AN: This is it! My first ever fanfic on here! I hope you guys enjoy this story due to my addiction to Iron Man and since I didn't want it to be only Tony and Pepper, I wanted to add the Avengers, so here you go! Kudos to anyone who reviews, follows and favs. Thanks!
Prologue
My name is Phoenix, I am twelve years old and I was raised in Afghanistan.
My foster father was a cruel man. He took me in, and I believed I was his child. My foster mother was a nice woman. She read me bedtime stories every night; she even cooked my meals with loving care. My foster father was never like that at all.
My foster father owned a business of raiding cargo jets and terrorism. He owned a large group of people who were dying to get their hands on guns and military grenades. Luckily, the raids ended when a sweaty, battered and dirty man came into play. His name was Tony Stark.
My family was poor and my foster father sold all the furniture in the house except a few in his room. Only my father was allowed to sit in this bed, and my mom and I slept on the floor with one sleeping bag, we had to share it while my dad had his own bed. The sleeping bag had many holes torn in it. It wasn't so bad, soon enough, I got used to working for my dad and doing all the chores. It was better than being dead. But here is where it gets awkward for people.
I never went to school, it was too far and people finding out my dad was a terrorist will terrify them. The solution was I was home schooled by my foster mother. She was the one who taught me math, writing and reading and some basic science.
One day, a dirty and battered man was brought into a cave, drowned in a bucket of water and hooked up to a car battery for safekeeping.
He was the only person who ever escaped from my fathers wrath.
I watched Stark through the little slit through the metal door. He was building a mini arc reactor for the electro magnet to keep the shrapnel away from his heart. My foster father has never told me why Stark was brought here, but I had a slight idea.
Stark was locked in a cave, hot and sweaty and was required to build a Jericho missile. Even an eight year old could tell that he's been abused and beaten up a lot. I jumped down some rocks and snuck into the cave without my foster father knowing. That's when curiosity has gotten the best of me.
"Hi there!" I stood in front of him. "What are you making?"
I would never forget Stark turning around to see me, asking for help.
I was eight at the time, so how much could I do? Besides, my foster father would kill me if I help him! So I turned around, spraying my hair behind and fled back to my room.
The day after that, Stark escaped wearing a flying hunk of metal. It didn't fly long and it crashed, but I knew it was enough. Stark has survived my foster father's wrath.
However, things didn't go so well after that.
My foster mom decided to pick a fight with my foster father. All I could remember was the fight was about Stark. Obviously my foster mother knew but did nothing about and didn't want to be involved. So when my foster mother was asked to lure Stark in, she refused the offer.
I was in my room reading the newspaper article about Stark's escape when this happened. There was a blood curling, ear-piercing scream that was followed by slapping noises.
My foster father held the knife stained with blood, my mom was down on the floor. I didn't dare to cry, to expose my weakness to him. Otherwise, death would be the only path to take.
When my foster mother was dying, she had told me the truth. She had told me the truth to everything. How I was not her daughter, and who my mother and father really was. The moment she spoke out my real name was the first time I cried in years. There was one thing she did tell me that I didn't know until now. I was determined to run away but I never told my foster father.
The policemen in Afghanistan never cared for me, I clearly was foreign to them and Afghanistan didn't like foreign people, well at least not at that time. If I forced them to help me, I would get shoved up into military training for children of under age twelve.
It was three years of wait so I could escape, but it was worth it, because I'll always remember the magic of friendship as well.
My father was too lazy and busy to walk over to the market from where we get food. I always had to go alone. Each side had people kneeling and placing items on their picnic mats, hoping someone would buy their valuables.
One night, a girl named Raven showed up at the market. She was about the same age as I was. Her hair was natural hot red and her eyes were sharp emerald green. She wore a really cute cherry shaped hair tie in her ponytail. Raven was also extremely social, talking to people around the market and helping elders. Every day she would wear the same leopard skirt and black sleek top. She was luxurious, and beautiful in every aspect you could think of.
I was holding my cloth bag, my hair was tangled and my shirt and pants were torn. I didn't bother about my appearance because my foster father had never given me any money to spend clothes on.
That was when I met my first friend ever in twelve years. Raven Romanova was the first girl I ever talked to. I began to learn how wonderful her life was. Raven was the richest person in Afghanistan that I have ever seen. All she ever talked about was video games and song artists. Things only a rich or decent person would put in their mind to care about. My heart was truly cold with envy but I never dared to say it. It was rude and I wouldn't want to lose the privilege of having a friend.
After a week of meeting her, she told me all about her life and after sharing my troubles with her, I realized that I could mean more than just a small girl living in a pool of lies. I escaped, I quickly wrote down where I was going on a small piece of cardboard and handed it to Raven. I left her without questions and headed back home to prepare my journey to The Avengers Tower.
I ran back home and packed my backpack, filling it with the only objects I had. In fact, they were not what I wanted to bring but they were what I needed.
The only object I had to remember my foster mother by was this ruby necklace. I never wore it because it has been scratched a couple of times beyond repair.
.oOo.
I had only stole enough money from my dad for a car ride to the airport. It took a whole week to plan this but it was better than nothing. I sneaked into the plane carrier and sat in there for as many hours as I could count. Some of the bags stank and cockroaches ran around the hard carpet floor. After a while, the door slowly opened and I sneaked out without anyone noticing.
The gust of wind caught my hair and blocked my face from seeing. I heard a car coming by and by the time I flipped my bangs backwards, a policeman pointed his gun at my forehead.
"Hands up." He wore his official blue policeman uniform and his cap had been blown away.
I didn't need to think about what to do next.
I ran towards the gate and I barged through. The security guards looked at the officer chasing me. Even if the officer was fit and trained, a twelve year old girl was out running him, and that girl was me.
The other officers realized that I was the criminal and chased after me. I was tiring out really quickly and my backpack was slowing me down. The only thing I thought about while I was running was my identity and family.
If I was caught here, who knew? I might not ever be heard from my father and I want to be heard from! I don't think he even knows I exist!
.oOo.
Running as fast as I could, I felt the rain dribble down my black tank top. It stuck to my body and became rather heavy in the last hour of rain. My skinny jeans were torn from tumbling through the thorn bushes before. With a cackle, lightning struck a nearby tree, sending me down the hill. Luckily, I stumbled upon Stark Tower. You know, the giant building in New York that was rather attractive and bright and at the same time equally lame. "AVENGERS" was written across it and I came to think it was too bright for any other stars to shine through all this light pollution. Thankfully the lights were bright and it made a perfect compass. It was nighttime at the moment so I ran up the steps to the doorstep. I could hear the police car and the alarms in the distance as I rang the doorbell.
"Please enter your name." A British voice responded. The doorbell disappeared and was replaced with an identity scanner. After scanning my eyes and face, the screen revealed a question mark.
"Uh... Phoenix Stark?" I said suspiciously. Funny, I thought, other than Pepper, there was no other person living in the building.
I heard a camera gear lower down to see my face. I was a twelve-year-old girl. My hair was down to shoulder length and was quite curly, the brown tint on my hair slightly darkened due to the rain. My skin was peach and white and my eyes were grey blue.
"I'm sorry, I am not able to find your identity in SHIELD's database. Please enter a valid name." The voice said again.
"Fine. Phoenix Neptune Stark!" I yelled in frustration. The policemen could catch her any moment now.
"Say it again?"
"Phoenix Neptune STARK!" I exaggerated my last name a bit.
"I'm sorry, the most I can do is inform sir that you are on his doorstep. Would you like me to do that?"
"NO! Just let me in!" I yelled. Suddenly, a hand grabbed my shoulder and dragged me into a police car. I writhed and protested with all my strength but policemen had probably bulked up for the occasion. I sent out a piercing scream and the last time I saw the moon was before they put a hot and insulated garbage bag over my dirty hair. .oOo.