Chapter 18

Salem had only just clutched the keys to the dark Kawasaki Vulcan motorbike before Tony was calling her.

"What do you think you're doing?" He said as he appeared on the inside lens of her sunglasses as she tried to find a helmet that would fit her. He looked worried and annoyed at the same time, nothing out of the usual for him. "I hope you're not doing what I'm thinking you're gonna be."

"Depends on what you're thinking, Dad," She plainly said.

"You have a helmet built into your suit, you know," He said.

"Do I?" She touched the medallion, thinking of what she wanted and the suit accommodated her needs, creating a full motorbike appearing around her head. "Cool. I need to go."

"Salem, don't," He started. "You're not a hero. You don't have to help him just because he's a kid. He can handle himself."

"Yeah, a kid, Dad," She said, sitting on the dark motorcycle as she turned it on and had the garage door opened. "Which I am too then. We are both kids who are doing your job because you decided that keeping the city safe was not worth your mental health and resources. Some of us can handle a bit of stress a bit better than others."

"Rude. Some of us have better things to do than go after every little bad guy that thinks they can get away," He said. "Look, I don't want you out there risking everything to just help Peter. He's a superhero, you're not."

"Yeah, never said I was a superhero. End call," Salem said, starting the bike properly before speeding out of the compound and onto the roads of upstate New York.

)()()(

As the energy blasted out of the weapon Spider-Man was able to web down to the floor, Medusa got onto the ship, letting her hair turn white as she scanned the whole place within seconds.

Comms connected, she heard everything on his end.

The weapon core had sent out rays that slid through the metal of the ship, almost cutting it in half completely. It barely missed the passengers as they went to other sides of the ship as they realised something was happening.

"Oh, my god!" Spider-Man panicked. "What do I do?"

"Karen, show him the strongest points of the boat," Medusa calmly said, running towards the area where Spider-Man stood with the piece of machinery still with its glowing, purple core.

Medusa pulled the webs away from the weapon, quickly getting hold of it and absorbing the energy. She dropped the now useless machine onto the ground as she cracked her neck and felt the ever-present thirst disappear for the time being.

She liked the fact she didn't hunger for energy, hunger for fuel so she could use her powers without limitations. This little weapon held so much compared to electricity, compared to what she had felt before.

She had to take a breath to prevent herself from craving more, a deep desire to find more energy, more to power her like a power-hungry villain.

She froze as she felt the gush of water over her boots, hearing the too familiar sound of water. As the water began to pool in the nearby area, it touched her feet. While she couldn't feel it through the suit's boots, she knew it was cold, ice-cold and she hated it.

"You doing alright?" Bucky asked through his comm from the compound. "Your heart rate increased."

"Yeah," She flicked her head to the right as a way to get out the need and desire to get away from the water. She started for the centre of the car hold. "Just a mild panic."

"Because of the water?"

"Yeah,"

"HYDRA had Sabrina Stark for several months, torturing her, manipulating her, hurting her for their own gains," Bucky started. "I've never known Salem to panic in cold water, to let what happened to her be a thing that prevents her to do things she wants. And I very well know that Medusa refuses to let basic instincts such as fear take over her reasoning."

She hummed in amusement at his encouragement. "So, action on, panic later?"

"You can panic all you want later," He grinned. "Get shit done, Delinquent. LIve up to the little title I gave you. Create some chaos while you help Spidey get this ship together. I'm watching."

"Roger that, Sargent," She saluted, taking a step in Spider-Man's direction as he tried to web the sides of the ship together. "Keep that up, Spidey! Get them closer, as close as you can. I need to find a way to bind them."

"Can't you do something faster?" He asked, struggling to hold the web together as he held on with two pieces in the middle.

Medusa rolled her eyes, clenching both hands into fists before touching the pinky sides together as her hands began to ooze the purple mist that sometimes accompanied her abilities if she used physical powers. She clicked her tongue bar against the inside of her teeth, getting the satisfying metal tink before raising her hands up.

The two sides of the ship began to float back together, settling down right next to each other with each clink and crack of metal being forced to move. S

"Sort the passengers!" She said firmly, letting Spider-Man go and do something useful as his webs weren't much help in keeping the ship together.

Going from where she was, Medusa ran towards the split in the ship.

After she got a good speed, she made herself trip as a way to slide across one of the slides and let her hand heat up. It turned white-hot as she pressed her fingertips into the areas of already melted metal, almost welding the two pieces of the ship slowly as she slid across the length of the ship.

She got to the other end, standing up as she slowed down and saw the Iron Man suit flying right at the end.

Medusa grinned, showing teeth as she waved her fingers before sprinting down to the lower level to continue the soldering.

"I'm almost done with the top levels," Iron Man said, connecting her comm to medusa's when she allowed.

"Yeah, just finishing up. Got a passenger with me,"

"Who?"

A yapping sound came from her end.

"A dog," Iron Man said. "Only you."

"Bringing them up now,"

)()()(

"Dad!" She whined as she was picked up bridal styled by the Iron Man suit right after everything was finished.

"Be quiet," He said. "We can discuss this later. First I need to speak to Peter about all of this shit."

"Tried to stop him,"

He sighed. "I know. You even helped him out when you didn't need to. I'm going to have to disable his authorisation of the proxy agreement for now. I can't have him doing stupid shit like this anymore. While I scold him, you are going to stand there quietly."

"Fair," She held her arms up as the suit kept a steady pace as it flew towards the building where Peter, now without his mask, sat on the ledge.

Tony landed, putting Salem down gently before she suited down and was back in her previous outfit of leggings and a shirt. He watched as Salem climbed down the ledge, going onto the walkway with the metal fence before leaning on it as she allowed them to speak.

"Previously on Peter Screws the Pooch," Tony started. "I tell you to stay away from this. Instead, you hacked a multimillion-dollar suit so you could sneak around behind my back doing the one thing I told you not to do."

Peter turned his head to the tiniest degree. "Is everyone okay?"

"No thanks to you," He said. "If Salem wasn't there, or if I didn't get here in time, most of those people would be in the water. How many do you think can swim?"

"No thanks to me?" Peter shifted, getting off the edge and approached the suit with anger fueling him. "Those weapons were out there, and I tried to tell you about it. I tried, alright? But neither you nor Happy nor Salem listened to me! This could have been prevented if you had just listened." He paused. "If you even cared, you'd actually be here."

Salem scratched the area behind one of her ears, looking away as she saw the sudden change in her dad's mannerisms.

The Iron Man suit opened, revealing him as he stepped out of it and marched towards Peter with disappointment and determination. " I listened, kid. I called the FBI. Do you know that I was the only one who believed in you? Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a fourteen-year-old kid, perhaps I was."

"I'm fifteen,"

Tony made a gesture with his hand, mimicking the zipping of a mouth. "This is where you zip it, all right? The adult is talking. What if someone died? That would be on you. You would have blood on your hands and you would constantly be thinking of things you could have done differently."

"You let her do whatever she wants!" Peter said, waving a hand over to Salem who was a couple of feet away. "She's barely older than me yet she gets to do all this cool stuff with her powers and you never scold her for it!"

"Oh," Salem said, grinning mischievously. "I'm gonna be scolded after this. Don't worry. There's a big difference between us, though."

"What? What could be the difference between me helping and you?"

"I know what I'm doing," She simply said, coming forward to stand in front of him. "I know the damages I can cause. What works and what doesn't because I have had the training. I've been taught and I've been tryna help you figure this shit out without you hurting yourself or others."

"You locked me in a car!" Peter snapped, stepping forward but Tony stood between them quickly.

"Salem, why did you lock him in a car?" He asked, watching as her features softened.

"I got him out of the storage vault and we were on our way back into DC," She said softly, keeping her voice even as she looked down. "He asked how could I know of having blood on my hands if I hadn't been doing anything in the last couple of months. He presumed since he hadn't seen me in the press or media, I was sitting on my ass while I could have been helping. I started to have a flashback so I left the car, making LILITH get him back to his hotel. Bucky had to come to get me."

Tony nodded, clasping a hand on her shoulder as he guided her away a little. "Go back to the compound. Barnes is still there. Take the bike back with you. I don't want to see a dent in it!"

She put her hand on his which still laid on her shoulder, squeezing it before activating her suit again and letting her hair go white once more. "Got it, Pops."

Salem walked to the edge of the ledge, jumping off with ease and without fear.

)()()(

Tony Stark came back to find his almost sixteen-year-old daughter drinking a bottle of beer in pure daylight. He plucked it out of her hand, looked at the cheaply brewed piece of shit before dumping it down the drain.

She pouted, only smiling when Tony went through the cupboards and found his stash of good quality beer before giving her only one bottle.

"You're not getting anymore," He said, taking one for himself as he sat down in the living area of the compound. "I'd rather you drink at home."

He leaned back on the couch, hearing that Salem sat somewhere across from him on the other couch. He took a swig of the beer, letting it calm his nerves.

"What happened?"

Salem made a face. "What do you mean?"

"What happened to you during the time HYDRA had you?"

She laughed without humour, taking a couple of gulps from her own bottle. "We're gonna need more than a couple of these."

He glared at her for that comment, but it faltered before he rubbed a hand down his face and scratched at his goatee.

"Where am I supposed to start?"

"At the beginning."

"Took me wherever it was I was held, stripped me, scrubbed me clean, tried to take my bracelet and watch but couldn't, and then I met Niver, he carved and branded me like cattle with the HYDRA insignia," She said, laying down on the couch until only one leg was touching the floor and the beer bottle was balanced on her stomach. "Niver said he was going to be my handler, and I saw him the most. After putting me in the same machine that wiped Bucky's memory, I pretended to have no memories. LILITH told me she didn't know where we were, and since she couldn't, FRIDAY didn't know where I was either. I made a plan to try and topple HYDRA, as Starks do."

Tony shook his head at that. "Build empires and topple regimes, yeah. What happened after that?"

They told her so many lies, so many falsehoods, so many fibs that she had to stop herself from rolling her eyes every time they commented on Tony, on Steve, on Natasha, and the other Avengers.

But they told her of her supposed origins.

November fourteenth, two thousand, there was a massive power outage in the USA, and the source came from a single hospital in New York City. The energy was strange, taking everything that could be converted into more energy before expelling everything useless.

It seemed like reality shifted on itself, taking and taking everything that could be used for energy and fuel before expelling a single life form, a little baby with a tiny note that simply said, Sabrina Andris.

"They told me of my origins and told me many more lies on top of that."

"I hate WATER!" Salem snarled as they pulled her head from the ice bucket they were shoving her face into and letting her half drown. "Will you stop—"

The agent sighed, dunking her head into the water and holding it there as she struggled and screamed in anger into the water. It made the water bubble as she wiggled in her restraints, hands shackled behind her and ankles together as she kneeled on the ground before the bucket.

— "Dunking me in it! Goddamn it!" Her hair clung to her face, most of it in a ponytail but pieces flew out with each dunking. She shook her head like a dog to get the water out of her face. She swore in Italian as she was allowed to sit back on her hunches again.

"Cut her hair."

"They tortured me when they realised I didn't forget. That plan fell through early on," she took a swig from her bottle, grimacing at the taste but still swallowing it. "Water. They dunked my head under cold water a lot, holding it down. Niver had them cut my hair. I was bald. Can you imagine me bald? It wasn't that bad actually. Niver introduced me to a girl named Lily."

Lily was barely ten and had the ability of changing her appearance. She stayed the same age but she could change everything from her hair, eyes, skin, to her height, voice, and mannerisms. Lily could change everything about herself.

After letting both Lily and Salem talk to each other with the supervision of their handlers, Salem was asked to try and mimic Lily's ability.

Mr Niver gave her a little shock with a small taser, giving her energy.

She did as asked, changing, morphing her appearance to look like blonde, brown-eyed Lily but an older version of her. She then changed to look like a younger version of Mr Niver before becoming herself again.

Lily clapped and showed joy for sharing her gift, stopping in the middle of her clapping with a splutter of blood coming down from her right nostril. She lifted a hand to touch it, seeing the blood and suddenly lurching forward.

Salem shrieked.

"I screamed and freaked out as I saw Lily's little boy be shot and killed in front of me," Salem said calmly. "It was the first time they killed someone in front of me, but it wasn't the last. The last was a young boy."

"What use is a girl with a conscience?" Niver complained, activating the gloves and sending pain through her. Salem only flinched, still holding the gun at the boy's head as he whimpered and pleaded. "Kill him."

Salem didn't want to, more because he told her to than her actual remorse for the action. He had to command her several more times, eventually taking a sharp, curved knife and slicing the boy's throat.

"Shoot him now or let him suffer," He said.

She kept her eyes on the boy's beautiful jade green eyes as she pulled the trigger without so much as a flinch for the recoil. She didn't react as Niver took the gun from her and praised her, her face remaining emotionless as it was expected of her.

"I killed him with a shot point-blank between his eyes," Salem looked away. "I killed him but I don't feel guilty. I have displaced the blame because I did it under duress. Those gloves Niver gave me, they hurt. They still hurt even if they're gone. I still have trouble wearing my gloves. Even with the help from Bucky, I still can't stand wearing them unless I have to."

Salem sat up, holding the empty bottle between her knees as she leaned forward with her head hanging. She rubbed at the back of her neck as memories came back to her, most she remembered, some she recalled vaguely.

She flinched when she saw Tony get up from his couch, coming over to her instantly and sitting down next to her. He wrapped one arm around her, letting her decide if she wanted his embrace or not.

She leaned into it, leaning into his head as she put her head on his shoulder and felt him tuck her under his chin.

"Without my gloves, I don't have powers," She said softly. "The stronger, more extravagant the abilities I use, the more energy I need as fuel. I have the anklets that allow me to have a small energy source but it's not enough anymore. The more I use, the more I need. I can't stand wearing my gloves unless I have to."

Tony rocked very minutely, barely but enough to lure Salem into a shallow slumber just as he used to do when she was younger and fussy. He rocked gently, keeping the rhyme slow as he moved. Leaning back on the couch, he found a lying position that allowed her to sleep comfortably as he began to work on a new design.

That was how Bucky found them a couple of hours later.

Tony was asleep too, Salem laying on his chest and using him as a pillow as one of his arms was curled protectively around her. Duke had slithered in, sleeping around one of Salem's hands to have some warmth. Tony's arm was thrown above him, relaxed yet semi alert even in his sleep.

Bucky took a blanket, pulling it over them before taking the tablet Tony was working on and placing it on the coffee table.

Both Starks cracked an eye open, brown and grey, neither staying awake for long before they burrowed closer to each other. They found comfort in each other before drifting off again.