ABEL'S SECRET
Tony walked down into his lab downstairs and saw Abel sitting on a chair underneath the upper half of the armor. He heard the turning and falling of nut and bolts as she reached her hand over and plopped them into a tray next to her.
"What are you doing?" Tony asked and looked down at the try of nuts.
"Trying to..." She clenched her teeth and got lose another bolt. "make sure that the suit won't be so hard to get off next time."
"Ah." Tony nodded and grabbed a screwdriver, but only flipped it in his hands. "The mini cameras you said to put on the suit really did help back there. I don't know what would have happened if you weren't panicking in my ears the whole time." He joked and successfully got a laugh out of her.
Abel stopped. She glanced at Tony and smiled. "Thank you. I'm just glad you're safe."
That warmed him to the core. God, he loves looking at that smile. "Hey, Abel. Once you finish up there, can you find Pepper? She'll be here in a few minutes. Can you give her this for me?" He pulled out a USB drive and waved it in Abel's face.
Abel looked away and got out from underneath the suit of armor. "What is it?" She asked and grabbed it.
"It's a lock-chip. I need her to hack into the mainframe in my office and retrieve all the recent shipping manifests." He walked over to another part of his lab. "It's probably under Executive Files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need she needs to look for the lowest numeric heading."
Abel frowned. "What do you plan to do with it all?"
"They've been dealing under the table, and I'm going to stop them. I'm going to find my weapons and destroy them."
Abel felt a hard thump against her chest and strained her heart. "Tony...I'm worried that you're going to get yourself killed."
"Abel if I don't do this then my weapons are just going to keep falling into the wrong hands." Tony then suddenly pulled a chair up next to her and sat down. "I shouldn't be alive. Unless it was for a reason. Don't worry about me, Abel. I just finally know what I have to do."
Abel had never heard him talk so softly before. He was serious about stopping it all. Ending all his weapons and protecting the people. Abel could see the change in his eye now whenever he would speak. He sounded more honest and not so naive.
Abel sighed and place the USB on the table. "Okay. I understand."
Tony nodded his head and smiled. "Thank you." He reached up and patted her shoulder and got up to do something else from across the small workspace.
Abel leaned back in her chair and grabbed the socket wrench from off the table. She reached up into the suit and began to loosen another nut. This one was tighter than the last ones. She gripped the handle with both hands and began to put a bit of strength into it. Suddenly the socket wrench slipped and Abel cut her hand across a sharp piece of metal. Abel gasped from the pain and pulled her hand away, blood running down her wrist and dripping onto the floor. She hunched over and clenched her bloody hand.
Tony whipped his head around and saw the blood running down her hand. "Abel?" He hurried over to her and tried to grab her arm to look at it, but Abel suddenly pushed off the chair and slid back away from him. "What are you doing?"
Abel gave a nervous laugh. "It's nothing really. It's not as bad as you think." She tried to muster a smile to assure him. Abel grabbed the USB and sprung to her feet, rushed out of the lab.
Tony eyed her wound as she left. He blinked a few times and swore that his eyes were deceiving him from lack of sleep because...he thought he saw it steaming. He shook his head from the though, thinking it was just silly and turned back around. There, on the floor was the small drops of her blood, vaping off steam. He narrowed his eyes in suspicion as his heart began to speed up. He kneeled down on the ground and got a better look at the droplets of blood. There were only three small drops and every one of them had a decent about of fumes coming off them for some reason.
"What...?" he said in a whisper. Tony got up. "Javis, show me the camera's around the house."
"Pulling them up now, sir."
Jarvis did as instructed and pulled up the live video of every room in the house. He never used them before, but this whole bloody steam thing just left him unable to come up with an answer. For the first time, the great Tony stark was left without words.
The video showed Abel in the bathroom running water over her gash. He saw the bloody water empty into the drain then suddenly run clear, not a drop of blood felt.
Tony's eyes widen and he walked closer to the monitor. "Run back five seconds Jarvis, and go frame by frame."
Jarvis re-round the video and zoomed up into Abel's bloody hands just as the water began to fall. He saw steam escaping from the wound as it began to sizzle. The wound then slowly closed up, not leaving any sign there was a cut in the first place.
Tony's legs felt weak and he had to sit down. He hunched over and balanced his head on his hands. He closed his eye and just tried to comprehend the impossible he has just seen.
Wounds heal, but not that impossibly fast, and they don't sizzle and steam up like that either.
His mind spun around in places as something stuck up and slowly fall into place. Back then in that cave. Abel spoke to the leader of the Ten Rings. "Jarvis, can you translate something for me?"
"What would that be, sir?"
Tony got up. "I'm sure it's going to be rushed, but I'll try my best." He began to speak the best of what he can remember about that conversation that man and Abel had. "Clean that up and fill it in."
The broken words on the screen began to get translated and the missing words were filled in that made the most sense, and it read: 'You promise that you word tell me everything you know in return for working with Tony Stark.' 'I am the last thing you got, and I already told you...I will tell you what I know when all is said and done. You have my word...and my life.'
Tony never realized just how naive he has been about Abel. This wonderful woman who saved his life and was still helping him today. He never even asked why they kept her there and what they wanted from her.
The power to heal wounds?
Something then clicked in his mind. "Is it possible to survive shot in the arm, two in the right leg, and one in the side?"
"It is possible, but not without permanent damage. She should be limping, sir."
Tony's breathing became rough and his eyes started to haze up. "One last thing...buddy. Do a search with Abel's face. Find any and all pictures of her online."
"One moment, sir."
This wouldn't have been just it. Abel was just too knowledgeable about almost everything he knows and the languages too. She was just as skilled as he was, probably even more. This didn't make an ounce of sense at all and it made Tony sick to his stomach. He didn't want to believe what he's thinking right now. He just wanted to have more fun with her. Being with her was more fun than his party lifestyle. More exciting than another woman he's been with. The look of worry on her face. The excitement. Everything. He thought that she was...an amazing girl. He knew how he felt about Abel after all this time, but now...he saw her as something different.
The pictures popped up and covered the entire room in these...new ones to old ones. They dated at least 80 years ago and had Abel standing in a black and white picture in that period's attire. Ageless, but without a doubt her. She hasn't aged a day. She still looked the same.
Nothing about her was different in over 80 years.
Abel was...
"Cut!" Tony shouted and all the pictures soon vanished. He fell back in his chair and breathed heavily, pulling his hands into his face. "Oh, God..." He said in a weak and tired voice.
He knew something was strange about her but he didn't want to face the facts, but now he just couldn't look the other ways now. Never did he realized just how blind he was to all of this. Or more he just didn't want to see it. He...he was just happy to have her back.
Tony looked up and saw Pepper walking through the front door on the security cameras. Abel walked out of the bathroom and met her at the front door with the USB in hand. It looked like Abel was explained what Tony has just told her, and handed the USB over in Pepper's hands. Pepper looked reluctant as she nodded her head and headed out the door.
Tony laid his hands into his face and breathed heavily as the sound of light footsteps came back into the room, and he heard the world's richest and smooth voice gently call out his name.
"Tony?" Abel closed the door behind her and tilted her head as she approached him. "Are you okay?"
Tony looked at Abel from between his fingers and felt an immediately reluctant feeling pass over him when he saw her face that he wanted to look at for eternity. The worried brown eyes generally concerned for him.
Tony took a deep breath and tried to gather himself best he could while standing up off the chair. "How's the cut? You're not gonna bleed out on me, are you?"
Abel blinked for a moment and wondered why he was acting so strangely. She smiled though and waved her hand out that had a bandage covering it now. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine."
Tony nodded. "Yeah...Just curious, but how old are you?"
She was confused by that question and answered right away without any hesitation or deceitfulness in her voice. "I'm 25. Why?" She tilted her head once again in such an innocent and cute fashion.
Tony nodded his head. "Yeah. 25. Of course. That's pretty young...and you seem to know a lot too" He mumbled and turned around, scratching his head before facing her once again. "What were you doing in that cave back then in the first place?"
This time he saw Abel's eyes shift with that question, but it was only for a second before she answered back in the same tone as last time. "I come from a rich family and I have quite a sum of money. They wanted to use my money to buy the parts that would make the Jericho missile." Once again, she answered without a problem.
That much is believable for any other person, but Tony knew, he knew that wasn't the case with her. "You speak any language that I'm capable of thinking. Your experience is...unmatched, and your intelligence is just plain uncanny."
"Tony. What's wrong?" Abel said once again, but that was the last straw now.
"I'm talking about you! Abel!" He snapped at her and caused Abel to jump. "You hiding God knows what from me and I can't stand it anymore."
"W-What?" Abel was taken back by his sudden outburst. "Tony, I'm not hiding anything. If you want me to explain anything then I will." She tried to use a calm voice to defuse the situation.
"I got something." Tony's eyes then locked on her bandaged wrist and he began to march up to her. He snatched her arm and yanked her over.
"Ah." Abel yelped and almost tripped, but her eyes widen in horror when he saw her reached for the bandage. "Wait! Don't!" She shouted in terror with wide eyes and a thumping chest. She watched as the bandages move in slow-motion and slid from her wrist and fell to the ground, revealing not a single trace of a cut or blood at all. It was like it wasn't even there.
Tony held her arm up and looked her dead in the eyes and spoke through his teeth. "Jarvis!" he shouted.
The whole area was lit up with multiple pictures dating back 80 years with women all marrying Abel's face, identical in every way and not a single detail was left being. All the pictures were so overwhelming that Abel herself couldn't even be seen anymore.
Tony then asked the question that has been pulling him around for months now. "What are you?"
Abel suddenly yanked her hand back with quite a bit of force as it disappeared behind the holographic pictures. She spoke with a gentle yet cracking voice. "This is bigger then you think, Tony. 80 years...is not even remotely close to the time that I have been on this earth." She then began to walk through the holographic pictures till one of them over lapsed with Abel's face perfectly. "I believe you can already tell what I am even if I don't say anything."
All the pictures turned off one by one until Abel was the only one left. Just Abel...and she stood there with a sorrowful look in her eyes that looked so different now from when he first met her.
Why were they so different?
Why did they have to change?
Why did this even happen?
How did it happen?
Tony's mind raced with questions that he didn't want to know the answer to anymore. He didn't want anything to do with...what she was. He didn't want to look at her face and have this longing feeling to be around her. This was all so much that his mind spun like a merry-go-round.
He then said it in a hushed tone. "Please, leave."
Abel's face began to fall and shatter like thin glass. "Tony, pl-"
"LEAVE!" He snapped at her like a frightened child who didn't know what to do anymore. It shattered his own mind and the look that Abel gave him was utterly overwhelmingly dread-filled.
Tears began to form in her eyes and stream down her cheek, staining them red and making them puffy. Abel let out a struggled breath before turning around and running towards the door. She yanked it open and she was gone. Gone. This wonderful woman just... She came into his life with a bang and left with a cry.
"Jarvis. Cameras." Tony ordered without even thinking and the cameras popped up once again. He watched her as she ran through the house and saw the obvious tears still flowing down her face. Tony let out a sharp gasp at the sight of that, and he felt a strain on his heart. He couldn't look anymore, because he knew if he watched her leave...then he would chase after her.
Abel breathed heavily and tried her hardest not to cry but she would always let out these muffled, pained screams when she pressed her lips together. She walked to her car and got in, slamming it behind her. Abel leaned her head against the steering wheel and began to sob. She felt the muscles in her throat tighten and swell up as the taste of salt came to her lips.
How long has it been since she last cried like this? What were the reasons that made her just break down like a child? Those memories were still very fresh, but this right now has stained her heart enough where she began to mumble in an unrecognizable language.