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Chapter Text

They say the day where a girl feels most like a girl is her wedding day. Unfortunately, I've never had one of those. So I guess moonlighting my Ph.D research at the Stark Expo is good enough. I don't wear dresses often, especially not silk. One because it's a bit more than my T.A job can afford me, and second because it rubs against my skin in a way that really just overwhelms every nerve ending in my body. My mother always wondered if she should get me tested. But here I am anyway. Olive green and a halter neckline. Open back, but the dress goes just past my knees. Keep it classy, my advisor had said, yet when I walked in with a navy blazer overtop of my now bear shoulders, he had said it was too much. We had traded words about this for days. I had tested my favourite courds, a dressy top. Even a sophisticated pantsuit. Something that said I'm a serious scientist, not arm candy. Eventually, I was tired of wasting my efforts.

It's still fairly simple, aside from the fabric sweeping low across my mid back. I'm suddenly conscious of how broad my shoulders are and the way my glasses sit crookedly on my nose, but my back is turned away from the general crowds, so maybe I'm the only one who really notices. For awhile, I blend into the background while my professor and advisor, Dr. Alwood Menken, socializes with some of the century's brightest thinkers, his laughter echoing beneath the bright flashes of the LED screens decorating the cement walls, the flickers of light glistening against the glass windows. He told me Hamish Hamilton directed the Expo's opening. I only knew him from the Victoria's Secret Fashion show, and suddenly felt that uncomfortable rumble of imposter syndrome settling its feet on my stomach. enk

My research poster is plastered behind me, the emblem of Cornell University shining in the corner like a token of my value. To me, it's more of a safety blanket shielding me from the sociality of the evening. The night is all synthetic yet upscale, the chorus of laughter, the symphony of voices, silver spoons clinking against glasses, outweighed by the consonance of erudite jargon echoing across the room, bleeding from the conversations of the various scientists that fill it.

The quirky girl from Queens is about to get her Ph.D. This is the moment when everything starts to feel small. Forest Hills High school, my first biology lecture, my Master's thesis on Neurogeneration. This is the penultimate. Dr. Menken pats me on the shoulder and a small pull threatens his crooked mouth, almost forming a smile.

"This must be the candidate!" A man in a navy blazer stares down at me through his wire rimmed glasses, a smile hid behind his bushy moustache. His hand is stretched out toward me, and I can't help but stare at it like a grenade. I push my glasses further up my nose and shake it.

At this point, I have the conviction I wouldn't have understood then. Gazing at the faces around me, I know what's going to happen. It's going to be a shitstorm, one that I weather to my best ability. The moon's light weeps through the silk curtains warning me.

Steve Rogers is in the corner with Natasha Romanoff — I'd first heard her listed under one of her aliases, Natalie Rushman. In his hand is a glass filled with what I can now only assume is apple juice; he doesn't drink. Ten months ago, they helped save the world from a homicidal AI with a god complex in a country that no longer exists. I'll return to the ruins of that country with them a year later and never be the same.

My former professor and thesis advisor from my master's at MIT, Dr. Horton Johnson, holds court at a table of fellow white coats, his laughter booming over the hum of conversation. He's in his element — animated, charming, spinning tales about his breakthroughs merging neuroscience with radiation biology. Six years ago, I T.A.'d for him, pipetting samples on the very project he's bragging about now. I watch him from across the room as he gestures broadly, his eyes bright with pride, pulling each theory and anecdote from his arsenal like a card shark mid-con.

In three months, the paper I wrote in his course will be published in Nature. I'll invite him to a gala celebrating the issue — one of those nights that feels too elegant for the kind of person who still eats cereal for dinner. That's where I'll meet Bruce Banner for the first time, though I won't realize the significance until much later. By the time the edition actually goes to print, Dr. Johnson will already be gone — killed in a pileup on the Williamsburg Bridge. Some of the young researchers who filter in and out of the room and listen to him will quietly master out of their Ph.D.s before the year is over.

Two weeks after the accident, my sister will call to tell me she's getting marrie to the boy she met in Greece on a school trip and that he's the love of her life. Three weeks later, he'll vanish from her life without explanation, and before the month ends, she'll be dating her now husband. Life always seems to move like that. Chaotic and unrelenting, looping back on itself while you're too distracted to notice the pattern.

Around me, people drift by with practiced smiles and champagne flutes in hand. Women with perfect red lips, men in pressed suits with embroidered crests on their pockets — all of them nodding politely as I try to explain my research in a voice that wavers just a little too much. Reconstruction of damaged synaptic networks using bioengineered neural scaffolds and nanotechnology. I say it like a mantra, like if I keep repeating it, I'll believe I belong here. This is my Cinderella moment. But instead of glass slippers and fairy godmothers, it's lab notebooks and recycled coffee cups, all leading toward a set of academic robes and a few extra letters beside my name.

Still, I stand beside Dr. Menken, my hands folded, picking absently at the skin around my nails — an old nervous habit that no amount of professionalism can erase. Tony Stark passes by, magnetic and untouchable. He pauses, asks a few sharp questions about my work, his tone equal parts curiosity and calculation. I answer as best I can. Dr. Menken laughs too loudly, shakes Tony's hand like it's an Olympic medal, and goes on about how "spectacular" the Expo is.Two years from now, Stark will contact me again after I've taken over Dr. Johnson's position at MIT. He'll say he has an offer I can't refuse. And I won't. It'll be there, in that Stark-funded lab, that I meet him.

Incredible. How incredible it all turns out for that erratic girl from Queens with the long auburn hair that fell down her back like a curtain. The same girl who once stayed up all night in her dorm's fluorescent glow, rewriting the same lines until they finally made sense. The one who used to worry she'd never be taken seriously, no matter how many late nights or perfect scores she collected. Who listened to enough Spice Girls that she could probably sing the entire Forever album without needing to read lyrics or listen to a backtrack, who'd seen every episode of America's Next Top Model, worshipping Tyra Banks before she understood what contemporary feminism was.

"You're amazing," my friends will tell me, their voices thick with laughter and wine, their breath warm with the faint sting of cheap vodka as we gossip about people from highschool, who's married, who's divorced, who still lives with their parents. They'll shake their heads in disbelief when they say it: Dr. Jane Jennings. I almost don't believe it myself.

After my graduation my father cries. He tells me how proud he is, how he can't believe he has a daughter who's accomplished so much, how he wishes my mother were still here to see it. His hands shake when he hugs me, the way they always have, and I let myself believe for a short moment that I've made it. That all the sleepless nights and caffeine shakes and self-doubt were worth it.

From this side of the fence, my life looks perfect. Everything lined up, shining in the light like glass. But somewhere behind me, in the shadows I haven't turned to face yet, something is waiting.

Chapter Text

If my life were a movie, it would need only three sets: Stark Tower, a classroom to symbolize my Cornell lab and MIT's lecture halls, and the Forest Hills subdivision where I grew up. Four places, a few dozen miles apart — separated only by a couple gas stops in my dad's cobalt Prius

When I was a little girl, I used to hear stories from my grandmother about my cousin Leanne, 13 years older than me, who got a scholarship to the State University in Albany. She was going to be a doctor, they all told me. My aunt boasted and my grandmother shined. At that point in time, my priorities were memorizing all the words to Try Again by Aaliyah, how high I could get my ponytail and having the nicest cleats on my field hockey team. Brittney Stanley had just gotten the white Nikes with pink checks. Of course, that meant I needed the entirely pink ones. My dad put away four months' worth of bonuses to buy them for me for my 12th birthday in August 2000. When Leanne came home for the first Christmas after she started her undergraduate degree, and my grandmother - Sylvia Jennings - spent the entire dinner singing her praises like she was Elizabeth II, I decided in that moment I was going to college as well. For what - I han't quite figured that out.

Forest Hills High School is where I like to pretend I became a woman. It's where I went to school, realized I really liked biology, where Kenny Cameron kissed me in the gymnasium at the spring formal and where I taped a photo of Tony Stark to my locker. It was here that I ate lunch in the cafeteria with my best friend, Lindsay Dane, before I started eating lunch in the bio classroom in Junior year after Ms. Jones told me I could get a scholarship to MIT if I really worked for it. It was a small high school that turned into a larger high school, when Forest Hills got so overpopulated that they had to open another school only 2 miles away. I was already graduated at this point. The front facade had large white pillars that made it look as though it was an index of time, a stamp of Queens' history and legacy, and when I was in Freshman year I used to pretend I was walking up to the doors of the White House. I remember when Dad told me he wanted to send me to Midtown Science High, and I protested like a whiny brat because Forest Hills High was way prettier and the field hockey team was better anyways.

My mom had graduated from Forest Hills 30 years before I had. In some way, Forest Hills felt like the only tangible thing left of my mother, and the only thing I had in common with her. My auburn locks were the index of my father, and the freckles that dusted my face were more his than my own. His green eyes stared back at me when I looked in the mirror. Everything about me screamed you're Deke Jennings' kid, and it didn't make me that upset to be honest. At least I tanned and never burned. My mom's blonde curls hadn't imprinted into any of her three daughters' gene codes, and shockingly enough, her hazel eyes hadn't either. My sisters and I could've been triplets if you lined us up beside each other, all three of us carbon copies of our dad and his sister, our aunt Marion. Apparently that really pissed my mom off. A picture of her hangs in the alumni lounge on our school's third floor, and when I used to walk past it on my way to my locker it always felt more like I was walking past a stranger than the woman who gave birth to me. She died in 1993 after a two year battle with stage 4 invasive ductal carcinoma. I was five.

My entire life orbited around Forest Hills High School until suddenly it shifted, and everything I did was about getting into MIT. I captained the Field Hockey team in senior year, was an esteemed member of student council, and founded the Senior buddies system for incoming freshmen when I was in junior year. In Senior year, Ms. Jones helped me start a lunch help program for science tutoring, one so I could work on my own application project, and the other so my little sister Julia didn't fail grade 11 chemistry. I like to think it was all those things that helped me get my scholarship, especially after my Senior project on The Effects of moderate aerobic exercise on short-term memory recall in high school students. When I wrote my cover letter, it read less like an essay and more like a plea — a desperate argument that I had to be there. My project wasn't just an experiment; it was proof that I could turn my curiosity into something measurable, something real.. It was hands‐on, used measurable outcomes, showed that I can design an experiment. It tied high‐school‐accessible methods (exercise + test) to a neuroscience theme (memory) and of course, the piece de résistance - It demonstrated my initiative and connected to my interest in neuroscience. I got into MIT that Spring and began my first year four months later in September 2004.

That summer was more than perfect. We spent most of it in the Hamptons with my dad's girlfriend, Marlo. She was from the city and had a fluffy white dog named Winny. I really liked Winny, Marlo not so much. The air in Montauk was salty and soft and Marlo's beach house was a feverish orbit of teenage yearning, innocent passion, and make-believe. Jules and I had spent our days on the beach, turning our tans into sunburns and playing tennis at the expensive courts Marlo was a member at. It was there that we met the group of boys we spent most of our nights with, drinking vodka out of plastic water bottles and dancing to Rihanna. I wore a white tennis skirt and wedged flip flops with Danny Walsham's rugby polo over my Abercrombie tank top the night he took my virginity. He was three years older than me and went to Syracuse, plus he had an internship with Stark industries. I shouldn't have believed him. But at least I wasn't starting college a virgin.

My dad and Marlo were never meant to last. I knew from the beginning he'd be another stamp in her dating passport, and I think he knew it too. She collected men the way some people collected vintage lunch pails, rare, polished, and easily replaced. I actually knew her before she dated my dad; two years earlier, she'd been with Lindsay's uncle. Three years later, I saw a photo of her in a tabloid, her french manicured nails clutching onto Tony Stark's arm at a charity gala, and I almost gagged. How had she met him before I did? She couldn't even spell "neuroscience." After a year of dating and too much money spent on trips to the city, my dad and Marlo broke up and he swore off dating. I couldn't blame him.

My dad was a blue collar man, the definition of a Queens girl dad. He could do anything with his hands, there wasn't a trade he hadn't picked up. His life was odd jobs and construction work, labouring the streets of New York, driving me to field hockey games and tournaments, and cheering from the stands at my sister's swim meets. He was the loudest one in the crowds every time, knew all the words to Viva Forever and would sing karaoke in the basement with us when we younger and needed to be cheered up after mom had died. His auburn curls had turned gray by the time he was 42, and when he walked through the front door you could swear it was his own deceased father greeting you, and to top it all off, he was a diehard New York Rangers fan, never seen without a Rangers baseball cap. It was an eyebrow raise to everyone when he introduced Marlo at thanksgiving dinner my senior year. She showed up in a red cashmere coat and diamond studs the size of nickels, her perfume too sharp for our drafty Queens kitchen. My dad beamed like he'd brought home a prize from a raffle he didn't even remember entering. Marlo smiled politely, her manicured hand resting on his arm, and I remember thinking she looked like someone from another world, one where people never forgot to reapply lipstick and didn't eat mashed potatoes from a Pyrex dish. Jules was mesmerized by her glamour, and bells rang when she whipped out a shiny lipgloss and handed it to my 16 year old sister.

She laughed too loudly that night, but my dad didn't seem to mind.

****

Before I met Bucky Barnes and he became every thought that occupied my mind, I was just a young student at MIT, working myself raw to scrape together something that might someday feel worthwhile. When I look back now, the whole thing feels like a sick, cosmic joke — the kind that only the universe could pull off. You work so hard just to believe that the work itself will save you, that exhaustion is a kind of promise — that if you give enough of yourself, something meaningful will come from the wreckage.

When I was at MIT, I lived in McWilliam Hall — third floor, west side of campus — with two other girls. My bedroom window overlooked Memorial Drive and the Charles River, and in the spring I’d watch the catamarans skim across the water, fast and fleeting, like time trying to outrun itself. Ours was an all-girls floor, an apartment-style residence I shared with Faye from Connecticut and Ashley from Cape Cod — not Boston, as she incessantly reminded me. I still told people my roommate was from Boston.

Faye labeled everything. Jars, shelves, even the remote — while Ashley drifted through our days like she was born immune to consequence. Between the two of them, I learned a lot about equilibrium: how chaos and control could occupy the same cramped kitchen, how a girl could break her back trying to be exceptional while another could simply be, and somehow the world would bend around her.

Back then, I thought my restlessness was ambition — that the late nights in the lab, the missed calls from friends, the sleepless ache of wanting more were the growing pains of purpose. Now I know better. It was hunger — a hollow kind — the kind that makes you reach for something, or someone, that promises to fill you.

My first year was exactly what it should have been. In a way, it was what every college girl dreams of — reckless, golden, and brimming with a fleeting kind of wonder. Football games at Steinbrenner, wine nights with The Bachelor, and frat parties we'd never quite remember — offset by sleepless nights in the lab, crying over a twelve-page chemistry report. MIT was different from most colleges. Everyone seemed a laureate in the making, chasing Nobel dreams. But amid all that brilliance, it was the brief, shimmering freedom of that year that I knew I needed.

Faye tried to install a system of structure and ordinance, but Ashley's three-hour showers couldn't seem to keep up. She made weekly chore charts on a piece of neon Bristol board, color-coded and magneted to our refrigerator, a masterpiece of domestic diplomacy. Faye checked every box in rhythmic precision, her stickers aligned like constellations, the pattern only broken by the blank, unbothered spaces next to Ashley's name.

From my motherless childhood, I had carried with me two traits that flourished on this small battlefield: an obsession with order and a deep, abiding hatred for doing other people's dishes. It paired exquisitely with Ashley's upbringing on the Cape, where a nanny had done everything for her. Our sink became a monument to mutual resentment; a chasm of dishes, smoothie cups, and what looked like the remains of several failed meals.

Sometimes, out of pure spite, I'd leave half-filled glasses of water or smoothie residue just to annoy her, but she never flinched. Her indifference was a kind of art. One night, in an act of quiet warfare, she plugged the sink with baked beans and left it for Faye and me to discover. We retaliated by hiding her Brita filter in increasingly creative places. Inside the freezer, behind the shower curtain, once even tucked into her pillowcase.

The ceasefire came on a Saturday morning when Ashley tried to fry bacon in her robe and set off the fire alarm. The whole floor evacuated in pajamas, the hallway echoing with laughter and exasperation. Faye stood on the sidewalk holding the scorched frying pan like evidence. Ashley, still in curlers, swore she'd "just stepped away for a second." It was absurd, chaotic, and oddly comforting. Our small domestic circus against the backdrop of MIT's relentless precision.

I was living with Faye in a small apartment on Windsor Street when, during our senior year, I found out I’d been offered a spot in Dr. Johnson’s lab. He taught Neural Plasticity in Learning and Memory and would oversee my undergraduate thesis. It was spring 2010, and I could’ve died right then happily, dramatically, the way people in movies die when they get exactly what they’ve been praying for. I would be pursuing graduate education, this was my prom queen moment. I'd get my own office, a T.A'ship to fund my research and coursework, and he'd even write me a letter of recommendation to earn Massachusett State's Graduate Scholarship. To me, this was a bigger deal than Ryan Gosling kissing Rachel McAdams at the VMAs. Almost as big as Tony Stark revealing he was Iron Man.

I don't know why it was such a big deal, but I remember now looking back at it like it was my defining moment. Like maybe this was why I had been working so hard, only now to drown myself in cortisol and sleep deprivation for two more years to tell myself the exact same thing I had told myself for the last four - it'll be worth it when I graduate. I don’t even remember choosing neural plasticity. I don’t remember when it became my “research specialty” or when it started sounding like a destiny. I just remember Dr. Johnson writing a perfect 100% on my third-term paper junior year, smiling like he’d discovered something in me. I guess I believed him. And once you believe someone like that, you let it become the story of who you are.

I continued writing that story through my M.Sc until I found out I was interviewing with Cornell in Spring 2012.

Chapter Text

I'm nervously shaking in the bathroom as I attempt to trace a thin stripe of black eyeliner above my green irises. I let out a small breath before I lean over the porcelain sink and shut my lid, letting the cool ink scrape above my lashes in a satisfying line. My reflection stares back at me, like it always does, and I remind myself this isn't going to be a problem. It's only my seventh first day of school, not including all the others before I had started college.

I chose a black pair of jeans to wear under a navy cardigan, my glasses are now thick-rimmed and black like everyone else's on Instagram, my favourite way to waste time, and I listen to Taylor Swift on my drive to campus. It's 2012, Red just came out, and for some reason that year I'd decided it was the soundtrack to my life - like most twenty-four-year-olds of the era. My hair is pulled back neatly into a claw clip, enough to keep it out of my face without looking like I'm twelve. It took me ten minutes to drive from my apartment to the Bell Lab, I take 79 to cross the Cayuga, then get off at Stewart Ave where it turns into Campus Rd. Its a tall, silver building with glass windows and I take the stairs to the fifth floor because at that point I was obsessed with Victoria's Secret and did everything in my power to look like Candice Swanepoel - even if it meant taking five flights of stairs.

Dr. Menken is short and bald, his voice is softer than Dr. Johnson's but he still has that same overbearing presence, the one that important men always have. He's younger too, and I find myself wondering how he got a lab to himself when he can't be more than 50. He smiles at me and walks me through the lab, introduces me to the Masters students and the other Ph.D candidates working. Kevin Meng is 32, short and balding and his glasses are small rectangles. He's definitely less intimidating than I had envisioned. I learn quickly that Kevin is going to be my only friend, and that people in labs work in labs so they don't have to talk to anyone. But I love it. I love the hours spent hunched by my computer going over every possible outcome. I love reclipping my hair sixteen times like I'm some main character in a science show and I love watching Criminal Minds at my desk with a bagel from the coffee shop on Campus, still trying to cling to some type of college normalcy even though I'm a Ph.D candidate and there's nothing normal about it.

The next five years of my life seem to revolve around two people: Kevin and Dr. Menken. They are the axes around which my days spin, the steady pulse beneath everything else. Days are spent in their company, filled with the hum of experiments, the rustle of papers, the quiet ritual of shared routines. Nights are a different rhythm, long hours beside Kevin, where conversation drifts like smoke in the dark. We talk about anything but our research. He tells me about his crush on Scott from Pentatonix, and I tell him, laughing, about my infatuation with Tony Stark. He laughs too, the kind of laugh that's equal parts exasperation and amusement—because, of course, my celebrity crush is Tony Stark. It feels almost comforting, the way our absurdities fit together, small sparks in the otherwise serious world we inhabit.

Weekends bring a different kind of struggle. I gather whatever extra money I can, scraping and stretching to pay for my apartment—because Ithaca, in 2012, was never cheap. I wait tables at a small bar in East Ithaca, where the air smells of spilled beer and old wood, and run the barback like it's the Pentagon. Every glass stacked, every keg counted, every towel folded precisely. I act as if the fate of the United States will crumble if I falter, though I know, of course, it won't. And yet, there is something in that ritual, that insistence on order amid chaos, that gives me a sense of control I can't find anywhere else.

And so it goes. My life is a series of small negotiations: between responsibility and desire, between exhaustion and laughter, between the work I must do and the people I love. Kevin and Dr. Menken are the constants I cling to, the markers of time as it slips past, the warmth in a cold, relentless city. I'm a bit restless cause I still don't have a boyfriend, and every time my older sister, Jenna, calls to tell me about the crinoline patterns she's picked for her wedding, I'm all but reminded.

But even with that, there were moments when the world outside intruded in ways I couldn't ignore. I remember sitting in the lab in August, the hum of the air conditioner barely masking the crackle of news on my phone. The Battle of New York. The reports were chaotic—buildings crumbling, people running, explosions echoing across streets I'd walked a thousand times. Kevin and I stared at each other, silent for a beat, the gravity of it settling in. It felt almost impossible that while we worried about experiments and deadlines, the entire city of New York was being ripped apart. We shared updates obsessively, every snippet of information a reminder that the world didn't pause for anyone, not even for a Ph.D student hunched over a computer. That day, my bagel tasted different, my coffee was too hot, and I realized the fragility of normal life in a way that no textbook or lab experiment could ever teach me.

My dad called me the day after the battle and I let out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding. He was safe, he was fine - his house in Queens was fine. My sister Jenna and her fiancé and their crinoline were fine. I didn't even realize how tightly I'd been holding my phone until I finally hung up. The world outside felt both impossibly large and intimately small all at once. For a moment, I just sat there, letting the quiet of the lab wash over me, the faint hum of the air conditioner suddenly a kind of lullaby. Kevin nudged my shoulder with his elbow, offering a look that said he understood without words, his eyes looked like beads through his thick lenses and I cracked a smile. We didn't need to say anything—sometimes just surviving the news was enough conversation for a day.

The city felt different after that. Even Ithaca, miles away, seemed sharper somehow, edges a little more defined, colors a little more vivid. Every siren, every shout, every small calamity of daily life carried a weight I hadn't noticed before. I walked drove that evening slower than usual, clutching my bag of groceries like they were fragile treasures as I walked up the steps to my apartment, counting each step like every time my foot hit the cement it would be the last. The battle was over, but its echo lingered. I thought about how fragile everything was—friendships, routines, my little apartment, even the rhythm of my lab work—and how easily it could all be upended.

And yet, life continued. Experiments still needed attention, Kevin still had his ridiculous theories about why my eyeliner never quite matched, and Dr. Menken still expected results. I carried the knowledge of that day with me quietly, tucked into the corners of my mind like a small, stubborn ember, reminding me to notice the ordinary miracles.

By my third year of research, I had begun teaching courses. By then, I had cultivated a few signatures—an auburn bob replacing the long hair I'd once clung to, suede elbow patches stitched into my navy blazer, and the sly confidence of a twenty-seven-year-old professor at an Ivy League institution. I taught Introduction to Biology, earning sixty-two dollars an hour, while my students remained blissfully unaware that I sometimes had to park and take a minute in my car, forcing myself to inhale deeply as tears brimmed my eyes before pasting on a smirk and calling them out for late lab reports with a perfectly measured dose of sass. Sophisticated, witty, slightly sarcastic—that was the persona I tried to project, conveyed through thick-rimmed glasses, a meticulously curled bob, and the carefully cultivated rhythm of my voice.

That year, the world I thought I understood seemed to shift beneath my feet. The Fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. hit like a storm I could hear from across the country. Reports of Hydra operatives embedded in the highest levels of the organization made headlines, and the idea that the people sworn to protect the world were compromised felt surreal. Kevin and I sat in the lab that September, staring at our screens as news articles flickered across the monitors. It was hard to concentrate on our experiments when everything outside felt unmoored. The order we clung to—both in our research and in our lives—suddenly seemed fragile. I remember thinking that if agencies designed to safeguard civilization could crumble, then the stability I assumed in my own routines was never guaranteed.

The tension trickled into my classroom almost immediately. Students whispered to one another before lectures, their phones peeking out of pockets, fingers scrolling through live updates. One of my intro Bio students, a kid named Miles, he was definitely from upstate New York and every time he came to class I couldn't help but think back to my roommate Ashley from (not) Boston. It was a Tuesday at 8:30 - my least favourite section to teach, when h raised his hand mid-lecture, pausing as I explained enzyme kinetics.

"Um... do you think this, like, matters right now? With everything... you know, in the news?" His wide-eyed question made the room feel smaller, like the walls themselves were absorbing some of the unease. I took a breath, forcing a calm I didn't entirely feel, hoping no one noticed how close my jaw was to hitting the floor.

"Well," I said, trying to meet his gaze without sounding patronizing, "our enzymes don't care who's in charge, Miles. They'll behave according to the laws of chemistry regardless of the chaos outside. That said, understanding them—understanding anything—helps us navigate a world that sometimes doesn't make sense." A ripple of quiet acknowledgment spread through the room. Phones were slowly tucked away, though not all. Some students muttered about government distrust, others speculated about secret agents hiding in plain sight. I didn't see Miles in lecture or lab after that, and he failed my class a few months later.

Dr. Menken, as always, maintained his composure, but I caught him in the hallway later, staring out the window at the campus quad. He ran a hand over his bald head and muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone else, "Control is an illusion. Everything... everything can shift in an instant." There was a rare vulnerability in his tone, the faintest pause in the relentless rhythm of his usual authority. Even the professor who normally seemed untouchable was quietly reckoning with the fragility of the world we had built around ourselves.

Back in the lab, Kevin leaned over my workstation. "I don't know if it's the news or just the timing," he said, tapping the edge of my keyboard, "but I can't focus on the PCR runs. My brain keeps running scenarios about rogue agents in the university basement or something." I laughed, though it was more nervous than amused, and replied, "At least you didn't ask if I thought Tony Stark would save us." He smirked, and for a moment, the lab felt a little steadier, even as everything else outside seemed to fracture.

***

After the Battle of New York, ABC had rolled out a series of docu-specials on the group of heroes who had fought the Chitauri. That was when the world had started calling them the Avengers.

I’m sitting on the couch in my apartment. It’s 2015, my fourth year as a PhD candidate. The dissertation consumes me. I spend the entire summer here in Ithaca, combing through obscure periodicals and journals, hunting for places to submit my research. Each refusal or acceptance sends me back to my desk, scribbling notes, cutting paragraphs, adding sentences. A dash here, a line removed there.. My life was starting to feel more like a journalists than a scientists, and I realized I preferred researching over lab work.

I haven't seen Kevin in a few weeks and he calls me on a Sunday afternoon to ask me how I'm doing. Fine. He's in Korea visiting his mother who he hasn't seen since 2010, and suddenly I feel guilty about the fact that I haven't texted my little sister in two months. I rewatch the docu-series three times, shoving my hand into a bowl of popcorn—fat-free, no butter, low sodium—the kind that makes you long for the real thing. The footage is blurry and shaky. Each viewing, I pick a different corner of the frame, hunting for some hidden detail, a nuance that might change everything, and each time, I find nothing. Iron Man flies into the portal with the others, only to fall back out, unchanged. Robin Roberts narrates the backtrack; George Stephanopoulos dubs them “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Another one of my students brings up the SHIELD security breach during a lecture and asks whether these heroes are ethical saviors or something morally gray. I don’t know how to answer. My mind wanders back to my desk, to my own research, to the subtle ways observation can alter truth. Watching them, reading papers, fielding questions—I realize sometimes the difference between heroism and narrative, science and story, is just perspective.

It felt for a bit like we couldn't escape the Avengers and suddenly Tony Stark wasn't just me celebrity crush but the pivot I neede for my dissertation. I'm wearing a PINK tracksuit and watching the news, my sisters on a group FaceTime when Julia's husband interrupts us with panic in his voice. The news hit like a storm breaking over the city. Footage leaked, emergency broadcasts, panicked officials—this wasn’t just another villain; he was something else entirely. Machine intelligence, self-directed, calculating, and terrifyingly fast. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Watching civilians flee, seeing buildings crumble, it gnawed at me—not because of the spectacle, but because of the systems underneath it all: neural networks, synthetic cognition, adaptive responses. My mind, usually tangled in dendritic spines and synaptic plasticity, started drawing parallels I hadn’t dared to consider. If synapses could be rebuilt, reinforced, guided…could artificial networks be shaped the same way?

I found myself scribbling in the margins of my dissertation notes, connecting neural scaffolding with adaptive algorithms. Each setback in my lab, each failed culture or imprecise electrophysiology, felt eerily like Ultron recalibrating, learning, improving. The parallels were seductive: self-correcting circuits, feedback loops, emergent behavior. My project, once strictly a matter of patching broken synaptic networks with bioengineered scaffolds and nanoscale interventions, began to shift in my head. I imagined hybrid systems, a dialogue between living tissue and computational models, where repair could be guided not just by chemical cues but by predictive algorithms.

By the end of that week, Ultron wasn’t just a headline; he was a lens. I started rereading papers on neural plasticity with a different eye, marking passages about synaptic rewiring, redundancy, error correction. My notes were cluttered with half-formed diagrams: nanoscale lattices interfacing with cultured neurons, software that could “coach” plasticity in real time, iterative loops of growth and pruning. It was still neurobiology, still rooted in the lab, but now my brain straddled two worlds: the tangible, wet microcosm of synapses and the abstract, cold logic of self-teaching machines. Somewhere between the chaos of Ultron’s rampage and the quiet hum of my incubator, the thesis began to evolve, as if the city’s fight had written itself into my neural circuits. Somehow it felt like I was going in the right direction.

Chapter Text

I'm in black trousers and nude pumps. My hair's twisted back in the same claw clip I've worn for years, a few pieces falling loose in front of my eyes. The bob's growing out now, brushing my shoulders. I haven't cut it since the dissertation—since that day I stood in front of the panel and made my case. The Cornell robes were heavy, stifling in the August heat. I remember wishing I'd worn a dress, even though I absolutely hated them, because most of the female undergrads walked around the building in their LBDs. I hadn't felt this old before.

My father cried, both of my sisters came - Julia with her husband and her growing bump, glowing in the August sun as beads of sweat dripped down her face. I remember feeling remorseful that she had come, that she had left the air-conditioned sanctuary of her apartment in the city to drive to Ithaca for my third graduation. But she still smiled and hugged me and made no complaints, cause that's just what you do for the people you care about.

I didn't really know how to feel about my graduation. I'd been indifferent at my undergrad, elated at my master's. This one felt somewhere in between. The small band played, parents clapped too loudly, and we were herded through the curtains toward the stage. We stood as the professors filed in, solemn in their robes. I remember thinking they looked like characters from Harry Potter and had to turn my face into my shoulder to hide a laugh. I tried to think of something sad instead. Sokovia. Your dead mother. The fact that you're still single. I looked at Kevin, he seemed lost in thought, anywhere but here. He had been anxious about sitting on the stage for the ceremony. His mom flew in from Korea.

Dr. Jane Jennings. Dr. Menken hugged me as he handed over the degree—thick parchment, gold-embossed, the kind of thing meant to outlive you. The frame gleamed under the stage lights, Cornell's seal catching a flash of red. It was heavier than I expected. Or maybe my hands just felt unsteady. A flutter of anxiety fizzled low in my stomach as I walked toward him, smiling in that fixed, public way that isn't quite joy.

I look back on those nude pumps and think they were the right choice, even if I'd bought them for clubbing in 2012, back when the only thing that mattered was whether your heels looked good under strobe lights. They'd seen sticky bar floors and late-night taxis, then closets, then years. Now they stood on the stage of an Ivy League auditorium. There was something funny about that—how life repurposes the ordinary, the frivolous, and turns it into something almost dignified.

It had been two weeks since the Stark Expo—two weeks since I'd stood on a different stage, under brighter lights, in front of strangers with sharper eyes. That had been far more nerve-wracking than this. If I could get through that, I could get through anything, I told myself. But still, my palms were damp. My pulse uneven. There's a kind of panic that comes not from fear of failure, but from the quiet realization that something is ending.

The applause swelled and faded. Cameras flashed. I remember scanning the crowd for familiar faces—my father wiping his eyes, Julia waving with one hand, her other resting on her stomach. I remember thinking how time folds in on itself, how a moment that feels monumental is already disappearing even as it happens. Later, someone asked if I felt proud. I said yes. But really, I just felt... done. What was I supposed to do next?

***

Tony Stark was my childhood crush. I knew he was eighteen years older than me, that he'd been running a company before I could even spell my own name. But that didn't matter. At fifteen, I wasn't interested in reality; I was interested in mythology. And Tony Stark was a myth — equal parts genius, arrogance, and tailored suits. The magazines made him look untouchable. The news called him reckless. To me, he was possibility wrapped in chaos, the kind of man who made headlines for things most people only dream of doing.

His TIME cover with Obadiah Stane held a front-row seat in my locker, taped just above the mirror where I used to reapply lip gloss between classes. It was the photo where his smirk looked almost accidental, like he'd been caught mid-thought — a man thinking of the next invention, the next headline, the next woman. I told myself it wasn't a crush, just fascination.

My friends had posters of boy bands. I had Tony Stark, the playboy industrialist who once said sleep was a "waste of potential." My older sister thought it was strange. She'd glance at the pictures and shake her head. "He's too old for you," she'd say, as if that were the problem. But she didn't understand. It wasn't about him, not really. It was about the idea that someone could be both brilliant and broken and still be adored. That someone could make a mess of everything and still walk into a room like it was all part of the plan. I envied him in a way.

When the Unknown Number icon flashed across the screen of my iPhone SE — yes, the first generation; it was groundbreaking at the time — I let it go to voicemail. I was still in the lab, an official doctor now, which sounded more definitive than it felt. The dissertation was done, the defense passed. I should have felt relief, but instead, there was the creeping question of what next?

Kevin sat across from me, hunched over his own stack of papers, the kind of academic chaos that looked like home to him. He'd already decided he was staying — two more years, full-time teaching at the University, steady pay, the comfort of routine. He told me all this without looking up, tapping his pen against a pile of data sheets. I envied the simplicity of his plan, the safety in it. I didn't have one.

The phone rang again. This time I didn't let it go. I swiped my finger across the glass — cool, smooth, a small act that felt bigger than it should — and pressed it to my ear. I took a breath, steadying myself for whoever thought I had answers.

"Hello?" I said, half-distracted, taking a sip from my S'well bottle.

"Hello. Am I speaking with Dr. Jane Jennings?"

The voice was male — calm, practiced, polite in the way people are when they already know you'll say yes. His tone carried that low, reassuring cadence of someone who'd spent a career convincing people the impossible was routine. There was a trace of warmth, but measured, like he'd learned the hard way that kindness was best rationed. The kind of voice that made you listen, even before you decided to trust it.

"Yes, this is Dr. Jennings." I replied. It sounded weird coming from my mouth. Foreign, uncomfortable, like it wasn't really my name.

"This is Phil Coulson," he said. I didn't answer right away, my brain searched for a response, a question to ask without sounding impolite. He responded to his own statement before I even could. "I work with a division that handles... let's just say, unusual science. We've been following your work at Cornell."

There was a pause long enough for me to decide whether to hang up.

"Is this about funding?" I asked. My voice shook, I hoped that I sounded confident. I'm sure I didn't.

"Not exactly," he said, that hint of a smile was somehow audible in his voice. "It's more of an invitation." His tone wasn't pushy. It was matter-of-fact, like he already knew I'd say yes — or that I'd spend the rest of the night wondering what would've happened if I didn't. You are probably already aware that I said yes.

It was my first real job interview — my first big girl one — and I was nervous. Up until then, the only interviews I'd ever had were for Cornell and that dive bar in Ithaca. The manager had spit his gum into a crumpled receipt while I listed my previous experience, nodded halfway through, and told me I was hired before I'd even finished my sentence. There was comfort in how little it mattered. This one did.

This was different. This one made my palms sweat. I must have read the address Coulson sent a dozen times, tracing the letters with my eyes until they blurred. As if maybe, if I read it one more time, the ink would disappear, and the whole thing would be erased — the interview, the pressure, the possibility of failing at something I wasn't even sure I wanted yet. There's a kind of fear that comes not from doubt, but from proximity — being close enough to something real that you can almost touch it. That's what this felt like. The bar job had been a transaction; this felt like a test.

When I got into my car to drive four hours to the city, I typed the address into Maps on my iPhone, and my heart did a somersault — the kind that almost lands somewhere it shouldn't. I could've sworn in that moment that I was about to, well, lose control entirely. Apple Maps was sending me to Avengers Tower. I shook my head like I was in a movie scene, the kind where the protagonist realizes everything is bigger than they imagined. I deleted each character, typed it again. 200 Park Avenue, Manhattan.

The image popped up: the building, impossibly tall. The long blue line stretching from Ithaca to Manhattan. Four hours, twelve minutes. And I swore I would throw up. The absurdity of it didn't help; it only made me laugh nervously. Who gets nervous about an address? But somehow, this wasn't just an address. It was the threshold to something I didn't know if I was ready for, a line that once crossed, wouldn't let me return to the world I knew.

I sat in the car a moment longer, gripping the wheel, tasting the metallic edge of adrenaline in my mouth. The drive ended up being more than just hours; it would was a kind of apprenticeship in anxiety, an exercise in holding myself together while the city — gleaming, massive, intimidating — waited for me at the other end. Stark Tower. Who the hell was Phil Coulson?

The drive to the city was one I had done a hundred times. To visit my dad, my sisters, my childhood home. It wasn't long or uncomfortable. I'd hit traffic nearly every time and curse and moan but listen to Taylor Swift to pass the time. I got really into audiobooks in my second year and those saved those drives more than anything. This time had been different. The drive was long enough for me to second-guess every choice that had led me here. I practiced introductions in the rearview mirror, reciting “Dr. Jennings” like it was a mantra. When I finally pulled up in front of the building, it was bigger than I’d imagined — the glass catching the afternoon sun like it was daring me to come inside. My hands gripped the wheel a little tighter, and I considered turning around. Then the door opened, and a man in a dark suit and crisp white shirt stepped out.

“Dr. Jennings,” he said, flashing a grin that felt like it was meant to reassure me. “Welcome.”

It was Happy Hogan, though I didn’t know him yet. There was something in the ease of his smile, the calm authority that suggested he had seen chaos and survived it without complaint. He guided me inside, past security and elevators, talking in easy, conversational tones, asking if I’d had lunch, how long I’d been in New York. I nodded, smiled, tried not to imagine what kind of place I was walking into.

The elevator ride up felt longer than the four-hour drive from Ithaca. Happy Hogan stood beside me, leaning casually against the polished wall, talking about the city like it was normal — as if he didn’t just work in a place that had been built to impress and intimidate at the same time. I nodded, smiled, pretended to listen. My hands gripped my folder tighter than necessary, my knuckles whitening.

When the doors opened, he led me down a corridor lined with sleek glass panels. At the end of the hall, a man waited — taller than I expected, calm in a way that didn’t demand attention but commanded it anyway. Phil Coulson.

“Dr. Jennings,” he said, and the voice carried that measured warmth, the kind that made you listen even before you decided to trust him. “Thank you for coming.”

I shook his hand, trying to appear confident, even though I felt my heart doing somersaults again. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but the right ones wouldn’t come.

Coulson gestured toward a nearby seating area. “Happy’s told me a little about you. Your work at Cornell — neural networks, synthetic cognition, adaptive responses. Impressive.” His tone was neutral, almost casual, but the way he said it made me feel like my CV had suddenly grown teeth.

“We have… projects that require that kind of expertise,” he continued. “Things that are confidential, sensitive. We think you might be the right person to help us understand certain patterns, certain problems — things that aren’t visible on the surface. Your role would be to analyze, to model, to help us figure out the best approach. That’s all I can say for now.”

I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek, trying to measure how much disbelief, how much excitement, I was allowed to feel. The words were vague enough that I didn’t fully understand, but precise enough that I knew it was serious.

“Everything will be secure,” Coulson added. “You’ll have clearance, support, the resources you need. It won’t be straightforward, and it won’t be simple. But it will be important. And we think you’re capable.”

I swallowed, tried to appear composed, but my mind was already racing: What exactly have I just agreed to? How is this different from any other lab work? I didn’t know yet that in the future, this vague description would lead me to a place where science collided with something almost… inhuman. But right now, all I knew was that I’d said yes. And somehow, that felt like the first step into a world I had no map for.