Legend

Next steps

As the immediate shock of the apartment fire wore off, depression crept in and it was harder to get up in the morning and drag myself to work. Especially when I knew there wasn't much work to go into. It took several days before Tony and Bruce could meet, so it was excruciating to go to my office. After the first two days of my return, nobody had made appointments. I talked to Doug and he went back upstairs. I missed the company but there was no point to having a receptionist anymore. The last thing I had him do for me was to create and print letters and envelopes to my former clients announcing the closing of the business, telling them to contact me to arrange for their records to be sent.

I had signed these letters and had grimly finished stuffing them into the envelopes when my uncle came in, looking around with a faint frown on his face. "Sweetie, where's Doug?" he asked. "What's going on?" and he gestured at the room where equipment was boxed up.

I sighed and told him everything, how my clients had fallen away so quickly, the finances, J deciding against joining me in the business. How depressed I felt.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, perching on the corner of the desk and petting my hair with his metal hand.

"I've got a meeting with Bruce and Tony tomorrow," I said, sighing and blinking to keep the water level in my eyes to a manageable level. "I'll tell them then what's happening and why I'm closing the business. I'm updating my resume; MIT has services for alumnae to help me figure out how to deal with this mess." I succumbed to temptation and put my head down on the cool surface of the desk. The tears started to trickle out, and I was too tired, all of a sudden, to keep fighting to tamp them down. Bucky didn't say anything, just gave me a handkerchief and kept petting my hair. One of his many good qualities is that he's not freaked out by crying females. Probably because he's had to mop me up so often. His handkerchief reminded me that all of mine had gone up in smoke and that was another thing I had to deal with.

"Sweetie, just because your business failed doesn't mean that you're a failure," he counselled. I gave him a look from one bloodshot eye. "I mean it. On paper, there was every reason to think that there would be a demand for your services. New York is pretty much the capital of superheroes and street heroes and there are precious few places they can get help unless they resort to their public identities. You just may be ahead of your time. You did what you could, you refined your business plan, and it just didn't work out. It's not a mess. You've probably been upstairs to see if you need anything."

I nodded, then pushed myself upright again. "They said it's normal, and there's no cause for anti-depressants, which is good," I said, pressing on my eyes. The doctors had been very nice and I was glad they weren't in a rush to medicate me.  He nodded.

"Why did Jaimez decide against psychiatry?" he asked. "I haven't heard that he was unhappy."

"He said that he's interested in other fields. Public health, maybe toxicology."

"Are you really ok?" he asked me, his blue eyes intent.

"Mostly," I said. "I feel a little rejected, but mostly I feel relieved that I haven't messed up his future too. Now I just have to figure out what to do with myself. But we got into a bit of a fight. He as much as promised one of his professors my DNA sample."

"And you don't know what he wants to do with it, so you're reluctant to give it to him. You've always kept that part of your identity to yourself; I wonder why the boy didn't respect that."

I was grateful that somebody understood without me spelling it out. Insistently. Our parents still didn't quite understand. "It's not anything he has to deal with," I pointed out. "But there's so much work being done on the human genome, and mutations are the hot new thing on the block. I don't like the idea of anybody messing around with my genes." He nodded.