Flowers In America | T.Stark

⎊ CHAPTER NINE ⎊

He trailed off, and Lilly rubbed her eyes feeling sleepy and dizzy. Her almost drowning was still affecting her heavily, her throat felt almost raw from the salty water, eyes stinging from both the salt and the cold. Despite herself, she started to lie down near the suit, ignoring the biting cold that was wetting her  still slightly damp back. Tony exciting his suit pulled her from falling completely asleep.

"That's brisk, you must be freezing Petals." He said, reaching over and rubbing her arms with his warm hand in a feeble attempt to warm her up.

"I, surprisingly, can not really feel anything right now." She mumbled over the chattering of her teeth as her eyes drooped lower, closing as she rested her head against the suits helmet.

"Then get inside the suit-"

"I actually think I need to go to sleep now, Sir." Jarvis voiced up, sounding very frayed and staticky.

"Jarvis? Jarvis, don't leave me buddy."

"I feel very sleepy too." Lilly muttered.

"Hey, hey, stay awake. I can't carry you both. Come on, lets get out of here." He said, standing up before bending back down to haul her up onto shaky legs, pulling her up from off the snow.

𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔𖥔

After walking for quite some time, how long? Lilly had lost count of the minutes after the first 30, they found themselves in front of a petrol station. There was a mannequin outside of the small shop, and Lilly couldn't decide wether to laugh or cry when Tony pulled a sort of clothing off it and placed it over her head, keeping the wooly hat for himself.

"It's a poncho." He said as the only explanation to her quizzical looks about what the item was meant to be.

They found a telephone cubicle, and Lilly waited outside patiently as he phoned Pepper, giving her some sort of explanation to stop her from losing her mind with owrry.

"Pepper, it's me. I've got a lot of apologies to make and not a lot of time. So first off, I'm so sorry I put you and Lilly in harms way. She's okay. Cold but not hurt. This wont happen again. Its Christmas and the rabbit's too big. Done, sorry. And I', sorry in advance because...I can't come home yet. I need to find this guy. You gotta stay safe, I've got Lilly so don't worry about her. That's all I know."

He left the small telephone box, rubbing his hands together to generate heat, for the two of them were both still verey cold, especially Lilly who was starting to sneeze, her hair very stiff and alightly frozen from being damp and in the cold. Tony sighed, not knowing what to do in such a situation like this this, for he had never been in such a crisis like this with a child before. He once again grabbed the ropes that were attatched to his suit, and the teo began waling again, the only noises being his occasional grunts from the effort, and a small cough or wheeze from Lilly.

"What did you mean?" Tony panted out between breathes, causing Lilly's head to snap up at him, not expecting the question out of the blue.

"What do you mean?" Lilly questioned, hands tucked into her chest from the cold. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"When you said the cold was nothing you were not used to," He asked again, not noticing thst she had stopped walking and had gone silent, "What did you mean by that?"

He heard her let out a breathy sigh, and stopped dropping the ropes and watching her rub her arms, and this time he could tell that it was more of a way to comfort herself.

"When I was with...them," She started, eyes darting to the snow when she saw him straighten more, posture going rigid as his fists clenched and unclenched, "A part of my...my training included them throwing me out in the snow every morning to build up my resistance to the cold."