New York was oddly quiet, for a mid-summer day in midtown Manhattan.
Or maybe that was just Avengers' Tower, because the city itself was still plenty loud outside of it's walls. The problem was that the inhabitants of the Tower weren't quite up to being our usual loud selves.
Mainly because it had been only twenty-four hours since our escape from the hold of the Mandarin, twenty-one since we crash-landed our getaway jet in the woods of eastern Pennsylvania and called Jarvis for extraction.
The flight home had been as awkward as I'd ever experienced – Natasha and Clint were silent in the cockpit (from which I'd been banned from entering), Dad was only talking to Bruce, Thor wasn't even in the jet, choosing to fly alongside it, and Bucky and Steve were acting like middle schoolers with a crush: glancing at each other before blushing red and quickly looking away.
And it hadn't gotten any better, meaning that even being on my own floor was suffocating. My next step had been entirely predictable: to lock myself in a small lab on floor 10 (with plenty of windows. It turns out the Mandarin's base had been underground, hence the lack of natural light, and meaning that my private lab, which was thirty feet underground, was claustrophobic at the moment).
I immediately used Jarvis to start regaining the time we had lost; it was now June 21st, meaning that we'd been in captivity for over a month, and that I'd missed both my twenty-second birthday and Clint and I's fourth anniversary which made me wonder: who was being tortured on my birthday? On my anniversary? Who was screaming when we should've been singing "Happy Birthday"? Were Clint and I splitting heads when we should've been out to dinner?
And nobody was sleeping at all, so instead of potentially comprising an important project, I busied myself with my bike. All it really needed was a tire change, an oil change, and a good waxing, but that didn't matter; going to sleep wasn't an option, because all I'd see would be broken glass and blood and dead eyes. And venturing outside the lab was out of the question, because then I'd see the pain and horror painted on everyone's face, hear their screams echo-
I hiss and recoil, swearing viciously as my head collides with the metal behind it. "Ow. Bad idea. F-Fudge."
"Ma'am, are you alright?" Jarvis asks, sounding concerned.
"I'm fine, Jay," I grit out through my teeth. "Dummy, no – I swear to god, if you spray me with that, I will take a hammer to your joints," I growl at the approaching bot, equipped with his favorite fire extinguisher.
He backs off, and I lay back down, alternatively staring up at the fluorescent lights and closing my eyes against the pain. "What am I doing, Jarvis?"
"…I believe you were working on the engine of your motorcycle, ma'am."
"No, I meant – what are we doing?" I sigh, pushing myself out from under my speedster and standing up, wincing as my head throbs. I plop down on a workbench, twirling an Allen wrench between my fingers. "The Tower's a mess, and everyone's acting like it's still 2014 and we're newly-fledged Avenger-lings. It might be worse than that."
"My data is collaborative with that of people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ma'am, symptoms of which include-"
"Mute," I snap, standing and pacing the width of the lab. "I know what the symptoms of PTSD are, Jarvis. Why do you think I haven't slept – nobody's slept – since we got back? Every time we close our eyes all we get is blood and pain and screams and-" I choke slightly, shaking my head. "We missed a birthday and an anniversary, and I don't even know if Clint's trying to plan anything, because I went to the Hermit Academy and haven't seen another human being in forever…"
My rambling is cut off by something nudging my foot, and I look down to see Dummy nudging my foot with his claw arm. With a whir of servos, he swings his camera up so he was looking at me, and somehow I could almost see his anxiety.
"Hey there, screw bucket," I murmur, bringing my hand around to pat the pressure-sensitive plates on his arm. "I'm alright." Liar. "I won't do anything stupid." Lies.
He rolls away, and I start to return to where my motorcycle hung, suspended in mid-air by a series of cables and jacks.
My progress is halted by the sound of glass breaking, and I stop in my tracks, suddenly sucked back into a different room, with different people.
"I needed that missile yesterday, brat!" Obie bellows, storming towards me as I scurry behind the couch, hoping beyond hope that this might help, even a small bit.
It doesn't. The larger man is just irritated by my actions, stomping towards me, his face irate as he grabs my arm, shaking me like a rag doll. "Don't you hide from me, you worthless little swine! What're you gonna do, run to daddy?" he sneers. "That won't do any good. He doesn't care. He doesn't love you."
"He wishes you were a boy, you know."
"He'd leave you for your mother if it weren't for the good press he gets from you."
"He supports everything I do," Obie snarls, advancing even as I shrink back. "Everything."
He pushes me back, and I cry out as the coffee table shatters under me, giving way to-
-something metal?
"Ma'am!" Jarvis' voice sounds. "Miss Stark!"
I groan something incoherent, the air having been chased from my lungs.
"Miss Stark, you are alright. It is June 21st, 2022, and you are in Avengers' Tower, on the tenth floor-"
"Mute," I gasp, laying back on the floor.
Judging by the pain in my calves, hip, and fresh pain on the back of my skull, coupled with the fact that I was now laying haphazardly across my workbench, probably meant I'd somehow made my way from where I had been to here, fallen, and hit my head during that – that episode.
Damn it all. If I wasn't safe in the lab, then where was I safe?
The Tower was obviously out of the question, and although I knew Dad owned a mansion upstate, getting out of New York altogether sounded like a really good idea.
Not that that left me without options; the Stark family owned property all over the world, after all, and there wasn't really anywhere the suit couldn't go.
Let's see, there was Austin, Albuquerque, Coden, Dauphin Island, Lake Arrowhead, Milwaukee, Malibu…
Malibu. Of course.
Because what was safer than my not-easily-accessible, Jarvis-defended, childhood home?
Not much, that'swhat.
"Malibu, then," I decide, sitting up and stretching, stepping around the worktable and making my way out the door.
"Jarvis, deliver my bike to the garage, please. Don't let Dummy touch it," I order, making my way into the nearest stairway and, after checking that the coast was clear, take off down the stairs.
The suite on the 90th floor was empty – Clint was probably filling a target with arrows and/or bullets at the moment – so it was extremely easy to enter the master bedroom, grab a duffel bag out of the closet, and throw in a change of clothes, a knife, and my bow and quiver. I grab the gun I kept on the nightstand and holster it, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and my coat and sleek black helmet off the coat rack by the door on my way out.
I make it down to level M-1, the garage, unnoticed, mainly due to the fact that I went down 90 flights of stairs, which was mostly insane.
I wheel my custom speedster out of the cargo elevator and quickly stuff the bag into the compartment under the seat, fitting the helmet over my head. "Good morning, Jarvis."
"Technically speaking, ma'am, it is just after noon," the AI replies via Bluetooth. "May I advise against your course of action?"
"There's nothing to advise against," I reply, sighing as I zipped my jacket and straddled the bike.
"You are leaving the safety of those that can help you, ma'am-"
"They're all dealing with their own crap," I mutter.
"-and leaving New York will not help matters."
"I don't care," I grit out, stabbing the ignition button on the bike's minimal console. "Sometimes, J, you have to run before you walk."
With that, I slam my visor down, letting the HUD light up before I push off with one foot, gunning the throttle as I slipped seamlessly into traffic.
Because sometimes, you just had to run…period. I just hoped it would help.
.
I arrived at the Malibu Mansion just after 2 am the next morning, roughly in the same state as I'd left New York in. The only changes were that I'd lost the water bottle and picked up a newspaper in Oklahoma City, about halfway through the drive. The headline read "Absent Heroes: Why have the Avengers' gone silent?"
(I think we've earned the right, yeah?)
The drive up the winding, cliff-side road to the beach was welcoming and familiar, and I relaxed at the scent of salty sea air.
Until, that is, I rounded the final bend and spotted the two cars in the driveway: one cherry red Maserati, one silver Dodge Charger.
Apparently I had company.
It was time for Plan B.