The Not So Silent Hill

[starkingenuity]

[Continued from: here]

Staring at the little house, Tony was noteably unimpressed. The child and other half of a god (however loosely you wanted to use the term) really ought to have not been so...small. He was expecting more, and the way he stood with his hip out and arms crossed proved it. They'd take a quinjet to the nearest open field and one of Tony's smaller cars after that, loaded into the back of the plane after he'd ripped out a few seats.

With Extremis stable enough to exist in several now fire-breathing and extra strong mice rampaging through specially designed cages to contain them, JARVIS' databases and hacking ability getting them the information they needed to arrive here, and Alessa more or less content with the nurse she and Banner picked out, this had been the next logical step. Even so, he expected it to be a little more difficult.

Wearing a black t-shirt and dark jeans that only accentuated his somewhat femininely proportioned hips and backside, Tony Stark was still Tony Stark and flashiness and he went hand in hand.

Like a brand name.

It didn't help that the yellow convertible was parked across the street, in direct contention with the overall look and feel of the neighbor around it.

"You can knock." He wasn't too keen on touching things other people did.

Comments

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Bruce was tense. Even if it was all the way in the upper reaches of Canada, he felt that this had been too easy. Cheryl Mason had avoided the Order, a cult with a network all across the United States of unknown effectiveness, for thirty-one years. Even with JARVIS’s brilliant design, it should have been harder to find her.

Bruce reached out and knocked on the door. No one came to answer it. All the lights were off inside. Maybe she was gone?

He tried the doorknob and the door swung open to reveal a front hall completely barren of any adornment. No furniture, no rugs, no pictures, nothing, but the AC had to have been on because it was freezing. It felt like the warmth was being sucked out of him, and he gave an involuntary shiver.

“I think this might have been a false lead,” Bruce said as he carefully stepped inside, only to freeze at the clicking sound of a cocked gun.

“Move and I’ll blow your head off.”

Now that he was inside, he could see her. Perched on the top of the stairs, eyes a striking ice blue and red-rimmed, a woman with short, messy black hair, a rumpled leather jacket, and a gun pointed at his head.

[starkingenuity]

Tony glanced inside and then took a step forward, hands raised but obviously not afraid. He should have thought to wear a bullet proof vest, he decided a bit too late and smirked over Bruce's shoulder. "That's a seriously bad idea," he said, attempting to move around Bruce. "First of all, this is Bruce Banner. If you've watched the news lately, you'll know who he is and how blowing his head off is not going to end in anything but tears and several less buildings on this block."

He glanced at Bruce and shrugged apologetically but it was true. SHIELD's big leak did leak Banner's identity and, finally, the media had picked up on it. The pictures they had of Bruce were grainy at best and from a military ID seven or so years younger.

Bruce had looked...happier then somehow. Maybe it was just the hairstyle. Tony preferred this current one, hands down.

"Tony Stark, by the way. Even if you don't have a TV you probably know who I am. Nice to meet you. Alessa says hi. I'm not sure I know where you're going with the decor but minimalist is all the rage these days. Think you can lower the gun? The big guy here gets a little sensitive around lethal weapons. You understand."

[honeyibrokeharlem]

“Bullshit.”

The gun was staying steady. Her eyes were chips of ice, fixed in giant dark circles that made her look dead. The room was getting colder.

“Quit walking around. This place is wired with pressure explosives. You think you can walk away from stepping on a mine?”

Bruce raised his hands in a pacifying gesture, working his jaw. Well. Suddenly, this had turned into a hostage negotiation. It would have probably been a better idea to not bring Tony along—he sucked at not getting people angry.

“We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Right. I bet there’s candy in the car outside too.” She looked entirely too small for her jacket. She looked too small for all her clothes, actually. It looked like she had piled them all to keep warm. The hard line of her jaw, the scowl, the unforgiving eyes--all of them were Alessa's, but older, and not quite as brutal. “Back off. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. Go tell your cult buddies that they’re not getting me.”

Had she been Alessa herself, they'd probably already be shot in the knees.

[starkingenuity]

Admit it. Tony had a talent for pissing people off. Funny how he had yet to get Bruce angry at him. He didn't adopt Bruce's posture, he stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced back at the car. "I do actually have a Snickers bar in the glove compartment. I was hoping to eat it myself but-- I guess I can part with it. In exchange for not being blown up. That would be good."

Bruce might be able to survive a nuclear detonation but Tony was still squishy. He hated that. He needed to get back to work on that nanite suit technology. Being able to carry his armor around would make all the difference.

"Stop a second and look at me. I've been on magazines for twenty years, in newspapers even longer. Look at me and tell me I'm not who I say I am. Want proof? I'll fix your AC because man it's cold. This guy here might be a walking talking heater but that's the gamma radiation and I don't have that luxury."

At least he stayed still?

"We were at Silent Hill. We found Alessa's body. There's half of some sort of hairy god tumor inside of her. We want it out and dead. Evidently we can't do that without you. We could stand here threatening and sassing each other all day but you know we're not from the Order."

[honeyibrokeharlem]

“Believe it or not, not everyone is as obsessed with American celebrities as Americans are. And there’s no AC in this house.”

“Tony,” Bruce said softly, eyeing the ground for any suspicious lumps, “why don’t you go back to the car?”

“What, so he can call in reinforcements?!” The gun was now pointing at Tony. Her shoulders were tense. She reminded Bruce of a cornered animal—which she was, in a sense. “No, no, you both get to stay right here unless you plan on leaving together.”

She was chewing the inside of her cheek. Her face was taught with tension, the sort Alessa never had—the kind that comes with not really wanting to hurt people, but being too scared to know of anything else to do. Alessa destroyed what threatened her. Cheryl wasn’t so indiscriminate.

“I don’t know who Alessa is,” she said, her voice tight and teeth clenched and eyes wild. “Stop acting like I should. Dad told me she was my mother. That she was some teenager who was raped and gave her baby to him. But the Order says that I’m her and he kidnapped me from them. I’m sick of hearing about her. No one gives me straight answers.”

[starkingenuity]

"You act like I can't be trusted," Tony had said to Bruce at one point, under his breath, looking almost bored. It would have been funny if there was t a gun pointed at him. And honestly, even then it was sort of funny. He had been shot at so many times.

And had t he deserved his celebrity? He saved the world. Like. Loads of times. And once, even literally! This circular talking was getting him no where.

Right up until Cheryl admitted how little she knew. And honestly, Tony realized how little he knew of all of this too.

"Alessa is a seven year old girl whose crazy family decided to get all demon worshippy and get her possessed or impregnated or whatever you want to call it. They burned her after and yeah. It doesn't make sense. Maybe they're a Phoenix cult? Any way, the point is, they did manage to get something inside of her-- I'm going to reach for my phone, all right? It's in my back pocket. I can show you the images."

And he would, if she'd let him. JARVIS would shine them on her bare walls.

[honeyibrokeharlem]

"Hey, hey--"

She flinched at the pictures, deliberately looking away, a blast of chilly air rushing through the house.

"Put it away! Put those away! Fucking crazy sicko--"

"Tony." Bruce jerked his head towards the ground. The shag carpet was beginning to stiffen and freeze.

Even the most powerful AC shouldn't be able to do that.

Louder, he said, "Have things always gotten so cold around you?"

Se was looking at him again, her teeth clenched and frost beginning to make the roots of her hair white.

"Alessa makes the room dark and hot when she's upset. Sometimes it's just a little warm, but then it can feel like you're in a furnace."

[starkingenuity]

Well he got the picture. He wasn't helping. Rather than go back to the car, and get his brains subsequently splattered all over Bruce in a way that would very likely trigger the Hulk, Tony just kept silent. Sometimes it was just as effective to be seen rather than to be heard and despite all of the things he really, desperately wanted to say, he let it go.

Interesting to discover that Alessa and this woman seemed to be polar opposites. One dealt with heat, the other with cold.

Could they be mirrors of each other, not true twins at all, but imperfect copies? Duplicates?

He set JARVIS to return biometric readings from his pocket for later data analysis. He nodded at appropriate times but otherwise, this was Bruce Banner's rodeo. He would have thought the mild mannered rage beast could be so...therapeutic. And this after he told Tony it wasn't in his temperament!

[honeyibrokeharlem]

"Shut up. I don't need to be psychoanalyzed," Cheryl muttered, but Bruce clearly had her attention. The gun was drifting towards him again.

"I'm not trying to analyze you. I'm trying to help you." Bruce lowered his hands, clasping them at his abdomen, like they were just having a conversation and there weren't bombs and guns in the equation. "You have powers. Maybe they started showing up early on, maybe later, but you have them and you don't know what they are or how to control them. And there have been other things that have been weird for you."

She was definitely paying attention now, the gun beginning to drift towards the floor.

"Maybe you have always felt a connection to Maine, even though your dad never went. Maybe mirrors have always unsettled you or looked wrong. Maybe you're scared of fire or women or have nightmares--but what I do know is that you've been hunted your whole life, and you don't know why. We're offering you answers, and you're turning us away?"

She stared at him, chewing the inside of her cheek, eyes narrow.

"Fine." She put the safety back on her gun. "You win this round."

Then she stood up and started casually walking down the stairs. "You can move, by the way. I was bullshitting about the bombs."

[starkingenuity]

Tony shrugged. "It wouldn't be my first time blown up," he said before he took thrice by the elbow and gently pulled him closer for a moment. "You're sexy when you talk people out of shooting me," he murmured and gave Bruce a wink that more or less guaranteed that there would be another attempt to seduce Bruce that evening... Or as soon as he got the proper chance to.

Tony let the woman waltz passed them and then followed her into the kitchen. He was openly shivering now, more of a fair weather inventor than anything else. He might have been born on Long Island but he raised himself in Malibu.

He missed California more often than he let on.

"How do you feel about an all expenses paid trip to New York?" he asked. "We have someone that might like to meet you."

Or blow off your head. It was hard to tell with Alessa.

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Bruce smirked at Tony, giving his arm a brief squeeze before disentangling himself. While he didn't think he was able to have sex anymore, he really didn't mind sexy talk.

The kitchen was just as devoid of life as the front hall. There was a singular table, one that Cheryl hopped on top and dangled her feet over the edge off. Ice started blooming from the seat of her pants, curling and cracking along the table. She flinched and then immediately hopped off again.

"I think it sounds really suspicious." She dusted off her pants like nothing happened, but she looked very unsettled. "Why should I trust you?"

"You knew we were coming, clearly," Bruce said, crossing his arms slowly. "You don't actually live here. You set things up so you could corner us with a gun. Why should we trust you?"

She scowled at him, her lips suddenly becoming thin as she shook out frost gathering in her clothes. She didn't want to talk about how she knew they were coming.

[starkingenuity]

Thinking better than to sit down at a table slowly icing over, Tony took up his usual arms crossed and bored looking stance by cabinets long since empty. He appreciated just how perceptive Bruce was, more so than he could ever be, but that came with the territory of having to run the moment he tried to settle down again. Seeing what was trying to be covered was in his blood as much as his brilliance.

And Tony still had trouble with his social security number and passwords.

"You're both pretty, ladies," Tony mentioned from his position away from the action. "I'll give you an address. I'll leave cash. You come to us on your own terms. Check it out." It was a risk. She could take the money and run...but JARVIS was onto her now, he could track her down again easily enough. "But you have to do it soon. We have a sick little girl that we need to fix. She's been in pain for a long, long time."

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Cheryl stared at the both of them long and hard, but some of the frost on her clothes was melting. Bruce decided to take that as a good sign.

“If it's anything like I dreamed, nothing you do will end her pain." She looked down, looking at the puddle of melting ice at her feet. "But I like that idea better.” She rubbed her hands together. Her fingers had turned bluish. “But first, tell me her last name. Alessa’s.”

She was going to do her own digging on the girl who’s been following her her whole life.

“Gillespie,” Bruce said softly. “Her name is Alessa Gillespie.”

“Gillespie?” She was still rubbing her hands together. “Huh. I thought it’d be something more… creepy. Alessa Cross. Alessa Rosebane. Or something to do with death. Alessa Muerte? I met a guy with that last name, once. Still don't know if he legally changed it to that or there's actually a family of Muertes out there.”

[starkingenuity]

That made Tony laugh. Alessa's last name was rather tame, a sort of posh, New England WASP vibe to it. But she was anything but. Her family was anything but. It was too bad her mother was dead. There might have been some Avenging to do.

Pulling out his wallet, Tony grabbed all of his cash, just under twelve hundred dollars, and laid it on the table. No. He never did anything small. Yes. He was pretty sure bribery was still in fashion.

"We'll have to see about a name change at some point," Tony mentioned. Gillespie won't be safe for her. And you--" He waggled a finger at Cheryl. "You change your name too. It was entirely too easy to find you."

Of course, he could hack into most systems. That helped.

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Cheryl's eyes went wide as saucers as she saw him lay out the cash. Bruce hid his smile as she picked it up, trying to be casual about counting it out.

"I did. This is supposed to be a trap for anyone who wanted to find Cheryl Mason, so I had help making a path to Cheryl Mason." She quickly stuffed the bills in her too-big pocket, looking a little like a homeless woman stashing money. "I was supposed to just wire it to blow up and let you stumble into it, but I was sick of running. All I wanted was to make a new life. I don't want anyone dead over it."

She shoved her hands in her pockets, staring at them from under her bangs. "You still need to tell me where to find you."

[starkingenuity]

"We really do appreciate that you didn't blow us up. I'd be dead. Banner would be mourning me for the rest of all eternity," he joked without really realizing how right that might be. When Bruce was too old to sustain the Hulk, the Hulk would continue on. Alone. Likely forever.

Plucking a good leaf business card from his wallet, Tony flicked it towards the woman. It only said his name, Avengers' Tower and New York, NY written on it.

"You can't miss it. I promise. Big building, massive A on it. Ask for Tony at the front desk."

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Yeah, Tony? A little too close to home there. Bruce has no idea if he's immortal and will keep looking like he's in his forties forever, or if he'll somehow find a way to die.

"I bet they'd let me right up," the woman says dryly, taking the card carefully before putting it in her pocket. "I'll think about it." She shrugged her jacket closer to herself, beginning to walk out the door. "Maybe I'll tell you my real name if I show up."

Bruce eyed her, a suspicious turn to his mouth, but whatever is bothering him doesn't seem to be enough to interrupt.

[starkingenuity]

With a nudge to Bruce's shoulder, Tony led the way out of the house. Cheryl would come. She had to. If not this time, they would find her again. And if not the next time, they would find her once more. Tony was confident that the woman would come through. She was curious and well paid. New York was a big place.

Tony had already emailed her picture to JARVIS. The moment she entered the city, they would know, ideally. And certainly the moment she entered the lobby at the very least.

Because he needed desperately to play the gentleman with Banner, Tony rounded the car to hold the door for him. He might even steal a kiss.

"I feel good about this," he murmured. Alessa would be whole again soon. Whole and happy.

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Bruce smiled and rolled his eyes in amusement at his boyfriend's need to be romantic, allowing Tony a chaste kiss, before sliding into the passenger's seat.

"Someone had to have warned her we were coming and helped her with the false lead. People on the run don't have the time or resources to put together fake trails that could stand up to JARVIS within a few days."

He spoke from experience.

"She looks a lot like Alessa, doesn't she?" He can't help but be a little wistful at that. Was Cheryl what Alessa would have looked like had she been given a chance to grow up?

[starkingenuity]

Tony lingered on Bruce's side of the convertible, leaning over the door even after it was shut. He never struggled with wondering if he had done the right thing with Pepper-- The truth was, he had cheated on her emotionally long before he had physically and while he had been in love with her, there was nothing to compare it to the way he felt about Bruce.

Even if they didn't rip off each other's clothing and tumble into bed, there was something wonderful about having discussions long into the night while he ran his fingers through the hair on Bruce's chest.

"She does look a lot like Alessa," Tony said, a slight crease between his eyebrows. "And you're right. I could be leading trouble to our home but... It's been almost two weeks since I've run for my like. I need to get the blood pumping."

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Bruce wondered about Pepper too, sometimes. Felt insecure that he didn't have the history with Tony that she had, and that he couldn't or wouldn't give Tony the things Pepper did. He felt guilty that they had gotten together the way they had, and wondered if Tony regretted it.

But he didn't ask these questions, give voice to these thoughts. He wasn't one to reveal his self-doubt and insecurity without prompting.

"At this rate, you'll die before you turn fifty." He leaned against the window, looking out at the neighborhood. The normal neighborhood. "I don't think she's going to try to do anything to kill us. She didn't seem to be a fan of that kind of thing." Not like Alessa, who would have no qualms bombing potential threats.

[starkingenuity]

Patting the door, Tony rounded the back of the car and slid behind the wheel with a sigh and leaned his head back against the rest. "Good. I don't want to turn fifty. What an ugly number," he confessed and then turned the ignition on with the press of the starter button. The car purred back to life and the top automatically went back up to combat the chill that lingered.

Tony never let JARVIS take over the driving unless he was too drunk to do it himself and peeled down the street like it was his right to drive like a maniac.

"She's Alessa's mirror," Tony said after a few long minutes of heavy silence. "You were in the mirror, though. You said it was like hell inside. But if Alessa is fire and Cheryl is ice, if their temperaments shift along temperature lines... We could get an explosion if they meet."

It was never wise to drop ice into boiling water.

"The colder the water is, the faster it boils," he muttered.

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Bruce grasped the side of the door, then quickly put his seatbelt on. "Looks like I won't reach fifty either," he grumbled softly. Honestly, he wished a car accident would have the same effect on him as it would on Tony.

"Alessa told us it would be a bad idea to get them too close together," Bruce agreed. "If she's right when she says they're a part of each other... sometimes, it's really hard facing all the parts of you you want to ignore."

Honestly, Bruce still had trouble with mirrors. They always looked off to him now. He had yet to touch a single one with his bare hands.

[starkingenuity]

If Tony knew that, he would very likely have teased Bruce about his shaving job or his hair. Tony couldn't help himself. Just like he couldn't help shifting the car into the next gear and briefly removing his hand from the stick shift to touch the other man's knee.

It was gentle. Tender. Brief.

"I don't like not knowing what I'm doing," he confessed. "I just want to help Alessa, but if it means hurting a lot of other people-- Nothing's ever black and white." Tony's eyes stayed on the raid as if he was staring it down. "It's not like with machines."

There was a reason Tony tended to 'create' his friends.

"So what do we do, Banner? We need Cheryl to remove that growth so we don't accidentally have a seven year old give birth to a demon when we fix her. But what if it doesn't matter?"

[honeyibrokeharlem]

“We have to believe it does.” Bruce wouldn’t touch Tony while he was driving, but he would look at him meaningfully. “I mean, gods, demons, cult magic… none of this is our area of expertise, Tony. We don’t know what we’re doing. But that’s never stopped us before.”

Seriously. Bruce was sure he wasn’t the only one who was basically running blind during the Chitauri invasion. Mutants, super soldier serums, giant iron suits—he knew how to deal with that, had context for it, but aliens? Norse gods? Not so much.

“We try to listen to the people who have some context. We can get a sample of Aglaophotis, examine it, figure out why it worked last time. Jane said that Thor was supposed to come to, so maybe he’ll know something. If we still can’t figure it out, maybe the Order will know. We can see if we can get our hands on any of their information.”