Sorry for the wait, hope ya'll enjoy! I'm sure I'll find someone who wants to read this lol

"Little girl?"

A hand rubbed my back gently while my face lit up in a slight burn from the cold seeping through my cheeks. As I blinked my eyes back open with the headache dissipating fast and the sun shining in my eyes, I regained feeling in my body. My hands flexed and I drew in a deep breath, pushing myself up, albeit not that far considering how deep my hands had sunk in the snow bank.

And…kept sinking.

Though the whole situation was odd considering we didn't get nearly enough snow in New Jersey for a snowbank, let alone one that I could sink my hands almost two feet deep down. That's when I looked up all the way and registered the surroundings better. There were cars bustling down the street and honking at each other, familiar buildings across the street and down at the end of it, and directly behind me when I swiveled my head to look; the children's home.

"Wh-"

"Hey!" A man had his hand on my back still, giving me a concerned look. "Are you alright? Where do you need to be?"

I looked between him and the building behind me, the freezing wind starting to nip at my back and bare arms, winding up my shirt and forcing me to shiver finally from the cold.

He looked back at the building too, made a sour face and then released me. "Right. Get back in then."

He rushed off as if I must've been infected with something, but his judgment was the least of my worries right now. I couldn't remember how I got here. No part in the last five minutes had any indication that I was taking an impromptu trip to my childhood home. You know, outside the private wishing to return in my head.

Pushing up off the ground, I got up all the way and looked around with my hands feeling freakishly warm for this kind of weather. I pressed them to my cheeks to help warm up my face as I marched across the sidewalk to the orphanage. Before I could go inside though, I had to remove my hands from my face fast as I felt like I'd burned myself. The sting slowed on my cheeks as I hissed at the pain, but my hands continued to bubble up with an inhuman temperature.

That's when I looked down at them and started to notice how my palms burned red and steamed in the air. They started to itch with pain, making my eyes widen in confusion and horror before I could jump back towards the snowbank and stuff them in. Relief came almost instantly and I would've sighed from it if my nose wasn't already runny and lips chapped from the wind biting my face.

My teeth chattered while I looked around, trying to gauge a plan for this worrisome situation I'd gotten myself in. If there wasn't so much cold wind blowing at me, I might've even considered that this was a bad dream. All the environmental tells around me were saying otherwise though, including all the odd stares I was getting.

I just needed to get back to the lab for help.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my nickel on me for phone calls to Mr. Stark on the secure line, so the phone down the street to my left was going to be totally useless.

I gasped and turned my head to look back at the house. "Rose!"

She would have a nickel around in her room somewhere for an emergency call. Mr. Jarvis had given her one too in case she really needed it, and as far as I knew, she hadn't made any emergency calls yet.

Taking a deep breath, I started to ball up some snow in my hands, accepting that they weren't going to stop burning at the moment and moving on to get myself back to some sensible world. I picked up said snowball and moved quickly to go indoors, pushing into the warm welcoming arms of an insulated home. My shoulders tucked up in a shiver as I tried to acquaint myself with a new heat.

Bernard rounded the corner and his brow dipped down in confusion. "Mary?"

I shook my head and walked by him to the stairs with tight muscles. "Not now, Dino."

"When did you get back?" He chased after me anyways with Charlie following behind him. "Are you here to stay or is this like Christmas?"

"Stop it!" I broke into a run.

I had a mission to complete and these two were not going to slow me down. There would be plenty of time for chit chat as soon as I found Rose and her nickel.

"I don't think Mother will like the snow in the house." Charlie added wearily from behind me. "Mary, it's dripping!"

"You guys seriously need to stop!" I shouted back at them, turning down the hallway towards Rose's room. "Rose! Rose! I need your help!"

I really wished I hadn't been taken away from the lab. I didn't know how long I'd been out but it didn't feel like long at all. Everything was a bit too confusing to grasp at the moment though, so I opted to focus on making the phone call to my mentor. Mr. Stark would be so mad.

"Rose!" I pushed into the room fast, getting a scream from her in response as she stood in front of me half dressed.

"Get out, Dino!" Rose pushed past me to slam the door shut with a huff, only wearing her undershirt and underwear. "Mary! What are you doing here?"

"I-" I opened and shut my mouth in a moment of pause before tears hit my eyes. "I don't know!"

Her face softened in worry. "Are you holding snow? Your hands will freeze."

"No." I shook my head, sitting down on the floor in defeat with it. "I don't know. My hands are hot and I don't know how I got here. I wanna go back! Mr. Stark's already mad at me and Mr. Jarvis is gonna be-"

Rose grabbed her tights and started to pull them on. "Okay, why don't we call him then. I have my nickel still. How'd you get back here? The train?"

I shook my head again and cried harder, just wishing to god I could be back where I was supposed to.

"Mary?" Rose pulled her dress over her head and marched over to me then. "Come on, get up. We can call to see what happened if you really don't know."

Before she could touch me to help me get back up, a hard pressure surrounded me again, flipping me over and over more times than I could count…or recognize. All I knew was that I felt sick again and went stumbling and crying back to hard ground after my poor attempt to get up. I fell face first towards the floor, my hands fumbling with the snow while trying to catch myself at the same time.

In my flounder toward the ground, I dropped my ball of snow and it shattered across the floor with a dull crunch. My head spun and I looked up fast, lungs chasing air like it were a rare substance.

"Mary!"

I choked on a sob, my vision only now coming back to me fully as I whipped my eyes around the room.

What's happening? What's happening? What's HAPPENING?

All I could focus on through my tears was the snow. I turned to it desperately and tried to rake it back towards myself to make a ball without my hands burning off. Meanwhile, my chest heaved with sobs and desperate gasps of air after having felt choked and turned inside out. Tears blurred my vision up again and I barely registered the hand pulling me up from the floor at first.

"Oh my god," Mr. Stark's voice broke as he yanked me into a tight embrace, holding on like his arms were made of steel.

I didn't realize until my lungs were out of air that I was screaming at all. All I could focus on was the fear as I kicked and shoved at him until he let me drop back to the floor. Sitting down hard, I gasped and looked up at him then. Mr. Stark was standing in front of me, looking just as horrified as I felt at the moment. His eyes dragged me back to the room as well as the remaining feeling of where his arms had squeezed me tight.

"Mary?" He whispered, his eyes moist with the start of uncertain tears. "Are you alright?"

"Hands."

The word fell out of my mouth like a spew of stomach acid and half-digested breakfast.

Right. I sniffled and my bottom lip quivered pitifully as I looked up at him for help through my nausea. My hands are burning.

"Hands?" He got down to my level, kneeling on the floor in front of me and looking around. "Okay, hands? What about hands? Your hands?"

I looked at them and then at the mess behind me, trembling from the new itching burn that was spreading across my palms. "Oh no. I don't have snow anymore. I don't have snow, Mr. Stark. I don't have snow-"

I trailed off in another sob, turning around to grab at the last bits of ice on my hands and knees as it started to melt on the floor.

"No, no, no." Mr. Stark put a hand on my shoulder to try and get me to turn back around and face him again. "It's okay. Please don't cry. I'll get you snow. All the snow in the world…Just stop crying, it's okay."

Even as I scraped my melting snow toward me with soaked cheeks and puffy eyes, I could hear how Mr. Stark's voice broke and contorted with his fear and confusion too.

"Mary, Mary, Mary-" He reached out to take my hands as if to stop me, only for me to tear them back and hold them onto my snow mound. "Mary, please."

I needed to explain this to him or he wouldn't stop. Grasping at words in my head, I did try my very best to elaborate on my visible madness while staring hard at the quickly melting mount of slush.

"My hands are hot." I explained slowly, taking a shaky breath. "I need- I…need i-ice. I. Don't. Know. Why. Please? I need ice."

Mr. Stark gave me a blank stare for a moment before nodding and getting up swiftly. "Okay. I'll get you ice. Then we're figuring this out."

'Figuring this out.'

It sounded so ominous despite his effort for it to be comforting. 'Figuring this out' only sounded like a disastrous mess with increasingly confusing and horrifying results. If it were up to me, I'd never do whatever that was again for the rest of my life. I'd mosey back to my home in New York after this nightmare and never see Mr. Stark ever again.

Don't forget how he yelled at you. I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying again, listening to Mr. Stark jog back down the stairs from the secret door with a bucket of ice. He set it down in front of me and I dunked my hands in there fast, releasing a shaky breath I didn't know I was holding.

"Did you burn them on something?" Mr. Stark asked then, releasing a sigh of his own while I settled my own tears the rest of the way and sniffled. "Maybe I should take a look at them-"

I pulled the bucket closer protectively at that, keeping my hands encased in ice. "No."

"Okay," He sat down all the way with me, crossing his legs and taking a calming breath. "Mary, when you disappeared I thought you might've… That I had…"

I looked up at him then, keeping my hands where they were safe. "Like the people in the films?"

He nodded, reaching a hand out to brush his fingers over my shoulder as if to physically remind himself that I was still there. "Where were you?"

I shook my head and looked back at the ice in worry. "I don't know. I don't get it."

"Well, you went somewhere with snow." He pointed out matter-of-factly, "You have to remember getting it, right? Tell me the whole story. Even if it sounds crazy."

"But it didn't happen." I tried to protest, glaring harder at the ice as anger from the confusion started to brew up next. "It didn't make sense. So I must've dreamed it-"

"Just-" Mr. Stark started over, giving my shoulder a squeeze. "Tell me about the dream then. What do you remember?"

I huffed an annoyed sigh back at that and cinched my brows together in thought, hoping to make sense of the nightmare. "Okay. I remember falling and being squished. It was awful, Mr. Stark. Like, the worst feeling ever-"

Mr. Stark was very patient at first with my explanation, even when the tears came back. After a minute of my story, he told me to standby and grabbed a notebook, starting to write things down vigorously. He asked me to describe the second time I fell and I have to admit, it felt better having someone else know how awful it was for me. I needed to tell someone what that was to have my body torn apart and dragged through immense pain.

And while his vigorous notes bothered me a little and seemed insensitive, I did understand his need to take them. Whether I liked it or not, something had happened that we couldn't explain outright. Mr. Stark and I were not ones to leave stones unturned either, so what I knew was going to be a long journey of more questions than answers started with that notebook.

"I'll count with you." Mr. Stark looked hard into my eyes, maintaining the calm aura while I was trying not to cry from panic again. "I put my hands in and you take yours out.

"What if-"

"You won't go anywhere."

"Or if-"

"Mary, I'm right here." He interrupted again, holding his hands over the bucket of ice. "Focus on me and this moment. You won't go anywhere else."

"Promise?" I bit my bottom lip, wishing I could just keep my hands tucked away in the safety of the bucket.

He nodded, "I promise. Count of three-"

When we got to three, I pulled my hands out of the ice and he stuck his in (for fairness reasons). We both watched my hands as they were face up in front of us, me whimpering when they started to itch in that way that warned me they were overheating.

"Mary, it's okay. You're so tough. It's okay."

I shut my eyes, trying my best to keep my hands still while focusing on the level of pain. I was only allowed to drop them if they started to really hurt, but Mr. Stark wanted to see if he could witness any change in my hands that would indicate visually that they were burning or hot. He wanted to know if there was a reason he could see off the bat.

A sharp gasp from him and suddenly his frozen hands were wrapped around my wrists and thrusting down to shove my hands back into the ice bucket.

I opened my eyes again and breathed a sigh of relief with him, both of us out of breath from the adrenaline rush and fast beating hearts.

"Okay," He nodded slowly, releasing my hands now that they were back in the ice. "We don't need to do that ever again."

I think my whole body would have collapsed in relief had I not already been sitting down. "Oh good. That really hurts."

"Yeah, yeah," Mr. Stark chewed on the bottom of his mustache in that peculiar way he would when he was thinking sometimes. "Alright. Let me think. Jarvis will be…I gotta…fucker."

A foolish smile actually reached my face. "I'm gonna tell him you swore around me."

"Oh," Mr. Stark choked out a laugh too, shaking his head and getting back up. "I'm sure he'll have enough crap to give me about this already. He's going to want you back soon too- Shit!"

I looked back at my bucket of ice while he paced across the floor, the gears turning in his mind with his arms crossed tight across his chest.

"Okay, okay, I can tell him you're sick." Mr. Stark theorized out loud, glancing up at the stairs a few times. "Lab accident so you can't see people right now or you'll get more sick… I'll make something up! He won't know the difference."

"You're not telling Mr. Jarvis?" I asked, a pit of worry burying itself in my gut, "Where will I go?"

"Here." Mr. Stark paced back across the floor to grab my shoulders and look me in the eyes. "I'm going to find you something for your hands. We don't know if it's permanent or not, but we do know that we need to keep them cold. And I know that I need to keep you here until we can be sure you won't pop off anywhere unexpectedly. Until then, try not to imagine being anywhere else or even think about anything but this lab. I don't know how this works."

"You're scaring me." I admitted with a slight whimper. "How am I gonna stay here? All my clothes and my books are at home!"

"I'll bring you stuff." He squeezed my shoulders gently with what looked more like a nervous smile than a comforting one. "I'll have Jarvis bring all your favorite things and set you up with a bed in the storage room."

"But what about at night?!" I shrilled, "It'll be dark and cold and I'll be all alone down here."

He sucked in a slow breath at that and looked around, chewing up his mustache again before getting back up. "I could use the extra time in the lab. I want this squared away as soon as possible."

"Will you stay?"

Mr. Stark sighed again. "If I can't find anyone else, of course."

"Mr. Jarvis?" I asked, almost excited at the idea of getting to be in the safety of his vicinity again.

Mr. Stark shook his head and looked away, starting towards the stairs. "No, no, Peg owes me some favors."

"Miss Carter?" I felt my face fall while he turned to go back upstairs. "Wait, where are you going?!"

"To make a phone call! I'll be right back."

I watched him disappear through the hidden hatch in the floor of the next level, shutting it behind him and leaving me in the room alone. I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not that I couldn't hear him or anything else upstairs. The sound-proofing of the walls kept me ignorant to whatever argument went on upstairs and some part of me was grateful for it. Another part really wanted to know how Mr. Jarvis felt about our whole 'lab accident'.

"She was overtired! Overworked!" Jarvis shouted over the phone while Howard winced again and sat down at his desk, knowing he deserved every bit of this. "You both were and you performed dangerous tests anyways?! You're lucky I don't quit on the spot and take Mary with me!"

"Please don't do that, Ed," Howard slid his fingers into his hair and rested his head forward in his hand on the desk.

"You could've asked me when I arrived!" Jarvis continued over him. "Waited until I go here to ask to take her for the day! Then neither of you would be in this mess! I wouldn't be threatening to leave my best friend!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

It was all he could do over Jarvis's shouting and ridicule. Howard was at least truthful with his apologies though. He actually was incredibly sorry for the accident. He knew that he'd been reckless with Mary before but this was so far beyond reckless it touched on stupid. And now Mary was paying the price.

Never again did he want to feel the fear he did when she first disappeared from the room. He must've paced around that area for half an hour, completely beside himself with worry to the point of tears. Howard wasn't one to cry, but when you're tucked away in a room by yourself with the guilt of your child's life weighing on you, things like tears are sort of inevitable. In that moment, he would've done anything to bring her back. He would've taken her place in a heartbeat. Even now he would too.

She didn't deserve to be locked in a lab and experimented on, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice unless he wanted her to walk around with a bucket of ice taped to her hands for the foreseeable future. So, first on his list would have to be a permanent solution to her burning hand issue.

"How sick is she?"

"I wouldn't recommend you visit." Howard scratched his head, "I need to keep an eye on her hands especially."

"What's happened to her hands?" Jarvis snapped again, his previously calm tone kicking back up to hostile again. "She needs her hands, Howard!"

"I'm aware." Howard sighed back, pulling his hand down to pinch his eyes together. "She might need gloves of some kind…I don't- Ed, I don't know yet. I don't know a lot."

Jarvis relaxed his tone again, "You know she'll be alright though, yes?"

"Of course." Howard sat up fast at the question. "Yes, yes. She'll be just fine. She might just need some gloves to protect her hands. Ed, I promise I will explain everything I can as soon as I get her settled here."

"Well then," Jarvis huffed to himself over the phone. "I'll be stopping by with some of her things."

"Thank you."

"Howard?"

Howard looked toward the door nervously, "Yeah?"

"As soon as that girl is better, I'm taking her from you." Jarvis stated evenly, sounding much scarier than Howard knew him to be. "Two weeks at least. Maybe four until I can trust you again."

Howard nodded at that and agreed quietly. His punishment could've been much worse than that if Jarvis wanted it to be. He would've agreed either way.

"She'll be with myself and Ana this summer as well."

That was a bit of an issue.

However, given that Howard was very close to actually killing the kid today, he wasn't one to shut down Jarvis's terms. If anything, a break for a few weeks and then again this summer might be what Howard needs to pull himself back to reality. He could use the break just as much as Mary after he sews this whole new disaster back together to a reasonable point.

If Howard didn't, Jarvis would probably give his head to the cook and serve it up for dinner.

"Alright, Curie, let's get this going." Howard marched back down the stairs to where Mary had since moved off the floor with her bucket of ice. "Or…keep it going."

She was standing at a work table with her idea journal laid out in front of her and her hand sliding back into the bucket of ice. He couldn't help but smile at her efforts. Even when she was down and scared, that girl was persistent. Her hand came back out of the ice again to grab her pencil and she began writing. While he knew she was doing this in a safe sort of manner, the action was stressful enough for him to interfere.

"Why don't we-" He slipped the pencil back out of her hand and moved her hand back into the ice. "Here. Put it back. I'll handle the writing."

"Yeah, but I had an idea!" She insisted, looking up at him fast and then nodding at her notebook. "See? What about gloves?"

He turned his eyes to her sketch, keeping the slight smile as he noted her improved sketching skills. Pointing at a canister-shaped backpack, Howard gave her a skeptical look.

"What's this?"

"Liquid air."

She grinned then, her mind having long forgotten the situation she was in. There really was nothing like a good problem to solve with technology to take your mind off the world. Mary got that just like he did.

"Maybe to start." He agreed then, admitting to himself that it was clever. "I'll have them send me liquid nitrogen from overseas though. It's said to be less dangerous."

Her face fell a little. "They don't have a whole lot of that stuff, do they? Can't we just make some ourselves?"

Howard nodded slowly to himself, looking around. "We could with the liquid oxygen. Until we can make it though, we can start on this liquid air one. Nitrogen is the goal, yeah? Make you less combustible."

She actually giggled at that and looked back at her bucket of ice. "Then we can figure out why I remember being in New York."

He had some theories on that already, but none of them he liked, so he just nodded along. "Let's start with the gloves."

Mr. Jarvis arrived pretty shortly after we got started on the metal pieces for the gloves. They were to be attached to the gloves to cover the palms of my hands so when there was liquid oxygen running through the gloves, my palms would get the full extent of the cold. Metal was excellent in thermal conductivity, so it was my top choice. Mr. Stark had pieces for the backs of my hands for safety reasons too.

My delivery of things kind of made me sad though. I had to sit around while Mr. Stark set up a bed on the shelf in the storage room down here. I was buried deep underground- further down than the lab that the top secret government knew about. Even with Mr. Stark's plan to sleep just outside on a mat in the lab, it was incredibly lonely down here. Dark, lonely, and cold were the best words for it.

"Just one more load of things." Mr. Stark marched back up the stairs while I looked on at the mat he made for himself in the corner.

Already, I was worrying about sleeping with the buckets of ice, especially since prototype-1 wasn't ready yet. It'd be a lot easier to sleep knowing that my hands wouldn't slip out of the things keeping me from burning my hands off. That was probably going to keep me up for a while tonight.

Mr. Stark came back downstairs with two pillows and a fluffy mass tucked under his arm. He dropped one on his 'bed' before making his way by me to the storage closet. When he passed by, I could make out the shape under his arm better and noticed the long floppy ears and stuffed body. A rabbit, apparently, was left in the storage closet too since he came back out without it.

"What was that?" I asked, eyeing him on his way back out.

"A pillow." Mr. Stark waved me off. "Ana sent you a stuffed animal too."

I scoffed, not really meaning my indifference. "I'm not a baby."

He shrugged, going back to the desk with half our work on it. "She insisted. If I said no to her, you know Jarvis would have me professionally butchered."

I laughed a little and looked back at my melting bucket of ice. "What if the ice all melts tonight? And my hands burn up while I sleep?"

"I'll be up." He mumbled from across the room. "I've got stuff to work on and a cup of coffee. I can add new ice in a few hours."

"You'll remember?"

He passed a look back at me, meeting my worried gaze and nodding. "When do I not remember things? Name one time."

"Dance recital." I replied easily and with a grin. "Both of them actually."

He scowled playfully and rolled his eyes. "Doesn't count. I'm not your ballet mentor. I'm your brain mentor."

"It still would've been nice to see you." I admitted, "You would've liked it."

He opened his mouth, ready for another snarky reply before shutting it again unexpectedly and turning his eyes back to the desk. "Give me a few minutes. Then I'll get you to bed."

I turned back around and did more heel raises while I waited, lifting a foot next and balancing in a passé. I held this for twenty seconds and then moved to my other leg. My mentor came back after the second round of balancing on each leg, and I got to follow him back to my makeshift bed.

The shelf I was to sleep on like a bed had been lowered so that the buckets could sit on the floor and my hands would fit easily inside them. When I got on the thin mattress, I already missed being able to tuck my hands up to my face with the blanket and cuddle up under the covers. That was a problem that wouldn't go away anytime soon it felt like. I worried about that as I rested my hands down into their respective ice buckets and looked on at the stuffed rabbit and all it's mocking glory.

While I didn't need to grab onto a stuffed animal and cuddle it close for comfort (I'm not a baby after all), the fact that I couldn't even if I did want to was a bit disheartening.

I don't know if Mr. Stark saw the longing stare I had for the rabbit in front of me or if he was just trying to tease me a little, but his next move was to slip on a small smile and move the rabbit under my arm and close to my face.

"There you go."

"I'm not a baby." I protested gently, making no move to relocate the rabbit. "I don't need it."

"Okay," Mr. Stark held up his hands in innocence like he was pretending to believe me. "Suit yourself."

He didn't move to relocate the rabbit either and just turned toward the door, closing it only enough to leave a crack behind in the doorway. I think we were both pretending a little in that conversation. I actually did enjoy holding close the smell of the most wonderful house on earth. It made me feel a little better about the tough situation I was currently trapped in. I tried to fall asleep that evening with the hope that I could wake up tomorrow morning and everything would be better.

My hands wouldn't burn, I wouldn't disappear millions of miles away from my original spot, and I'd be back in Mr. Jarvis and Ana's house with the soft blankets and shampoo.