Anthony Edward Stark

So there it was. The love exchange. Tony felt warm, and it wasn't because Bruce's body temperature was abnormally high. It wasn't because of the pot either. He almost wanted to giggle-- Hopefully that was the pot though! It all happened organically. The conversation returned almost immediately after.

Still, he placed a kiss on the top of Banner's head and folded his arms tightly around his boyfriend with a sigh into his hair as he prattled away about letters.

"Borrow some of the drones," he murmured. "Write your letters or record video and JARVIS will send them where they need to go if you have approximate GPS coordinates."

If they could find Cheryl, they could find Bruce's old compatriots.

"And say thank you from me, too. I would have missed out if I never got to meet you."

From:

Love. They hadn't needed to say it, really--Bruce knew that Tony loved him, and he assumed Tony knew that he loved him back. But it was still nice to say it out loud.

He rested his head on Tony's chest, still rolling the joint between his fingers but listening to his lover's heart beat.

"That might freak some of them out. It's hard to get used to drones if you've never seen a computer before."

He'd never say it, but he loved the smell of Tony. Grease and cologne, but beneath that, when he was shirtless and in bed, there was something unique. Warm.

"But thank you. I'll do that. I'd like to make sure they're all still alive. I never got to say goodbye to most of them."

From:

Steve Rogers called early the next morning, right around ten o'clock, and though Tony tended to lean towards insomnia, after his and Banner's late night, he'd slept in. Having JARVIS wake him to inform him of the other man's arrival caused him to lift his head. Bruce, sprawled against his chest, looked too perfect to move and so Tony closed his eyes again and let his head hit the pillow.

That lasted all of ten seconds.

"J--" he half whispered, trying to get the AI's responses to match so Bruce wouldn't wake. It was rare his boyfriend didn't have nightmares after Silent Hill, after all. "Does Alessa know we have company again?"

He didn't need another blown out section of home. The repairs were too costly.

He probably shouldn't have allowed poor Alessa to be alone all night and morning.

From:

No, Alessa had no idea that they were supposed to have company.

But she knew now.

She had spent the night chatting with JARVIS. When she grew tired of that, she went outside and played tricks on people she didn't like. And by 'play tricks,' she meant 'burn or pummel or otherwise attack' people she caught doing things she didn't like, mainly things like mugging or drinking excessively or bullying children. A lot of people went home with unexplained burns and bruises. Silent Hill wasn't doing the punishing for her, so she'd happily dole some retribution out to sinners in her boredom.

You were only allowed to beat up children if you were their parents or a religious authority. So there.

In the morning, she came back to the Tower, impatiently waiting for Tony and Bruce to wake up. She was aware of their relationship, and before the ritual she would have been deeply disgusted by it, but after encountering murdered children and wife killers and rapists, homosexuality really didn't seem like a big deal. So she found she really didn't mind like she once would have.

She entertained herself by looking up things on the Internet, introducing herself to more violent video games, and drawing. Until someone came to the door.

She was immediately there, staring as a weirdly handsome man walked inside. She narrowed her eyes. Tell her they weren't going to have another guest talking over her like she were some baby boy.

She threw a pen at the man to catch his attention and see if he could spot her.

From:

Steve Rogers wasn't like the rest. He'd seen things that might break most men, but he was a paragon of good and while that made it impossible to see Alessa, even a chest as broad as his wasn't going to be able to ignore the pen that bounced off of it. Glancing up in his faded blue jeans and brown bomber jacket, every bit the picture of a good old American boy, quite literally born on the Fourth of July, Steve bent to pick up the object and frown at it.

By that point, Tony appeared in the doorway and the pen was neatly placed on the table by the entry way. "Stark."

But Tony wasn't looking at him. "Try to be nice this time, Lessy." Okay... Steve wasn't sure how to take that but he assumed it was a new AI. He had trouble dealing with that sort of thing, but having just gotten through I Love Lucy on Blu Ray between flights around the country, dodging HYDRA as he went, he decided to roll with the punches.

It was just easier.

Tony frowned slightly and then moved forward before he turned hi back to Steve and crouched down. The super soldier didn't need super hearing to pick up Tony's whispering. "He can't see you...great. I guess it looks like I'm talking to myself. Where's your Teddy JARVIS?"

From:

“I’ll be nice if he is nice.” Alessa puffed her cheeks out indignantly, as if that made her look any more dignified and mature, but she was surreptitiously trying to check if Tony’s leg had gotten any better. Not that she was concerned and guilty, absolutely not.

The people who couldn’t see her generally annoyed her. It wasn’t just about them by default ignoring her, which was irritating but understandable—it was the implication that they had no reason to. There were only three ways one could be unaware of her entirely, in her experience: one, the town didn’t care to make her visible and neither did she, and the person lacked any extraordinary sight. That, she could live with, and that was how she was generally able to navigate the city without ever being seen. Two, they were too good or lacking in sin to have need for her and the judgment she was tied to. Those people didn’t exist past the age of twelve.

That left the third category: the people who refused to acknowledge, even in the darkest depths of their hearts, that they had done anything wrong. The town usually dealt with those types. There was no town to deal with them here.

But Tony seemed to want her to play nice with the unseeing man, so she supposed she could tolerate him. As long as he didn’t make her mad.

“JARVIS bear is on the couch. I was playing video games with him.” And by that, she meant she convinced JARVIS to go on multiplayer. He was way better at games than she was, since he was literally an AI, but she liked to think she was getting better, considering she didn’t have any thumbs to work with. “You want me to get him?”

Because if she was supposed to communicate with Mr. American Stereotype over there, he probably needed some indicator of where she was standing. Holding a bear in front of her might help.

From:

"That's sort of the trouble with that one," Tony muttered. "He is nice. Well, it's relative. And yeah, go get him. You can make him talk for you." Tony stood and faced the wary frown of Captain America. Tony had half a mind to send him on his way without answers, but...they needed him.

And that was annoying. Almost as annoying as his limp. He was stiff but it was better than yesterday. Pot, aspirin and a good night's sleep will do that.

And then Steve opened his mouth. "Stark, I don't know what game you're playing--"

"Know what I wish this was? A game. It's not. There's a little girl here, about seven years old, ritualistically burned. Banner filled you in a little bit, I know, but we couldn't risk saying much over the phone."

Steve shifted his weight. "Are you saying your lines might be tapped?"

"Yes. Thanks to you and your new girlfriend--"

"Woah, woah, woah--!"

"--I have HYDRA trying to kill me and I don't know if they're working with this Order. She's probably a mutant, Steve. She can astral project, she has telekinesis. Don't get her mad because I really can not afford another renovation right now, okay? I'm twice your age, Rogers. I get tired too."

Steve, poor Steve, at least looked like he believed Tony through his own confusion.

From:

"Is there anything JARVIS can't do?" Alessa muttered as the door leading to the living room suddenly clattered open and a teddy bear flew out, coming to a sudden stop in front of her.

She leaned forward, though that did nothing, and said, "Tony, you're really bad at explaining things. And that's coming from me."

She waved at Rogers, once again a useless gesture, and resigned herself to at least trying to play nice. "I'm Alessa. Don't listen to Tony. My name's not Lessy. Or Less. Or Ashy. It's Alessa."

From:

"He can't make eggs and eat them," Tony replied, calling after her, which just so happened to make him look even more insane before he turned to lead Steve into the kitchen. Eggs sounded good. He'd fallen asleep before the pot munchies started and now he could really use a little grease.

Steve, thankfully, decided not to bring up the limp. Instead, all he wanted to know was: "Are you pulling the wool over my eyes, Stark?" And that was before the sudden banging and flying teddy bears happened to cause him to spin around and nearly reach for the shield he had strapped to his back.

"Wh-- Rogers, no one... No one says that any more," he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. Yes, evidently floating teddy bears were normal for Tony.

What wasn't normal was having Alessa's approximated voice coming out of the bear a moment after Alessa herself said the same words it repeated.

"Creepy."

It wouldn't be as creepy as explaining things to the somewhat disgruntled, on edge blond, however. At least Steve took it all fairly well while Tony made omelets.

From:

As Tony finished the preliminary explanations, Bruce wandered in, dressed in a rumpled button-down and pajama bottoms. As soon as he sees Steve, he smiles one of his rare smiles.

"Steve. Good to see you."

While Tony didn't like Steve, Bruce really did. Steve was one of the only people who treated Bruce like he was human, even after knowing about the Hulk. One of the other only people happened to be Tony.

"Thanks for coming by." He sits down near Alessa, taking note how she was holding the teddy bear and looking disgruntled. "They haven't started picking fights with each other yet, have they?"

Alessa smirked at Bruce, letting the bear float in her lap. "Leave for another minute and I bet they will."

"Good thing I got here, then." Bruce leans against the edge of the table and gives both Steve and Tony a sleepy smile, still not completely awake.

From:

Tony would be more or less fine being insular. He had his toys, he had his boyfriend, he had his lab and a mission. He could go out and be above them all any time he wanted. He told himself he didn't need anything else. And perhaps that was true now that he had Banner and Alessa with him. He really didn't.

He sat back and let the teddy bear and Bruce fill in Steve on the rest of what had happened while he placed plates in front of them all. Yes, even Alessa. It wasn't that he didn't remember she was incorporeal, he just wanted to make sure that she didn't feel left out. She even got a glass of chocolate milk too.

They were halfway through their meal, after stopping to rip on Captain America for his overzealous use of ketchup, when a figure appeared behind Banner followed by her shadow.

Tony waggled his fork around. "You two are too late for breakfast."

Barton just shrugged. "I can make ours."

"Not in my kitchen," Tony said defensively. "I already had enough of my place blown up already!"

From:

Bruce turned in his seat, and the corner of his mouth quirked slightly. He knew neither Natasha nor Clint very well, but the fact remained that they all saved the world together. That earned them 'Bruce smiling at you' privileges.

"Glad to see you could make it. Pull up a seat."

Alessa, who up until now was trying to figure out what she was expected to do with food and chocolate milk, immediately looked up and narrowed her eyes at the newcomers, Natasha especially.

One of the utensil drawers clattered open and chopsticks flew out, getting thrown at both Clint and Natasha to see if they could see her.

Immediately, Bruce slapped his hand down on the counter, forcing Alessa to look him in the eye as he tried to look stern. "Alessa, that is not how we say hi to people! Play nice."

"I am playing nice!" she huffed. "I didn't throw sharp things!"

"You have your JARVIS bear, just talk at people!"

"But that's boring!"

From:

cognitive_recalibration

Barton was fast. You had to be when your only superpower in a room full of super heroes (or trained former ballerinas turned KGB agents) was to move quicker than they could. He didn't even turn, half in the fridge despite Stark's commands, when he grabbed the chopsticks out of the air and tucked them behind one here.

"Who's the kid?" He balanced pancake mix, eggs and milk in one arm and kicked the door to the refrigerator shut. "Because that's creepy, even for you, Stark."

Tony was too busy helping Bruce deal with Alessa to pay attention to Clint Barton, invader of air ducts and disabler of security equipment. He assumed that was why JARVIS did no announce their arrival to the Tower. He needed to install lasers, he decided.

"Oh, hey, got blueberries? Nat, you want pancakes? Yeah you do." He grinned.

From:

Natasha caught the chopsticks heading her way easily enough, raising one eyebrow at the small child. "You know me, Clint."

Steve looked between Clint and Natasha, frowning. "You're seriously telling me I'm the only one who can't see her?" He had been thinking that maybe Stark was pulling his leg, but...

Natasha arched one eyebrow at him, slowly moving towards Clint and away from the child. "Why wouldn't you see her? She's right there. Glaring at me."

Alessa intensified her glare. Bruce frowned at her, but considering she wasn't throwing anything, he decided to just be satisfied.

"Are you a mutant?" Natasha asked, keeping her eyes on Alessa, because just because Tony let it in the house doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.

"We call it Divinely Touched where I come from, but I guess your word works too," Alessa grumbled, giving a small roll of her eyes.

"This is Alessa," Bruce cut in. "And she's honestly a sweet girl once she warms up to you."

"No I'm not."

"Tony, is she or is she no nice once you get to know her?" Bruce asked, taking a drink of orange juice and looking to his boyfriend for support while Alessa kept glaring at Natasha.

From:

"Banner," Tony said, smirking, "we are not playing 'gang up' on this one or she'll go out of her way to prove just how far right of the nice spectrum she is!" He couldn't help but laugh, the warmth in his eyes causing Clint to turn away from his pancake assembly line to glance almost secretly at Natasha.

Tony's personality was certainly off. Natasha did not return the look to her friend and her savior. She might have cleared her ledger when it came to Barton but there was still something there that would never be erased by paying one good deed with another. Much too capable of schooling her expressions, she didn't reveal her surprise at Tony's interactions with Banner or the girl.

When poor Steve just started to get lost in the confusion of the bickering with a person he couldn't see, Tony hooked him up with an earpiece and JARVIS was able to approximate Alessa's voice for him. It was only strange, thereafter, not to see the girl, even if he could see her manipulating objects.

The story, like it had with Thor, came out slowly. The two assassins were quiet, well, relatively. Barton ate noisily, fork to plate, but he kept his mouth shut otherwise. Natasha more or less ignored the pancakes in favor of watching Alessa and her scowling act all through the tale.

Other than the sex, their relationship and some of Bruce's trials in Silent Hill, the three of them managed to fill the Avengers in on what was happening.

From:

"Good move, Tony."

Alessa nodded towards Tony. "You see, he understands." Which might or might not have been a good thing. People shouldn't understand the recalcitrant and violent mind of Alessa.

Bruce just rolls his eyes and smiles. He was smiling more in this conversation than he had smiled throughout the build up to the Battle of New York. If the others noticed, they weren't obvious about it, mostly because Barton and Natasha were trained to not let on if they noticed something weird.

Bruce let Tony tell the story. Alessa kept glaring at Natasha. After a few minutes of just glaring at each other, Alessa started pulling Natasha's hair.

"Alessa, play nice," Bruce said quietly when Natasha's brow furrowed just a little in surprise and she instinctively touched the hair being pulled by nothing.

"I am."

Steve, meanwhile, was listening to the story, his face gradually getting stormier as the narrative continued. "This Order... How long has it been in operation?"

"Since the pilgrims," Alessa immediately answered, still glowering at Natasha. "Puritans burned one of our saints at the stake or witchcraft. It was how we discovered the power of the land Silent Hill is now built on."

From:

Tony set his arm along the back of Alessa's chair, not because she could really feel him but because he might normally brush her hair away from her neck if she was sitting beside him. He let Bruce do the discipline because he wanted to be the fun parent. The thought made his lips quirk up.

There was a lot of information getting tossed around here. The Order. Silent Hill. The power behind it.

"And HYDRA followed you--" Clint twirled his fork around. His mouth was still full.

"And died for it."

He glanced at Natasha. "Hey Nat. Wanna go on vacation?"

From:

“I’ll pack my bathing suit,” Natasha said softly, already mapping things out in her head. HYDRA had tried to intimidate the Order into coughing up Bruce. Clearly, direct tactics like that didn’t work, even when working under the assumption that they had no ability to pull people in or out of the magic town (since when was that in her job description she did not sign up for magic).

“Don’t swim in Toluca Lake. The people at the bottom will drag you down.” Alessa ignored how Steve flinched next to her at the thought. She could feel the darkness radiating off of Natasha. She had no doubt the woman could wake up the spirits in the lake.

“Noted.” Natasha was unsettled, even if her expression was just as impassive as ever. Dead people were supposed to stay dead. She was going to run into a lot of problems if they weren’t. “Maybe it’s time the Order met a couple hopeful converts.” She moved her food out of the way, leaning forward so her face was level with Alessa’s. The room began to get warm as Alessa’s eyes narrowed and her shoulders tensed aggressively. “What can you tell me about how it works?”

Alessa’s eyes stayed narrow. The room was getting uncomfortably warm.

“They’ll be less suspicious of him.” She jerked her head towards Hawkeye. “But they’ll tell you more, if you play it right.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a woman. Our council is made of women. Our leaders are women. Everything except some splinter denominations is ran by women, because they’re the ones who might learn how to control bits of the town. They’re the ones who are connected to God. Men?” Alessa shrugged with a scowl. “No one really worries about them, but no one really respects them either. They’re just sort of kept out of the way.” Unless they managed to earn a religious title, but Alessa hadn’t met any man who had. Unbeknownst to her, Vincent had managed it. JARVIS’s search for records on her friends would eventually turn up very little for Claudia, but a wealth for Vincent, because he was running social media inviting people to the loving, totally innocent arms of the Order and was labeled not only a priest, but the one who managed donations and finances of the church.

From:

"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?"

From:

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."

From:

"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?"

From:

"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."

From:

"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."

From:

"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."

From: