starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

The Not So Silent Hill

[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.

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Tony conceded that laundry detergent made the most sense to do laundry with but he still didn't care for how it measured out or what rinse cycles meant to appropriate softeners. The man might be a genius, but he still couldn't remember his social security number, his cell phone number, or some of the passwords to various emails.

He had other things to worry about and there just wasn't room for extra digits! He'd told Pepper that before, but her exasperation was usually anger induced. Bruce's... Well, he liked seeing him flustered.

If Tony would remember how to run a laundry machine in the future was still on the table but he seemed somewhat impressed by Bruce's handling of the situation and dutifully followed the proper steps to get their sheets clean for what was bound to be a terribly exhausting evening.

He'd had little time to let it sink in that he was going to get to share the night with Bruce (it felt a little bit like the sleep overs he never had). No sooner had the buzzer on the washer gone off than JARVIS informed them that their charge was waking.

It was now or never, Tony decided, and lightly touched Bruce's cheek. "Go time. Stop worrying. We're going to be amazing. Well, I am at least. But you'll be up there too."

"I never stop worrying. Haven't you figured that out yet?" But Bruce leaned forward and gave Tony a soft peck on the lips. "I'll go get Alessa. You go find a spot with a view."

After all, once everything got moving, Bruce wanted Tony watching from his bedroom, not from inside the lab.

Alessa was still groggy when Bruce got to her room. He gently picked her up and held her against his chest, resting her chin on his shoulder. "We're going to give you Extremis, Alessa."

She made a soft noise of assent, a real one with her real throat, her eyelashes tickling his neck. She was so fragile and tiny in his arms.

He took her down to the lab, laying her carefully down on a medical table before strapping her in. "Okay. Are you comfortable?"

"Yes, Bruce. You can take a deep breath." She didn't even bother making a projection. The voice came from nowhere, bouncing off the walls. "You're too anxious."

"That's what I keep saying," Tony chimed in, appearing on a floating 'screen' by the wall. "He can't help himself. Let him worry," he laughed. This was a dangerous thing, he knew, and joking very likely was the only way to dissolve some of the tension. He wished he could be there but... It was too dangerous.

Instead, he checked over Bruce's calculations (because it was always a good idea to have someone else check your work) and set JARVIS on the final analysis of the serum they had perfected back in New York. Who knew what sort of affect it could have had if it was jumbled too much in the transport?

Luckily for everyone involved, the base pairs looked good and nothing had shifted too much. It looked wholly stable.

"I want you behind that blast door as soon as you give her the injection series. And tie her down. It's not going to be too pleasant but once the chain reaction starts there's nothing else to do."

"I'll be careful." Bruce more than anyone knew the dangers associated with him getting hurt. "Alessa, this is probably going to be very painful, but I know you can handle it."

"I'll be fine." Alessa closed her eyes. Bruce made sure all the straps keeping her held down were secure, then impulsively leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

"I know you will be."

She didn't know what to do with the kiss. Bruce and Tony both seemed to like kissing her far more than she was used to. But she didn't have time to sort it out in her head, because Bruce was already finding her veins. Then he positioned all the apparatus meant to inject her.

"Starting the series now." The machines whirred to life, and needles began pushing themselves into Alessa's veins, her muscles, her limbs. She didn't even wince.

"I'm right here." Bruce retreated behind the blast shields, a chilling calm settling over him now that the process was underway. The room was warm. It was getting warmer.

Tony pushed his chair with his feet over to the left to stare at the temperature output. JARVIS wasn't wrong with the climb but he double checked it anyway. "Banner, shut the door," he muttered to himself, watching Bruce rush across the room. He could see Alessa's body actually giving off heat, waves rising from her skin.

Tony's worry was as palpable as the climbing temperature. He leaned forward, hands clasped, and pressed his lips against the curve of his forefinger.

"I need bio signs," he told the AI and a moment later they flashed on the screen. Heart rate up. The rate of his synapses firing were up even more. Tony felt his mouth go high. This was different than their clinical tests on the rats.

This was...this was going to split her open.

He was on his feet a moment later. "BANNER! You have to get out of the lab completely! Meet me by the quinjet hangar!"

"Tony, I can't just--"

The body shuddered on the table, straining against the straps, her skin glowing orange and red and her mouth opening in an ear-splitting shriek.

The air was too hot. The metal was changing. There were more screams, there were more children, he couldn't see them but he could hear them, and his side was suddenly hurting and burning and wet--

The scar Alessa's pyramid-headed pet had given him had torn open without any prompting. His head was all fuzzy and blood was starting to soak through his clothes. He stumbled towards the door, trying to get out before she released the monster inside, but his head was swimming. He fell over.

The layers were separating again. Children. Many children, with knives for nails and tentacles for grabbing and blue faces and dirt under their nails and between their teeth. All he could hear was screaming.

JARVIS couldn't catch any of that on video. The static that rolled across the screen made Tony's heart just stop. "Banner...?" he asked, half a whisper. "Banner! JARVIS, I need bio signs--"

But JARVIS was offline and Tony was blind. He could feel his hands start to shake as he moved slowly to the physical screen he had set up on the wall. Pulling it from it's mounting, he tried to rewire it to pick up any signal at all but got nothing.

Tony turned on his heels and ran for the lab, sweating before he hit the landing on the way to the basement. He knew in the back of his head how badly this was going to go, but the people trapped in there were his family.

This had been his idea.

He couldn't kill them!

The room was a mess. The heat was blistering, the metal wobbling, like it wanted to turn into something else but was being resisted. Bruce was on the floor, his blood soaking through his coat, his eyes fixing on something that wasn't there, and tiny faces were pressing against the floor, pushing up and screaming, trying to rip themselves free, and Alessa was glowing bright red as her body thrashed, beginning to burn clean through the straps.

Bruce was covering his ears, apparently unaware that he was hurt, trying to block out the screams of children and the visions of their death--shouting while dirt was piled on him, shrieking as he was hacked to pieces, gasping as he was drowned and strangled and thrown and burned--

Alessa would be absolutely all right, Tony knew it. The tattoo on her back, the resistance of her body, and the Extremis itself would protect her. At least from herself. From the Hulk? No, that would be bad.

Tony spotted Bruce on the floor, the blood seeping across the metal grating, and despite the little faces trying to break into the world, he stepped on them to get to Bruce. Blood soaked his clothing as he pulled him up.

"Ahhhh!" He was a strong man but dead weight? That was hard to maneuver. "Okay, okay, I believe you! I can't lift you up properly! I'm going to have to drag you. I'm sorry!"

He grabbed Bruce beneath the arms , chest to back, and grunted the whole way.

"Please...please stay in there, Big Guy. Make it up to...aaargh...you!"

It hurt. There was growling in his head. The movement just made his head swim more--the knife biting into his first knuckle as he strained against straps, waking up in a hole because a little dirt fell in your face and seeing the shovel moving to bury you above--and sweat burst on his skin.

The straps on Alessa snapped. "SHUT UP!" She immediately swung her arm for the first time in decades, sending a molten fireball to the ground, right where the little faces where pressing upwards. The voices squealed and shrieked, but the faces were forced to retreat from the flames and the heat radiating off her glowing body.

The moment Tony got Bruce to the hall, he tried shoving Tony's arms off, suddenly gasping for air in shallow panicky breaths and screaming echoing in his head.

"And you wanted me to just leave?" Tony said, shielding Bruce's body with his own when the air literally sizzled over him in Alessa's fit. He had no idea what was happening there, what was causing it, or how Bruce could be bleeding so profusely. From what he knew of Bruce, even a small injury, panic or feat could bring out the Hulk. After all, the collapse of the lab on the helicarrier had. This was so much worse.

Was Alessa causing him not to Hulk out again like he said she had in Silent Hill? Something to keep in mind, he supposed, though now was not the time to praise the girl's ability to restrain him. Tony wasn't a doctor. He couldn't even hem pants, like Bruce had teased him. How could he sew the other up?

"Work with me," he begged Bruce, shutting the door between them and Alessa's tantrum. He only let him go for a moment before he dropped to his knees again at Bruce's side, looking for telltale signs of the Hulk coming out to smash up his poor island.

Give Bruce a little credit, Tony. He could handle being hurt without Hulking out. If he couldn't, he would have never lasted away from modern medicine.

That said, the influence of Silent Hill might also have something to do with it.

Bruce's vision was cloudy. He was seeing flashes of things that weren't their, pulsing walls that were still as stone, screaming children that were long dead.

"Pressure, pressure..." He pressed his hands against his wet side, trying to apply pressure by himself because in the back of his head, he knew that he shouldn't let Tony touch him when he was bleeding. He didn't remember why at the moment, but he knew that it was important.

Credit, perhaps, but Tony did remember the Hulk rampaging while he played with the turbines. He remembered Widow's account of it from the leaked SHIELD documents. He wasn't afraid. He couldn't be afraid. Not of Bruce of all people. Not even if he had all the reason in the world to be.

Pressure. Now that he could do. He was already streaked in his blood, why not a little more?

Tony pressed his hands over Bruce's and leaned in. How long would they need to do this? Hands couldn't stop bleeding indefinitely.

"Tell me what to get!" Just not needles. Please. Super glue, however, that he could do.

"Gloves."

Tony shouldn't touch the blood. He shouldn't touch it.

And needles would do nothing now. It wouldn't stop the bleeding, just take away a passage out of his body. He would still be bleeding internally with a wound this deep.

He remembers getting it. Remembers the stalking beast with the pyramid mask.

"I don't have time to find gloves," Tony complained immediately, and it was too late. He was already bled all over. He didn't have any cuts or open wounds, he was pretty sure at least, so as long as he didn't get any blood in his eyes or mouth he'd be gold.

Not that Bruce would be.

There was just too much blood. Too much blood and no sign of the Jolly Green Giant.

"Why aren't you changing?!" Tony demanded, angry and starting to lose it. "You're going to bleed out!" And while that might seem like a relief to Bruce in some ways, to Tony, it might as well end his world.

Why isn't he changing? Why isn't he changing?

He could die. He could die right there. That was too good a thing for Silent Hill to do.

He slipped one hand out from under Tony's, squinting at his palm. The more he looked at it, the cleaner it was, the more the screams receded from his head and the air felt cold.

"Because it's not real."

The town was trying to trick them.

His hands were suddenly clean. His side was dry. There wasn't blood. There never was. There was just an old scar.

He wanted to laugh. The town was going to drive them crazy. Drive them crazy all the way in France. It already ruined his head, might as well try to ruin Tony's too.

Somehow the laughter just wasn't appropriate. Tony blinked down at Bruce as he looked over the blood that phased away in globs, dissolving towards the ceiling. As his hands cleaned themselves, he felt his anger at the situation bubble over to fear. Emotion got the better of him and tears ran down his face.

"I thought you were dead!" Tony cried out, grabbing the front of Bruce's shirt to haul him back into a seated position. He'd never been so scared in his life and it showed.

He leaned forward on his knees, Tony pressed his forehead against Bruce's chest and let out a long, low sigh.

"Don't do that to me again."

Bruce had never seen Tony cry. Even in Silent Hill, he had never cried.

He draped his arms around Tony's shoulders and pressed his nose into his hair. There was a dull ache in his scar, the one arching across his ribs, but that didn't matter for the moment. He just remembered his own panic, his own despair when he had seen Tony sink into the graveyard and thought he had died.

He could still see the outlines of children over Tony's head. Jigsaw children, torn apart and hastily put back together. His mind was leaving him. Every time he had an encounter with Silent Hill, he felt his mind crumble a little more.

But there was a reason it targeted him. His stomach fell. "Alessa. Tony, Alessa."

The visions had forced them to leave her. What if that had been the point?

The last thing Tony wanted to do right then was run back into that inferno of a room but sometimes you just had to do things you didn't particularly want to. He pulled himself out of Bruce's arms, face a splotched mess, and bolted for the doors. "J-- Open outer and inner lab doors, Stark-0415." The doors hissed for him as they split open and reacting blindly, he found himself inside hell itself.

But he'd been there before, playing chess with the Queen Demon herself. He'd survived this once, why not again?

And if not-- Well, he'd had a pretty good life. His dad might not have cared much for him and he might have always had some alcohol issues but it was Alessa's turn to get to experience something good. Alessa's turn and Bruce's turn.

The heat was sweltering but Tony threw up his arms to protect his face and could almost feel the skin start to blacken on them. "Not today!" he yelled, unsure if this was all just more Silent Hill illusion or if it was real.

What did it matter at the moment?

"You don't get to have her back today! ALESSA!"

"Leave! I told you to leave!"

"You DARE speak to me like that?!"

It wasn't a lab anymore. There was fire everywhere. A hulking thing, wreathed in swirling black cloth, so tall that it stoops, arms and legs so long that it takes up the hallway. They're in a living room, burning, chunks of the floor falling through to the fiery kitchen below. Alessa is back in her school uniform, smaller than she usually is, puffing out her chest and looking up at the beast with her hands fisted in her skirt. The tears running down her face belied her defiant pose. "You're dead. You're supposed to stay dead."

Know what Tony was starting to hate? Dead parents coming back to nightmarish life to torment their children. He was going to seriously rue the day that Howard came back for a chat and some scotch, though if that ever happened, Tony might well throw in the towel. No matter what his father might have said on film in the 70s, that didn't make decades of heartache any less real.

Growling as he pushed his way through Alessa's inferno, Tony moved between the small girl and whatever towering mass of horrible shadow had arrived to make her miserable when all she really needed to do was get better.

This might be one more instance of laying down on the line for a fellow soldier but he wasn't trying to prove himself. He had nothing to prove this time anyway. He just wasn't going to let Alessa get hurt.

"I believe the lady told you to leave!"

"This is none of your concern!"

The monster approached, every step making a sharp clicking sound on the burning wood and the billowing cloth sweeping around it. Alessa flinched back from the cloth as it came closer, every brush against the skin leaving burning pain, as if the cloak were made of nettles.

"She always had a way with men. Twisted them around her little finger, made them suffer, then tossed them aside when she was done. Masterful. My little girl."

The beast bent, curled, lowering itself so its face was level with Tony's, and in the firelight, it was clear it was wearing a perfect porcelain mask.

"Leave before she sucks you dry."

"I SAID GO AWAY!" A floorboard ripped itself from the floor and bashed the monster in the face. It reared back with a shriek of rage and swung its arm, an arm that cracked like a whip in the air and swung like a belt.

Tony wasn't so good at dodging but for a man of his age, he was a little more spry than some. What he wouldn't have gived for a little super soldiber serum to tide him over, however. He'd have to play around with that later, even if Bruce might well kill him. As he dodged the creature, he grabbed Alessa as well and should he not just fall through her, as tended to happen with astral projections, he would likely end up sheltering her with his body.

After all, none of this was real and if that was the case, Silent Hill would do everything in it's power to make it appear so with all senses. He'd seen and smelled the blood on Bruce, he'd touched it. And if all of this gambling paid off, he could use that experience to his benefit.

It would not help him from feeling or experiencing hurt, but it shouldn't actually be there.

Pushing himself up, defiant despite all of his senses telling him that his skin was crackling and splitting, Tony Stark pressed on towards the porceline faced creature, eyes blazing with the heat of the room and his own inner fire.

"You have no business being here," he growled. "You're not real! This isn't your realm. And you're really messing up my carpeting!"

He hoped the gamble paid off.

Alessa was solid. She wrapped her arms around his neck, digging her nails into his back.

"I have every business to be here. I haunt this world. I wait in every shadow. When the new world is born, I will be there."

The porcelain mask cracked at the mouth, its lower jaw hanging open with jagged teeth.

"I am more real than you will ever be."

The beast lunged with a hiss, but then a deafening crack rattled the ground, a bolt of lightning coming down and hitting the monster, making it rear back and writhe and shriek. "ALESSA!"

Then everything was gone. Alessa wasn't in Tony's arms, and there was no fire. Instead, Alessa was sitting up on her medical table, the straps ruined, gasping for air.

And Bruce managed to force the lab door open again, his eyes wide. "What just happened?"

Tony took two steps back and sat down, legs out and knuckles hitting the floor between his legs. "I think I just shit out through my penis," he said, and while he wasn't generally crude like that, he really felt as if he'd done the impossible and lived to see through to the end. It was horrifying. And still, it gave him a real sense of accomplishment. Though with what, exactly, he couldn't be sure.

How could be that accomplished when he might not have done anything at all? It wasn't like he could call down lightning from the sky--

When he saw Alessa gasping, however, Tony half crawled on his knees towards her, pulling himself up to the table to wrap his arms around her burning hot body.

This time he might really get burned but it was worth it.

One more hurdle passed--

He was sure that they were going to be all right...for the next few minutes at least. "Shh, Ashy, calm down, breath like I do. In...and out..."

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