To All Those Brave and Lovely

A Half-Hearted Attempt at Moving On

They decide to finish out the rest of the year at home.

Nora isn't really sure who decides it, exactly, but then all her books from her locker arrive on her bedside table while she takes a nap in the closet, and then emails from her teachers and some social worker  that was probably on SHIELD'S payroll, and a kid that was apparently their class Valdecitorian and a big fan of the Avengers was coming over every day to help her thorugh her math homework.

(Tony could have done that, but Nora has the feeling that Pepper has been trying to make her socialize as much as possible, thus the very blonde haired and very tall and very charasmatic boy coming and sitting at her kitchen table every other night, so polite that he doesn't even hold it against her when she curses at him and cries over calculus homework.  She thinks that Tony might be paying him.)

"You don't have to go to school,"  Pepper tells her, fidgeting with the ends of the blanket instead of looking at Nora's face.  She always looks like she's going to cry whenever Pepper looks at her, so maybe its a good thing.  Nora doesn't think she can handle Peppers tears today.  "I wouldn't expect you to, after everything.  The doctors aren't even sure you can.  But you can't hide yourself away in your closet and call that living.  It's just not going to happen."

"What do you want me to do?"  She wasn't hiding herself in the closet all the time.  Sometimes she goes for walks, long ones, where she picks up pebbles and runs them over the lines of her palms for no reason at all, or when she goes down to the garage to work on a car that Tony only bought for her to tear apart.  She's trying to put it back together, but it isn't working.  

"I want you to be a kid, okay?"  Pepper's eyes were a little watery, and that more than anything is what made her agree as easily as she did.  "Just.. just don't hide, alright?  I've seen what that does to someone."

Nora had agreed, but she didn't actually intend to stick with it until Tony came to talk to her.  That's when he talked about dying from blood posoining and trying to fix it on his own even though the answer had been in Fury's pocket the whole time, about not pushing away everyone who loves you, when he almost became a danger to everyone because he got drunk while wearing the suit.  About how when something bad happens, no matter how unfair, you can either let it break you or you can rise from the ashes, just to spit everyone.

"But you became a superhero,"  She had told him, part angry and part exasperated, because it's really unfair that her legal guardian can just respond with Well, I'm Iron Man every time she wants to sulk.  "I'm just a kid."

But he wins, eventually, like he always does, so she starts to leave her door open and responds to all those texts and miss calls that she hadn't been looking at.  She reads her books again and tries going to a therapist before she remembers that she hates them, and even thinks of calling Peter, even though she never actually does it.  And when she tells Tony that maybe it would be better if poeple would just show up and talk to her, they do,  revolving door of people that she really wishes would just stay away.

MJ comes first.  Nora hadn't invited her, or even talked to her, because MJ was tied up with Peter and she wasn't sure if that would pull him back into her life.  She also didn't want to keep Peter's secrets for him, because MJ was another person that he was probably lying to.  Or maybe she was another person that had been lying to Nora.  But then one day the elevator opened and there she was, throwing herself down the bed that Nora no longer touches, wrinkling her nose at the tv and reaching for the remote.

"Were you really watching this?" She said, flicking through the channels, nevermind that Tony and Natasha had both come out of the garage to check on Nora when they heard the voices and were now staring at MJ like she had grown a second head.  It wasn't the way that most people handled seeing their PTSD ridden friend for the first time since her kidnapping, but it was MJ's way.  "It's horrible."  And then, like she had just then realized that Nora wasn't sitting by her desk like normal- "What are you doing in the closet?"