Chapter 24
I was drifting at the check up with Bruce.
"Hello? Val?" he asks.
"Huh? What?" I shake myself awake.
"Tony… Tony needs to tell you something important," he says, his eyes dark.
I felt a burst of possibility in my heart, but when I saw Bruce's glance over to Tony in the corner I knew this was pre-practiced and was not a spontaneous burst of news.
"Okay," I say, and let Tony come over and sit next to me on the check up table.
"Val," he said.
"Yes?" I ask, studying him. He had worn deep lines into his face from not sleeping, partially from nightmares and partially for looking for Pepper. I was of little use to the search team, being that I only knew about public, generic technology instead of the private, specialized technology required for searching.
"Well, um, the people at SHIELD wanted me to, uh, tell you that, uh," he looked at me, eyes filled with sorrow and sadness.
"What? Spit it out!" I was nervous, for Tony never stuttered.
"They wanted me to tell you that they are going to stop searching for Steve and Pepper soon because it is becoming obvious that they will not be found until Loki wants them found," he blurts out.
"What?" I am dazed.
"And they want us… to try to… move on, and not… be as held up on it as we are now, so that we can focus on stopping Loki," he said, his voice angry.
"What?"
"They want us to just let it go, let them go, let them die, okay, Val? They're going to stop searching for them in a few days," Tony says, his voice cracking a little.
"What?" I say, my voice not making the sound.
I stand up and walk away, towards the balcony to think. I rub my belly unconsciously, and start to cry a little as I stare out the window.
But then I look around and see the room where we trained. I see the place where I fell off the building. I see where we first met. I see the couch where we had sat numerous times.
And it is too much for me.
I fall to the ground, flaming a bit I think.
Before I black out, I hear Tony yell, "Val!"
And I am forced into a dream.
I open my eyes and my head hurts.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the bright lighting. I'm standing on a thin, iron bridge that extends from the metal walls to an island in the middle of the room. To either side of me is an abyss that falls down about 100 feet to a hard, metal ground.
I rush down the bridge to the island, seeing someone on it. As I get closer, I know exactly who is on the metal island: Steve. Learning this, I run faster and faster to him.
As I get closer and closer, the air in the room seems to get thicker and thicker, like a thick fog has overtaken me. It's hard to breathe.
I run anyway.
Finally, when I am about to reach the island, I can't go any farther. This is ridiculous. My arms can extend out to the island, my feet just cannot move another step forward because I am so slow.
This isn't fair. "STEVE!" I cry out, trying to get him to come save me.
My feet can move forward one step.
His hand twitches slightly, reaching out for something. "Val," he murmurs softly.
"STEVE! HELP ME!" I shout out.
I move forward two more steps.
"Hmm," he murmurs, his eyebrows curving downward, as though he was thinking hard.
I cry out repeatedly, trying to move forward. Nothing works.
"Steve, please, help," I whimper, from my position stuck in the fog. I don't have enough energy to move backward and try to leave, so I'm stuck.
He makes a noise that I had never heard before. It sounds strangled, like a whimper almost.
I can suddenly run forward.
I race over to him, almost knocking him off his gurney. "Steve," I whisper, stroking his hand softly.
I was waiting for him to burn, to burst into flames, to kill me, to make me wake up from this paradise.
In some ways, this was the worst nightmare.
"Val," he sighs, smiling slightly.
"Where… where are we?" I ask timidly.
His eyes are closed and he looks as though he was asleep, but I knew that it was a drugged sleep; I could tell by the IV in his arm.
A nurse walks down the bridge towards the little island, with no trouble at all. She stops at Steve's IV and changes out the liquid that was running out of drugs. She then moves on to Pepper, not noticing me.
I know that I probably won't get anything else from him, so I just stroke his cheek softly, whispering a goodbye.
Then my paranoid instincts kick in.
I look around for any marking that would tell me where we were. I knew that I couldn't go back across the bridge without suffocating, so I searched for pens with logos, blankets, addresses, anything.
After a few minutes of searching, I find nothing and rub my forehead.
"God," I say. "What is the point of my being here with nothing to find my way back?"
I look up to the ceiling, like I am talking to Heaven, and then I see it!
The three triangle logo.
We were somewhere in the heart of Hammer Advanced Weapon Systems.
I know I am drifting, I can feel myself not focusing in. I struggle to find a pen, find something to help me remember.
I see a pen and grab it, drawing a big H on my hand.
With that, I drift out of the metal room and out of the dream.
I start to sit straight up, but am restricted.
I'm still in the living room, but I'm strapped down to a gurney.
"What… what's going on?" I shout out, not seeing anyone.
"Val…Val! You woke up! Fuck, don't ever fucking do that again!" Tony shouts at me.
"Wha… what did I do?" I asked.
"You collapsed onto the floor, almost splitting your damn head open, might I add, and caught on fire, almost killing yourself by burning a hole in the damn floor. Did… did you want to fucking die, Val? Come on," he cussed at me, not angrily, but worriedly.
"Why am I on a gurney?" I asked, confused.
"Oh," Tony said, starting to unstrap me. "Well, we had to strap you down on the check up table because you were thrashing around and almost fell off."
I blinked. "What?"
"You were yelling and thrashing around in your sleep," Tony explained.
I sat up. "What was I yelling about?"
He gives me a look. "The usual," he says.
Then I remember. "Tony…. TONY! TONY! TONY! TONY!" I shout, jumping off the table.
"What is it?" he asks, grumpily.
"I know… I know where Pepper and Steve are! I know! I know now! I KNOW!" I shout, jumping around the room.
"What the… don't you fucking mess with me, Valencia Summers, or I will whoop your sorry ass," he says, not believing me.
"No, you don't understand! I know where they are… I dreamt about it! They're somewhere at Hammer's building, I saw!" I shout.
"Why the… wait. Wait. You know, that might be legit," Tony said, half talking to himself.
"Let's go! Go get Nick Fury! Now!" I shout at him, already pushing the down button for the elevator.
"Well…"
"NO! NOW! NOW!" I shout, like a child throwing a tantrum.
"BRUCE!" Tony shouts.
"Yeah?" a response echoes out from the level below.
"Get up here, now. We have to go to SHIELD," Tony shouts, already in the elevator with me.
Bruce runs clumsily up the stairs, tripping on one.
"Come on, hustle!" I shout.
He runs into the elevator and we shoot down to the ground.
Chapter 25
"So, let me get this straight," Nick Fury says. "You think that Hammer has Pepper and Steve locked up for Loki?"
We were in a private warehouse owned by SHIELD. Natasha, Nick, Bruce, Tony, and I were sitting around a table talking about my dream. Clint and Thor weren't there because Thor was in Ohio with Jane at a convention and Clint was on a spy mission across the globe in China.
"Well, we have our reasons, Nicky. For one thing, Hammer was probably interested in surpassing Stark Industries, the leader of the weaponry market…" Tony started.
"Don't flatter yourself, Stark," Nick interrupted.
Giddy from the excitement and crazy from the lack of sleep, I can't help but laugh.
"And, to surpass us, he probably wanted something like the Tesseract. Loki probably promised him it if Hammer would be his headquarters," Tony explained.
A moment of silence filled the room.
"Well… I'll see what I can do," Nick said. "I'll be back in a second." He walked over to a corner and dialed someone on his phone.
We all sat around the table, not really talking. It was kind of like we were a band of misfits: Tony wasn't much of his self without Pepper, or I without Steve, or Natasha without Clint. Bruce was… well, not that talkative, anyway. He never really got into the Avengers.
"So, um, how's the baby thing going, Val?" Natasha broke the awkward silence.
"It's okay. Um, how are you… um, doing?" I ask awkwardly, nudging Tony to get involved in the conversation. He was lost in thought, fingers twitching as though he was writing.
"Yeah, I'm okay, you know, um, I bought a new condo, so… that was nice," she said, staring at Tony.
All three of us were waiting for some sarcastic comment about condos or something.
"So, getting back to the meeting, I just told your idea to the board members, and they agreed with me that there is a chance of it being legitimate… so we are going to look into it," Nick said, sitting down.
I almost squealed.
"But, we don't think we are going to take Tony or Val."
My jaw dropped down to the table. "What the fuck?" I asked. "I… I'm the one who knows where they are!"
"Hey, we want to take you two, and Lord knows we need to take you two, but you two are so… out of it, as they say, that they don't want to risk throwing away two of our three fliers, not to mention both of our two ways to defeat Hydra," Nick says.
I felt the need to vomit rising up in my throat.
"Where… where exactly did you hear that we were out of it?" Tony asks, trying to keep his anger controlled.
"Well, Bruce told us, of course," Nick said, in a DUH voice.
My jaw dropped again. I looked over at Bruce, who fortunately knew enough social skills to look away from my glare.
"Wait, wait, if… if Tony and I can pass a psychological exam… from a psychologist BESIDES Dr. Banner… can we come with you? On the mission, I mean," I ask Nick.
His face turned into a thoughtful frown, like I guessed something he hadn't thought of.
"I'll ask," he says. He retreats into the corner and calls the board again.
We are stuck yet again in a circle of misfits.
"So… um, that condo sounds nice, Natasha," I say.
"Yeah, it's all right," she says, getting up from her chair and starting to pace in the space behind it.
I turn to Tony, watching his face as he types into his iPhone, doing some equation.
He looks like a man searching for God, searching for something to put his faith in. He was searching for something to lean on in the storm, something strong and sturdy that would last.
He is certainly looking for Pepper.
Nick comes back over to the table, while Natasha keeps pacing.
"If you can take the test without showing signs of depression or suicidal thoughts or insanity," Nick says, looking at Tony, "you can go on the mission."
"The psychologist is coming when?" Tony asks, in a cocky, smartass voice that was known to the public as the real Tony Stark.
Nick gave him a look. "He is coming in 10 minutes."
Chapter 26
"What is your name?"
"Valencia Marie Summers."
The nerdy psychologist was only about 30 or 32. He had red curls of hair swept up on top of his head. He was tall and lanky, and had glasses that spanned his freckled cheeks. He looked a lot younger than he was.
"How old are you?"
"23."
The room we were in was cozy, in that it was a little small. A "mirror" spanned the left wall, but I knew that Nick, Natasha, Bruce, and the board members were watching me from behind it.
"Where are you from? Can you describe it?"
"I'm from Jenkins, Alabama. I lived in a trailer for 16 years, excluding the year I lived with Pepper in New York."
"Who do you consider your family? Why?"
"I consider my aunt, Pepper Stark, and uncle, Tony Stark my parents and Steve Rogers my husband. I said Pepper and Tony as my parents because my real parents are drug addicts and because I love Pepper and Tony the way you should love your parents. I consider Steve Rogers my husband because we are engaged."
"What do you mean when you say, 'the way you should love your parents'?"
"Well, my mom left when I was 7, and my dad was never emotionally or mentally there. In that way, my parents never loved me the way parents should love their children and, in return, I never loved them the way a child should love their parents."
The young psychologist gulped. "Has anyone ever assaulted you in a fight?"
"In a fight, yes."
"Did you ever feel the need to fight back?"
"Yes, because they were taking my groceries and money for the week, so I beat the shit out of them and they left me alone."
He gulped. I heard chuckles from behind the mirror.
"So you fought them back?"
"Yes."
"Do you ever feel remorse for fighting them back?"
"No."
"Do you ever feel remorse for anything?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"I feel remorse for two things: one, not coming to live with Pepper sooner, and two, not saving Steve."
"Steve?"
"My fiancé."
"What happened?"
"A hydra took him to Hammer Tech and to Loki."
"Can you describe Tony Stark in three words?"
"Sure. Wait, that's not one of the words." I rub my nervous, shaking hands on my pants. "Sorry, I'm just nervous."
"It's no problem."
"Okay, um, phew. I would describe Tony Stark as smart, loving, and… funny. He's a really good person."
I imagined that they had moved Tony into another room with another psychologist.
"Hmm. So, what…no, how would you describe yourself?"
This was a hard question. "Well. I would call myself protective, insecure at times, and caring."
"Insecure? How so?"
"I'm… I've been told I was a terrible person so many times, it wore me down."
"Do you ever have recurring nightmares?"
"Yes."
"What about?"
"Oh, just small things. My mom, Pep, Tony, Steve, my baby."
"Baby?"
"Oh, I'm pregnant."
He gulped again, sweating a little. "Uh… um, congratulations."
It's a good thing Tony didn't have this guy; he would call the guy insane and that he needed the psych.
"Thanks." I smile.
"What happens in these dreams?"
"Fire."
"Why fire?"
"I… uh, you probably know me better as Arson, or whatever they call me," I say.
His eyes show his connection. "Oh, yeah. Okay, so why are you scared of fire?"
"Just because I'm the only one who will survive it without pain, I guess."
He scribbles on his little notepad. "Okay, you're done. It was nice to have met you, Miss Summers."
"Thanks," I say, and the metal door in the corner makes a POP sound, letting me know that it was unlocked.
Chapter 27
Tony came out of his room a few minutes after me.
"Hey," he says, a little too cockily, like he was hiding something.
I nod a sup.
We have to stand in the corner while Nick and the board go over our evaluations.
"Well," Nick says, coming back over to us. "Here are your results. You both are going, but one of you [he looks at Tony] just barely made it, so be careful."
"Thanks," I say to Nick and he lets us look over our results.
Name: Valencia Marie Summers Age: 23 Gender: Female
Diagnosis: some insecurities, slight violent tendencies, sleep deprivation
Overall suggestion: serve with some limitations
I smiled at the psychologist across the room.
"Damn," Tony mutters, done reading.
"What? Let me see," I say, taking the paper from his hands.
Name: Anthony Edward Stark Age: 46 Gender: Male
Diagnosis: narcissistic personality, violent tendencies, sleep deprivation, passionate
Overall suggestion: serve with caution; serve with team
"You did a good job. I got serve with limitations," I say.
"Well, that's because of," he gestured to my belly.
"How do you get 'serve with a team' and be called 'narcissistic'?" I ask, changing the subject.
"Maybe I'm just special," Tony says, extra loudly.
"Don't flatter yourself, Stark," Nick called across the room.
"Back at you," he whispered, just for me to hear.
The board members all left, along with the two psychologists: Tony's psychologist was a big man who looked suspiciously like Chris Christie.
"So, before we start planning, we need Thor here," Natasha says.
"If Clint is available, we could call…" I start.
"No, his assignment is not something he can just drop," Nick says. "Here," he hands Bruce his phone. "Call Thor."
He goes into the corner to call him.
"Listen up, you two. I am not going to have you drop out on us when we need you the most. If we are going to have you on this mission, we need Bruce to stay over at the penthouse to babysit you. Every day, he is going to report on everything you did all day and all night. Think of it as… house arrest. We are going on the mission in two to four days, depending on when Thor can get his ass back in New York. I need both of you two go home now and we will have a plan meeting tomorrow. Go," he points to the door.
Tony and I walk out, Bruce following us.
I get in Tony's 1950's Chevy truck first, followed by Tony and Bruce. I have to sit in the middle of them in the front seat as there is no back seat, just a small space between the bed and the back of the front seats.
Right after everyone gets in, I feel the pregnancy vomit coming up my throat. I push Bruce, who immediately gets out of the car after seeing my green face. I run over to the bushes and let it out.
Tony comes over and pulls my hair back as I release last night's dinner into the grass.
I feel terrible.
We get back in the car, and I am exhausted, as usual. I lean my head on Tony's shoulder while he drives and almost fall asleep, but then the tip of the nightmare comes and I shake myself semi-awake.
"Val," Tony says. "We're home."
I wake up and walk into the building, into the elevator. I hadn't done this in several months, only on days when I had to go grocery shopping.
We go upstairs and Bruce announces that he will cook for us, so we sit on the couch and pretend to be happy because we know Bruce will report any signs of sadness, or depression. We watch the news, and let Bruce bring our food over to us, and we eat and joke with each other, like nothing is wrong, like Pepper is in the bedroom getting her pajamas on and Steve is in the bathroom.
The time approaches 9:00 and I am growing more and more sleepy, so much that I can hardly stay awake… or pretend to be happy.
Tony quickly catches on, and says we are both going to sleep.
We walk back into my bedroom, where I fall onto my bed, almost asleep. Tony is tired too.
The last thing I think before I go to sleep is that something is off.
I dream the usual dream, Steve, Pepper, Tony, the baby, and I burning to death in a fire. But this time, when the flames are normally so intense that I wake up, I keep on sleeping, even though I try to wake myself up. The flames subside and it is just me left, standing in a field of ashes, all alone. I try to rebuild everything with the ashes, but when I get close, the wind blows it away. One time, the wind blows so hard that it shows three bleached white skeletons on the ground, along with a tiny one.
I realize who they are and I blow away with the wind and join them.
I wake up in a cold sweat, wanting to scream but keeping it silent. I get up from the bed and run into the bathroom to throw up, and I know what is wrong while I puke.
Bruce drugged me.
Tony is there a few minutes after me, holding my hair up while I let loose the spaghetti and noodles that was my dinner.
Finally, I am through, and I lean back against the cool tile of the bathroom wall next to Tony.
And I begin to cry.
"Hey, hey, Val, don't cry," Tony said, his voice crackly from sleep. He reaches his arm around my back and rubs my shoulder.
"I'm… I'm so… sca…scared, Tony. I'm… I'm affffraid that Steve is dead. That I will never… ever… see him again," I say, leaning against Tony.
He pauses, trying to think what to say to respond.
"Well, Val, there is a huge chance that they are," he says. "I don't know what else to tell you."
After this, we sit there quietly, leaning on each other's shoulders.
I sigh, and stop crying. I stand up. "Bruce drugged me last night," I inform Tony as I wipe my eyes with the back of my hands.
"I know," Tony sighed. "I saw him do it, and told him if he put it in my pasta I'd put an overdose in his."
"What? Why? He'll report you!" I yell softly at Tony, going to punch him lightly.
"No, he knows not to," Tony said, staring off into space, thinking.
I shrug, and walk out of my bathroom and bedroom into the hallway. My eyes are still bleary and I still feel tired, even though I've slept the longest time in months. I stomp past Bruce's door, to alert him that someone is awake. I run swiftly into the kitchen and find the sleeping pills in a cabinet.
A door opens. I pull out the pill bottle.
Someone is walking down the hallway. I struggle with the childproof cap.
"Hey, Val," Bruce says from the living room.
I pour the drugs down the trash disposal.
"What're you doing?" he asks.
"Oh, I just found these drugs in the coffee mug cabinet and decided that, since no one was using them, I'd just get rid of them," I say, giving him a glare that says, "I know what you have done and, quite frankly, I'm pissed."
"Wait! Wait! Wait!" Bruce runs over to the sink to stop me, but I already turned on the disposal which would crush the pills into tiny crumbs.
"Oh, where they yours?" I ask innocently. "I would label them next time. Maybe you can get another prescription."
Bruce gives me an angry look, his eyes shifting into a slight green. He walks away.
"We have a meeting in five minutes."
