CHAPTER XII

"Tell me about your parents' accident."

Alvie looked up at the ceiling of her lounge and laughed. "You gotta be kidding me," she said.

The therapist, whose name she had not bothered to remember, turned his pen around in his fingers. She had, as always, made him a cup of coffee; as always still, it sat untouched on the table next to his chair. "Traumatic memories such as death of loved ones can become more painful the longer they sit and fester," he told her.

"Ain't that something?"

"You should talk about it. You might find it helps."

"It won't."

"It wasn't your fault they died, Alvine."

He wouldn't be saying that if he knew what I did to the brakes of their car the night they left and never came back. "Yeah. Sure."

"Your father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, wasn't he? Do you remember what that was like?"

"I try not to," she said curtly, sinking deeper into the cushions of the couch.

"And why's that?"

"I dunno, man. Take a guess."

The therapist sighed. "You're one tough nut, aren't you?" he said, closing his notebook.

"And you're a patronizing asshole. Is it the end of the session yet? 'Cause I've got other stuff to spend my time on, y'know."

"I'll have to put your lack of cooperation in the report," he told her, and Alvie gasped in fake shock. "The less you give me, the longer it will take for Ross to consider you mentally stable and eligible for parole."

"Whatever. You can show yourself out," Alvie told him, checking her watch. It was afternoon already; she had wasted most of the day being psychoanalyzed by some schmuck who cared more about his professional record than her actual wellbeing. Trust Thaddeus Ross to send her the most pigheaded psychiatrist in the country.

"KHAN," she yelled, as the shrink slammed the door shut behind him. The dog slunk into the room, having been sent away for the session due to the fact that he kept trying to bite the doctor. There was a piece of paper wedged under his collar, with Eva's handwriting on it.

Gone to the compound, will be back for dinner, love you xx

She wouldn't be back for dinner. She never was when she went down to the Avengers HQ. They're trying to steal her off a'me.

She shook her head. No, they're not. Don't be paranoid, Kennings. That's crazy-think. Ten points from Ravenclaw.

The phone rang before she could dwell on it any further. Only one person aside from Eva had the house number, so she didn't have to wonder who it was when she picked it up. "Stark," she said, scratching Khan behind the ears, "what is it?"

"Pep's out and I wanna tinker. See you in ten?"

"I'll be in the garage," she said, and hung up.

Of all the miraculous coincidences in the world, the most annoying of them had to be that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were living in retired, wedded bliss in the cabin whose land backed onto Alvie's own. They came round every other Sunday for dinner, which Alvie and Tony both quietly hated but were made to do so by their best friend and wife respectively. When those two were out, the ones once called Iron Man and Athena met up in Alvie's garage to play around with her car.

It was their baby. The bright red, convertible Karmann Ghia that Alvie had bought years ago, now, had been restored, reupholstered and entirely gutted and fitted with the kind of engine that would be more at home in a rocket ship, not to mention a few optional extras. Today Tony was fitting a vibranium chassis while Alvie worked on the radio, which seemed to be the only piece of tech that still managed to elude them. It kept tuning itself to Czech shipping forecasts, for some reason.

"How was therapy?" Tony asked her, from underneath the car.

Alvie looked up from the bundle of wires in her lap. "Why d'you care?" she asked.

"I'm a caring person," Tony replied, and Alvie snorted.

"It's bullshit. It's not even therapy, they just want me to jump through hoops until I'm legally sane again and they can take me off their babysitting list." She bit the plastic coating off a wire, wincing at the copper taste. "I'm not gonna give them the satisfaction."

"Don't you wanna lose the house arrest? Go out, see what's left of the world?"

"Have you met me?" Alvie asked incredulously.

"Right. My bad. Still, it'd be nice to have you round to dinner for a change." He slid out from underneath the car, pushed his welding goggles onto his forehead, and sat up. "I got a hypothetical for ya, doctor."

"Fire away, doctor."

He leant over her door, covering the gleaming red paint with grease. "Say you got a second chance," he began, drumming a screwdriver on her new cream leather upholstery. "At life, at… being a good person. But it meant turning your back on who you were, everything that you tried to do, whether you managed to actually do it or not - would you take it?"

Alvie narrowed her eyes at him. "Where's this going?"

"Just answer the question."

"I already got one," she said. "Years ago. I was on my own, I was happy on my own, and then all of a sudden I wasn't, and I had to choose whether to go back to being on my own and not getting involved or letting myself become a part of something bigger."

"And?"

"And I fell in love," she shrugged. "Which fucked me, as it does. That second chance was the best thing that ever happened to me. Shame I lost it."

"Shame," Tony echoed, as though he hadn't really been listening.

Alvie rolled her eyes. "Got qualms about retirement, Mr Stark?" she asked, and switched the radio back on. There was a burst of crackling noise, and then muffled voices started to break through. It wasn't Czech! That was a start. Instead, it was…

Russian. Merde. She turned it up to hear what they were saying, concentrating to translate –

Левиафан идет

LEVIATHAN IS COMING

Alvie shrieked, grabbed the screwdriver out of Tony's hand and plunged it into the radio. Sparks flew as it electrics burst, and a few garbled snatches could be heard for a moment before the whole thing died completely.

"What the hell was that about?!" Tony exclaimed.

"Turn it off! Turn it off!"

"It is!" Tony slid out from under the car and jumped in beside Alvie, grabbing her shoulders as she wriggled away from the car console. "Alvie, calm down – Alvie!"

"Make it stop, make it stop make it stop make it –"

"Kennings, I swear to God I'm gonna smack you if you don't shut up!" Tony shouted over Alvie's wails. He yanked the car door open and, with some difficulty, pulled her out and onto the garage floor. "You're okay! You're okay, you're safe. It's just a panic attack. Deep breaths. Hey!"

Alvie felt callused hands press into her cheeks. Tony's face, familiar as it had once been but older, tireder, stared at her with concern. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, clinging onto his wrists.

"Hear what? Czech shipping forecasts?"

It wasn't real.

But I could've sworn –

It wasn't real.

Tony probably couldn't tell the difference between Czech and Russian if it came through a crappy car radio –

IT. WASN'T. REAL.

"What happened to you?" Tony asked.

%

"Dad was crazy," Alvie said, twisting her engagement ring around her finger. "I told you that, years ago. Schizophrenic. They think that I, um – I got some of it – I'm predisposed to have paranoid, hallucinatory, and-or psychotic episodes at times of particular emotional distress. Apparently. And when the Snap happened in Wakanda, we – I lost someone. We all did. But…" She pressed her thumb against the ring. "I lost someone," she said again, quietly.

Tony nodded. "Keep going," he said.

"I'm still not 100% on what happened, but… basically, I don't think my brain wanted to accept that he'd just gone. I started thinking that someone had taken him. That there was this huge conspiracy, like a secret agency, and they'd taken him to get to me. And when that got bad, I started… seeing things. Seeing him."

"But you said you thought he was kidnapped –"

"I know! It don't make sense! That's the point. And when everyone else said he wasn't there, I thought they were part of the conspiracy, too. I got angry. And he said – or I thought he said – I had to stop them before they got anyone else."

"What did you do?" Tony asked.

"Nothing. They stopped me before I could. But they, uh, they hacked Athena, they could – they could see what I was thinking. It wasn't good. There was a big political thing in Wakanda about harbouring a dangerous political refugee – they said I was dangerous. They cut a deal with the States, with Ross – I didn't want to stay there anyway. Not without him. But they shipped me back over here, and I spent three months in a psych ward. I was still seeing him for the first three weeks. It took a month and a half after that for them to convince me the conspiracy wasn't real. Longer for me to start taking the antipsychotic medication. They eventually let me go home if I agreed to five years' house arrest with no internet access and regular therapy and psychoanalysis. I'd have agreed to anything to get outta that place."

Tony's face had remained the same the whole time she talked; calm, almost expressionless. Now that she had stopped, he sidled round next to her so they were both leaning with their backs against the car, and knocked his knee against hers.

"You thought you heard something," he said. "On the radio."

"Yeah. I don't want to be like that again."

"Fair enough."

Alvie sniffed. "Betcha wish you never gave me that internship, huh? Nobody wants a crazy person working for them."

"Oh," said Tony, "we knew."

Alvie stared at him. "What?"

"Stark Industries requires a full psych analysis before employment," he said. "Don't you remember that interview? With the doctor? And the charts?"

"Oh," said Alvie, "I thought that was, like, a Myers Briggs type thing."

"Jesus, no. We hire solely on horoscopes."

Alvie sniggered. "But you knew? You knew I was crazy and you still hired me?"

"Stark Industries isn't exactly known for the mental stability of its employees." He looped his arm round her shoulders and squeezed; an awkward, antisocial hug, but a hug nonetheless. "We've all got stuff going on behind the scenes, doctor."

"Right. Right. I know…" She wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving mascara streaked across the cuff. "So – what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Tony sucked air through his teeth. "Pep," he said. "Pep is… pregnant."

"OH MY GOD!"