Chapter 3

Over the next few weeks everybody, even Ali, noticed that something was different with Tony. He was hardly ever with them and looked way happier than usual. He even seemed to be eating breakfast and actually going to some of his meetings.

Pepper refused to tell any of them why Tony had become so different in the span of 3 weeks though her face always spread into a smile when ever anybody asked.

Ali's plan to do nothing was working. She tried as hard as she could to not behave differently when Peter was around, but it was hard. Really hard! Especially when most of the things he said to her were in stutters.

Maya was of course not happy with this but Ali trusted Maya not to interfere. Geography lessons soon became both her favourite and worst lesson. Favourite because she sat next to Peter and worst because she did actually want to get a good grade in her tests.

When she got home, she tried to distract herself from her thoughts of Peter. The mystery of Tony's happy mood was a good distraction, but she did often find herself daydreaming while watching the security tapes from FRIDAY.

She had started creating a timeline of where Tony went each day. The security feeds helped but the cameras in the lab had been destroyed and after weeks of them not being fixed Ali was starting to believe that they had been destroyed on purpose.

With her tablet in her hand and her already half eaten biscuit in the other Ali made her way to the elevator. It immediately started to descend as FRIDAY already knew where Ali wanted to go. She had been hacking into the protocols on her tablet and had managed to delete the one that forbid her from the lab floor before she reached the elevator.

She stuck her triple chocolate in her mouth as she started typing with both hands to try and find out who had set the protocol up. Tony was the most likely suspect since she was blocked out of his lab floor, but she knew that her mum could be too overprotective at times.

The elevator door dinged open and without even looking up from the tablet, Ali walked down the corridor before entering into Tony's lab. The door was closed but Ali didn't knock. Instead, she took her biscuit out of her mouth after taking a bite out of it. She was still staring at the tablet screen in front of her but knew that someone was in the room.

"Uncle Tony, I swear if you have not fixed the cameras just so that you can get away with being mean to DUM-E I will not be happy and will tell Aunt Pepper!"

"Umm... Mr Stark isn't here right now. But... I... Uh... can always leave a message."

At that Ali looked up. She didn't need to look up to know who's the voice belonged to. Peter was on the other side of Tony's work bench with part of an upgrade to what looked like her Mum's Widow bites in front of him.

He was fiddling with his hands and Ali lost her train of thought completely.

"Peter what are you doing here?"

"Well... uh... I am kind of Mr Stark's personal intern."

Several things clicked in Ali's head. This explained everything. Everybody knew that Peter was smart and that he was one of the smartest kids in the whole school, but she had no idea that he was this smart. Tony would not allow anyone who wasn't a genius touch or help with any of his projects without getting extremely frustrated at them. Most geniuses he knew he didn't get on with anyways.

Peter was making her uncle better. Tony was never sick, but he wasn't exactly healthy. He never got more than 3 hours sleep a night, was always obsessed with his experiments and only ate one proper meal because we all forced him too. Now he was eating more than just one meal and drinking more than just coffee. Ali couldn't say much about his sleep, but he seemed to rely on the coffee a lot less.

Ali smiled a genuine smile at Peter but before she could say anything more, she heard the elevator door open and the sound of Tony's footsteps. She hurriedly finished her biscuit before turning to Peter.

"You never saw me. I will talk to you about it in Geography tomorrow."

She didn't even wait for an answer as she jumped up onto the desk before removing a panel of the ceiling, climbing into the vents and then replacing the panel. She lay there for a few seconds to listen to the two below. Peter did as she had asked and didn't tell Tony anything.

To say Peter was surprised to see Ali was an understatement. He had been amazed when Mr Stark had offered him the opportunity to be his personal intern. He liked Mr Stark and one of his favourite parts of the week would be working with him in his lab. After the trip to the Avenger's Tower in Year 8 many had forgotten that Ali lived here. Peter hadn't but didn't take her as the girl to enjoy spending time in a lab so didn't think he would end up seeing her here.

When he first heard the elevator descend, he immediately assumed that it was Mr Stark returning with the snacks that he said he would bring, but the footsteps were to quiet and quick to be his.

To say he had memorised Ali's footsteps would sound extremely creepy, but he had started to notice the rhythm of them, though he was still shocked to see her as she rounded the corner and entered into the lab.

It was obvious that she was working on something on her tablet as she didn't even look up so didn't see him. Which was probably a good thing because he was gawking at her. She was wearing her hair down which suited her and framed her face in a way that made her look even more beautiful which Peter didn't think was possible. At school her hair was always up in either a ponytail or a French plait.

Hearing her call Tony her Uncle and Pepper her Aunt didn't surprise Peter as much as he thought it would. It made sense to him. When the trip had happened all those years ago, he had been able to train with the Black Widow and after fighting Ali a few minutes before it was not hard to realise that the way they fought was exactly the same. He knew that the Black Widow had trained Ali but didn't know what type of relationship the two had.

He had of course turned into a stuttering mess when it was his turn to talk but Ali's smile made his already amazing day, perfect. Her frantic entrance was not out done but her dramatic exit either. When Mr Stark came into the room a second after Ali had disappeared Peter just about managed to hide what had just happened. He had gained no answers to any of the many questions he now had in his head but was happy that she had promised to talk to him tomorrow.

The next day Ali woke up for the first time that year before her alarm. Since Peter had found out about Tony being her Uncle yesterday Ali now had a reason to tell him everything. Well not everything. Only about her family. Maya was the only one outside of it that knew about her powers and nobody outside of them knew about her past. Only Natasha and Daisy knew the extent of her injuries and only Ali knew that the actions of her first mum still plagued her. The past was in the past, but it always came back to haunt you and left you covered in scars. Nobody had ever seen the three massive scars on her stomach or the massive one that ran from the middle of her rib cage to the bottom of her heart. A millimetre higher and she would not have been sitting there in the kitchen eating her frosted flakes and drinking her orange juice.

What hurt Ali the most was that she had no idea what she had done wrong. She knew she must have done something wrong otherwise why would her first mum try to kill her? Did she only see death when she looked into Ali's eyes?

Ali tried to wipe these thoughts from her mind, but it was hard. They were always at the back of her mind and she could never fully shake them.

She left for school way earlier than she needed to but told FRUDAY to tell her mum that she had already left.

For the first time in years Maya wasn't there waiting for her at the bottom of the road that led to the school and Ali had to wait a whole 5 minutes for her.

On the rest of the walk to school Ali filled her in on all that had happened, and Maya was silently cheering to herself since she knew that there was no way they were going to get together if they only saw each other at school.

Form was extremely long and boring for both Ali and Maya. They literally counted down the seconds until they could leave for Geography but neither knew that the other was doing the same. The two sprinted to the Geography block and were the first to enter the room and sit down.

Ali waited impatiently for another 3 minutes before Peter arrived.

"Hey."

"Hi. Sooo… how did you get the internship?"

"Oh... uh... there was this competition for an internship with Stark Industries, but you would work at the Avengers Tower. I applied over the summer and got in. We had to build these robots out of some scraps, and I guess Mr Stark liked mine since, when the person in charge of the competition came in to assess them Mr Stark appeared and offered me an internship with him. Weirdly though a lot of music had been added to my robot."

"You made the BB-8 looking robot!?"

"Yeah... Why?"

"Well, I helped to update your robot with good music."

"My music wasn't that bad though you do have good taste too."

They had to both stop talking then, as their Geography teacher had started glaring at them. The rest of the lesson was spent with the two either passing notes or whispering to each other.

By the time the lesson was over Ali had managed to tell Peter all about her family and in return she had learnt a bit about his.

He had his best friend Ned who he was always seen sitting next to at break and lunch and he also had his Aunt May. Ali hadn't asked about his parents as she sensed that the story was not one to be talked about in the middle of a Geography lesson.

When she left the classroom, Maya started to help Ali break down everything he had said. Ali wasn't really listening though and was instead reliving the last hour over and over in her mind.

The rest of a day past in a blur which was mainly because she daydreamed though all of her lessons.

When she got back to the tower though she needed to clear her head, so she ran to her room before changing into her sports clothes, grabbing her headphones and running back to the elevator.

She was wearing a purple sports bra which was visible because the blue T-shirt that she was wearing didn't cover any of her shoulders and it was slightly too small. The sports leggings stopped just below her knee and had purple swirls all over them. She had left her trainers in her room because she was going to use some of the simulations that Tony had created for her so she would be better off without them.

Once she had reached the 4th door on the left, she opened it to reveal a small room with a punching bag in the corner of it and a small box of things next to it. This room had unofficially become hers since she was the only one who really used it.

Before she placed her headphones over her head, she asked FRIFAY to bring up simulation 17. It was her favourite one since it was the hardest one that Tony had created so far, yet she still found it pretty easy.

The music blasted through her headphones as she started to tape up her hands. What she didn't realise was that she was singing along to the song. Someone else did though.

Tony had asked Peter if he could go and grab one of the prototypes for the Black Widow's new taser from the main training area where he had been testing it the night before.

FRIDAY led him to the room and he quickly spotted what he was looking for by the door of the room so he picked it up. He was going to just head straight back to the elevator with it, but something stopped him.

It was quiet but he still heard the singing. It was the most amazing thing he had ever heard and was in tune with the song. She was singing Galway Girl and she sounded like a professional singer.

He went over to the door where he could hear her singing and peered in. Just as he reached the door the singing stopped and for a moment, he believed he had been spotted but when he looked through the window on the door, he could see her fighting several holographic men at once. What was weird about it though, was that the kicks and punches that she pulled didn't seem to go through the projections. She was still humming the song and after a while Peter started to realise that she was basing her moves on the beat on the song.

She would move to the beat of the song and attack them at the end of each bar. It was amazing. After a few minutes of watching, he realised that he was supposed to be delivering the prototype that he was carrying to the lab, so he quickly walked away so that he didn't make Mr Stark suspicious of where he was.

Ali knew the moment that the simulation started that someone was watching her. She knew though that they wouldn't be there for long and wouldn't dare enter. The last time someone had entered while she was in the middle of a simulation they had got kicked in the stomach by accident.

The fight was almost like a dance to Ai. She could hear the music in her head, and it helped her to plan her moves and when to attack.

After only 5 minutes the simulation stopped, and Ali was annoyed to find that she had already finished it.

It had done its job though. She had finally managed to mostly clear Peter from her mind. She decided to stay in the training room a little longer so started up some of the older simulations.

She returned back to her room to have a shower an hour later.