Captain America: Professional Best Friend

The Past Revealed

Trigger warning about halfway through this chapter there are mentions once more of familial abuse so if you would be more comfortable skipping over that part feel free my friends :)

Over the next twenty days during the construction of the new Avengers facility, Emma tries to distract herself by keeping busy. She starts going all-in on her reporting of the construction of the facility, waking up at dawn every day to make the trip to where it's being built. She stays almost all day, interviewing the workers on their breaks, taking pictures of the fast-moving progress, and exploring the grounds surrounding the compound. She barely has any time for her personal life, and she's okay with that, because the less time she has to think about what happened, the better.

One night when Emma gets home completely exhausted after a long day's work, she sees Maria sitting on her couch waiting for her with a movie on. "Wait Maria, how-"

"You forget you gave me the spare key?" she asks while pausing the TV.

"Oh, right, yeah totally, it just slipped my mind," Emma replies as she sits her bag and drone on one of her partially packed boxes. The moving process was taking a lot longer this time because she didn't have the help of Sam or Steve. She feels bad not asking Sam for help, but she knows that if she was with him it would just remind her of Steve.

"Emma, I'm worried about you," Maria says as Emma sits on a chair in the living room.

"Nothing to worry about, I'm fine," Emma tells her with a smile.

"If you're fine then tell me why all your movies except the sad romance ones are packed up? Or how not even half of your apartment is packed up when we move into the new facility in less than two weeks? I already have all of mine packed up. Also, why haven't you been answering my calls or texts until the ungodly hours of the night?"

"I've just been really busy 'documenting history' as Tony puts it. Did you know that they're on track to finish in twenty days? That's record time! Stark really can do so much when he sets his mind to it."

"You're getting off-topic, Em. All of this going and going nonstop is going to catch up to you sooner or later and that crash isn't going to be fun because when you do crash, all you'll have time to do is think about everything you've been avoiding," Maria tells her in a stern tone. Emma tries to defend herself with another excuse, but Maria interrupts her with, "Don't deny that you've just been avoiding thinking about what happened between you and Steve. You can't just ignore it and pretend it didn't happen because it did. And the problem won't go away by avoiding it either."

Emma sighs and gives in, admitting, "Fine, you got me. I've been working so hard because I don't want to think about what I've ruined. Because that's what I did, I ruined things between him and me. If I had just told him about my past in the first place or maybe if I didn't-"

"Emma, you can't blame yourself for all of it."

"Sure I can," Emma replies and laughs a bit, trying not to cry. "I guess I wanted him to see my messy past, to see my current struggles, and find me worthy of love, but with all these memories of my father resurfacing and then this, I definitely feel unworthy of any sort of love at all."

Maria looks at Emma with sadness in her eyes and says, "Emma, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I really think you need to get some help. This blaming yourself and shaming everything you do is stemming from more than what happened this month. I think you need to see someone and healthily unpack your past. You'll feel better if you do that, and maybe you can figure out how to mend things with Steve after you start facing your other problems head-on. I can't stand to see my best friend hurting so much, okay?"