starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

"It was bound to happen. Somewhere, some day someone was going to like me better," Clint grinned, even if no one else shared his smile. Tony was too busy being creeped out again. Alessa's attitude towards Pepper now made a whole lot of sense.

Tony watched Alessa for a moment before he snapped his finger by her ear. "Let me talk to you in your room a sec," he said, standing up with a little difficulty.

No one said anything about his limp as he led the little ghost girl back to her flowers and her pink walls. Tony flopped down on a bed he hoped she would soon use and propped one foot up on the headboard.

"Not too fond of women huh?" He was trying to level with her, not talk down to her. "I know that one out there is a liar and a pain in the ass, but she is going to help us. Think you can call a truce?"

Alessa scowled, giving Natasha one last glare before floating after Tony, taking her bear with them.

Steve pursed his lips before glancing at Bruce. "If you and Stark are planning on keeping her long-term thing, you have your work cut out for you."

Bruce nodded in agreement before standing up and pouring himself orange juice.

Alessa followed Tony to her room--still far too pretty for her, she never got pretty things--before settling down next to his leg, giving him a frown.

"This is a truce." Alessa hugged her knees and brought them under her chin. She was normally an articulate girl, but it was hard to explain the culture of the Order to a man who had absolutely no context to go by. "In the Order... you earn your power, and you earn your respect. You earn everything by fighting for it. Boys don't have to, but the girls have to be tough. Our mommies make us tough by hurting us, so then we can handle ourselves with the rest of the Order."

The fact that Alessa wasn't outright attacking the women she was presented with was a concession on her part, because despite her power, she was vulnerable. Her body was on life support. It would be simple to kick her respirator over and she would be defenseless. She responded to that by wanting to assert dominance over any potential threats, like she was a dog. Like they were all nothing but feral dogs.

"No one will fight for you. No one. So you fight for yourself."

"You and I are more alike than you think," Tony said, smirking a little as he looked up at her fabric covered canopy. Were those little red dots or strawberries? He'd never taken time to notice some of the things about his home. He really had to pay more attention. He didn't want to lose what he'd only recently obtained. "My dad was a genius. I pretty much lived in his shadow-- Still do if you want some honesty there. He was smarter than I can ever be, but I have to keep trying. I only had myself growing up. I only had myself until I met this guy in a cave who saved my life. And then the guys out there, they helped save my life too. Even Natasha. It wasn't too long ago that her entire life history was leaked online... You want to see it?"

Maybe Alessa would respect Natasha a little more if she knew what the Black Widow had lived through.

Then again, maybe she would just want to fight her a little more feircely.

I know you spent the last forty years or so hanging out hating women "and being abused, but you have a chance at a real childhood again. Banner and I are going to give that to you. First things first, though...you have to learn to tolerate women. The Order--"

"Sir, sorry to interrupt, but I have that digest ready," JARVIS piped in.

Tony frowned. "Send it to my phone, I'll look at it later." This was how quality time was suppose to be spent...not worried about business. "So will you at least try not to hate everyone?"

"Your father loved you."

She didn't often let in on it, but she saw things. Pieces souls left behind, random details about the people around her, feelings and memories left streaked on walls and furniture. The darkest parts of people, usually without any kind of goodness contextualizing it. It wasn't just the future she could see. In the town, she was able to read people's histories like books if she cared to, but even out here, in the real world with only a fraction of her power, she could see the little things.

"He didn't know how to show you." She played with the hem of her skirt, frowning at the sheets. "I don't need to see her history. She bleeds it everywhere. She hurts and she's been hurt. She wonders if she's a bad person, and she's bothered that the fact that she is doesn't bother her more than it does. She'll fit into the Order pretty well." She buried her face in her knees. Despite that, her voice was still loud and clear. She didn't think to modulate it to make it seem like she was a real girl being muffled by real clothing, instead of just a ghost of a diseased, decrepit near-corpse.

"I don't hate women." She pressed her head harder against her knees. Her voice came out in the slightest of shamed whispers when she said, "I'm scared of them."

"He loved me," Tony said, with a smirk. "And he never let me know. What good at having feelings if you can't share them?" He tended to mask his own too, but he knew he was a hypocrite so this didn't matter as much in the grand scheme of things. Parents on TV were constantly telling their kids to be better than they were any way.

And TV parents were the only sort Tony ever knew.

He let Alessa tell him more about herself, his eyelids falling, not from sleep but from the horror of it. Alessa was just a little girl who wanted to bring paradise to the world but because of her crazy mother and he genes, she was forced to live in hell for thirty years and had turned into...this.

Tony rested his hand near her when she confessed to him.

"They scare me too," he said, and not just to be cheeky. "That woman out there is something to fear, I'll give you that, but Lessy, you have to know that Banner and I are going to protect you...even if you don't need it. Even if it's from women. No one is going to hurt you again like the Order did."

"I don't know. I don't know what good feelings are anyway. They're just all awful."

She peeked out from her little ball, staring at him from under her hair.

"You can't promise that. No one can. I'm not..." She loosened her grip on her knees just a little. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to be aware of her surroundings anymore. "I know I'm not a good person. I know I'm not... things don't work out here like they did in the Order, and I only know what an Order girl should do. And I know what happened will never go away. That will always hurt, and you can't save me from that."

She'll never be able to touch a mirror without leaving. She'll never be able to smile and be carefree. She'll never be able to look upon other people and not see the horrible festering darkness inside all of them. An indelible mark has been left on her.

"Wanna hear something weird?" She fiddled with the hem of her skirt again. It looked pristine, as usual. Too stiff. Too formal. "I miss Mommy sometimes. I miss her stories. I miss listening to her humming in the living room while I fell asleep. I still love her, even though I know she had to die. And I hate her, too."

Tony wasn't the sort of guy to really seek out physical comfort but he wanted to hug the girl just then. She might have helped to put Banner (and himself) through hell, but he had grown attached to her very, very quickly. In the few weeks since they'd gotten back from Silent Hill, Tony really had come to think of her like their kid.

He probably needed therapy. And Bruce was a terrible therapist in the end. He just...gave in too much. Tony sort of liked that about him though.

He patted the bad beside him instead, trying to coax the girl closer. Banner didn't have to be the only parental one! "I think your mom did love you," he said, eyes half closed. "There's no mother that can completely hate their kid. And she sang to you, she taught you, she tried to make you like her. I mean she was sick and crazy but she was trying to do what she thought was best for you." That didn't make it all right again.

"So I really don't think you're weird at all."

Bruce loved his father too.

And Tony...he hated his old man but he loved him just the same.

What a curse life could be.

Alessa slowly unfurled from her ball and lay down next to Tony, pillowing her head on her hands and staring at him.

"I'd like to think so. I don't know. I don't even know if I was what she wanted. I never met my dad." The room was warm, but not unpleasantly so. The sort of warm that came with sunlight on one's back. "I don't know if he left because he didn't want me, or Mommy killed him, or if he was a demon or a person... I like to think that she didn't mean to have me, though. Then maybe they liked each other and it wasn't always about power."

She hoped that somewhere, at some point, her mother loved someone else. That would mean she was capable of loving Alessa, too.

Alessa had never really felt loved by any of he adults in her life before.

"Tony..." She averted her eyes, looking towards the red spots that might be strawberries on the canopy. Too pretty for her. "Why do you want me?"

He didn't have to keep her. He could adopt a child without her baggage and capacity to hurt. He could have all the benefits of of children with none of hardship that would come with living with her. Why, then?

Tony turned his head to smile at the girl because it's a question he might have asked in her shoes too. That was the real reason he wanted her, not just to stave off loneliness (he had Banner now), was to sort of do for someone else what he wished was done for him. Tony was constantly trying to atone, perhaps not as dramatically (or maybe more dramatically?) as Bruce, but paying it forward meant more than giving to charities and hosting fundraisers.

"Why do I want you? Because you almost beat me at chess." He wasn't exactly teasing. He was beating around the bush. "Why does there have to be a why, Alessa? It's not every day I meet a little girl older than me whose mom burned her alive and might very well be pregnant with something that could kill us all."

And that was putting it bluntly.

"I want you because you need me. I guess that sounds selfish, and I'm honestly a pretty selfish sort of guy, but Less? There's some old footage of my dad and it took me thirty years to ever hear it, but he told me that I was his greatest creation. I don't have kids. I have JARVIS and DUM-E, but I want to have a greatest creation too. So why can't that be you? You're actually pretty all right for a little demon girl."

Her eyes flicked back down to her face and she stared, her face impassive. Whenever serious topics came up, she smoothed out her expression, separated herself from her feelings. That was how she knew to weather things she wouldn't ordinarily manage.

But...

"I don't think I'd mind being your greatest creation." She scooted a little closer, enough so that her foggy presence brushed against his shirt. "I think I'd kinda like it."

She didn't know if he would be able to keep his promises. She didn't know if she would have to keep living on life support at the top of his tower for the rest of his life. She didn't know if he would finally tire of her and leave her unfinished like an impossible project.

But she had faith he would try.

"Do you think you could teach me how to make things, too? I think I've spent long enough only knowing how to break things."

Even Bruce had trouble getting that particularly affectionate look from Tony, though likely that was due entirely to the fact that Bruce was not a little girl that Tony had adopted in a cesspit of some version of hell while they played chess. Some understanding of that had to be made.

"You've already done the most important part then. Knowing how to take things apart is crucial. The trick, however, is doing it so that you can put it back together again...or add something new to it. There's no such thing as invention, not truly. You have to build off of what you already have or already know. So yes. I can teach you. I don't know if you'll be any good at it, but hey, we can try." He wasn't going to talk down to her and praise her for what he wasn't sure she was capable of just yet. "Who knows, you might even be better than me. You have the added benefit of tiny fingers...and telekinesis."

Tony laughed.

"Some people still have to obey the laws of physics you know. So you'd better not get use to using your mind to move stuff. Once you get your fingers back, you're going to have to relearn how to use them. And it's not going to be easy if you've been chilling in hell for thirty years sending triangle beasts to stab people."

"Telekinesis would definitely make it easier to deal with the hot things. Or the electrified ones."

She didn't know if she'd be any good at it. She was, after all, used to breaking things and approaching problems with either strategic deceptiveness or brute force, but she still had the mind of a child. It could be adapted.

The expressionless mask cracked. The corner of her mouth quirked in her crooked smile. "I'll have to learn a lot of things again. It's nearly been forty years, now." She stretched out her hand, wiggling her fingers, but she knew it wasn't anything like moving real fingers. The projection, the projection's movements, it was all a product of her mind. An illusion. "I don't remember how it feels. I used to like wrestling with Claudia, or pushing around Vincent, or lying in the backyard when the sun was out. I don't remember what any of it feels like."

She had spent the vast majority of her life time without a working body. She doubted she would have any idea how to properly use it once she got it back.

"Maybe we should keep you out of the sun for a little while," Tony teased. "I wouldn't know what SPF to put on you and we already have to worry about premature aging and skin cancer."

In the other room, Clint and Natasha were already going through JARVIS' digest. Tony had said to send it to his phone and he'd left his phone on the table. It probably was a breach of privacy but given their roles and their life choices, privacy was not something to be concerned about for now.

It was Clint that decided to share it with the scowling pair bookending him. Banner and Rogers were just no fun.

"Looks like we've got our in," he said cheerfully enough. "I've always wanted to be a cultist."

"I'm going to end up really, really pale, aren't I?" But she was smiling, and that was what mattered.

Bruce, meanwhile, was pretty sure he was being a very bad boyfriend. Good ones kept world-class assassins from rifling through their boyfriends' phones, right?

"You really should have waited for Tony to come back," he grumbled softly, privately glad that he and Tony had never spent a long enough time apart from each other to turn to sexting. He had no doubt Natasha would take this opportunity to glance over Tony's text messages, too.

"So... you're going to just email them? Are you sure you won't need back up?" Steve asked, still chafing at the thought of an entire organization abusing children with impunity under the guise of religion. He was very tolerant of different kinds of faith, but this... this was defilement of something that was supposed to be beautiful and intimate between a person and God.

"And that's the attitude that benches you," Clint said with a grin, not really reading into Bruce's body language because it didn't concern him. He was very good at keeping things he was sure were none of his business exactly the way he left it...

After taking lots of photographs and having a little smug conversation with himself as to why he was still single and should keep it that way.

"Nat and I are pretty good at playing double agents. With or without that asshole's interference." He could feel Natasha's eyes on him so he smiled through it. He didn't exactly have a whole lot of choice.

What was done was done.

"You might want to delete the pictures of you off of here," he said as an aside, already breaking his promise not to say anything.

Evidently, Tony liked it when Bruce was asleep.

Bruce made a very strange noise and glared at Clint as hard as he could, his cheeks immediately flushing. Natasha covered her mouth to hide how the corner of her mouth quirked upwards. Steve glanced between the three of them, feeling as he usually did: something was going over his head.

"What, has Stark been taking embarrassing pictures of you?" That sounded like something Tony would do as a joke.

Bruce glanced at Steve, keeping his lips pursed. "...Yeah. That's it."

Steve had a feeling that wasn't it. But, as a man raised in the 40's, while he was well aware that gay people existed, it just didn't occur to him that any of the Avengers might be interested in someone of the same sex. Embarrassing pictures was really the best he could come up with, at least until he stopped thinking about it later and then came to a horrifying realization while making himself dinner.

Bruce glared at Clint, daring him to make Steve's confusion go away.

If only Tony could be a fly on the wall when Steve realized that Howard's kid was bonking Bruce Banner. Well, mentally at least. One day there would be too much sexual tension and they might rip each other apart, but for now, Tony's hand was good enough for the worst of the aches.

"What did I miss?" he asked a moment later, escorting Alessa back to the conference room with a quiet truce on the hair pulling of women that were trying to help her out.

Clint shrugged and tossed him his phone. "Got a website," he said. The last image he'd scrolled through, where Bruce was tucked up against Tony's chest (and it had to be Tony's, with that scar and the angle of the photo) still on it. "Found your stash."

Tony blinked. "This isn't even the best one. Did you look back to two weeks ago?"

Steve's cheeks puffed out. "Can't you take anything seriously, Stark? We found a way to get to the Order!"

Tony just rolled his eyes and tucked his phone away, unabashed by the found footage of his new obsession. "Yeah, got that," he said with a shrug. "Bird Brain and Not From Legal, ahem, are going to do what they do best right? Good, problem solved for now."

All Bruce had to say was that he'd better not be naked in any of those pictures. Which... really meant nothing, since everyone in the room except Alessa had seen him naked, but he drew a mental line between post-transformation naked and post-heavy petting naked.

He rolled his eyes and huffed before patting the seat next to him for Alessa to sit down. Natasha was back to all business, keeping Alessa visible in the corner of her eye. "We'll do what we do best, but that also means we'll need ways to have untraceable communication with the outside world and each other. We also should see how much background information we can find on the leadership."

She glanced expectantly at Alessa, but she only shrugged.

"The last high priestess was killed thirty-one years ago, and I don't know anything about who came into power since. I can tell you how the structure works, but I can't tell you who's in charge now."

The naked pictures were on Tony's hard drive, but all of those were post transformation so that Tony could find Bruce before anyone else did. It was strictly business. Bruce never wanted to sleep naked and Tony didn't blame him. He knew he could be pretty handsy and when temptation struck--

At least all he did was take photos at the moment.

He leaned back in his chair as Natasha shook her head. "That's good enough, I'll find out the rest while I'm there," she said confidently.

That really just left Steve without a job to do, at least until Thor got back from finding the plant and perhaps asking Asgard for their help in making Alessa whole again. He was odd man out with seeing the little too, which had really stopped being so amusing and started to seem... Awkward.

They'd all accepted Steve to pretty much lead them while they were together, but the fish out of water was still just gasping on dry land.

Alessa was resisting the urge to glare at Natasha and tug her hair for everyone's sake and instead rested her chin on the counter, making everyone's abandoned silverware float and begin to make sculptures in the middle of the counter. It was her idea of fidgeting.

"I don't know why the Order hasn't attacked by now. They might think that HYRDA was the one who got me, since they attacked so soon before we left. I could go ask Valtiel."

Bruce frowned, because Alessa had mentioned Valtiel before and had yet to explain what, exactly, Valtiel was.

"But once they figure it out, they'll come for all of you. Sleep with weapons."

She wondered about Vincent and Claudia. Were they fighters too? Or were they dead?

For people like them, so closely tied to the Order from birth, there weren't many options.

"As long as that doesn't require us moving your body, you can do what you want," Tony told Alessa as he swivelled his chair back around to face the still blatantly confused Steve. Even if he could hear Alessa thanks to JARVIS, watching silverware float was just one of those things he had trouble recitfying. And Tony didn't blame him at all.

It sucked being left out.

Bruce might not know who Valtiel was, but Tony remembered the fond patting of that horrible head and the name that came out of Alessa's lips.

He wasn't exactly pleased to think Alessa could still summon that thing.

There was a reason mirrors kept disappearing, though it was hard to remove every reflective surface in the tower.

"Who's Veal Teal?" Clint asked, finishing up Natasha's pancakes.

"Valtiel. I have two attendants: the executioner, my hands, and Valtiel, my eyes. Or at least, that's what the stories call them."

The silverware was now shifting to make strange symbols on the counter.

"It's a bad idea to invite either of them directly here, so I would need a mirror. Once they've been invited, they can come back whenever they want. And you guys are not ready to meet the Executioner again."

He was, after all, attracted to guilt and sin. Everyone has guilt or sin on their shoulders.

"Does anyone have a mirror with them?"

"So this is like one big game of Bloody Mary?" Clint asked as Steve started to look more and more uncomfortable. He wet his lips and threw himself back into the chair. "I've got to see this. It's like a hundred horror movies rolled up into one."

There was an almost annoyed, haunted look to Tony when he answered that last statement. "You really have no idea. But speaking of Bloody Mary... We can go to the bathroom."

"Not necessary," Natasha said and handed over a compact she retrieved from some pocket dimension linked to her skin tight jeans. "Use this."

Tony still looked uncertain. "I know we haven't discussed this before, Less, but no parties, okay? Banner and I aren't that fond of your old friends. Bad crowed."

“Don’t worry. No parties.” She plucked the compact from Natasha’s hands, letting it rest in front of her on the counter. “You guys won’t be able to see much unless you follow me, anyway. It’ll all be in the mirror.”

“You’re not going in there alone,” Bruce said, already tensed in his seat. “I’ll come with you.”

She looked up at him sharply. “They won’t hurt me. That’s not a guarantee for anyone else.”

“I don’t care. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, you’re not going back alone.”

To be honest, Bruce still hadn’t shaken the way Silent Hill had sunk into his bones. He still found himself staring at mirrors, thinking about what lay beyond and remembering the way his mother screamed when he shot her. He still felt a pervasive sense that he should lie down and let death take him, as if the town was just waiting for him to stay still long enough so it could reach out and drag him back for good.

But the mirrors held Alessa’s hell, not his. She had dealt with her demons alone long enough.

Alessa, for her part, looked annoyed by the kindness. “Don’t be dumb. I’m used to it. You’ll just give it a chance to try getting you again.” She didn’t understand solidarity. She didn’t understand that it wasn’t a misguided belief that she couldn’t take care of herself that was guiding him; it was love and a fierce desire to not let her face it alone.

"Banner," Tony half hissed, sharp and annoyed. "What the hell are you doing?" Tony himself hadn't been able to enter the mirrors. He'd tried to go in after Banner fell through and all he could do was watch. The portal was not for him. Alessa promised him that, one day, Silent Hill would call him too. Maybe today was that day. He liked being the hero so long as it didn't bring undo hardship on him.

But this was his family. It was too new to lose.

"I'm going too." It was said through gritted teeth even as Natasha rolled her eyes and Steve looked skeptical.

"Are we all going to go?" the blond asked. A paragon for good and moral, Steve might not last a minute there...or he could triumph over them all... Silent Hill might reject him immediately though.

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I can't believe I never hit send. ><

Ugh, I hate it when that happens! >.<

;__;

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