16 Years Later

Avalon, or Ava, as she liked to be called, sat up and stretched. She had just had a good night, which was pretty rare. Most of her nights involved thrashing around in her sheets and screaming for help that would never come. But last night, she had been able to rest peacefully, and she couldn't remember what she had dreamed about, if it had been anything at all.

Ava got up, and made her bed, then got dressed. She looked around her spacious room. It was the same room that she had used for as long as she could remember, but that was okay with her. It had a four poster bed with a canopy, a dresser, a desk, and a closet full of clothes. Clothes that she had only gotten by 'borrowing' her mom's credit card.

She had been sure that her mother was finally going to hit her after that last shopping spree, but the woman had just done her usual routine of ignoring the girl. Ava quietly crept down to the kitchen, not wanting to disturb her parents. She turned on the kitchen light, and checked the pantry first, then the fridge. They were both empty.

Her parents very rarely were home, other than at night, and even that wasn't guaranteed. So more often than not, there was no food in the house. They seemed to forget about Ava's existence the majority of the time. Either that, or they didn't realize that humans needed to eat to survive.

Ava's stomach was growling, but she ignored it. She would have breakfast when she got to school. She had honestly been very surprised when her parents had enrolled her, because they didn't seem like they would remember something like that. Either that or they wanted her out of the house as often as possible. It was most likely the latter.

She went back upstairs to slip on her shoes and grab her backpack, then left the house. It was always better to get away from that place. Other than her room, and that was only because her parents never ventured there, the entire place looked like no one even lived there. There wasn't a single piece of dust, nothing out of place, no signs of life.

As soon as she was outside, she began to jog to the bus stop. She knew that it would be a couple hours still until the bus arrived, but it was a nice day out, and she could sit on the bench and work on her homework for a while. She was relieved that there was no one else out when she got there. She had a small case of social anxiety, and while it wasn't too big a deal, it did make her especially wary of talking to other people.

Ava worked on her calculus for a while, then gave up. It was so annoying, how other people seemed to understand this stuff so much. But this work, written down on paper, wasn't what she could do. Her talents were in the realm of computers, and really any technology that came her way. She could a million in one things on a computer in the same amount of time it would take someone to read one page of a childrens' book. But give her some math work? She would get completely lost. And there wasn't room for her computer prowess at school, so that was something she kept to herself.

It slowly got lighter out, and Ava packed up all of her stuff to wait for the bus. Other kids got to the bus stop one after another. After a few minutes of waiting awkwardly a few feet away from the others and staring at the ground, like always, someone shuffled into her view. She hesitantly looked up, and Chad Mully. That was bad. Very bad.

He grinned mischieviously. "So, what have you been up to? Everyone wants the latest on the resident introvert."

Ava frowned, and cleared her throat a few times before she could speak. "Nothing."

He laughed, and turned to the other kids. When he saw that he had an audience, he decided that he should do his proper duty and entertain them. "Nothing, you say? I find that hard to believe. I've heard a few people saying that they saw you leaving Trevor Norton's place late last night. What's that all about?"

Ava's face flushed. "That's not true-"

Chad smirked. "I bet you're not even a virgin, are you?"

A few people chuckled, and Ava could feel the butterflies tumbling around in her stomach. This was one of those times that she couldn't help thinking it would have been kinder of her parents to just let her starve to death as a baby, or something. "Please just leave me alone. I haven't done anything to you."

Chad's eyes narrowed. "So are you saying that you don't recall sitting in my sit Friday? Everyone knows that the back seat is mine, yet you had the audacity to sit there."

Ava gulped. She would never sit in the back of the bus, and he knew it. "You must be mistaken. Please, I didn't sit there."

His grin grew. "Are you talking back to me, you little punk? Now why would you do that if you really are innocent?" Ava couldn't help it, one hand flew out and struck Chad across the cheek. She was suddenly horrified.

There was an old car, a puffer as the kids would call it, driving haltingly down the street. Chad's face lit up like someone told him that Christmas had come early this year. He bent down to whisper into Ava's ear. "You shouldn't have done that." When the puffer was only a few feet away, he shoved Ava out onto the road.

She was frozen in place, and couldn't move out of the way. The car hit her, and she was flung into the windshield by the momentum. The last thing she saw was Chad's satisfied smirk.

Ava paced nervously back in forth in the small hospital room as she waited for her mother to arrive. Even though she was fine, aside from a few scrapes and a nasty bruise on her forehead, the doctors couldn't release her without a guardian present since she was still a minor.

After what seemed like forever, her mom stormed into the hospital. For a moment, Ava almost thought that the anger was for Chad, that her mom was mad someone had pushed her in front of a moving vehicle. But when the woman stomped into the small room and glared, Ava knew that it had been a pointless thing to hope for.

"Do you know how much this is costing me? I have to pay for your hospital bill! I'm the one who has to miss work, where I am earning the money that is keeping you in school, and with a roof over your head! Do you not realize what a burden you are? What a waste of time this is?" She gestured at Ava. "Next time you step in front of a car, wait for it to be a speeding one!" She groaned. "I wish you had never been born!" And she turned and left.

Ava gulped, and left the room. She couldn't stop her head from drooping. She had always known that her parents didn't care for her the way they were supposed to, but she had never realized before how much they actually hated her. She wiped her eyes, and approached the secretary. She forced herself not to feel the knots in her stomach at the prospect of talking to a stranger. "Did she… Did she sign the release form?"

The nurse nodded with a small smile. It was obvious that somehow no one had overheard that outburst. "Yup, you're free to go with your mother now."

Ava didn't bother with a proper response, she just nodded and hurried away, before they could decided that she wasn't allowed to leave after all. She had seen the clock inside, and knew that it was still the middle of the school day. But she couldn't go to school.

Her feet dragged her along, and before she knew it, she was at the Verrazano-Narrows bridge. She heard her mother's words echoing around inside her head. She thought of the sheer terror that descended upon her whenever she had to talk to strangers. She was tired of that. She couldn't take it anymore.

So she walked up the bridge. Without having anything better to do, Ava had done a lot of running around the neighborhood as she grew up, and that topped with the fact that she barely had enough to eat at all, let alone overeat, was how she was in such good shape. She got to the center of the sidewalk, and looked around.

Everyone was already at work who needed to be, so not that many people really went from Staten Island to Brooklyn anyways. Ava took a deep breath as she stared over the railing at the beautiful blue water. It was a lovely sight, as good as any to be her last. Her heart was pounding in her chest like crazy, but she didn't care.

Ava pulled herself over the safety rail, and sat on the edge of it precariously, her legs dangling freely over the water. She kicked off her shoes, and watched as the hit the water with satisfying twin splashes. She leaned forward, her grip on the rails and her feet resting on the concrete.

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. A million what-ifs swirled around in her mind, but she blocked them out. It didn't matter what could have been, it only mattered what was. So she bent her knees a little, let go of the rail, and sprung over the edge. Her eyes were shut, and, for just a moment, she felt like she was flying. Everything was going to be okay. But she was more terrified than she had thought, because she passed out.

What she didn't expect was for Iron Man to be flying around, so far out of Manhattan. He saw the free falling body, and was pretty sure that he saw her jump. But he convinced himself that she was pushed, and he rushed over to catch her in his metal arms. She had this troubled look on her face, and she was light. He suspected that even if he wasn't in his suit, she would have weighed nothing.

Tony hated hospitals, and he had the latest high tech gear at the tower, so it would make no sense to bring her to the hospital. Back to the hospital his mind whispered as he saw the plastic band hanging loosely off of her thin wrist. He held her tighter, feeling some strange instinct to protect her, and he headed back to the tower. The project he had been working on could wait.