Well, I'd like to start by welcoming you all to the other side! I hope you all liked the conclusion of last chapters! Thank you to all of you who left reviews on it! It's great to hear from you guys! Seriously, thank you! Know that anytime I read one of them I squeal (both internally and externally). It truly make this whole process so worth it knowing you guys are enjoying it just as much as me! THANK YOU! 3 This next chapter will fill as a connection between Captain America and Iron Man. I can't wait to be able to play with Tony's character and build his relationship with Rose. Tony is by far my favorite character and a HUGE part of Rose's life. But they won't share a pairing. (You'll come to understand why). As always, I acknowledge that I have no rights over any Marvel character. I own my OC and her alone. With that being said, I'll let you guys read on and see what happens to her next! Xoxo-NickyLynn
After all the events that transpired, Rose was left a hollow shell of the woman she once was. There was no joy nor wonder in her life anymore. There was just fear. Fear of the powers lurking within herself….and fear of the people who would wish to use that power for themselves. She was terrified to fall back into Hydra's hands, but she was also scared of her own government wanting to use her for their own devices. Use her….or, lock her away so she couldn't hurt anyone else. So, as far as the world was concerned, Rose Elizabeth Rogers died in a tragic hospital fire on March 2, 1945. From then on, Tessa took her place in the world. It seemed only fitting to base her name off of the device which turned her into this monster in the first place.
Tessa didn't know what she would have done without Howard Stark. He took her in, set her up with an apartment and helped keep her hidden from the world. He had felt responsible for her, knowing she had no one else to look after her. He was her only connection to the outside world. He would make sure she had enough food and supplies, as she avoided the general public as much as she could. Once she felt more in control of her powers, she did begin wandering down to the store every so often, or went to see Howard in his home, but she did her best to disguise her appearance every time she stepped foot outside of her apartment.
Her hair was the hardest thing to hide. She had tried dying it several times, only to find that the color wouldn't hold and would end up just washing right out. Which meant she had to resort to cutting it short and keeping it tucked under hats and sometimes even wigs. Time moved around her as she hide from the world. The weeks turning into months. The months turning into years. And before she knew it, the world seemed to forget about the Roger siblings and the war they played a part in.
The world grew brighter with hope as peace washed over the world once again, the Allies having subdued the German forces. Children laughed again and the world moved on into the future. Over the years, Tessa developed her control over her powers, testing them more and more as she grew stronger. She discovered that her powers and her emotions went hand-in-hand. The stronger the emotion, the harder it was for her to control her powers. So, she did her best to keep herself calm and controlled, slowly discovering the lengths of her abilities little by little.
It started with her being able to move objects. The blue energy, she found, could be focused down onto a single item and she could lift it into the air and move it around however she pleased. She started with small items. Pens, cups, light switches….those sorts of things, but the more control she developed, the larger of objects she tested her powers on. In the end, she could lift things as large as entire vehicles without so much as breaking a sweat. (Which turned out to be a rather helpful power as Howard would use her to help him during his projects where heavy equipment and machinery needed to be lifted or moved.)
The second facet of her powers that she discovered was the remarkable ability so teleport short distances. The first time it happened, she had damn near scared Howard half to death. She had been on her way to visit him, and when she had been walking up to his front door, something in her shifted and the next thing she knew, she was inside. Howard had been on his way down to open the door for her when she suddenly appeared in front of him in a burst of blue. He had let out a loud yelp, falling to the floor in surprise as she looked around, surprise filling her as well. "Well, that's new." She had said as Howard stared up at her in bafflement. She worked with her teleportation as much as she could, but it seemed that she could never jumped further than a few yards at a time.
She practiced with her powers as much as she could, honing her abilities until she was sure she had perfect control over them. Little by little, she began to feel more comfortable with her powers, knowing that she wouldn't cause another disaster like the one she had caused all those years ago. The emptiness in her slowly began to fill back up with small bits of happiness as Howard helped her traverse her new life. A life that she soon discovered might end up being longer than expected. As the years passed by, and the age began to show on Howard, Tessa remained unchanging. No matter how much time seemed to pass, no matter how many birthdays came and went, Tessa never physically changed. She remained the same, young version of herself that had been thrown through a war and altered by Schmidt's experimentation.
She was frozen in time as Howard moved along through life. He built himself an empire with his genius, erecting Stark Industries into something historical. He met and married a remarkable woman named Maria, and Tessa watched his life fold out in fondness. Though she and nearly everyone she knew had been handed a terrible set of cards in life, it was nice to see at least someone getting to enjoy life for what it was meant to be.
The day Tessa's life changed forever, and she knew she no longer had to stumble around life aimlessly anymore, was May 29, 1970. The day she greeted Howard's first and only child into the world. Howard and Maria had planned a home birth, and Tessa was more than happy to help Maria deliver her baby. So, she spent the majority of her time in their large home during Maria's last two weeks of pregnancy, waiting patiently for the baby's debut.
It was a Friday afternoon and Tessa was sitting across from Maria, the two women playing a game of cards to help pass the time. While Tessa was studying her hand, debating her next move, she heard Maria let out a gasp, causing Tessa's head to shoot up in alarm. She looked up to find Maria's wide eyes go from staring across the table at her, to fall to her lap in surprise.
"Contraction?" Tessa asked her in concern.
"I think this chair will need thoroughly washed." Maria commented, looking back up at Tessa with raised eyebrows.
"Your water broke?" Tessa asked, the cards in her hand falling to the table, instantly forgotten. Maria nodded at her, suddenly becoming nervous. "Okay!" Tessa said, shooting up from the table. "Let's get you upstairs and I'll call Howard." She said, reaching out and helping Maria up from her now soaked seat.
Tessa helped Maria upstairs to her bedroom before running back downstairs to the telephone. She quickly telephoned Howard, who was working at the SHIELD base, informing him that he had better get his ass home in a hurry. By the time Howard arrived, Maria was in the middle of full-blown labor. Tessa had been holding Maria's hand, coaching her through each contraction, but quickly let Howard take her place as he rushed into the room a frantic mess.
It was a long, intense labor. Maria would cry out in agony with each contraction, her head falling back on the pillow behind her in exhaustion as soon as they would subside. Several hours passed before Maria was fully dilated and ready to begin her pushing. Tessa looked up at Howard after she checked Maria's cervix for the last time, giving him a confirming nod. He drew in a deep breath before squeezing his wife's hand reassuringly.
"Alright, Maria. I'm gonna need you to start pushing, okay? Once you feel the next contraction hit, I want you to bear down as hard as you can." Tessa instructed the exhausted woman. Maria nodded her head in understanding, looking up at her husband nervously. Tessa could feel the muscles around Maria's pelvis tighten under her hand that rested on her abdomen and knew a contraction was building. "Alright here it comes. I want you to give me a big push in three…two….one." she said.
Maria let out a loud groan as she pushed with all her might. As the contraction passed, she drew in several deep breaths, trying to refill her lungs with oxygen. "That was good!" Tessa praised. "We're going to do it again with the next one, okay?" she said, getting another nod from the soon-to-be mother. Maria pushed with each contraction, her screams filling the room the further she pushed her baby through the canal. Howard's hand had gone nearly white in her tight grasp, giving her words of encouragement every so often as she worked through her contractions.
After several rounds of pushing, Tessa could see the top of the baby's head peaking through and couldn't stop the smile that pulled across her face. "I can see him!" she called up to the pair. "He's almost here Maria! This next contraction, I want you to give it everything you've got, okay? You're so close!" she said, getting herself ready with a clean towel.
The next contraction came and with a loud roar, Maria finished pushing the baby from herself. Tessa took hold of the small infant as he came out, helping guide him safely into his new world. The baby let out a shrill cry as the cold air hit him and Tessa quickly wrapped the thin towel around his tiny form. She marveled at the small creature in her hands for a moment before quickly moving up and carefully depositing him into Maria's awaiting arms. "You have a son." She breathed in amazement, looking from Maria up to Howard with a wide smile.
Tessa helped take care of the afterbirth, letting Howard cut through the umbilical cord, and cleaned Maria up as the new parents stared down at the child they had created together. After they had a few minutes with him, Tessa took him back into her arms. She cleaned him up using the bowl of warm water and quickly took note of his vitals and weight. After he was clean and wrapped in a cloth diaper, she gave herself a minute to hold him and actually let herself enjoy the moment.
He was so small and fragile that Tessa was afraid one wrong move would injure him. He weighed barely anything to Tessa's inhuman strength. Considering she could easily hoist up hundreds of pounds, his mere eight pounds were nothing to her. But he was strong and beautiful and most of all….healthy (something she was so incredibly grateful for). She stared down at the tiny bundle and was struck with the realization of just how innocent he was. He knew nothing of the dangerous world he was just made a part of and was completely defenseless to it. She stared down at his adorably pudgy face and in that moment she made him a promise. "Don't worry sweetheart." She cooed down at him, as she traced an index finger across his own miniscule ones. They stretched out and wrapped around her finger, making their small appearance seem even smaller against her one large finger. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Anthony Edward Stark. I'm going to be here to protect you….I promise."
It amazed her just how much one small human could alter her life so drastically. It felt like she had purpose again. She was determined to keep him safe. Her powers had once been a burden to her, but now she had a reason to be thankful for them. She was going to look out for him and should anything or anyone threaten his safety…well, God help the fool who would be dumb enough to even try.
Tessa spent the next years watching him grow from a baby, to a toddler, then to a boy. She would visit him as often as she could, dotting on him every chance she got, but she also knew she had to be careful. While Howard's success came with a lot of positives, the worst negative was the public attention he and, in turn, his family received. It seemed like everyone wanted to know the ins and out of the Stark family, which made it difficult for Tessa as she needed to remain a ghost. She was in and out of Tony's life quite frequently as a boy, but the older he grew, the more she had to pull back from his life.
Tessa knew that perhaps one day Tony would be grown enough to understand her secret, but until then and while he was a normal, reckless teen, she had to be satisfied with watching him from afar. Howard and Maria would give her frequent updates on his life, and she had to admit that she was quite proud of him. Tony was a brilliant kid. He always scored at the top of his classes, and it seemed that he had a natural affliction for engineering. In fact, Tessa had caught him more times than one dismantling his toys, curious about their innerworkings. She knew he was going to do great things like his father.
Speaking of his father….that was one aspect of Tony's life that Tessa was less than pleased with. While there was a part of Tessa that understood the demands his work required, she could also see the impact his time away had made on his connection with his son. He focused his attention entirely on his work, knowing that between Maria and the hired help they had would be more than sufficient to attend to Tony's needs. But Tessa could tell by the looks Tony would give Howard when he thought no one was looking, that he needed a father more than the world needed Howard Stark. But it wasn't Tessa's place to tell Howard how to be a father, so she bit her tongue and just looked out for Tony that much more.
As Tony continued to grow into a young man, Tessa worked with Howard on a few projects here and there, and while credit for her creations and breakthroughs were left to Howard, he began transferring a portion of the earnings they made into an account just for her. She tinkered around with small gadgets and medical devices, enjoying her small achievements, but it was when Howard had asked for her help with something more serious that she made something that she would regret for the rest of her life.
He had asked for her help with something SHIELD had been working on. Something that came in the form of a little blue vial. Something that she had already successfully created not once, but twice before. Something that only she knew how to create. Something that she should have never said yes to.
Howard had convinced her that recreating the serum for SHIELD was the right choice. And after all he had done for her through the years….well, she found herself saying yes easier than she should have. And that decision would alter both her and Tony's lives forever.
On the night of December 16, 1991, a mere week before Christmas, Howard and Maria took off for the Pentagon, set on delivering the finished serum. They never made it, though. There had been an accident on their trip. They struck a tree and both Howard and Maria were killed on impact. Or, at least, that's what the official reports said. Knowing what they had been carrying and given the lengths Hydra had gone to for the serum before, Tessa knew that what happened to them was no accident. They had been killed. They had been killed because of her.
When news of the 'accident' reached Tessa, she didn't take it well. Howard had been the last friend she had, and she had inadvertently killed him too. By the time she had reigned control back over her emotions, her entire apartment had been destroyed. She stood in the center of the decimation, tears covering her cheeks as she fought to regulate her breathing. While the pain of loosing Howard had been terrible, unlike the last time she had lost control of herself, she now had something more important to focus on than her grief. Someone else had also lost Howard and Maria. And compared to her loss, Tony's was greater.
While Tony was twenty-one now and by all rights a grown man, the death of his parents was still cataclysmic. Knowing Tony had no one else in his life worth any value, she shoved her pain deep within herself and steeled herself. She dried her tears and drew on the strength she knew Tony would need.
Tessa didn't attend the funeral. She knew there would be far too many familiar faces who would be able to recognize her in the crowd, so instead she waited until the mass of people began making their way out of the Manhattan estate after giving their condolences to the grieving young man. She lingered near the shadows, keeping her head down to avoid being recognized, waiting for her chance to talk to Tony alone. The crowd slowly dwindled down little by little as the hours ticked by, until there were no more than twenty people left in the house.
Tony had been drinking heavily throughout the night and by eight o'clock he had consumed more than Tessa thought possible. He became belligerent, yelling at anyone who tried to console him, and everyone had begun whispering about what a disgrace it was to be drunk at your own parents' funeral. It was when Tony stumbled into one of the food tables, falling over it and sending food crashing to the ground around him that Tessa had had enough.
She quickly pushed through the remaining crowd, who had circled around him in shock and came across Tony swatting the hand of someone away, as they tried to help him back up. "I'm fine!" he shouted, knocking the helping hand away. He pushed himself up before storming away a stumbling mess. The crowd began their whispering again as he retreated out of the room. Tessa let out a sigh before following discreetly behind him. She lost sight of him halfway through his trek through the large house, and it wasn't until she began climbing the staircase near the back of the house that she came across him again. He was sprawled out on the steps, groaning, and having a hard time standing back up.
As she came into view, Tony looked down at her before his lip raised in a sneer. "Show's over. You can leave now." He told her, his words coming out slurred.
Tessa's heart broke even more than it already was as she watched him struggle. "Oh Anthony…" she whispered, knowing just how broken he felt. She stepped up the last few steps that separated them before stopping above him.
"I said you can leave!" he shouted up at her, having given up at his attempts of getting back up.
"Yes, well, I'm afraid I've a promise to keep." She told him with a sad smile.
Tony looked up at her then, actually looking at her for the first time. "I…I know you." He said, his eyebrows pinched together. "How do I know you? Have we done it before or something?" he asked her, not being able to sort through his foggy brain.
"I'm your fairy fucking godmother." She said with a roll of her eyes, bending down to wrap her arm around him. "Now come on." She said, hoisting him back up onto his unsteady feet. She kept her arm around him as she helped him up the remainder of the stairs and into his bedroom. She dropped him onto the bed before turning and grabbing the small garbage bin from under his desk. She slid it onto the floor near the head of the bed, in case he needed to vomit and looked down at him with her arms crossed. "Are you okay?" she asked him.
He let out a laugh. "My parents are dead. How do you think I'm doing?" he scoffed. "You gonna offer your condolences now? Tell me how sorry you are?" he bit out.
Tessa bit the inside of her cheek. The truth was, she was sorry. So unbelievably sorry for the part she had played in their death. But she knew that wasn't what he needed to hear right now. "No, I imagine you're tired of hearing those empty words by now." She told him.
Tony then dropped back onto the bed in a huff. "What's that even suppose to mean?" he asked out loud. "My condolences." He said with a scoff. "It's a bunch of bullshit, is what it is. Those people didn't even know my dad. Shit, I didn't even know my dad." He ranted.
Tessa's heart clenched hearing those words. "Your parents loved you, Tony. More than anything, believe me." She told him.
Tony picked his head back up, staring over at her like he just realized she was still in the room with him. "Who did you say you were?" he asked, having a hard time keeping his eyes focused on her.
She licked her lips before stepping forward and helped him by slipping off his shoes as his head dropped back onto his pillow. "I'm a friend." She told him.