…
I Hate Real Life!
KEY
Italic – Thoughts in general
Normal text inside Italic text paragraphs -
"(speech inside brackets)" people saying whatever they are thinking to no one in particular.
Bold Italic – Someone reading something
In an Alley on the same block as The Apartment
It was finally dark.
Despite herself, Leona had fallen asleep; waking up to find hours of precious darkness had passed already.
However even with a head start, tracking the boy was laughably easy.
… Grr
Crossing busy roads with a malfunctioning charm was decidedly not.
After much contemplation and pacing, she finally decided to just wing it, to take the gamble.
Because the Lord knows that she had taken enough risks already, what with following in her father's footsteps.
…
Grr… when would the traffic lights change anyway?
Natasha's Dream
Natasha was in a large white room, she recognised it though, even though the walls being such bright, clean white was a novelty for her.
The Red Room
Of course as soon as she thought it, red ink started scrawling across the walls.
And behind her she heard someone breathing.
… The Nightmare was beginning again
This was the bit she hated.
Accepting the inevitable, she slowly turned around to face whatever tragic soul she had killed.
And was quite surprised that instead of a shambling zombie or a burnt out corpse (those were the worst because she didn't even know who they were) she was faced (or not-faced, he was turned around) by Tony the unicorn.
Who seemed to be trying to paint the walls red, with magic. (Which did explain the red colour on the walls)
It wasn't going so well, he was trying to move a brush around with his magic, dipping it hastily into a paint bucket then moving it against the wall. The trouble was that that he didn't seem to have any control over it at all. While Natasha watched the paintbrush's handle actually ended up jabbing Tony in the face.
That seemed to be the final straw and with a cry of, "stupid magic!" and a flash of blue magic, he threw the whole paint bucket at the wall.
Natasha sidestepped a bit to avoid the majority of the resulting splash. She followed the paint's progress as it flew across the room to splatter just about everywhere.
When she glanced back to Tony again, he was gazing expectantly and while his face showed limited emotions, she could tell he was happy to see her.
"Hey Natasha wanna help me paint?" came his eager greeting.
She just crossed her arms and gave him her best dead-panned, think-about-what-you-just-said look.
He considered the floor and then the roof, both were splattered with red.
"I guess I overdid it with the red, huh?" he thought-spoke sheepishly.
"I've got other colours though," he gestured, with a hoof, to several other pots of paint she had only just noticed, "What do you think we should paint?"
And suddenly there was a paintbrush in her hand. She gazed at it and felt the soft clean bristles in her hand and let memories come to the surface.
It had been one of her undercover missions; she had gotten the closest she could have gotten to a friend that time.
Her friend had taught her to paint over the several weeks she was undercover; they had started with simple things like a bowl of fruit and then progressed to more difficult subjects like people and a cat that lived next door to the art studio.
In the end, when the mission was over and the bad guy was dead, she had painted a black widow spider and left it where her friend would find it, as a sort of goodbye.
How on earth had the unicorn known?- oh wait, stupid question.
Tony was still waiting for an answer; but she just smiled and started painting, using some light strokes of yellow as sketch lines.
He trotted over to her and started painting too; this time without magic, instead he opted for manoeuvring it with the paintbrush between his teeth.
He didn't need to ask to work out what she was painting.
And while he was only capable of the most basic shapes with the brush (what with it being in his mouth and all), together they slowly and carefully formed the colours into shapes and they in turn came together to form pictures of the Avengers, of everyone the Widow had in her life (and in her heart).
Tony left at some point while she was painting Thor's cape, but that was okay with Nat, she was okay, for now at least.
Stark/Avengers Tower
Pepper was still awake, she knew she shouldn't have been, it was late, but she just needed time alone to mull over things.
She knew she was getting pushed out of the picture here, maybe it was because of all the inhabitants of the Tower she was the one least able to look after herself in a dangerous situation. Even DUM-E could handle himself if there was a frying pan nearby.
But Tony was her boyfriend.
Stupid Steve, she thought before she checked herself; it wasn't his fault that unicorns were stupi-stuck up, or that Tony didn't remember anything at all.
She heard the clip clop of hooves from outside her door, and the door was pushed open by a brown muzzle. Tony then came in doing, what came be only said as tiptoeing, except with hooves. However as soon Tony say that she was in fact a wake he gave a soft nicker and abandoned his sneaking (which he had been failing at btw).
"Hey, you should be getting some sleep," came his rather strange greeting, it was obvious that he wanted to ask why on Earth she was still awake.
Pepper thought about the absolute absurdity of the situation; Tony Stark, who could never be convinced to just take a break from whatever project he was working on to sleep, had been turned into a unicorn and was now concerned about other people not sleeping.
The situation was laughable, but it just made her want to cry.
It probably showed a lot on her face, because Tony tilted his head like a confused dog and thought-spoke in a concerned voice, "Is something bothering you?"
When she didn't answer he walked closer looking into her eyes, they still looked human…
With a sob, she leaned towards him and holding his neck, she sobbed into his shoulder.
Tony stiffened somewhat, it seemed that he hadn't expected that, even with mind reading power (she at least had listened a bit) then he rested his muzzle on her shoulder.
She was enjoying the moment when, who else but the dragon strolled in.
Her ever present jingling orange harness was the only source of noise from her as she inspected a rubix cube that she seemed to have picked up somewhere.
In the silence Pepper let go of Tony and wiped away her tears. The dragon was completely unaware of her presence and was still looking with absolute concentration at the rubix cube.
So silence went unbroken, until the dragon pronounced loudly, "Hey Tony, I was just under an air duct when I heard this low keening noise, so I opened the vent cover, stuck my head in and who do I see? The stupid idiot with the sun glasses curled up in some blankets having a nightmare… I felt sorta sorry for him… Gah! I must be scarier than I think-"
Pepper interrupted her just there, "No you just remind him- remind all of us of someone very unpleasant"
Indiana reared up and slammed back on her haunches, wings half unfolding and her head hitting the roof. The rubix cube went flying until the dragoness snatched mid-air with her mouth.
The whole thing was quite a comical move actually, but left huge scratches on the ceiling, walls and floor in its wake.
Pepper crossed her arms with a disapproving glare, "Are you going tell me why you are still here?"
Indiana pawed slightly at the ground, dropping the now wet cube into her paws.
She stammered a bit, obviously worried about being caught out and what that would mean, "I- I just- and- nd-"
She whined a little bit, shifting paws in an uncomfortable fashion and then tried again.
"I didn't mean to- I know I shouldn't have-," before looking up at Pepper, pupils dilated into huge orbs of fear, like a puppy that was being scolded.
It was then Pepper remembered that she did in fact have only her pyjamas (which Tony had given her, so they didn't really cover much, at all) on.
Opps.
Slowly, and hopefully casually, she went to draw the covers over her. All while meeting the dragon's tragic gaze, which slowly turned confused as Pepper grasped for covers that weren't there anymore.
There was then a period of awkwardness until a munching was heard from the other side of the room.
Both she and Indiana glanced at Tony munching away at the covers, before Pepper noted, as she grabbed her pillow instead, "He's hungry."
A monotone "Yep," was Indiana's only reply.
"You can get food for him?"
"Yep"
"Then you can stop him from eating the blanket"
"Yep"
Pepper wasn't happy with the one syllable answer the dragoness was giving her who was watching in morbid fascination as the equine/bovine consumed the cloth, "What's wrong?"
"He's eating the covers," turns out even dragons are not immune to the need to point out the completely obvious once in a while.
Tony paused in his munching, "Oh, I'm not allowed to eat this?"
After a quick stop over at the kitchen (they {Indiana} asked JARVIS for directions, Tony was excited when he found out there was another 'being' in the Tower, but he could not understand any of what the AI said, to both their disappointment), not before they dealt with the sunglasses guy's nightmare (Indiana had ended up needing to use magic to get Tony up to the archer and down again), they went to the last Avenger on their merry midnight nightmare hunt, Captain America.
Indiana actually knew a bit about Cap and she had seen him in action a few times. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone, for reasons that were her's and her's alone to know.
They reached the door, which was closed. Indiana watched as Tony stared intensely at the door handle.
"You could just use magic," she sighed.
Tony only huffed in annoyance.
"Ok fine, this one's an easy one, all you need to do is push down the metal bit sticking out," she explained, demonstrating quickly then reclosing the door.
Delighted to be actually able to beat the puzzle (albeit with help) Tony proceeded to open the door, nuzzling the 'handle' down until the 'door' opened.
And with a soft, "Goodnight, it was nice talking to you," he disappeared into the darkness inside.
And as much as it would have be courteous to, she didn't respond.
She had just realised something; the unicorn could understand her without reading mind her first, and if the only creatures he had read were humans… where did that leave her?
As she flew over a night (but still bright) New York skyline, Indiana was so distracted thinking over this and what it could that she didn't notice the giant spider web in her flight path.
She turned slightly to go around the next corner she was yanked back by one of her hind paws.
For a few seconds she was hovering in the air as she continued to flap her wings uselessly, before she gave up and the web snapped her back and she was suspended upside down over the street.
"Who leaves a giant web around the place?!" she growled to no one at all, which she was glad of, with such an embarrassing situation.
She watched as small boy ran across the street below her, her eyes narrowing into slits as she saw the absolute fear that gripped him. She generally was indifferent to what humans got up to, but the thought that a child was in danger didn't escape her concern.
Within a few moments she resolved that she would follow the kid just to make sure he was alright.
With that decided, getting out of the spider web was the next step, she looked up to the paws she was hanging from and sighed.
She was so busy trying to get out of the web that she didn't notice the blond lady silently stalking across the street, hot on the boy's trail.
But the dragoness froze when a scent, out of place in such an urban environment (and nowhere near the zoo or anything), reached her nostrils, Lion?