Tony would be lying if he said that the battle for the planet hadn't been an intense one. Especially with the help of the 'magical' kids that he was still somewhat furious with for being where they shouldn't have been. Sure they had proved themselves to be quite capable and handy during the battle.
Taking the enemy forces head on with the recklessness that could only come from the young. In truth as much as they had helped out during the fight with their magical abilities and such, he still wanted to strangle each and every one of them for not being somewhere else. Somewhere safer and less life threatening.
He was after all a firm believer in the fact that children should never step foot on a battlefield of any kind. It wasn't their job to fight and die for the sake of the world that may need them in the future.
It was however an adult's job to do so.
Which was why he was currently sitting in his lab looking over the footage of everything that happened once the kids appeared and started fighting. His mind was curiously obsessed with the kid Lily, who had not only managed to destroy an entire alien army before it could slip through to their world, but had even sealed the wormhole before falling from the sky.
He'd been having nightmares about her falling in the past three weeks since the fight had occurred.
He could recall with such startling clarity everything that had happened from beginning to end. The sky lighting up with what had looked like one of the most impossible sights he had ever seen. Vivid green lightening/fire just on the other side of the wormhole, eating up everything alien vessel and ship that it touched like a ravenously hungry monster devouring everything in site.
The eerie feeling of dread that had filled him as he had blasted the last enemy attempting to attack him before turning his gaze towards the sky like the others in horror.
His mind attempting to calculate the kid's chances of survival just before her small cloak encased figure fell from the closing wormhole and plunged at terminal velocity towards the ground.
He had tried to get himself air born so that he could go and catch her, but his suit had been too damaged to move and all of his other suits wouldn't reach him in time even if he called him.
He remembered the mind numbing fear that he was going to see the girl's body splatter on the ground and tried to think, think, think of some way to save her. But his mind blanked in panic and worry and he found himself rambling to no one in particular to catch her, save her, break her fall for fuck's sake!
It wasn't until he saw the half eagle-half lion creature closing in on her that he felt some small kernel of hope blossom within him. However he felt that small kernel of hope being snuffed out after the creature caught the girl and soon after landed and allowed the red headed teen riding on it's back to slide off and place the girl on the ground where they could all see her.
Tony almost couldn't stand looking at her. Her skin was so pale, her lips blueish-purple, her green eyes were open wide and unseeing with little ice particles surrounding them. One of her friends checked her for a heartbeat and found none but still tried several spells and such on her just in case she could be brought back.
To be honest Tony had almost reached out to stop the kids from doing anything.
The kid was gone. It sucked and yes it was hard to deal with the reality, especially when the kids all seemed to be so close to one another. But it was reality nevertheless.
However even as he reached out to stop them, he paused when he heard a faint rasp of breath and found his eyes strangely fixated on the girl's body as he held his breath in nervous anticipation.
The rasp became another, and a deep gasp, followed by some coughing as she finally blinked her eyes and grimaced in pain and tried to roll over as her friends all crowded around her and took turns hugging her, taking hold of her hand and laughing.
The group might have stayed longer to talk with them, or even go grab some shawarma with them- however Fury had shown up and walked right up to Lily as one of her friends was helping her to her feet and declared his intent to take her in for 'questioning' of some kind about some sort of terrorist attack that had taken place.
Of course that hadn't have happened.
The group of kids had placed themselves firmly between Fury and Lily and allowed several others to take her and disappear. Fury had drawn his gun and started to aim it at the kids when the guy with the dragon got in the way and threatened to let the giant beast off of it's leash if he so much as tried to go after Lily and the others.
The guy was arrested by Fury however less than fifteen minutes later somehow mysteriously managed to escape and vanish without a trace.
So here he was, once again hacking into Shield's database, looking for any and all info on Lily to satiate his curiosity. So far he had checked everything but the top secret files that required top military clearance just to access. Not that those files were much of a problem for him to hack.
It took him another forty five minutes to go through enough top secret files just to find what he was looking for. And when he did, it certainly wasn't what he had been expecting. He had expected some sort of sordid past from the aggressive way that Fury had acted towards the kid.
But what he found wasn't quite as sordid as he had believed he would find. In fact it was quite the opposite. The files began with the murder's of Lily's parents under mysterious circumstances. However aside from a small scar on the child's forehead, she herself was strangely untouched by her parent's killer.
The next page in the file had a picture of an five year old Lily in it. She was so unbelievably small and malnourished looking, wearing baggy threadbare clothing that did nothing to hide the painful looking hand shaped bruises on her shoulders, neck, arms ect. Her dark shoulder length hair looked as if it had been haphazardly hacked at without a care and she had a broken pair of glasses with tape holding them together on her little face.
The page went on to state something about odd occurrences happening at her school and home residence where things had vanished and reappeared in a different place. Animals, especially snakes behaving strangely around her.
The file's next page listed a series of physical ailments that she was left to suffer after a severe beating while she had been sick. The list went on to say that the incident was because she had accidentally slept in one morning because she was sick and her guardian had dragged her out of bed to make his family breakfast while denying her any food or drink, and had become infuriated enough to beat her unconscious when she had tripped and spilled some of the food onto the floor and wasn't able to pick herself up due to muscle weakness.
Tony made a mental note to hunt down the kid's former guardians and give them a piece of his damned mind.
But aside from the pics and the strange occurrences and abuse as well as the multiple murders and attacks listed in the file on her, by far the most interesting part of reading up on her was learning about Lord Voldemort and the incident's that took place beginning when she was twelve all the way up till six months ago when she finally managed to kill him.
He was in the middle of reading some of the extra stuff in the file when Steve and Banner entered his lab and quietly walked up behind him to see what had the man so obsessed and both blinked in surprise upon finding Tony reading about the girl from three weeks ago.
"Um...Tony," Banner started to say when Tony cut him off and quickly said,
"Shut up and sit down. So I've hacked every one of Shield's top secret classified files, and this is what I found so far- Name, Lily Mellissa Potter. Age, seventeen. Born, July. Parents, dead. Designation; The Girl who Lived, The tri-cup Champion, the world's first ever true combat Witch, and Destroyer of the Dark lord," Steve opened his mouth to say something but was also cut off by Tony.
"Now listen to this, The Dark Lord Voldemort and his death eaters once again made an appearance yesterday. A large group of over a hundred cloaked figures wielding wands and lethal spells attacked and killed two hundred and ten non magical folks. A message was left behind at the scene of the mass murder, in blood. The words were chillingly spelled out as, Potter is next,"
"Fifteen year old Lily Potter who is currently away for her fifth year at Hogwarts school for witchcraft and wizardry could not be reached for any comments. It is believed that she is in enforced seclusion under the order of the school's longtime headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, to keep her safe from harm."
"Potter has been making waves since she first appeared on the scene in the wizarding world when she was a baby cursed by the dark lord the night of her parent's murder. Aptly nicknamed The Girl who Lived because of the physical evidence of the lethal killing curse that should have taken her life- a jagged lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead, that she keeps partially hidden by her bangs- Potter has long earned the title of the Girl who Lived through blood and bone and sacrifices the likes of which even grown wizards would not be able to withstand without going mad."
"And then I found this...report of some kind dating back almost a year in a half ago." Tony said as he clicked on the article and began reading again as a holographic image of the girl that had helped them save the world appeared in the middle of the room.
In the image, Lily looked as if she were no more than fourteen. She was decked out in emerald green halter top and black leather pants with a broom in one hand. Her black hair was shoulder length, and the fringe of her bangs barely hid the angry red scar on her forehead.
"Lily Potter- The Girl who Lived has once again made headlines in the wizard world but not in a positive way. Something is said about a Ministry of Magic, Death Eaters, and the kid disappearing and going on the run with her two best friends- a Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger- for close to a year where it was believed that she and her friends were being hunted down by agents of the dark lord. She and her friends returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after a stint of eight months on the run only for the school to fall under siege."
The next holographic image that Tony pulled up moved as if it were a video recording and was labeled Tragedy at the Tri-Wizard Cup! Lord Voldemort returns! And in the image was a sixteen year old Lily. She was bruised and bloody and was crouched over the still body of another teen. An older male from the looks of things, and she looked as if she were screaming. Her face was sweat and tear stained, and she was surrounded by people.
"The battle lasted days, and over a thousand civilian witches, wizards, teachers, and students alike perished in the battle before victory was claimed by a cunning move on Potter's part. The plan that Potter shared only in part with her friends, gave them the necessary instructions to help end the war before. It was said by several close friends and school officials- 'Lily didn't tell us what she truly intended when she slipped out of the safety of the school. Only what some of us would need to do to stay alive.' It was said that Lily learned something important about herself and the dark lord; that their souls were in some way bound to one another. It was also discovered later on- that the only way to untangle their souls from one another was to willingly let him kill her."
"That's all I've found so far aside from this weird looking news headline in bold print, Voldemort dead at last! Indomitable Potter remains the girl who lived!" Tony said as he finished reading everything to them before finally looking away from his computer and waited for them to say something.
The two men were silent as they mulled over everything that Tony had just read to them from Shield's files and couldn't really think of anything worthwhile worth saying. Honestly if one thought long and hard enough about everything that Tony had discovered about the girl, what could they really say?
'Good for her', seemed a little bit condescending. And a 'thank you', sounded more than just a little bit weak in light of what they had just discovered about the girl's past.