INFERNO │ Marvel

2 - Stranger Danger

The bottle of wine Tony had given her was half empty by the time Amelia began to feel tired. She had confined herself to her room for the rest of the day, watching the sun set over the horizon and then bathing in the darkness that followed. Tony was right, the drink had made her less jittery. Unfortunately for her, though, the effects didn't go beyond that considering her serum didn't allow her to get drunk. Perhaps the provided calmness was a placebo effect.

"JARVIS," Amelia called out. "Play something fun."

"Of course, miss," JARVIS responded, and Queen began playing through the speakers of her room. She was thankful for the soundproofing she had installed. No doubt her brother and his girlfriend were fast asleep, if Tony was sleeping at all. For the first time in a while, Amelia let loose, carrying the bottle as she spun around her room and banged her head to the music. The weight in her chest didn't disappear, but it was almost as if it floated rather than hold her down fully. A temporary distraction from the reality of life outside those walls.

"Amy!" a voice shouted over the music. Amelia shrieked and turned around, her hand pointed out with flames dancing around it. She retracted it quickly when she saw who it was. The woman in front of her stared on with a shocked expression.

"Pepper, I am so sorry," she apologised, her voice quiet. She shut the music off.

"Not you, too..." Pepper whispered. "I'm sleeping downstairs tonight. Please go speak to your brother."

With that, the woman left. Amelia sighed, head hung low, and walked out of her room, the bottle still in hand.

Amelia knocked quietly on Tony's door. When he didn't answer, she let herself in. He sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. The sheets were messed up and his broken apart suit was laid all over the floor.

"Hey, big brother," she whispered, moving slowly towards him. She sat down on the floor in front of him to meet his line of sight and placed a hand on his knee. "It's gonna be ok."

"I don't know what happened," he said timidly. Amelia nodded and grimaced, getting a sense of what had happened from the broken suit next to her. "I was having a nightmare and I just..."

"Hurt Pepper?" she finished for him. She decided not to mention how she had almost just burned the woman herself. "It wasn't intentional. You can't control nightmares, Tony. And if it was a problem with the suit, we'll fix it. We always do."

"Yeah, well, I don't know if I can fix this."

"Of course you can," she reassured him. She took his hands in hers and squeezed, keeping him grounded in reality so he didn't go back to whatever nightmare he had just experienced. "She has to understand, Tony. You don't come out of everything we've been through unscathed. Mentally or physically."

Tony sighed and looked down again, utterly defeated. Amelia was good with her words but there were some things even she couldn't make better. This was one of them and she knew it. As her brother broke down in front of her, the woman felt there was nothing she could do to help him. She moved to sit beside him and hugged him tight as he silently cried.

"It's ok to feel like this, you know," she whispered into his hair after placing a kiss on the top of his head. "The world isn't going to end just because you need to take some time to sort through your feelings. Even heroes have their demons."

She pulled away slightly to look him in the eyes. Even she had never seen him this vulnerable. It was like she was seeing straight into his soul. It was dark and clouded and broken, but it wasn't destroyed. She sighed and held out the bottle of wine to him. It wasn't enough to get him drunk, but it was enough to get him to loosen up and talk to her.