Resilience | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

Marley had a serious problem.

The kind of problem that would ruin her life. The kind of problem that would get a lot of people real pissed at her real quick.

She stared at the screen of her computer, trying not to freak out. (It wasn't working.) In her inbox sat the worst anonymous threat she'd gotten. The worst by far.

just wait til everyone knows your bi marley stark.

There were several things that bothered her about the message. First off, the anon had used the wrong version of 'you are.' The grammatically correct term would be 'you're.' 'Your' was possessive and made it sound like bisexuality as a whole was hers. Incorrect.

Secondly, the anon knew her name. They knew who she was. This person who had been sending her death threats had somehow figured out her identity. They knew where she lived. She hadn't ever responded—how long until they started getting worse in the hopes that she'd acknowledge them?

Lastly, but certainly not the least of the accumulation of problems, was the wording—the threat. The anon was ready to out her. Willing. Was planning on it. Was going to follow through on this one. And that would be a huge thing. She wanted to tell Tony herself on her own time. Then Beck and Steve, and then Pepper—she wanted to take it slow, be sure of everyone's political views before she screwed up. But this went beyond that. It would look bad, so so terribly bad, if someone on the internet outed Marley to the world. Criticism would flood the news—criticism of her, yes, but more so of Tony. Marley was running a secret LGBTQ+ blog? How did Tony Stark, master of technology, not catch this?

Is he really as credible as he says?

People knew that parenting was hard work, and that unexpected things would happen. But she figured this was a first.

What the hell was she supposed to do now? She had no idea when the anon was going to drop the news—maybe they already had. She pulled up the news tab on her phone, hands shaking. Nothing about her. So she was safe for now. She tried to think. What was her first instinct?

Tell someone.

Steve. She'd tell Steve—but she wanted to come out to Tony first. So she'd tell Tony. But she didn't know how Tony felt about LGBTQ+ rights. What if he was homophobic? What if he disagreed with everything she stood for?

It didn't matter. She had to tell him she was bi and get him to help her come out before the anon did. She didn't want to, but she couldn't ignore it and hope for it to go away. It wouldn't, and she'd have thrown him into this awful situation where winning was impossible.

She wouldn't tell him about all the death threats, though. Just this one. Just this one that threatened more than her. She screenshotted the death threats and went through and deleted them, one by one. Then she picked up her computer and swung her legs out of bed and went to find Tony.

It had been two days since they'd gotten back from their road trip and they'd all had to run off to save Washington D.C. and she'd hugged him. Everyone was still recovering from their injuries, but there hadn't been any horrendous ones, so they'd all be fine within the week. There was however a break in training until everyone was okay, so Marley had taken advantage of that and gotten ahead on her schoolwork. She'd been hanging roadtrip pictures on the fairy lights on the wall beside her bed when she'd remembered to check her blog. She had not finished putting up the pictures.

It was early afternoon now, which meant Tony would be in his lab. Or retrieving a hoard of snacks from the kitchen. She went for the lab first. There was something poetic or ironic about this, she thought as she pushed open the door. Schumann played softly from Tony's sound system. Tony was standing on his chair looking down at something on his desk.