So...

I saw Endgame.

That's why it's been so long. I've been getting my thoughts and feelings in order.

There will be no Endgame spoilers until it comes on DVD, even though Marvel has lifted the spoiler ban. Please do not put spoilers in the comments.

It will be fixed, though (Endgame was a wonderful mix of amazing and horrible). That's what fanfiction is for.

And a reminder (or just to let you know if you didn't) Elle has seen every movie up to Infinity War. Infinity War and everything after she knows nothing about (she will eventually, though (and if you read Ripples, yes, it will happen similarly)).

Chapter Twenty One - Friday, Part Four

"You've been pretty quiet," I said as I helped him pack up another box. "What's on your mind?"

Tony said nothing.

After leaving the Parker's apartment, we returned to the mansion and began going through Howard's older junk and war memorabilia in case Steve and Bucky might eventually want them.

Tony still didn't respond, staring emptily into the box in front of him.

I paused. "Tony?"

He didn't look up.

I got up and approached him, sitting down across from him on the floor.

"I can't read minds, Tony," I reminded him. "Can you give me a peek of what you're thinking? It's probably wrong."

He snorted, but also finally met my eyes. He continued to stare at me for a bit while his finger twitched.

"Fine!" he snapped out. "I'm thinking about how this is really nice so far, but it won't be long until you leave. Everyone leaves."

"Tony, if for some reason I do need to leave, I'll always come back to you," I told him. "You're a Fairy now, and we stick together. Even if we need to separate for a bit, like we do now."

He did look pleased at that, before he deflated and asked, "What about if you die?"

I paused. This was something I hadn't really planned on telling anyone, but if it would make Tony feel better…

"So, about that..."

Tony was completely, one hundred percent okay with this.

If anything, that was what was odd with this picture.

But every time a new worry popped up, Elle found a way to dismiss it.

He knew that JARVIS wasn't very happy with a random person coming out of nowhere with all of this knowledge, and Tony didn't really blame him. From an unbiased perspective, it certainly seems ridiculous, and like he shouldn't trust Elle.

But the more time he spent with her, the more he trusted her.

If anything, it was because she was so genuine.

When she was joking, she could barely keep a straight face before she'd bust out laughing. (Even earlier, when they'd been at the gala, he's pretty sure she was only able to keep a straight face because of the surprise appearance of a prince).

And even more than that, she was fine with so many things, with so many of his quirks; things that bothered even Pepper or Rhodey. And she had offered Tony to make her costume because she said she might think he'd want to, but she was also completely prepared to make it with Virgo on her own. The only thing she actually asked him to make was smoke bombs, and Tony had no problem making those, (though that was mostly because he didn't want to see Elle try to make them through DIY YouTube videos, if they even existed. He felt some horror over the fact that what he felt was probably akin to what Pepper and Rhodey feel when they try to prevent him from going on a blackout drunk inventing binge).

And another odd thing was how easily she could read him. The only reason he was even slightly okay with that was because she was also so easy to read.

And now she had gotten rid of his biggest doubt, just like that.

Everybody leaves. Rhodey goes back to the Air Force. Pepper had threatened to quit when he started Iron Man. Happy hasn't said anything, but he'd probably leave with Pepper.

He had thought that it would only be a matter of time before Elle was gone in the wind, like the others, or dead, like everyone else.

Jarvis. Yinsen. Howard and Maria. The Commandos were getting old, and Peggy had called him 'Howard' the last three times he'd visited.

People leave.

But he felt on top of the world after hearing Elle's solution.

"Wow, I think we're done," Elle said.

Tony looked up. Sure enough, the whole room was a hell of a lot neater than when he first came in, and most things were now in Elle's requip space.

"Come on," Elle said, squeezing his shoulder. "Let's go eat some cookies."

That was another thing. Elle was pretty touchy-feely. But he really didn't mind. It was good, actually. Tony had always liked touch, but after Obadiah, he not only didn't want to feel human skin, but not even human pressure, like something as simple as a hand on his shoulder, or someone leaning against him.

Elle had a way of expressing comfort through hugs. She had told him previously that it was mostly because she was touch-starved in her first life that she became so 'huggy'. It didn't feel restraining when she did it; it felt comforting. The way it feels when he'd hug Lila Rhodes, or even Peter, earlier. Kids are easy to be around; innocent. He doesn't need to worry about a kid gaslighting him, or having a lot of ulterior motives. Most of the time, they're just in awe that he flies around in a metal suit, and they don't care about his past or his reputation or his problems. Iron Man is all they care about, and it's nice how kids can be so nonjudgmental.

Well, some of them.

"How much sugar are you having?" Tony said incredulously, following Elle out of the study. "You're going to get fat."

"I'm eating for two," Elle snapped, before pausing at the edge of the doorway. "Hey, is there anything else you want me to take? Like for you?"

Tony's mind immediately jumped to the amount of embarrassing old memorabilia he had in his closet. But he didn't need Elle to take that, he could smuggle it out with his own stuff, if he really wanted it. But there wasn't really anything that he'd want in the house, except...

"How much can you fit in your requip space?" he asked hesitantly.

Elle tilted her head as she stared at the piano. "Yeah, this'll fit, no problem. You want me to bring it with us?"

Tony nodded, keeping his hands in his pockets so she wouldn't see him fidgeting. "Yep."

There was a layer of dust over the keys. He had told the cleaning crew to leave the piano untouched.

The last person who played on it was his mother.

But she was gone. And she would've preferred that it was played on than hidden away. He had still needed to order a new grand for his Malibu house, but when JARVIS had given him options and he hesitated, considering this trip to the old Mansion, he knew that he didn't need to buy a new one.

It was time it was played again.

And it was time he moved on.

He loved his parents. Despite all of his father's flaws, and his mother's depression, and odd spurts of life in between. But their deaths wasn't his father's fault, and if what Elle said about the footage was true, then their last thoughts were for each other.

And Elle and him were going to destroy HYDRA anyway.

So he was starting to be okay with that.

"Yeah," Tony said, more firmly this time. "Let's take it with us."

Elle smiled at him, and requipped it away.

The big empty space where it used to be didn't feel as big as he thought it was. Instead of a gaping hole, an empty maw, it was more like a clean slate.

Yeah. It was time to move on.

"Hey, Tony?" I asked, sitting next to him.

We were outside, sitting next to a fire I had lit with Mars, and roasting marshmallows. Tony was working on a heater in the patio that connected with the pool, having it warm up for me, having suggested a warm swim when he learned that I didn't need to watch out for hot water like normal women in their first trimester, as my control over Mars and Neptune made my body immune to any adverse effects.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Are you wearing the palladium reactor?"

He froze and looked up at me. "…Maybe?"

"Tony!" I said, crossing my arms. "I thought you were going to wear the new one during the day!"

"I do," he conceded. "Like…every other day. Sometimes I just forget to switch it out, and considering that I'll be actively getting sicker until my last appearance a week from tomorrow, when I announce it, I've decided that I should go back to the palladium reactor for the week. Only the week, though."

"You're a moron," I said, putting a hand to my forehead before tapping his shoulder.. "Venus's Cleansing Light."

Tony glowed gold for a second before it faded. His eyes widened as he took a breath. "Woah, what did you do? And that wasn't Saturn."

"That's because I didn't heal you," I answered. Tony pulled up at his shirt and looked at the palladium lines, which were still rather long. "I just took away some of the pain. It's not permanent, and it won't last through tomorrow, and while I'm able to help take away some of it, there's parts I can't. For instance, the reactor blocks some of your lungspace. I can't get you more room to breathe, but I can take some of the restricting pain away. But I'm not that good at this and I can't do it often."

"Why not?" Tony asked.

I shrugged. "That's not what the spell is made for. That's the type of spell I'd use to exorcise someone who's possessed, or under a dark spell. But I went over my spell repertoire awhile back, and me and the rest of the Stellar Siblings decided that this one was the best for this type of situation."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Stellar Siblings?"

"It's a thing," I said, sighing. "The magazine Sorcerer Weekly liked to do spreads on the guilds, and they gave us all nicknames. Actually, we can probably use about half of them for superhero names."

"What was yours?" Tony asked.

I sighed. "Ugh, can we discuss this at another point? I said that we would have to change about half of them."

"I'll get the story out of you eventually," he said, switching tools and pausing, before he looked back up at me. "Elle? What is it? You're staring."

"...You sure you're okay with being out here with me?" I asked him. "I know what happened in Afghanistan, I get it. I understand the lasting consequences of that…"

"What do you mean?" Tony asked.

I looked away from him, but my mind was elsewhere. "My hair has always been long. It was a part of me. If I ever changed it, I just made it longer. Whenever we would go to a ball, or a party, it would just get curlier. Cancer – you met him, Lucy's Zodiac spirit with hair-cutting magic – and would always complain about me never letting him do something different. And there was an ongoing joke in the whole guild that I hated bangs. It managed to look good on the other characters, but after one bad haircut in my first life…anyway. People liked my long hair. Others would grow theirs out so we could have braid trains on movie night. Things like that. It's a weird thing, but some of us bonded over longer hair. Lucy has always been like a sister to me, and she grew her hair out to be like me and her mom."

My mind was in my memories now. "But then, my own Afghanistan happened. I nearly escaped several times, actually, but my captors deliberately went for my hair rather than anything else. And they'd throw me around with it. I hated my hair for a bit after that. I cut almost all of it off when I got back to the guild. It was even shorter than yours, more of a chick-buzz cut look than anything else. And it was weird for all of us."

I was quiet.

"What happened?" Tony prodded gently.

I smiled. "We have this annual parade, where we perform magic and tricks. That year, I decided to add songs. Laxus and I danced and fought off fake monsters, and we practically threw down a gauntlet for dark guilds. It had extra significance because they broke my legs so I couldn't run away-"

I almost missed Tony's look of horror. "But after time with Phoenix I managed to get healed up in time. So we grew my hair out again for the performance. And while I would still tense up when people were behind me, sometimes, I also slowly adjusted back to normal."

I turned back to Tony. "I'll always be sensitive with my hair. And if I ever get kidnapped again, the first thing I'll do is probably sheer it all off if I can. But it's a part of me, even if it took a bit to come back. I don't know what water was like for you before, Tony, but I wouldn't be surprised if you loved it. You have a pool, and you also live on a private beach in Malibu…" I trailed off. "So, I get it. But if you don't want to be out here, that's fine. I can swim once you go to sleep."

"No, it's fine," Tony said. "In fact,-" he took a deep breath and toed off his shoes, moving carefully to the shallow end of the pool before putting his feet in.

"Tony, you don't have to do this," I stressed to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I know," he told me, slowly sitting down. "I want to. It's just a little water. Just…a little…water."

The water was up to his knees now, and though he was tense, he very slowly started to relax.

"If you're sure," I said, and very, very slowly walked into the pool. I let out a sigh of relief at the hot water. "Oh, this feels very, very nice."

I waded over to Tony's side and folded my arms on the wall next to him, resting my head on them and kicking softly as I stayed in place.

"So," I asked him. "The sun has set. We've had an interesting day. We've reached witching hour-"

"It's like, nine," Tony scoffed.

I rolled my eyes, before they rested on someone else, and I froze as I stared at the person behind Tony. "What the fuck, it's hasn't even been a week!"

Tony turned his head to follow my gaze. "Uh…"

"Sir, I do not understand the readings I am picking up!" JARVIS announced from Tony's phone. He was not as connected with this house as he was with the Malibu house, so he's mostly been a silent watcher on Tony's phone.

"That's because it's a thought projection," I said. "So it probably gives off magical energy but not any heat. Now, seriously, it's hasn't even been a week."

Macbeth winced. "Sorry Dawnie. There were some…complications and I thought you might want to know."

"Yeah," said a voice, and Erigor faded into view next to him. "So…" he drifted off, staring at me. "No fair! We're stuck with these HYDRA asshats and you're in a pool?"

Tony snorted.

Macbeth rolled his eyes. "If Dawnie wants to relax in a pool, she should get to. You're the one who wanted to go undercover."

"Beth," Erigor whined.

"Eri," Macbeth mimicked.

Tony laughed. "Erigor and Macbeth, right?" he asked, pointing at them for clarification.

They both nodded and were quiet, before...

"…hi," they said in unison, awkwardly.

"They have bad social skills, ignore that," I told Tony.

"Hey."

"It's true," Macbeth shrugged.

"Anyway, what's the problem?" I asked.

"We ran into Erik," Macbeth said, sighing.

I straightened and used the water to pull me out of the pool so we were face to face. "That shouldn't have happened." Tony got up behind me to see what the problem was.

"We know," Erigor said, serious for once.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"We did the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing," Macbeth said. "It got us stationed somewhere else, and it also made us acknowledge that we'd be seeing other 'Fairies'."

I grimaced. "What did you have to tell them?"

"We decided we would wait to see what happens," Erigor said. "So far, it's just that we come from a different universe where there's magic, and we're probably not the only ones who came over."

"I'm planning on breaking in soon to get Bucky," I admitted. "Tony and I spent time testing metal so it was strong enough to resist Bucky's strength, so he won't break the room we put him in. And I'll be going in disguised, and I'm going to try and pretend that I don't actually have magic; I'm using Noir's staff."

"Smart," Macbeth nodded.

I nodded. "I'll teleport in through the air shaft or something, and I'll focus on an element or two, make me seem specifically skilled in them, one for each end of staff. If you can, tell them you don't recognize me and that, despite the timing, you think I might be using the Fairies' arrival as a cover-up because I didn't actually use magic."

Erigor nodded. "We can do that."

"What two elements?" Macbeth asked. "Jupiter and Saturn?"

"I was thinking Mars, actually," I admitted. "HYDRA are enemies I'm fine with using some of the more violent spells on. And I can save what my best elements are for ones that I actually find 'difficult' so I'll stick to using Mars and maybe Venus for now."

"You should keep the spells silent, if you can," Tony pointed out. "If you use the name of two planets, they might catch on that you can do other planets, too."

I nodded. "Good thinking."

"I think that covers most of it," Macbeth said. "We should be good."

Erigor nodded. "And we mostly wanted to see how you were doing?"

"I have a question or two," I said. "First, do you guys have any problems astral projecting?"

They exchanged confused looks and shook their heads. "No, no not really."

"Alright," I said, sighing. "Can one of you astral project to Laxus and tell him to send a Thought Projection my way? Sometime in the evening, New York time, or California time if he's going to be longer than two days."

"Sure," Macbeth said. "Is that all?"

I nodded, and Tony waved. "Bye!"

And they were gone.

"Huh," Tony said.

"No, this is good news, actually," I said, before turning and falling backwards into the pool. I raised the water up to catch me before I could create a splash or have my back hurt from a back flop.

"Show off," Tony said.

"Absolutely," I said. "My first life I had no powers. This time, I will take full-out advantage of it."

"It's like you use it for everything," Tony said, sitting back on the ledge.

"It's honestly like a muscle for me now," I admitted. "Like how you have that tic where you need to keep moving your hands. Like how someone bounces a leg when they're sitting down. My magic is just casually manipulating the air around me, and when I do something like with the water, it's like the difference between bouncing a leg and then getting up and pacing for a bit. If I don't use magic, then I start to get antsy. It happens with all of us, actually."

Tony sat there, thinking and moving his feet slowly while I floated peacefully.

Tony broke the peace. "What did you mean about having trouble astral projecting?"

I floated in silence for a bit longer before I said, "Freed thinks that because I died the first time around before jumping universes, I have some trouble keeping my soul tethered to my body. So I can't astral project very well, or very long. Macbeth and Erigor don't have trouble, though, so it's probably just me. Probably because they already knew how to astral project before they died."

Silence.

I looked up from my floating to find Tony staring at me. "So, if you astral project…what, you can just die?"

"…Probably not," I said, shrugging. "That feels like a really big design flaw, and I doubt She would make a mistake like that. But I just feel really uncomfortable about doing it, so I don't. And it makes it a bit more difficult for me to access more magic from the Astral Plane. Anyway, that's why I asked them to contact Laxus. I can tell him I'm pregnant when he comes to visit."

"You are oddly non-chalant about certain things," Tony commented. "You said…you were what, thirteen during your Afghanistan? And they broke your legs?"

"I got over it," I said somewhat uncomfortably. "I healed pretty quickly and I moved past that. Generally, our more powerful guild members can only get caught by dark guilds if they get the jump on us. I mean, it does happen."

"Okay," Tony said quietly.

"Anyway, we should probably be getting to bed," I said, stretching and leaving the pool. "It might still be a bit early in the evening, but you've got the press conference for Pepper's promotion and I'm going to be suiting up in the morning."

Elle's a bit more like Tony than either of them realize. She doesn't realize how, despite how often she communicates some things, she still deflects others. (They'll realize eventually, though).

I've also had several of my readers who I've discussed this with say that I shouldn't actually reveal Elle's plan. Actually, I wouldn't have even wanted you guys to know there was a plan, but that's some of the problems with writing a fix it fic where the MC knows a bunch of things. As an author, for instance, I love things like Arc Reactor whump. But with Elle there, Tony's pain becomes real, and she has to try all the ways she can find to avoid it. (Same with FMA - I prefer when Ed and Al are on the road, traveling, even if Al has no body and Ed has his automail).

I'm on a long road vacation, so the updates should come in pretty often now! Next chapter of Ripples should be finished and up tomorrow, as long as I have Wifi!