Well, here's the next chapter. A note before you read; I have a pretty big time skip here. For clarification, it begins when all the Avengers are in the lab and yelling at each other. Yup. You'll know when you get to it.
Oh, by the way, I have a site for this story now. The link is on my bio. If you read it, you'll get a few little sneak peeks about the coming events. ;)
~Christianne
Slight Warning: A few instances of language. Extremely brief mentions of self harm and suicide ABSOLUTELY NOTHING EVEN A LITTLE BIT GRAHPIC
*Unedited*
Anna POV
December, 1991
I let my coat flap in the breeze as I looked down the cliff. Steely waves were crashing against the stone a hundred feet below me.
"Uh...Miss Buchanan?"
I looked over my shoulder and saw a somewhat familiar face.
"Obadiah, right?" I asked, turning towards him; walking away from the cliff. "You shouldn't be here."
He said nothing, he just nodded a little. "He was my best friend." Obadiah said in a hollow sounding voice. "I wanted to see where it happened."
"Where's Tony?" I asked him.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" I asked him. My voice must have been more threatening than I thought; he leaned back slightly; intimidated.
"The police called his apartment, I sent some people over there...Couldn't find him." Obadiah said in the same hollow tone.
"I'll be back in a few hours." I said as I began walking to my car.
"Where-"
"I'm going to find Tony!" I yelled over my shoulder.
Tony's apartment, close to the MIT campus was empty, like Obadiah said. I called S.H.I.E.L.D. on my way there.
"This is Juliette Bravo Four Six," I said as I started my car; they made me use a stupid code name now. This new director, Nick something, sucked. "It's an important message from Annabelle Brightman."
As I waited to speak, I got on the highway to New York.
Maybe Tony went back to the estate to throw a big party like he did a few years ago.
"Speak when ready." The agent said.
I took a deep breath, merged onto the interstate, and spoke.
"As some of you may know, Howard Stark and his wife Maria died yesterday. Their son, Anthony Stark hasn't been able to be located by the Long Island PD. A preliminary examination of Stark's Porsche shows evidence of assassination; Tony needs to be found ASAP. Bring any and all information directly to me." I snapped my phone shut and floored it.
Howard got Tony a penthouse apartment a few blocks from campus. I flirted with the doorman for six seconds and got the key to Tony's apartment.
First chance I get, I'm faking a gas leak in this place to Howard would get him a new one.
As the door hit the wall behind it, I let out a low whistle. The place was a mess. Clothes all over the floor, empty pizza boxes and Chinese food containers amongst half-put-together gadgets.
"Hey Tony?" I called, walking through the apartment; my hand was ready on my gun at my hip. The kitchen was even worse than the living room where the front door opened up to. I used one hand to close the fridge, and continued to the bedroom.
I rolled my eyes, and pushed the pair of hot pink, lace trimmed panties off the door knob with the end of my gun before going into Tony's room. The bed was unmade, closet open, and there were two more pairs of panties and four bras (none of them matched) around the room.
"Damnit." I cussed as I put my gun back in the holster. Every hour I didn't find him was another hour he could be as dead as Howard. A message beeped on his machine; I played it as I looked around.
"Hey, Tony, dude, you gotta check out the party at the Alpha house. They got senior chicks slummin' it here!"
The voice on the machine sounded completely wasted. But, I'd called S.H.I.E.L.D. an hour ago, and a drunk college boy was better than nothing at all.
I grabbed a plain black suit and tie before leaving.
The door wasn't even locked.
I was so going to yell at the hungover 21-year-old for that.
I counted eight bodies passed out in the living room. Two in the kitchen. Four more on the steps. I stopped counting after twenty in the first three bedrooms.
I rolled my eyes when I found Tony passed out on the window seat in the bedroom in the front of the house.
"Hey," I said, putting my gun back in the holster. "Tony...Time to wake up buddy." I said, shaking his shoulder slightly. He grunted and snorted in his sleep before rolling over (and shoving his face into someone else's discarded pants).
Sighing, I stood and put one hand on my hip. I skipped back downstairs after I woke everyone on the second floor up. They were a little reluctant, but when I offered to not tell the dean's office, the police and their parents about all the underage drinking, they seemed happy to comply.
Just as the last hungover college boy left, I was putting the largest pot under the sink and filling it up with cold water. I leaned on the counter as I waited for the pot to fill up.
Jesus Howard...What'd you do to that boy?
I scolded myself for speaking ill of the dead, but I couldn't put it together. The Howard I knew would never raise his son so, that at 21-years-old I needed to give him a head-bath to get him off a two day bender. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes; it was hard not to blame myself at times like this.
I walked up stairs with the empty pot, a wooden spoon in my back pocket.
I didn't say a word as I tipped the pot over on Tony's head.
He gasped awake and sputtered and spat out water. Tony jerked wildly and fell onto the floor, groaning painfully as his head hit the floor.
"Get up Tony." I said, my voice just a little over normal volume. He moaned and grunted something that sounded like a string of cuss words in response.
I grabbed the wooden spoon and gave the bottom of the pot six good hits, matched with me yelling 'GET UP TONY!' twelve times.
"I'm up! I'm up! I'm UP!" Tony yelled defensively as he sat up on the floor. Once he was upright, he swayed and fell back onto the wall. "Oh...wow that's not fun."
"Take a shower." I told him, looking in a closet. I grabbed a towel from the tip shelf.
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, one hand pressed to his head as he gave me a sour look. "My dad sent you, didn't he?"
"Take a shower." I said again, throwing the towel at him.
"Look, lady, I don't have classes on Wednesdays, so-"
"It's Thursday," I cut him off. He frowned, and seemed to think hard.
"Take a shower, then we'll talk." I told him, then went back downstairs.
I heard the water turn on, and I began going through the cupboards. I turned on the coffee maker, and found two eggs, vegetable oil and chocolate chips. My first goal was something greasy, but since I was working with frat-house-food, my options were limited.
"Hey Abie."
I spun around, and for a split second I saw Tony when he was a little kid, wrapped up in his spaceship bed covers.
"Hey lady." Tony said again. I blinked and he was a 21-year-old again.
A 21-year-old with wet hair and wearing boxers and a hoodie.
"My name is Anna." I told him, turning back to the stove. "I brought you clothes." I said, pointing over my shoulder with the spatula. Tony said nothing as he went to the plastic garment bag.
"Are these-?"
"Yup." I finished for him. "I went to your apartment first."
I flipped the last of the six pancakes onto a (hopefully) clean plate. Tony was awkwardly hopping into the slacks and had one arm in the white dress shirt. I put the plate down, then took one for myself. "Eat." I said, pointing to the pancakes. I put a large cup of hot, strong coffee next to the plate.
Tony grabbed it and drank from it eagerly.
"I knew your dad pretty well, once upon a time, but haven't talked to him in a while. Obadiah called me...I sorta specialize in this sorta thing. But he didn't send me." I said as Tony picked at his pancakes.
"Really, 'cause it seems like sumthin' he'd do." He mumbled in response.
How was I supposed to tell him this?
"Tony..." I started off, walking around the counted to stand next to him. "Your-Your parents were in a car accident on late Tuesday night."
The fork dropped to the table. "What? What happened? Is my mom ok?"
"Tony-"
"My dad was driving, wasn't he?" He said, getting more and more worked up. "Fuckin' drunk idiot-I knew one day that he'd be one bourbon over the-"
The black suit.
He finally processed the black suit and tie in the garment bag.
Tony laughed once, shaking his head. "No...No, that-that's not-" He cut himself off laughing.
I frowned at him. "Tony," I said cautiously; hungover and heartbroken wasn't in my Stark Emotional Database.
"It-It has to be a mistake." He said forcefully, turning to look up at me. "Right? I-I mean the police are morons and make mistakes all the time."
"They were forced off a cliff." I said softly.
"Lots of people own a black town car-"
"It was the hot rod red Porsche." I said in the same soft voice.
"I know six guys who have-"
"It had vanity plates that read 'STARK.'"
Tony rubbed his hands down his face as he kept shaking his head.
"They...They both died, Tony." I needed to get it out.
I wasn't sure what to do. It wasn't like I could give him a hug, make a bowl of popcorn and watch reruns of Star Trek with him until he was smiling. He didn't know me anymore.
I reached towards him when he inhaled sharply. I had barely put a hand on his shoulder before Tony used one arm to grab around my waist in a hug. His head was on my upper torso as he quietly, almost silently, cried.
I instinctively hugged my godson back.
"I hate your fucking guts." Tony mumbled into my stomach.
"What?" I asked.
"That's the last thing I told my dad." Tony mumbled again.
"I-I said I hate your fucking guts."
Omniscient POV
The lab was pretty quiet; Dr. Banner was working on the scepter, Tony was working on seven different things at once, Ellie was playing with the end of her braid and Kára was wandering around the lab. She was keeping an eye on Ellie; Fury needed to talk to Steve.
"You know, you were really hard on Anna, Tony." Kára sighed, hopping up to sit on the lab table next to Bruce; who, slowly and carefully, slid away from her and moved to another table.
"No I wasn't." Tony said dismissively. "All that crap about protecting me, just excuses."
Kara rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. When she didn't say anything, Tony glanced back at her. "Not gonna defend her?"
"Oh, Annie is my best friend. Has been for, like, 55 years. But you're Howard's kid, and if you're half as stubborn as he was, nothing I say is going to change how you think." Kára said while inspecting her nails.
Tony looked over his shoulder briefly and rolled his eyes.
While they bickered, Ellie slowly made her way over to Bruce.
She stood across from him and silently watched him work. "You're Bruce Banner, right?" She asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. Bruce nodded, but didn't look at her.
"You're...You're the Hulk, right?" Ellie asked timidly. She didn't want to offend him.
Bruce looked over his shoulder; no one on the helicarrier had been so direct with him. No one was that direct with him. "Uh...I-I...I say the Other Guy."
"Oh." Ellie said, nodding a little. She pulled her thick gray sweater over her knuckles. "Do you mind?" She asked, gesturing to the stool next to him.
His brows furrowed, but he shook his head.
Ellie, all five-foot-four-inches of her, sat down next to him; hands in her lap, braid over her shoulder, ankles crossed over one another. To Bruce, she just looked so young.
He must not have hid his uneasiness very well, because Ellie spoke up again.
"Is it an odd feeling?"
"Is what an odd feeling?" Bruce asked, not looking up from the screen.
"Knowing you're not the most destructive person aboard this ship." Ellie clarified. Bruce looked up in mild shock. "Is it an odd feeling?"
Bruce stood up and took off his glasses. "What are you?" He asked lowly, so Tony and Kára wouldn't hear.
Ellie shrugged and looked down at her hands. "I don't know...I think that's what scares me."
_-~0O0~-_
While the others argued, Anna was fighting to keep control of her own mind. She was hunched over, her hands pressed to her head.
She tried to open her mouth and scream, yell for someone to hit her; hit her hard enough in the head to get the cold out.
Do you feel that? That cold feeling running down your spine?
"No." She ground out. No one heard her, they were too busy yelling at each other. Accept Ellie. She had her back pressed to the wall as she softly sang 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' It was the best thing to calm her down.
That means I am near. I am watching you, my dear.
"You-You're in the cell." Anna insisted, the sharp, piercing cold was coiling around her mind. No one heard her.
Does that frighten you? Or does it excite you? Either way, I enjoy what I see.
"You don't scare me." She hissed, the sharp cold, as hard as she tried to fight it, was too strong.
That time, Steve heard her. Before he could ask what she said, an explosion, followed by the groaning protest of metal and the screams of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, sent Anna crashing beneath the lab.
As she lay unconscious, her master's calm, charismatic voice hazed her mind. Orders and promises by Loki coaxed Anna to a state where he could once again put her under the spell of the scepter.
Open your eyes, my pet. You have company you must give a proper greeting.
Kára and Thor had been yelling at each other in their native tongue; screaming that the other had no use being there. Thor because he had not proven that he cared for any human other than Jane. Kára because she was a disgraced Valkyrie. Both of them continued yelling even after they fell from the blast.
That's when the armed men in black burst through the room.
"Put your hammer down and hands up!" The man in front yelled to Thor.
"Hold on!" Kára screamed at him, then continued yelling at Thor in their ancient, foreign language.
When they fired at Thor, he let his hammer go. It knocked all the soldiers down and out.
"See you haven't lost your touch," Kára purred sarcastically in the language of the gods.
Thor sent her an annoyed look. "But you have lost yours."
Kára cocked a hip. "Yeah, and whose fault is that?"
She was about to turn away, when she stopped and turned back towards the god. She spoke in English this time.
"And just 'cause I lost my wings, Odinson, doesn't mean I lost my touch."
Steve could hear garbled, muffled voices through the earpiece Anna fitted him with earlier. He pushed himself up onto his hands, and bit back a wince; his head was throbbing. The ringing was dissipating with every breath he took, but it still impaired his hearing.
When he looked around, the ringing was replaced with a voice.
A familiar voice that he used to invite into his head. But now, all it was doing was reminding him of a broken promise.
Something' happens to me, God forbid, look after Annie, alright?
Bucky's words raced through Steve's head as he looked at the young woman next to him.
Anna was on her stomach a few feet from him, her face turned towards him and a trail of blood over her forehead that was getting in her hair. Her arms, which were bare, were scraped and bruised, as was her torso; there were dark burgundy stains leaking through the soft gray material. Steve couldn't tell if she was breathing; her shoulders looked still.
He got to his feet, only to be knocked down again when the helicarrier jolted to the left. Steve grabbed a chunk of broken metal to keep from sliding away from Anna, and pulled himself closer to her. After gently flipping her on her back and pressed an ear to her chest; he sighed in relief when he heard air rush through her throat and into her lungs.
Anna pushed herself up instantly, aback facing Steve, and breathed heavily.
"Hey," Steve said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Annie, you doin' ok?"
She shook off his hand and stood up, Steve stood with her. He frowned when he heard her laughing lowly, and taking a few steps away from him. They'd fallen into what appeared to be a supply room; the walls of the large room were lined with boxes and shelves. Anna crossed the room and braced herself on the shelf, grabbing the steel bars to keep herself up.
"Steve Rogers," she sighed, looking over her shoulder at him. Steve clenched his jaw; Annie's eyes weren't a warm, soft, soulful whisky brown. They were a startling, unnatural blue.
"Captain America," Anna said in the same tone. "You know, S.H.I.E.L.D. compares its top agents fighting ability to you."
She paused briefly, getting up from the shelf. She glanced down at her arms and torso, but looked right back up. She brushed back some wavy hair, and frowned when she grazed the cut.
"Natasha is collectively one of the best," she admitted, her gaze flicking back to Steve. "And I can wipe the floor with her."
"Annie," Steve said calmly. "Annie, this isn't you."
She laughed, tucking hair behind her ear. "See, that's the thing!" She said, sounding almost excited. "I'm still me!"
"No, no this isn't the Annie I knew," Steve insisted. Her words were cold and condescending.
"You've been gone for 70 years," Anna spat at him. "You barely know the person I've become."
"You have to fight him-"
"I don't want to fight him!" Anna screamed at Steve, cutting him off. "My master helped me realize that I have every right to be angry at this world-at the people in it. He's the only person who hasn't let me down!"
"The only-What about Phil?" Steve cut himself off, and started listing people. "Ellie, Kára? Natasha and Barton, Fury, Howard, Kiku?...Me?"
Anna snorted. "Howard Stark it at the top of my 'Let Me Down' list. You see what he did to Tony? That boy had almost as worse a childhood as I did!"
"What about me, huh?" Steve tried to bargain, while the rest of his mind was trying to think of how to snap her out of Loki's spell. "I never let you down." He insisted.
Anna seemed to consider what he said for a second, her chin tipped up in thought; she was listening to her master's voice.
Hurt him.
"See, Steve, you did something worse," Anna said calmly, walking closer to Steve. She was an arm's length away; Steve could have reached out and pulled her in for a hug.
After swallowing thickly, Steve spoke. "What-What'd I do?"
Anna leaned forward, less than a foot from Steve's chest.
"You let him fall."
"Mr. Stark!"
"Oh...Oh, please don't be dead!"
"M-Mr. Stark!"
"Stop shaking me." Tony groaned.
Ellie quickly removed her hands from the genius's shoulders, and sat back on her heels so he could right himself. Tony looked around and pushed himself up to he was sitting instead of laying.
"What happened?" He asked, more like demanded, Ellie.
"The floor fell out from under us...All of us." Ellie said quietly, falling to sit on the floor and pull her knees to her chest. Her glasses had a large crack in them. Tony frowned when he saw her shaking hands pulling at her long dark braid.
"What's wrong with you?" Tony asked, rolling his shoulder back; he must have landed on it funny. Ellie just shook her head.
"I-I'm made entirely of flaws and stitched together with good intentions." The little dark haired woman got out, pressing her hands to her face as she tried not to cry.
Tony was never good with crying woman, but this one just hurt to look at; she looked like one of those girls he saw on the ads for teen suicide. Sad, curled up and hopeless. Shaking the thought out of his head, Tony stood up and began looking around the room they ended up in.
"You came with the Valkyrie, right?" Tony asked, trying to get Ellie to say something. He overheard Kara telling Ellie to take deep breaths, and that if she wanted to leave she could.
"She-She doesn't like to be called a Valkyrie anymore." Ellie mumbled, still pulling at her braid. "Only Anna can get away with it now, she hits other people when they call her that."
Tony's eyes rolled at the mention of Anna. "What's with her, anyway?" He asked sharply, turning to look at Ellie. "Anna, I mean."
Ellie didn't look at him. "Her philosophy of life is that she might die any day, any moment. The tragedy, she says, is that she doesn't."
Tony raised his brows as he turned to look at the girl, but she wasn't done.
"She's ripped herself to pieces over and over again to keep others whole. When they grow tired or her, or get impatient, they throw the pieces of her back and leave her to try and stitch up the wounds on her heart. Anna is a patchwork of her former self, she leaves people better than when they came to her while she suffers in silence because there is no one here in this world that can understand the pain she's suffered through that still breaths."
"Do you always talk like that?" Tony grunted, using his back to push debris out of the way.
"Like what?" Ellie asked, peeking up from her knees.
"Like the love child of a fortune cookie and a therapist." Tony said, finally getting the door open. He took about six seconds to feel proud of himself, then looked over at Ellie. "Hey, you comin' or not?"
Ellie looked longingly at the door, but shook her head. "No...No, I should stay away from...people."
Tony rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "You're really going to make me leave you here?"
Ellie nodded. "I'm a lady, not a baby bird. I'm tiny and quiet, but I have a loud scream, a temper that can boil water and a pretty good right hook...Or, I guess, that's what Anna tells me." She said, pushing herself to the wall and straightening up a little. Her brown eyes were strong while the rest of her body was scared, and Tony figured she'd do fine.
Ellie watched Tony walk away, and continued to gnaw on her lip. Her hands gripped the opposite wrists, and she felt the lines along them. Looking through her cracked glasses, Ellie stared at the door and waited for someone to come through. She was both anxious and excited.
If no one came, she wouldn't feel guilty.
If someone did come, they'd see she wasn't meant to be stuck on an estate upstate.
The pang of guilt and sadness Steve was hit was strong enough to leave him defenseless. Anna gave him a good hit to the face, then grabbed the front of his uniform and hurled him around to the floor.
"He was all I had, Steve!" Anna yelled, her voice echoing off the metal. "He was all I had and he trusted you to make sure he came back to me!"
Steve could recall easily 15 different times Anna had insisted, for hours, sometimes, that Steve was the last person at fault for Bucky's death. He was so shocked, he couldn't defend himself from the metal bar, from a broken shelf, Anna hurled at him. He managed to hold his arm up against it, and it hit his forearm with enough force to leave a big bruise.
"I-I'm sorry," Steve managed to say, looking up at Anna from the floor.
She rolled her eyes and gave him a sharp kick in the ribs. "Get up."
When Steve didn't move, she kicked him again. "I said, get up."
Steve got to his feet slowly, holding onto the pipe Anna had thrown at him. "I'm sorry," he said again.
Anna scoffed. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" She asked him, she got an empathetic look in response.
"After the war, I went home with nothing, Steve." Anna said, her voice was angrier and harsher that Steve had ever heard it. "I had a whole in my heart the size of Europe and nothing anybody did could make it better. Bucky never let me feel so alone, and I had to go from hearing his voice every night to hearing nothing at all."
Steve opened his mouth to say something, but Anna spun on her heel and gave his gut a hard kick, sending him stumbling back into the shelves.
"They named a medal after him, you know," Anna said harshly. "The Barnes Cross, yeah, they awarded it to him the year after he died on his birthday."
Steve got nailed in the face again. He just took the hits, which only made Anna angrier.
"I had to get up and go to Washington, take the damn thing and say something like 'I'm sure he'd be honored.' If Bucky had been alive for that, he would have laughed in the president's face."
"Yeah, he would have." Steve said under his breath, finding the mind to block Anna's next punch. "He should have been alive to laugh in his face."
"And whose fault is that?" Anna asked sarcastically, grabbing another section of shelving bar, this one longer than the section Steve currently held. She swung hers, and Steve raised his own section to counter it.
"Wanna know what I did on the ten year anniversary of his death?" Anna asked, grunting at the end as she swung her bar again. It hit Steve's with a clang.
"Went to the cemetery."
Clang.
"Loaded a gun."
Clang.
"And put it under my chin."
