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Chapter 4
They found Aeria making guacamole in the kitchen.
There were avocados - some empty, some untouched - scattered around the floor, on the table. It was an unbelievable sight. There must've been a hundred avocados. The air was burning with the scent of onion. Tomato juice was dripping off the counter into red puddles. Bowls and bowls of guacamole were lined up on the island. Aeria was practically covered in the green mush, but she was smiling - she was smiling. Her face was lit up, and she had guac on her hands and in her hair, turning the strands green, but she was happy.
She was happy.
She looked up and saw them staring at her and dropped the bowl, which shattered, spilling half-mashed avocado all over the floor (not like there wasn't any already).
"Uh," she started.
Peter started laughing hysterically and scooped out a bunch with his hand then licked it off.
"Holy crap!" he mumbled. "This is amazing!"
"Get some chips," Tony said, still staring at the girl. She was still staring at him. She seemed embarrassed and she was silent.
"It's fine," Rogers said with a grin. "We're not mad."
Her body language relaxed and she her bright smile returned.
"I like it," she said quietly. "The guacamole."
"Well, we would think so," Thor said with a laugh.
Aeria sat down on the ground (on a puddle of guacamole) and placed three bowls on the ground, while Peter put down three bowls of chips.
And they ate.
They sat around, on the ground, with chips and guacamole, and they ate.
Aeria was smiling.
It was something they had never seen on her before - not like this. She had said only a few sentences since she had arrived, and now she was talking. She was talking.
"I enjoy chocolate and raspberries and guacamole," she told them. "But only those
three foods."
"You need some protein," Steve Rogers said. Aeria blinked, looking confused. "Uh," Rogers stuttered. "You need other varieties of food. Otherwise, you won't be healthy."
"I know what protein is," she muttered. "I was - I had some tutoring."
And then, and then Aeria looked him in the eyes and said (and she said, to this super soldier who was a hundred times larger than her - she looked at him and said), "The only foods I've ever eaten are pieces of bread and different types of soup. I think I deserve chocolate and raspberries and guacamole."
"That you do," Tony said, stuffing a chip down his throat.
They were all still fully suited, save for their masks. They used Cap's shield as a table. Sam used his wings to scoop up guacamole. Peter used his (renewed) webs to refill the bowls. Thor used Mjölnir to smash up more avocados. They told stories, making Aeria smile more and laugh.
Then
in a quiet voice
Aeria asked, "They're coming for me. Aren't they?"
Silence.
"Do you know anything about them, Aeria?" Natasha murmured. "Anything at all? Did you see any labels on any weapons?"
Aeria hesitated as if thinking about the question. She was. She was searching through her mind, searching through every bit of information, every painful memory.
"Stark," she finally said. Tony nearly choked on his chip.
"W-what?" he stuttered.
"They were talking about how the boss doesn't like Stark," Aeria said. "I don't know why. But they said they didn't like Stark."
"Lot of people don't," Rhodey muttered. Clint elbowed him.
"So… is this personal?" Rogers asked. Tony blinked.
"Uh. I - I don't know why it would be. I've never, like, talked to a little girl before. I'm not a big fan of kids."
"We know," they all said.
"They're small agents to you," Clint said with a wink.
"Anything else?" Nat asked. Aeria shook her head.
"No," she said. "Sorry."
"Don't be," Wanda said with a smile.
They ate in silence for a few more minutes before Aeria said, "What are you going to do with me?"
Silence.
"W-what do you mean?" Tony stammered. Aeria glanced at him, her eyes clear and blue.
"You obviously had a reason for why you rescued me," she said.
"Our orders were to find you and take you to our headquarters," Steve Rogers told her.
"But why? Who gave the orders?" Her head lowered. "SHIELD. It was SHIELD, wasn't it?"
"How do you know about SHIELD?" Peter asked, still eating guacamole. Aeria glanced around furtively.
"I told you," she muttered. Her eyes seemed to cloud over. "I watch the news." She blinked, looking back up, looking back up into all their eyes. "You want to train me," she said slowly. "You want me as a weapon."
"Aeria, that's -" Rogers started, but Aeria cut him off. Her hands were shaking and she started to clench and unclench her fists.
"You want me as a weapon," she said. "Just like them. You want me to kill people."
"That's not what - no," Tony said firmly. "No. I promise you, Aeria Winters, you're not a weapon, and you won't ever be a weapon."
"My name is Aeria," Aeria said fiercely, her mouth hard and her eyes cold. "My name is Aeria."
"Aeria," Natasha said softly, "You're not a weapon. You're not a monster. You are a girl. We aren't going to train you to be a weapon. We want to train you to be an Avenger."
Whoa, Tony and almost the whole room thought. She's too young.
That night the Avengers had a meeting - without Aeria.
"What the hell Nat?" Clint said. "She's a kid! She's 13!"
"14 soon," Natasha reminded him.
"Still!"
"She'll be killed," Rogers said.
"She's powerful," Bucky mused. Everyone turned to him and he shrugged. "What? It's true. She's powerful, and you all know it. It'll take a lot of force to bring that kid down. Besides… she's strong. She's tough. I can see it in her eyes."
"Well that's awful poetic of you, Mr. Barnes," Tony said, "But we're thinking realistically here. Yes, she has probably had training before. So we know that. But she is a kid, and we have a responsibility to protect her. To keep her alive. These… things want her."
"If this was a story that paragraph probably has a lot of italics," said Peter.
"Fury is going to train her anyway," Natasha said. "We better start get a kick start - a good kickstart. You know what they'll do to her."
"I can teach her to control her powers," Wanda offered. "Nat and Clint can teach combat."
"And what?" Tony scoffed. "She'll become an Avenger after? Is that even legal?"
"Legal?" Sam repeated.
"Can we all be honest here?" Peter said loudly. They turned to him. "Villains don't care if someone's a kid or not. You saw what happened today. So why should we care?"
"Because we're human," Tony growled.
"Fury doesn't care whether or not she's a 13 year-old girl," Peter continued. "I mean, I sure do, but -"
"You're the same age as her," Tony interrupted.
"But Fury? But SHIELD? They don't give a shit whether or not she gets hurt in battle," he said. "And don't you all pretend that they will. They just care whether or not she's a useful weapon."
And there was no denying it.
They didn't talk about training for a week.
At night, Aeria would wake up screaming. She would wake up the whole tower with her screams. It became a routine for them - a rather embarrassing and painful one for Aeria, of course. When it would happen Tony and Natasha and Peter would get an alarm, and they would each talk to her softly, over the intercom. They would calm her down. Tony and Natasha would calm her down. Peter would tell jokes to make her laugh.
And it was a routine. After a while, the Avengers stopped getting angry over waking up. Tony, Nat, and Peter certainly didn't care that she woke them up. After a while, the Avengers stopped getting angry - and started feeling genuinely horrible for Aeria.
Six days later.
Little Tommy Timpson was enjoying the best lollipop in the world
Like, really.
It was so amazing there were no words to describe the amazingness of it all. Each lick was bursting with flavor. The rainbow colors never seemed to fade, which was like magic to little Tommy Timpson (even though - and bless his heart - it was just added preservatives. But who knows. Maybe it was magic.).
"Mommy, look!" Little Tommy Timpson said, pointing up at the sky. Mommy Laura Timpson smiled down at her son (a toothy-smiled, bright-eyed joy - her her world) and took his hand.
"What is it, Tommy?"
"Look! What is it? Up there, in the sky!"
Still smiling, Mommy Laura Timpson glanced up at the sky.
A scream erupted from her throat.
"There's been another attack," Rogers said, striding into the room. "Or rather, an attack in progress. Suit up."
"Can I go?" Aeria asked, standing. There was a speck of chocolate on her cheek. "Please?" Her voice was quiet. "This is my fault, anyway."
"It's not your fault," Tony said, turning to her. "It's not your fault, so don't you dare think it is. And no, you're not coming. Too dangerous."
"I'm dangerous," Aeria argued. "I should come! I have to come!"
"You don't have to," said Natasha. "And you're not going to."
Bucky lingered around after everyone had left. Aeria stared at him, her scarred arms folded over on themselves. She looked fierce, this little thing, this little broken girl. Fierce and strong.
Bucky winked.
Aeria grinned.
"Don't kill yourself," he said and ran out.
Aeria glanced down at her clothes - she didn't have a suit, just sweat pants and baggy shirts.
"Do I need anything else?" she asked out loud. Maybe a weapon? she thought. Or… a shield? Wanda doesn't have any weapons, she reminded herself. Why should I?
So she left in sweatpants and a baggy shirt.
It seemed like the right thing to do.
…
Aeria hadn't flown in years. She hadn't tried after they used those iron-hot chains to yank her down and pin her to the ground for days. She was afraid to try - not because she was afraid it wasn't going to work (of course it would work - it was a part of her). Because of PTSD, bad memories, that sort of shit. They can't hurt me, Aeria thought. It's okay.
She opened a window on the third floor and took a deep breath. The wind was cool today, fresh and bitter. And smokey.
She took a step forward into open air, her eyes closed.
Nothing happened.
No pain.
No hot, unbearable, burning pain.
She was flying.
It was awkward, at first. She felt stupid, flying around with sweatpants and a baggy shirt flapping in the wind. She didn't know how she should look - should her arms be tucked in, or should they be out? Should she be running or gliding?
So she pretended like she was jumping - and in a way, she was, leaping from building to building, running barefoot against the side of walls, vaulting off of balconies and wires. Some people looked up in wonder, some kept running. The smoke was becoming overwhelming.
Aeria hovered for a bit, coughing, her hand held up to her mouth. She could see the black fire and the black shadowy-figures down the street, slowly making their way up.
"Nope," she muttered.
She blasted through a cluster of shadows, her frost freezing their burning mist. Aeria fought past the perimeter, freezing as many as possible. Already she felt weakened, her arms and legs growing limp as if all the muscles were dissolving.
She kept going until she saw one of the Avengers.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam Wilson shouted, slicing through a few shadow soldiers with his wings. Aeria froze them before they could reform.
"Helping," she said breathlessly.
One minute Tony was pinned to the ground, shadows ripping apart his suit, the next they crumble into black flakes of ice with Aeria Winters standing over him.
"What are you doing?" Tony gasped, stumbling to his feet.
"Saving you," she replied with a smirk, and she disappeared before he could say anything more.
And suddenly things were turning around.
They drove the shadows back to where they had appeared - union square. Aeria shivered, taking it all in. She'd only been outside a few times in her life - at least after she was taken.
There was that one time when she almost made it.
They took her outside once, for training. Decided it was too dangerous.
But she had never seen a city before, not like this. Not in real life. The buildings were towering over her, in flames. Trees and bushes were peppered around the area, in flames.
People.
In flames.
Aeria felt her body growing colder and colder, her skin turning paler with a hint of blue. She shuddered, fear pricking her heart. Control. Control.
"Control," she repeated softly, biting back a scream as one of the shadows grabbed onto her shoulder, burning into her flesh. She felt her power awakening, rumbling down deep inside her, yearning to be let out. "Control."
"Aeria!" Tony yelled. Aeria threw the soldier off her back and turned to face him.
"What?" she called.
"Get - go back - you're not allowed to be here!"
"You're not my dad," Aeria said back.
"How do you even know that phrase? You've been imprisoned - Aeria, it's dangerous!"
"I thought we made it clear that I'm also dangerous," and with that, she summoned a burst of power from the pit of her own consciousness, and let it travel through her, travel through her arms and her fingers and the palm of her hand, and let it spill out in front of her, let it swirl and twist and ravage around the shadow soldiers, turning them white.
They were burning.
Burning cold.
The others paused and stared at her in shock, and she stared back, confused.
"What?" she said.
"Is there any way you can put these fires out?" Clint shouted. Aeria raised her arms and dropped them in defeat.
"It's not water!" she yelled. Clint shrugged.
"So?"
Frowning, Aeria turned away and channeled her energy onto the burning trees around her.
"It's… different," she said. "It's not regular fire."
"Concentrate!"
"You all should get back to fighting," Aeria snapped. She closed her eyes, inhaling sharply. Everything can freeze.
She caught the fire mid flicker, a collection of black flames encased in a silver gloss. She was breathless, sagging. Used up.
"Aeria, come help me!" Peter called. Aeria turned to him, panting. Spider-Man was hanging out of a window, smoke billowing out behind him. Aeria nodded and ran to the building.
"Stop!" Tony shouted from somewhere nearby. "Aeria, the smoke -"
"Shut up!" Aeria replied and dove into the buildings.
She was immediately engulfed in choking black flames. She doubled over, hacking, but kept running.
"Help!" someone wailed. "Help me! I can't move!"
Aeria stumbled through the flames, burning them cold as she passed, brushing off the flakes of frost (or maybe frozen ash) as they landed on her skin.
"Where are you?" she choked out.
"Here! Help me, please!"
Aeria found the voice huddled in a corner on the first floor. A middle-aged woman was behind a mountain of collapsed beams, wrapped in a wall of black fire. Aeria stumbled, weak and limp, succumbing to the smoke. She tried to tried to summon enough power to put out the flames but it wouldn't come. The heat of the fire was getting to her, warming her up. Not to mention she was already exhausted.
"You have to jump!" Aeria cried, her voice cracking.
"My son! Where's my son?"
"Take my hand and jump!" Aeria said, sticking her hand through the flames. Pain flared in her hand up her arm as the flames licked away at her skin, burning away the gauze that was already around her wrists, revealing old scars. Having powers meant having more durability, but even so - her flesh was burning.
"Where's my son?"
"I'll find him. I just -" another beam fell, catching Aeria's foot. She let out a whimper. "Take my hand," she said. "Please!"
The woman did.
"Get out through that entrance!" Aeria coughed, pointing, her hand smoldering. "Go!"
"Find my son," the woman sobbed, stumbling through the wreckage. Aeria grabbed hold of the burning beam and groaned, her muscles straining.
"I got it," said Peter, suddenly appearing and helping to lift the beam off her leg. Aeria mumbled a thank you and hid her wrists before he could see. "Crap. That looks bad," he said, pointing at her leg. "Check it out later."
"Go," Aeria said, "I have to go find a woman's son."
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