starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

That was everything Tony was afraid of. That, and cheating. He'd been willing to cheat on Pepper and-- That wasn't him. He couldn't stand the thought of being that sort of guy. It was different with one night stands, but having a string of them again and coming home to sleep with Bruce--

It would eat at him. It would eat at them both.

"There's nothing we can't do," Tony said, not just pandering to his boyfriend, but genuinely believing it. "Nothing. When was the last time I steered you wrong, Banner? Actually, don't answer that."

He tried to joke, to make light of it all, but the corners of his lips tugged upwards with such horrible strain.

"Alessa first. Your little heart condition second. It'll be fun. Like couple's therapy." Or it would destroy them. Tony was going to lean towards good vibrations here.

Bruce wasn't very good at forcing smiles. Even his real ones rarely reached his eyes. Instead, he reached out, stroking Tony's hair before pulling him in for a gentle kiss.

"I love you."

He didn't say it very often. It felt strange in his mouth. It had been a phrase rarely, if ever, spoken in his home growing up, and he just never got into the habit of verbalizing that feeling that made him want to keep people close and never let them go. He was neither demonstrative nor particularly verbal about his feelings, something that had grated on many exes in the past.

But he wanted to say it. Wanted to, just in case they were wrong and they wouldn't be able to fix it. Just in case they had made a mistake in opening this door in the first place.

They might be able to fix it. They might. He tried to think about that instead.

There was a moment where all of Tony's muscles stiffened before he relaxed and his smile brightened his eyes. It was a treat to have the words leave Bruce's lips and sure, they were just words, but Tony liked to hear them. They made his heart flutter in a way no one had ever been able to do before.

It was why he knew this was worth fighting for.

He knew it in his bones. Another kiss was passed between them, Tony pressing his thumb to Bruce's chin before he did it. Soft. Hot, but not demanding. There was no need to have another flurry of 'I need a minute!'s thrown around again.

Tony pressed his leg between Bruce's to nuzzle in as close as possible and held him as if it might make the grass greener or the stars fall out of the sky. Tony was a miracle worker. And with Bruce helping him, how could they fail?

"I love you too," he said after soaking it all in. "Which is why I know you need to sleep. Alessa might not enjoy the experience being teleported home tomorrow."

"Mmmhmm. The last thing we need it to try dealing with a cranky little girl without enough sleep."

Hopefully, Tony would get some sleep too. Bruce fretted about how little he rested, but to be fair, Bruce tended to fret about a lot of things.

He fell into a fitful sleep. Nightmares were frequent. It was nice to be able to wake up in someone's arms, though.

By the time he woke up and it was just barely daytime, a familiar projection was crouched at the foot of their bed, staring at them both with a neutral expression. "We should explore before we leave," was the first thing out of Alessa's mouth.

No one understood knocking anymore.

Tony actually moved aside the blanket in his sleep to allow Alessa to 'crawl' in between them. It made little sense, but there was little of the interaction Tony and Alessa had that did. Since their first arrival at the Tower, Tony had treated Alessa as if her projection was flesh and blood. Inviting her to lay with them was just another aspect of it.

"We should. We got free food yesterday," he yawned and scooted over, the pillow still warm where he'd had his head. "What do you want to see?"

He'd been asleep for just under an hour which, really, was fairly decent for him. He could function on that with a few cups of extra strong black coffee, he decided.

"Art? Buildings--" He yawns, bringing moisture to his eyes. "The fountains? What do little girls think is fun?"

“I don’t know. I’ve never traveled before.” Alessa flopped down between them, her presence radiating a comfortable amount of warmth, like a tiny space heater. “What do you guys do when you travel?”

“I spend my time hiding from law enforcement and giving healthcare to people who haven’t seen a doctor in years.” Bruce yawned as well, burrowing into his covers. Mmmm. Asgardians were onto something with all this fur. “But I don’t think we have the time to set up a clinic.”

“I’d be bad at that anyway.” Alessa wiggled in place, imitating Bruce’s attempts to get comfortable. “I’d keep telling people to stop being stupid and suck it up.”

“Even if they had something like a gangrenous limb?”

“Then I’d chop it off and hit them if they cried.”

Bruce let out a half-chuckle. Considering he’d chopped off multiple limbs of hers without anesthesia while she sat quietly, he completely believed her. “Maybe doctoring isn’t in your future.”

"Maybe instead of hitting you could give them a stern talking to," Tony said, unhelpfully, accepting a glance or a smirk or a rebuttal from Banner before he added: "That's why I'm not a doctor either." Engineers rarely bothered to go beyond their Masters and while he did hold a doctorate in physics, he didn't insist on the title being added to his name. Mr. Stark was good enough for his dad and Mr. Stark would be good enough for him.

When Alessa got them up and Tony spent his half an hour primping in front of a massive polished metal mirror and messing with Asgard's version of in ground plumbing, they headed off to see the city one last time.

Tony couldn't help but fantasize, just a little, of holding Alessa's hand to cross the street or watching Bruce fix her hair or tie her shoe. Alessa was old enough not to need any of that, but the idea of being a family man had hit Tony very quickly, very hard. He still wasn't sure what to do with that when he clung so fiercely to the playboy mindset and the bachelor lifestyle.

They headed down to the water, Viking longships sailing serenely passed the city, when Tony decided they should find a place to eat.

He wasn't sure why he was expecting silverware at the little tavern on the river they picked.

It was strange to watch how Tony changed around Alessa. He was less harsh with her than he could be with others. He was less flippant and selfish. He had really taken to the idea of fatherhood in a way Bruce had never expected him to, but that was okay. More than okay, actually. He had always wanted to be a father.

Bruce didn't have the same longing to touch Alessa. He was used to not being able to touch people, especially the people he cared about, and he was never one to initiate a lot of affection anyway. Instead, he kept his hands in his pockets, walking with them at a relaxed pace and taking the time to soak in the sights, watch the people stare and giggle at them, take note of how clean and beautiful everything was...

When they sat down at the tavern and got their food, Bruce found himself looking down at Alessa contemplatively, who, to her eternal bafflement, still had food and drink put in front of her. "We should get you something here. A souvenir. Maybe a hairpin?"

She looked at him with one raised eyebrow. "In case you didn't notice, I don't have actually have hair."

He waved his hand dismissively. "Hair grows back, and you'll need something to keep it out of your face."

"What about a suit of armor?" Okay, so Tony wasn't so practical. "Those women guards...?" Well, he had been, until Bruce Banner strolled into his life (well, hid in the back of the room behind a lot of chairs with all exits in sight), been very interested in what women had to offer and old habits died hard. He still looked. He didn't touch, but he couldn't help but look. Then again, Alessa was a child."Maybe a sword? In case you get tired of fire blasting people? It could be a nice change of pace."

Tony himself would have loved a sword at her age! And probably accidentally chopped his ear off.

Being served a truncheon of crusty bread and a thick creamy soup poured inside of it with the largest mug of ale he'd ever seen (including the ones at the feast), Tony glanced at the massive knife it had come with and grinned. "Okay, maybe not a sword. A hairpin's nice though. And I can always build you armor if you really wanted some." He broke a piece off of the bread bowl and dipped it in the soup. "Oooh, or one of those ships?"

Even if Bruce wasn't looking at him, Tony reacted as if he was getting an eyeroll.

"What? I think those ships are cool."

In retrospect, maybe Bruce shouldn't have mentioned spoiling their little girl in front of the spoiling king. "A ship? What would she do with a ship?" Bruce was definitely rolling his eyes. "She only just got a body back, and what do you want to do? You want to give her a sword or a ship."

"I don't know. A sword sounds pretty neat." Bruce gave Alessa a side-glance, noting how her signature crooked smile was starting to form.

"You don't need any weapons. You're violent enough as it is."

"But I might need one to protect myself from the evils of the world."

"Believe me, you don't need any help with that." Bruce rolled his eyes again. He had seen her blow up far too many things to think she needed a weapon on top of it all. "Maybe we could look at books instead. I don't know if their alphabet is the same as ours, though."

Of course, Bruce noticed it when Tony looked at women. Frankly? He didn't mind a bit. He trusted Tony to be faithful, or at the very least to be honest if he wasn't, so he didn't care about straying eyes.

Books? "You come to an alien planet and you want-- oh. Actually, books would be good." Tony wasn't exactly a scholar but he was in no way as blue collar as his mechanical background might assume. He was well read, a quick study of languages and yes. He did like to read. Sometimes. Well. He could read extremely fast. Did that count? "Maybe if they had a lot of cool pictures they would be almost as good as a sword," Tony said, chewing thoughtfully on his bread. He gave Alessa a wink. "If Bruce won't let us have a ship, yanno?"

He liked being buddies with the little girl. Bruce was better being compassionate and extra fatherly. Tony took a different approach. He'd never really had anyone to spoil. Pepper never cared for his attempts, Bruce was a difficult one to get gifts for because even the smallest things seemed to go over well with him. That was likely due to the man not having much in his life all his own. But with Alessa, all he wanted to do was give her absolutely everything.

"And we can still get that hairpin. Or like one of those massive chunky necklaces. You know. Something to pass on to your kids that they won't really appreciate and just end up pawning."

"Alien planet books? Even if you're not interested, I am." Especially if they could find science books. Yeeeesssss, alien science.

Alessa, for her part, looked resigned to the fact that both her new parents were dorks. "I wonder if they have neat stories, too. I'm not sure what I'd do with a big heavy necklace if I can't even lift my head, though."

"We'll figure that out for you, don't worry." Bruce picked at his food, eating a little like a bird. "We can check out book stores and jewelry places to see what they have. We should have something to remember this place by." As if a working body for Alessa weren't enough for that.

Tony had at least thought ahead this time. They didn't have the currancy of this planet but that didn't seem to matter when they were mostly on a barter system. The book shops were more interested in paper money, for which Tony had quite a lot of, and the kind old man running one by the water's edge climbed up to the top of the stacks to pull down massive tomes with colorful pages and stories the likes of which Bruce nor Alessa would have heard before. Though the writing wasn't in English, the shopkeep directed the small family to an amulet store that would be able to help them sort out the language issue.

True enough, there was indeed a shop of magical trinkets and baubles and liquids in beautiful little bottles. Tony found some of them to be more interesting than others, especially intricate clockwork pieces supposedly mixed with spells that Tony himself didn't quite understand.

There didn't seem to be anyone in the shop, however, just the three of them. He ran his thumb over one of the amulets and picked it up from it's case.

"Uh... Hello?" Honestly.... Who didn't watch their wares like this?

Bruce carried the books in a bag slung over his shoulder, but he was transfixed by all the (not magical, definitely not magical) extraordinary trinkets around them. But if he was mesmerized, it was nothing compared to the way Alessa stared at all the beauty around her with wide eyes.

It was beautiful. Utterly beautiful. And she had never been around so many things radiating beautiful magic.

She ignored Tony's confusion, instead floating from shelf to shelf, too frightened of breaking one of the precious things letting off tiny streams of happy power, runes that she could see floating off of the things in her mind's eye, glass that shimmered with faces long gone, auras and glows and colors without names--

"Alessa, be careful not to break anything."

Carefully, oh so carefully, she picked up one beautiful ball that looked like it had entire universes swirling inside of it, but the moment it rose off the shelf, the image inside of it changed. Instead, there was a curtain of hair the color of silver and snow, glimmering in lamplight as a middle-aged woman bent over a dimly-lit desk, writing something, though it's too dark to tell what.

Her face seemed tired. Lined with years of strain, with more frown lines between her eyebrows than smile lines around her mouth. Her eyes were a very pale blue, reflecting what little light there was in the room.

Her clothes were robes. Heavy and black.

On the corner of the desk, in red paint, was the symbol of the Order: the Halo of the Sun.

Sharing Alessa's natural need to break things and put them back together, Tony was relieved that Bruce's directive was not aimed at himself. Since no one seemed to be watching, Tony turned his back on the pair and started to pry the amulet open, thumbs working on the copper and gold gears and cogs that made it up. They spun out of the way, but still stayed attached to the main body of the object, causing him to frown. He tapped the weakest part on the table but again, nothing.

It was only when Tony looked up, Alessa had been too quiet for too long, that the device decided to open for him, catching the edge of his little finger and tearing off the skin from his pinkie.

He hissed, dropping the device and put his finger to his mouth before turning back towards his family. Bruce could keep himself out of trouble and he didn't want to be chided for hurting himself, so he headed for Alessa instead to peer over her shoulder.

He wasn't sure what he was seeing to be honest.

"What have you got there?"

It was probably a good move that Tony didn't go to Bruce. Bruce did not need reminding that he had two children to deal with.

"I don't know," Alessa said honestly, frowning at the ball. The woman inside it looked up from her writing, her brow creasing as she stared at the window she sat in front of. "But she's a part of the Order. Those are ceremonial robes, and that's the Halo of the Sun painted on her desk."

The woman seemed familiar. The way she frowned. The way furrows dug themselves deep between her brows, the way her eyebrows were so thin that it looked like she had none at all.

"She's from the Sect of the Holy Woman. That's my sect. We are the only ones who don't simplify the Halo, even if we're just using it to bless our space."

And the Halo of the Sun looked pretty damn complex.

Ever so sensitive about other people's religious beliefs, Tony squinted at the sigil that came into view and smirked. "You guys have a hog with a pitchfork and a beetle as part of your seal? That must be pretty hard to get accurate for tattoos among the young punks in your sect." It was probably a good thing that Alessa liked Tony or he might find his head exploded over the wall. Then he wouldn't have to worry about the way his finger ached.

Though Tony had done his best to understand the Order, their sects, the varying belief systems and what not, he couldn't help but throw in a dig here or there because he truthfully did not understand it at all. Really, that was the whole point of religion, he'd decided long ago...to confuse the masses into a fright-based belief system for those with nothing else in their lives.

The Halo was less important, though, than the woman herself. One he recognized from the research he'd been having JARVIS do based on aging technology of some of the people whose names Alessa had dropped to him when they'd first started this journey.

Tony was uncomfortable. It seemed to be growing more humid, more close in here. He'd have to talk to Banner about the woman later.

Tony was lucky Alessa liked him. She rolled her eyes--a habit she seemed to be picking up from Bruce--and turned the ball carefully in the air. The woman began tapping her pen against the desk, slow rhythmic taps as her eyes followed something unseen in the window.

"It's a holy symbol. The markings symbolize the values of our faith, and the eventual resurrection of God. The outer circle is charity, and the inner circle is resurrection. The runes between those two are the names of God and of those involved with the most recent attempt to resurrect God. So right now, in the Sect of the Holy Woman, the names are Dahlia, Alessa, Incubus, and Alizer. They names are framed by the symbols for the tools to resurrect God. The innermost circles are past, present, and future, and they're in a triangle because they're supposed to symbolize that time is a cycle, not a line..."

She waved a hand dismissively. "What am I talking about? You don't care." She looked at him with a frown, picking up on the odd feeling around him. "Is something wrong?"

"Incubus...as a name? That's pretty much exactly a demon, Lessy," Tony said, really trying to engage. He might find it all a crock of shit but this was Alessa's life for the last forty or so years and that made it important for him to learn.

He was just having trouble focusing now, as if her words didn't quite make sense. Past. Present. Time was a cycle. A cycle. He felt dizzy and reached out to brace himself only to knock half of the contents on the table off of it as he dropped to his knee.

Tony tried to laugh, sweat beading on his forehead, and push himself up. The former came out like a whimper and the latter was completely unsuccessful.

"Swear, didn't have any of the ale," he lied...he did have one sip. But a sip really ought to not make him feel this way.

"Just because that's what Christians call it doesn't mean..."

And then he fell over.

Alessa looked down at him, her eyebrows immediately going up and her eyes getting a fraction wider. "Bruce!"

She hastily put the ball back on the shelf, and the image of the woman faded, replaced by the universe, as Bruce spun around from his spot examining a floating clock.

"Tony!" He ran across the room, kneeling down by Tony and grabbing his arm. "Tony, what happened?"

"He just fell over," Alessa said as she floated down to their level, spinning around Tony to see if she could find anything wrong with him.

Their names. Their names. Which was Alessa's? What did it mean? Tony was thinking too many thoughts at once as he tried for a second time to get up and ended on his hands and knees, sweat rolling down his temple. He swallowed thickly, finding his mouth too dry. "I'm fine," he said, but it came out in a jumble of words, more like 'Enif mi' or the equivalent.

Bruce was at his side and his hands felt cool and clammy at the same time.

"Pu em pleh tsuj," he slurred, but Bruce didn't seem to understand him. "Rennab--" Darkness sparkled like soft, pale lights at the edge of his vision, and he reached up to take a hand or a pant leg or whatever was in reach.

"Tony?"

Bruce was scared.

"Tony, Tony, don't move," he muttered, keeping a hold of Tony's arm as he tried to press his fingers to his throat, timing his pulse. "Alessa, go find help. Now."

"Got it." She reached out to the closest mark she had left and disappeared.

...And reappeared in front of Thor, regardless of where he was. "Tony's collapsed. Where are the doctors?"

"Gnidnamed yrev erouy," Tony complained, finally giving up on his thoughts of pulling himself up. He laid instead in Bruce's arms, eyes half closed and sweat soaking into the other man's shirt. His pulse was only a little faster than usual, which likely didn't make sense. Dizziness tended to come from rapid heartbeat and hypertension.

Despite the sweat, he was shivering when Alessa brought Thor, the latter touching down outside with quite a clamor as Mjolnir finished it's swing and seemed to disappear from his hand.

"Tell me all that has happened!" the former prince demanded. "What was it that has been touched?" Oh Man of Iron, why did you put your hands on everything?

"I-I don't know." Bruce pushed some of Tony's hair out of his face, still trying to get a clear read on his vitals. "I didn't think to..."

All at once, the ball with the universe floated off the shelf, the woman at her desk reappearing, and the amulet Tony had been messing with floated off its table, both pieces presenting themselves to Thor. "He was touching this," Alessa said, shaking the amulet gently, "and then we both looked at this ball."

Bruce sighed in relief. At least one of them had been paying attention. Damn it, Tony, he can't take you anywhere.

"We just came here to find something to let us read the books..."

"I do not recognize either," Thor said with a troubled expression. His brother would have known immediately the cause and remedy for what befell Stark, but Thor was at a certain loss as he gazed at the objects and then picked up the ailing man bodily. "Bring those. We will seek the proprietor of this shop after we see Stark to the healers."

In Thor's arms, Tony looked like a child, cuddling up to the blond's massive chest. He complained unintelligibly about something, causing Thor to frown.

"He speaks mirrored," the Thunderer intoned as people gathered to watch the quick paced procession of the humans and their prince. "It is a strange infliction."

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Ignore that.

Ignored!

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