I DON'T KNOW YOU VERY WELL; I DON'T KNOW YOU AT ALL
BUT YOU REMIND ME OF ANOTHER GIRL WHO ALSO HAD POWER IN HER VEINS
SO I DON'T THINK I HAVE ANOTHER CHOICE BUT TO SAVE YOU
She wakes up with a gasp, the metal of the Mark 45 completely unfamiliar around her body. She's cold and shivering and everything hurts and aches and she can feel her repressor making a mark on her skin from where it rests in her pocket but the only thing she can think of his her brother.
"Tony," she calls out, the mask of the suit still in place, and she cannot see past the two slits for eyes, which should be lighting up with schematics and plans and numbers and values.
It's just dark.
"Jarvis," She doesn't realize how terrible her voice sounds until then.
In fact, she doesn't realize much until then. She had woken up groggy and highly disoriented and in her panic didn't realize that Jarvis wasn't online, didn't realize that the air is slightly cooler than it should be, didn't realize that wherever she is, it smells like apple pie, the kind of apple pie she hadn't eaten since Anna Jarvis passed away.
She wants to close her eyes. She wants to pretend that she's ten again when her powers didn't mean a single thing to anyone. She wants to pretend that Anna is still here, wants to pretend that she's anyone but Elizabeth Stark.
The reminder that Tony is in trouble gets her back up.
She tries calling for Jarvis again even though she knows it'll be futile.
Lifting her arm, which feels ten times heavier due to the damage done when her house blew up combined with the metal of the suit, she peels off the faceplate and tries and fails to rear in her scream of surprise when she sees the unfamiliar face peering down at her.
She crashes on the floor and groans in pain, the metal doing nothing to cushion her fall and she remembers all the times she saw her brother fall from greater heights in the suit and winces.
"Didn't know how to take that off."
The woman standing above her has long dark cornrows cascading down her shoulders. She looks a little older than she is, but her smile is welcoming and kind and she feels safe.
Elizabeth breathes a little easier, "Ya. I don't either. How did I…" she looks around the place to the best of her ability.
She's in a small little home, which looks cozier than any of the houses she's ever lived in. The furniture is clearly handpicked and the spontaneous colours, trinkets and photo frames indicate careful choosing and deliberate styling.
She likes it.
The woman fills in the blanks she has between falling off her blown-up house and ending up on the couch in this little house, "I found you on the ground a few miles away. Thought you were Iron Man. Didn't know what to do, but didn't want to leave you there. So I dragged you here. You've been out for a day"
There is a lot about that answer she doesn't understand, a lot that doesn't make sense, a lot that needs elaboration. A lot that scares her.
Strangely enough, she can only focus on one aspect of the response, "You dragged me."
"Hooked you to a car."
The girl looks at her suspiciously, and Liz wishes she could get out of this suit so that she doesn't have to be forced to stare right back as her mysterious saviour sizes her up, "You're supposed to be dead."
Liz shakes her head but the helmet doesn't move with her action so she ends up thudding the side of her head on hard metal, "No. My house blew up. I'm,"
She realizes that she hasn't introduced herself yet. Most people typically know who she is, but she hates being presumptuous until she's certain.
The woman knows, "Elizabeth Stark."
Liz is about to nod before she remembers the helmet and the throbbing in her skull, "Ya. And my house was blown up by a terrorist but the suit saved me and I need you to get a hammer and break me open."
She tries to sound as cheery as possible so that she doesn't scare away the only person that can help her and while the woman doesn't seem to want to run away, she does look nervous.
Liz explains, "You have to hit this chest piece," she indicates with her arms the round emptiness in the suit where the arc reactor should have glowed, "real hard so that the suit will open up and I will be free."
The girl nods and disappears, appearing moments later with a hammer in her hands. She raises the hammer and before she does what Liz instructed her to do, she pauses and says,
"I'm Monica. Monica Rambeau."
"Ya, that helped."
With one swing that hits the center of the suit, Liz is free and she can breathe. She stretches out her muscles in the middle of the living room in a house that's owned by this woman she's met for all of five minutes and she laughs.
"Jesus Christ that was crazy."
Monica gives Liz her arm and Liz accepts it thankfully, scrunching her nose at the pain she feels in her entire body. Pain is normal for Elizabeth Stark; she's felt pain every single day for the past seven years before she took her source of pain out of her body. This pain is nothing compared to the repressors.
"I need to get home."
Monica smiles in understanding and sympathy, "I would direct you to the nearest airport but it wouldn't be the best idea when there's a terrorist group after you?"
Liz nods, looking at the scraps of metal that is her best bet at getting to Tony. Then she looks at Monica, "How good of a mechanic are you."
Monica smiles at the suit as if she won the lottery, "I fix planes as a hobby. Been wanting to get my hands on the wiring of the suit for a long time."
Liz smiles and holds out her hand, shrugging her shoulders in a move her eight-year-old self had learnt from her brother, "Merry Christmas."
The two girls collect the pieces of the suit into a bucket and make their way into the warehouse shaped shed that holds several planes and tools that are enough to fix the suit.
Unlike the way Tony and Elizabeth Stark work; with music blaring loud enough to drown out any other sounds making the siblings silent until one of them throws motor oil on the other and it becomes a fight, Liz and Monica are laughing the entire time, trading stories of dates gone wrong; Monica who had to set a small fire in the restaurant to get away from the girl she was set on a blind date with and Liz who had her brother come in as Iron Man and whisk her date away.
The opening of the entrance of the warehouse interrupts their laughing fit and the woman that walks is almost a mirror image of the woman that Liz has been laughing with for the past few hours, just with the additions of a couple of lines, gray hairs and the elimination of a couple of inches in height.
"You too seem to be having a whole lot of fun for someone who should probably save the world right now." The bemused note is said with no berating and offence and Liz smiles, the elderly woman reminding her of Anna.
Monica steps forward and makes the introductions Liz suspects neither of them needs, "Mom, this is Elizabeth. Liz this is my mom, Maria."
"It's nice to meet you, Miss."
Maria smiles and it's kind, a sort of motherly affection to it, the kind that hasn't been directed her way in a long time, "As it is meeting you. Not every day you meet a superhero in your shed."
Liz wants to tell her that the wooden structure is excessively big to be called a shed.
Instead, she says, "Oh, I'm not a superhero."
Maria tilts her head, cutting through the bullshit, "You have powers?"
Liz nods softly.
"And you used those powers to save New York,"
Liz doesn't nod this time, remembering the helplessness she felt when she had to watch her brother perform a suicide task and had been able to do nothing because she spent her whole life denying her powers that they repressed themselves.
Monica looks between her mom and her new friend before asking the question that she should have questioned before spending hours on the suit, "Wait, why don't you just fly back home?"
Liz has a good explanation for that one, "Because I go up in flames when I fly and I'm not sure if I'll burn out or not."
After a moment of deciding whether she should stop it at that, Liz continues, "Also, I don't like using my powers."
The conversation is left at that and Maria tells Liz to finish up with the suit and have dinner before she goes off to fight terrorists and Elizabeth, whose stomach has been making inhumane noises throughout the day, doesn't disagree.
Monica bans the Stark from the warehouse as she makes final touches on the suit that's supposed to be a surprise and Tony is left staring at the sky beside Maria.
"Can I see it?" The older woman asks.
When Liz looks confused, Maria clarifies, "The fire,"
Maria Rambeau hasn't seen Carol in years. She doesn't know if this will help her. She reckons it won't. But the ex-pilot can clearly remember the fire-like flames that engulfed her friend as she soared through space.
Maria cannot help herself if she sees Carol every time she looks at Elizabeth Stark.
Her fire is not in any way similar to Carol's. But the way her hair merges with the red and floats through the sky, the way the flames dance through her frame and the way Elizabeth calmly looks at her does.
Earth may not have Carol Danvers but it has Elizabeth Stark and Maria hopes that it's enough.
"All done," Monica runs to the front porch, her overalls tainted with blue and purple splotches.
The Iron Man Suit flies behind her, opening up in front of Elizabeth. The red and gold colour now replaced with blue and purple, reminding Liz so much of her own suit that Tony made for her.
She turns around and faces Monica, pulling her into a hug, "Thank You."
She steps into the suit and the two women watch until Elizabeth Stark is nothing but a blip in the air.
Maria reckons Carol would be proud.
She doesn't have enough time to appreciate the security she feels in the suit before Liz reaches the port where she can identify the forty-three suits Tony had built and the man himself falling mid-air.
Praising herself for her timing, she puts the thrusters at full speed and grabs him by the arm, flinging herself and her brother onto the metal staircase.
Her faceplate slides up and she makes note of her brother's many injuries, "I got to say. I kind of understand the appeal of these suits."
Her brother looks her over, presumably also making note of the cut on her cheek, "That mine?"
She holds out her hand and blasts the enhanced man that was running towards them, "I made a friend. She made a few changes."
Tony tells her that it looks good the same time Jarvis informs them that he's located Pepper.
"Get a suit, save your girlfriend. I'll deal with this."
When Tony hesitates, she urges, "I got this. If I don't, I'll take the repressor off."
That calms him down and he runs to the other side, smoothly jumping into a suit before flying off and leaving her with these extremis soldiers.
She's not as experienced in using the suit as Tony is, but she fares relatively well considering this is her first time actively battling in an Iron Man suit. The other suits, which, unbeknownst to her, are programmed to prioritize Elizabeth Stark's survival, also make survival less challenging.
Some would say that Elizabeth Stark is being foolish by refusing to use her powers, refusing to rip off the repressor, despite being in the middle of an attack between enhanced humans that refuse to be put down and can burn metal. Some would say that Elizabeth Stark should know better than to let her fears come in the way of her protection. Some would comment on Elizabeth's idiocy because using her powers to harm would be efficient in this scenario.
Some don't understand that Elizabeth Stark fears her powers. Some don't understand that Elizabeth has been taught to fear her powers since she was a little girl. Some don't understand that most times, the things one learn as a child shape their ideals, morals and the way they perceive the world. Elizabeth Stark had viewed her powers as evil incarnate for so long that it'll take more than a few words from a few people to change that.
So when she's forced to jump out of the suit that Monica had helped her fix, the suit that is now melted and forged together, and she's surrounded by a circle of Extremis Soldiers, she hesitates to take the repressor off. It's one thing letting her powers lose when it's just her and her brother and she feels nothing but calm and happy and another releasing her powers upon the world when she's surrounded by burning people and there's pure fear and adrenaline running through her veins.
She's scared until she sees it.
She's seen it several times before; in pictures her father had shown her as a child, in documentaries, in New York fighting aliens and a God. She's seen the red, blue and white shield many times in her life before, enough to eat away at her awe and impressiveness every time she saw it again.
She's never been happier to see Captain America's shield than when it bounces through the flaming humans, the vibranium stronger than their heat, and concurrently saves her from being burnt to death.
She rips the repressor off when she sees the three heroes that walk towards her, armed and ready to fight.
She's no longer scared anymore.