file on Emory Autumn, generated at Stark Industries.
Tony can picture the secret smile on Ms. Potts' face as she steps into the elevator. Pepper 1, Tony 0.
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Natasha Romanoff drives like a maniac without shoes.
It isn't that she's unsafe- she makes sure they're both buckled. But D.C. streets have a different feel than LA ones, and something about this headlong rush is equal parts intimidating and impressive. At one point she slows to a crawl in the middle of the street. Emory looks over, confused, and Natasha nods toward a building ahead of them.
Suddenly, a bike flies out of a side door, skating across the sidewalk and down onto the road as if it has the right of way. Because they've slowed down already, the biker zooms across without issue, racing around a corner and out of sight.
"Courier agency. Crazy courier agency," Natasha explains. "Haven't needed to use it as a cover yet, but the whole city knows about those guys. They'll come in handy someday."
"I'm-" Emory's throat closes up. She pushes ahead with what needs to be said anyway. "All of this is beyond me. If you need me to smooth over a hurt celebrity's feelings, I'm your gal. Everything else…"
"I hear you," Natasha says when she trails off. "According to the file, that's exactly what they want you to be doing. My job will be to teach you how to stay alive afterwards. If something else grows from that, well." Her brassy smile as she looks away from the road at Emory is not at all reassuring. The way that everyone at SHIELD dances around her powers while keeping her confined because of them is starting to drive her crazy.
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service means that they go through a drive thru and sit in a run-down parking lot to talk while they eat. Natasha talks, Emory listens. Nothing about Emory's abilities are mentioned, and Emory doesn't volunteer anything. It feels a little bit like a game of chicken, but being Rory's PA has taught her all about how to play those well. By the time they're finished eating, Emory has a better idea of what's expected of her in the short term (some physical training, some psychological training, a lot of policies and procedures training), and she's gained a strong sense of respect for Natasha's competence.
What's baffling is how the SHIELD Emory has seen so far can possibly align with the one Natasha Romanoff seems to think she's working for. Emboldened by a sliver of Tony's audacious courage, Emory asks what Natasha thinks of SHIELD imprisoning a kidnapping victim without the means to contact friends, family, or former employer.
The agent's response is to start up the car and head back toward SHIELD headquarters. The rest of the ride is silent, and Emory's resentment rises with every tenth of a mile. Once back at the complex, Natasha parks and looks ahead for so many awkward seconds that Emory leans over to follow her gaze.
They're parked in front of a placard that designates the spot for SHIELD parking only. Underneath the words are a sticker that warns that agency vehicles are surveillance monitored.
"I really am new at this," Emory says sheepishly. She takes off the borrowed boots and offers them to Natasha, realizing belatedly that she should have done it earlier so the other woman didn't have to drive barefoot. "Take these back, I'm sure you have a long day?" she offers.
"I'll spend some of it raising hell about isolating you. You're not a spy, you're not quite an agent, but you shouldn't be a prisoner." Natasha takes the boots and puts them on, waving off the socks Emory offers.
"I'm not ready to be any of the above! I look like a child in a trenchcoat, I'd make a terrible fake nurse, and… I mean…" Emory shakes her head, gesturing at Natasha Romanoff's everything. "I don't even belong in the building," she mutters.
"A hawk-eyed assassin's arrow can strike with precision, but his training can be nullified with an unpredictable wind. A spider's size doesn't diminish her sting, but she can be blown off course." Natasha pushes the door open, turning her body away but tipping her head towards Emory to make eye contact for the first time since they parked. "Don't underestimate what you can do."
Natasha delivers the words in a tone so matter-of-fact that Emory almost feels chastised rather than encouraged. She sits in the car, shaken, until she realizes that the agent isn't waiting for her. Scrambling out of the car, she sock power walks across the warm asphalt to catch up.
"How can you say that if I don't even know what I can do?" she asks, still behind by a few paces. Natasha stops right where the parking lot meets the sidewalk, so Emory does too. The sun-warmed material heats up her feet like an impromptu 'hot seat' as they look at each other in the parking lot.
"Did you use your powers to help you and Stark escape the terrorists?" Natasha finally asks.
Emory refuses to adjust her stance, even if her burning feet are begging her to. "Yes."
"Are you willing to use them to help us prevent anyone else from being blackmailed with that serum?" Natasha asks, the sharp tone at odds with her 'two office girls at the water cooler' body language.
"Excuse me," a middle aged man in a suit says as he sidles past them onto the sidewalk.
"Of course," Natasha says coyly, a full ten seconds later. The man's gait hitches, and he clears his throat. Emory can't help staring at her smug expression, and after another ten seconds, Natasha jerks her head back toward the man as he disappears into the Triskelion's entrance. "Look at it this way: maybe someone decides to investigate our outing, sees him walk past us on the security footage."
Emory gives up trying to seem tough and lifts one foot and then the other to ease the relentless sear of the blacktop's heat transfer. As a result, Natasha steps up onto the sidewalk, moving close to the grass strip that leads toward the building, a small smile haunting her face. Emory gratefully follows, wondering what exactly the agent learned by her capitulation.
"If they ask that man what kind of shoes we had on," Natasha continues, "There's a high chance he'll say black boots for both of us, even under oath. People see what they expect to see."
"Doesn't that only last as long as it takes for my proverbial arrow to miss?" Emory asks, enjoying the soothing cold floor of the atrium as they walk inside.
"That's what the training is for. So you learn how to miss."
Either something about being inside SHIELD headquarters makes Natasha Romanoff more confident, or her increased gait is another subtle test. Emory's really close to mentally nicknaming her 'Yinsen' for the agent's ability to make her feel similarly off-balance.
"Don't you mean how not to miss?" she asks, jogging a bit to close the gap between them.
"Oh, that works itself out." Natasha hits the elevator button and the doors immediately open. She settles herself against the back corner of the car in a casual position that looks like a photoshoot. "You're a phone number memorizer, aren't you?"
"Yes. The phone they put in my room doesn't call out, though. I already tried," Emory admits. She doesn't add how lonely it had made her feel to realize she doesn't even know how to contact Tony, and avoids eye contact in the resulting silence, until they reach the correct floor.
"Dialing 9 before calling out isn't hardcoded. That's your trivia for today," Natasha says briskly as they walk out. After unlocking Emory's door, Natasha steps inside and scans the room with a professionalism that has Emory once again wallowing in inadequacy. "New laptop, new phone, new chair, and they brought up your suitcase, good. I'll write down what you'll need for training, hold off on getting adventurous until I get you a schedule?"
"I can handle that. It was my job to be the wet blanket, after all."
"So you're saying you kept Stark alive, rather than the other way around?"
Emory walks in, facing away from Natasha long enough to allow a rueful smile whose evidence leaks into her tone despite her best efforts. "No way. The man is a force of nature."
"So are you, from what I've seen. Just need some control. It'll be easier to teach that to you than to him." Before Emory can really take in the full meaning of those words, Natasha leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms with an odd kind of satisfaction. "He's connected to your power generation, isn't he? Can I be the one to tell Fury?"
"Is this spy blackmail? Make it fun or I'll sic the director on you? I'd be impressed if I weren't so intimidated," Emory tells her. She feels bad when Natasha straightens back up, her face tightening back into that of a SHIELD agent. "Oops. I didn't mean to reactivate you, 'Agent Romanoff,'" Emory says, backing into the room while doing the air quotes.
Natasha's response to that is playful irritation, rather than formality. "That's Stark talking."
The implications of that sweeps through Emory like a tiny burst of joy. "The scare quotes were all me, but yeah, I guess you can. Tony's-" she gasps, realizing the perfect way to put it, given the music Tony would riff to himself when deep in thought. "He's my current. My AC/DC. The truth is, since the kidnapping I barely know myself compared to who I was before. I don't want to let you down, but-"
"Okay, that first part is disgusting, I'm out of here," Natasha interrupts with a teasing frown, reaching for the doorknob. She pauses and makes eye contact, her expression hardening for a frightening three seconds before her features shift back into the recognizable. "I might be Agent Romanoff here, but in the field, I'm called Black Widow. You don't have to be all things at all times, Ms. Autumn, no matter what Hawkeye will tell you."
The door clicks shut before Emory can ask who Hawkeye is, but it has to be Barton. It seems like maybe Agent Romanoff brought him up specifically because she wants Emory to think about how to support an archer and a close-combat fighter during their mission, if things go wrong.
Since there's not much else to do besides go through the suitcase that represents a part of herself she doesn't want to deal with right now, Emory grabs her notebook and starts jotting down ideas.
88888888
He hasn't just broken a toe, he's broken three of them. As suspected, the doctor offers him a stupid looking shoe and a lot of tape and foam to wrap it in. Tony rejects the shoe but takes the tape and foam. His foot has to be elevated not to hurt like a sonofabitch even with meds, so he sets up in his bedroom at home, reclining like a sultan with his desktop displayed on a projection screen Hogan sets up at the foot of the bed.
Tony spends the rest of that day and the next one designing his new suit.
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Emory spends the rest of that day and the next one signing; the 'new recruit.'
As per Fury, her powers are need-to-know only, so her orientation is the same as anyone who is hired as a SHIELD agent. Along with the paperwork are a series of 'legacy' videos to watch, with the outdated information inexpertly erased or added-on over awkward freeze-frames. It's obvious by the dated nature of the recordings that they're still being used because of historical significance, but she didn't realize how much they'd be personally significant.
The first one is an elegant British woman who speaks about the Strategic Scientific Reserve, the precursor to SHIELD. All the rest are Howard Stark.
It feels like a betrayal of her allegiance to see Tony in the man, but she does. Tony's enthusiasm, wit, and charisma shine through in the footage of his father. Joy and guilt circle each other in her stomach, dampening any power she might have generated from the meagre association she has with this part of the Stark family. Still, as the last seconds of the final video play, and Howard Stark nods respectfully at the screen, her eyes well up.
She'll never meet this man, but it's possible that even if she were Tony Stark's girlfriend, she wouldn't have an inherent right to see this. There's a solid chance Tony doesn't even know they're being shown- and she has no intention of risking opening old wounds by telling him. That nod is the best she'll get for approval from his family, and even though she can guess how Tony would feel about it, she still feels the impact.
But oh, she misses him.
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When Tony's meds wear off, the pain is a motivator. When they're active, he feels a mix of ire and desire. He's angry at SHIELD for being domestic, presentable versions of the people he'd flamethrowered in the escape. Of all the similarities and differences between the two groups, it's just his luck that the American kidnappers would be the ones to keep them strictly separated. Emory should be here with him, in his house, in his room, in his bed, making fun of the ways he'd try to get around his injuries during sex.
If he could, he'd build an arc reactor powerful enough to use the power generated by his sexual frustration to drag her out of the agency's clutches. Since he can't, he'll start with a more efficient version for his chest, and work from there. It's possible that he's just a bit salty about being able to achieve a buckled seatbelt but not a satisfying orgasm with his fucked-up arm, now that he has the privacy he'd lacked in the cave.
Soldering at the makeshift workstation in his bedroom hadn't been ideal, but after Happy had caught him sneaking down to the workshop and nearly carried him back up, Tony chose to improvise. The result is superb if bittersweet; a cleaner, more efficient arc reactor with replaceable fuel capability, but built without Ho Yinsen's help. Tony almost manages to swap it out by himself, but he's thwarted by something he probably should have expected: the combination of make-do workmanship in a cave in Afghanistan and genetically large hands. There's a wire shorting out at the base of his magnet apparatus, and his hand is too big to grab it.
Emory's hand would fit. The thought makes his heart speed up. Tony groans, dramatically throwing himself back on the pillows piled up behind him, one of which slides over to cover his face. Perfect. He's been trying to focus on wanting her as a way to heighten his sense of urgency without putting his worries about her in overdrive, but his heart is fully engaged, despite his best efforts.
Pepper's light tap at the door revives him in spirit if not in body. Tony just holds up the new arc reactor like he's a melted version of the Statue of Liberty and waits.
"Nice," Happy Hogan says. They'd come in together.
"Oh, wow. You built another one?" Pepper breathes. Tony hears her set down a tray, the various china containers clinking against each other.
"What, like it's hard?" he asks in his best Elle Woods.
"Why don't you bend and snap your way into a sitting position, there, counselor, so you can eat something and heal faster?" Pepper says pertly.
Shocked, Tony sits up so fast the pillow goes flying. For some reason he really hadn't expected her to catch the Legally Blonde reference.
"You don't remember my resume at all, do you? I was pre-law before I dropped out because of exactly the kind of people she stands up to, in that movie," she says, crossing her arms and leveling a challenging look at him.
"I knew that," Happy helpfully supplies.
"I absolutely remember your resume," Tony lies. "You know what wasn't on there? Hand size. Hold 'em up, I need you."
"To think, I almost applied to work for Kate Winslet instead," Pepper says under her breath just loud enough for him to hear her. She lifts her chin and comes over to the bed, holding up both hands like a surgeon.
"Happy is a bad influence on you," he says under his own breath. Louder, Tony says, "Yes, those are very small. Exactly what I need." Tony holds up the new reactor. "See this? This is the difference between Malibu and Moria."
"We need to dial down the pain meds, because out of the two of those, Moria wins for metal craftsmanship every time. You know that, right?" Hogan tells him, lifting the glass of green sludge he'd brought from the workshop blender so Tony can see it. His bank of smoothie ingredients had gone bad while he was gone, and replacing them had been unexpectedly tricky.
"Gorgeous. Set that with the tray." Tony tries to hand the new reactor to Pepper, who backs up, her eyes wide. He shrugs and puts it on the bed beside him as pulls his shirt off, talking the whole time. "'Cave troll' is too kind for some of those guys anyway. Was too kind." The memories of killing to escape don't include the joy of self rescue, and his resulting dreams carry none of the triumph and relief of getting away. He's looking forward to having new memories to associate with the device keeping him alive. "They had a video camera pointed at us and still ended up surprised by our escape."
When he's done with the shirt, he balls it up to toss it in the direction of his closet, and Pepper clears her throat. Happy starts coughing, but Tony knows he's masking a laugh.
"Okay, Hogan, I'm sure you have better things to do than watch her dig around in my chest."
"What? No." Pepper's adamant.
"See you, sweetie," Happy says, with a huge grin. Pepper's standing between Tony and Hogan, so Tony can't see his bodyguard's face, but his assistant's expression makes up for it. She's beet red, her wide eyes begging him not to be upset.
"Calm down, I knew about the two of you from the second I walked out of the plane," Tony tells her. He leans over and nods at Happy, who is in the doorway. "See ya, Hap."
"Mr. Stark-" Pepper starts to say.
"Make it up to me by helping me with this," Tony commands, tapping his chest.
"I can't believe I missed you," She takes in a steadying breath. "Okay. What do you need?"
"Hey." Tony reaches out and takes her hand. It's freezing, so he tugs her closer so he can reach to rub it between both of his. "First, you gotta settle. One wrong move and you'll put me in cardiac arrest, and that would probably make the papers." He leans his head back and looks at her critically. "Why aren't you reassured yet?"
Wild-eyed, Pepper says, weakly, "My half naked boss is holding my hand in his bedroom, explaining how I could accidentally kill him-"
"It's a good thing for both of our reputations that you're shacking up with Happy then, right?" Tony laughs, but he lets go of her hands and holds his up in surrender when her worry turns into a sharp glare. "Want me to take you out of my will? Would that help?"
All the color drains from her face.
"No no no, don't go Casper on me. It's like, a couple of million for faithful service! Chump change." Pepper backs away toward the door, and Tony winces. "Come back, I'll stop! And I need you. My redhead is trapped at SHIELD with her tiny hands held hostage by a possibly evil government agency. This is step one to rescue her, okay? You're in no danger."
"Your- Wait, SHIELD? Is it the guy who gave me the card?" she asks.
"Yep." Tony shifts the arc reactor in his chest a quarter turn and pulls it out just enough to show her the wiring.
"They kidnapped her?" Pepper walks slowly back toward him, but when Tony holds out the new reactor for her to hold, she shakes her head again.
"A lot happened in that cave, Pepper. Situations and technology that bad people might want to exploit. They're claiming they need her knowledge to stop one of those people."
"Do you believe them?"
"No."
Pepper nods and squares her shoulders as if donning a cloak of bravery. "How can I help?"
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Because SHIELD has her acting like a regular recruit, Emory doesn't have time to dwell on the brief but reassuring phone call she was able to have with her father. The clothes he sent along are almost too big for her, despite dating from her late teens. Rory had required them to have the same starvation diet, and that plus the time spent in the cave has left Emory dangerously slim. The intimidating physical trainer who works with her small group of seven has placed her on a regimen meant to 'remind her muscles what it's like to have fuel.' The woman is a force of nature, and Emory can't resist wanting to impress her.
She'd met with Fury once more, post-paperwork, and he'd explained that an altered version of her ordeal had been concocted for her SHIELD file. There's no hiding her identity long-term, but the plan, the director explained, is to allude to a run-in with terrorists during non-military work in Afghanistan. That had led to this 'twinned' version of herself (the name she's currently going by is 'Emma Autumn') witnessing something classified. According to the file, her subsequent confinement by SHIELD had been for her own protection until they could determine her loyalties.
This compromise thankfully explains why she lacks the law enforcement, military, or otherwise 'spy adjacent' background of her fellow recruits. Emory's experience in fading into the background is useless here, though- her red hair, 'mysterious witness' reputation, and relative ignorance of a lot of what they're learning all cause her to stand out.
Emory's saving grace is a rumor that whatever happened to her overseas has made this training a necessity, and she's just making the best of it. It's true, and once that starts circulating, everyone's attitude toward her softens into a kind of protective sympathy. Everyone, that is, except for the physical trainer, Barton, and Romanoff.
Her schedule is gruelling, though, no matter how she's treated by her instructors or classmates. On top of the full day for aspiring agents, she has a morning run with Barton where they go through some of the mission parameters and ostensibly build up her endurance. In the evening, Emory alternates between attending sparring sessions with Barton and Romanoff, and meeting with Natasha alone, off-site. These sessions take place at an empty field surrounded by forest.
Emory's attempt to demand at-will contact with Tony as a means to demonstrate her abilities is met with stony resistance. Instead, Natasha works with her to explore various emotional responses in a low-level, methodical way, keeping track of each reaction without expanding on it. It's… uncomfortable, the way the agent seems to dig down into Emory's psyche to extract various targeted responses. Natasha never pushes her buttons too roughly or for too long, but it's very clear that she could.
On the last day of that first week, she asks Emory to try to ramp up her power as high as she can manage, without direct contact with Tony. It's really tempting to pretend that's not possible, but after a week of sitting in camp chairs in an empty field with Black Widow, Emory knows the agent would detect her lie.
She starts by remembering the contrast between the harsh heat of the sun on the sack over her head, and the warmth of Tony's squeeze of reassurance, all those months ago. That's enough to get her hair shifting already, as the layers of power start to build up. Next, Emory draws on what it had felt like to have Tony pull her close and kiss her so roughly, to save her life. It had been frightening at the time, but now, she reframes the memory as pent-up desire and relief. He'd wanted her. For the man Tony Stark was in the hum-vee or the person he'd been while 'dating' Rory, to have apologized, to have cared about her the way he'd grown to- that was hugely significant.
The grass around her is rippling from the waves of power she's throwing off.
She feels electrified, but Emory holds on and lets herself think of the moment when Tony had called her over while he was lying on his back in the cave. Their mutual desire had sizzled with the slide of their hands together. It's exhilarating to even think about.
"You're starting to lift up!" Natasha calls over.
It's true. Emory's holding onto so many layers of power that she can't feel anything but potential. "What do you want me to do with this?" she yells back.
"Something new!"
For a few seconds, Emory draws a blank, but then it occurs to her that she's lifted herself, she's pushed her power towards others as an attack, she's used its force to pull something toward herself- but she's never tried to lift something else. Especially not something that's anchored.
There's a single tree that stands at the edge of their field, and Emory raises her hands to circle the layers of power she'd sheathed with into a spiral. She pictures herself throwing the horizontal cyclone she's built like a javelin with a rope attached. Emory tries to make it a reality, arcing her narrow whorl across the open air and onto the tree. Having held back a percentage of her power, she braces herself with one foot behind her and tugs on the airspace around the tree, carefully angling the force of it so it will fly over and behind her. The sound of groaning, tearing wood is loud even from this distance, and finally, the tree rockets upward, dragging large chunks of earth and fractured roots along with it.
A sudden touch at her back almost derails the yanking action. It's Natasha, helping her brace. Emory's confidence surges when she realizes that she'd simply stopped the tree in midair for those few seconds as she assessed the threat.
"Holy shit!" Natasha's voice says, behind her. "Finish it."
Gleefully, Emory redoubles the yank. The tree sails over their heads, and they both turn to watch it.
"Shit, shit-" Emory swears. She pulls the small amount of power she's got left and sends it slicing out to arrest and release the spin that's twisting the massive tree and its flung-out dirt and leaves like a comet in the evening sky. It works, to her great relief, but the crash when the tree impacts the ground nearly knocks them down, despite it being 200 feet away at least.
Emory and Natasha stand still in shock for a long moment.
"So, we're looking for a middle ground between that and our earlier work?" the SHIELD agent says.
"Yeah."