"Comics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller." - Stan Lee
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Chapter IV: The Hero
"Come to Avengers Tower as soon as you're out of school. Tell May it's an urgent meeting regarding the Stark Internship," Tony Stark informed the teenage boy over the phone as he stalked down the hallway with Natasha Romanoff by his side. "But don't rush yourself. Be careful."
"Yeah, okay, yes, sir, sure thing, Mr. Stark. So what's so important? Is it Spidey Business or Iron Man business?" Peter Parker responded over the phone in a hushed voice.
"What did I tell you about using those words when you're at school?" Tony responded, only partly joking, as he and Natasha stepped onto the elevator at the end of the hall.
"Okay, right, no using the words Spidey, Spider-Man, or Iron Man at school," Peter Parker responded.
Tony sighed through his nose, shutting his eyes briefly. "Kid..."
"Starting now," Peter corrected himself. "Okay, yeah, I have my Science class now, I'm really sorry, I gotta go."
"Straight after school, don't be late," Tony reminded Peter as the elevator opened again and he and Natasha made their way down the hall to the third door on the left.
"Got it. I won't be late. See ya, Mr. Stark," Peter spoke quickly and they both hung up.
Natasha and Tony scanned their key cards over the door's lock and they soon stepped back inside the small room that separated them from the girl who lay recovering in the hospital bed. Bruce was just entering into the room from her room and had a concerned expression crossing over his face. The door swung shut behind him and he sighed.
"What is it?" Tony asked, attempting to mask his nerves with a firm tone.
"I asked her why she hasn't spoken," the doctor began and Natasha and Tony exchanged a brief look before they returned their serious gazes back onto Bruce. "It was almost as if she didn't think much of the fact that she hadn't spoken. Like it was normal for her. She tried to force herself to speak but she just ended up going into a coughing fit."
Tony sighed, running a hand over his face. "Sounds like she has a mental block," he concluded and Bruce nodded in agreement.
"What do you think caused the mental block in her brain?" Natasha questioned, arms crossed and expression serious, much less soft than it was when she spoke to the young girl.
"There are different types of mental blocks. In this case, she has a speech block. They're typically caused by traumatic events that scar a person's mind so severely that they're unable to produce words," Tony responded as he examined the girl through the tinted glass as if observing her movements would answer all of her wonders. "Usually it's just a stutter in someone's speech. It's extremely rare that someone is unable to speak altogether," he concluded.
"So it's possible that someone abused her so badly for something such as 'talking back' that she was made to be terrified of saying anything at all," Natasha suggested.
Bruce and Tony nodded. "That's possible," the doctor agreed.
There was a long pause- one filled with silent wonder as they all allowed the gears in their minds to turn. This girl lying in the bed through the one-way glass window was a puzzle begging to be pieced together, yet Tony came up with very little. The only logical step to take next, he believed, was if the girl were to accompany him as he returned to the sands where he discovered her. But it seemed to be too soon for her to do so. Though the girl was nearly completely healed of all her physical wounds, Tony still felt as though it weren't a good idea to bring her to the place she was left until she had been given time to regain her energy and maybe find herself speaking again. The most important thing to Tony at this moment was to make her feel safe and comfortable. Wherever she was before, whatever she had gone through... it clearly was no safe haven for her. He was determined to build her one.
The brown-eyed man turned his attention to Natasha. "You said she wanted to meet me," he checked with the woman, and she nodded her head in confirmation. Tony looked back to the girl through the glass, his arms crossed over his chest as he examined her anonymously one last time before he would enter the room. When he did, he made sure his movements were careful so as not to startle her, though it didn't seem to work as he noticed the girl jump slightly in surprise, then examine him curiously. Tony shut the door carefully behind him and met her eyes, sending her a little smile as he pulled his sunglasses away from his eyes so she could better trust his presence. She simply stared back at him, unsure, her head of dark chocolate curls tilted slightly to her left in wonder. There was something about her that Tony saw in himself when he was young. Perhaps it was the uncertainty of peoples' true intentions that he had felt one too many times before, or maybe it was the curiosity in her eyes that she attempted to shield with an exterior of dominance. He wasn't sure.
Tony gestured with his sunglasses to the chair that still rested beside the girl's bed. "May I?" He requested.
The girl nodded, and Tony now noticed the notebook and pen clutched in her grasp, laying atop her sheet-covered lap. He took a seat in the chair facing her and was preparing to form his first introduction of himself to her, but stopped short when he raised his eyes to see her writing sloppily on a fresh sheet of blue-lined paper. He waited patiently until she was done and raised his eyebrows in expectancy as she raised the notebook for him to see her words.
Are you the man who found me? Tony Stark?
Tony met her eyes. "I am he, yes," he informed her with a light-hearted tone in hopes of raising her spirits. "I found you on a beach in Maine a little over a day ago." He paused as they kept their eyes locked. "How are you feeling?" He decided to ask the girl.
She wrote. I feel fine. But I am still uncomfortable and confused. Why was I brought here and not to a hospital?
Tony skimmed the words and nodded his head in understanding, folding his sunglasses up and sliding them into his jacket pocket. "Well, first of all, I'm glad you're feeling fine. I'm sorry for the confusion," he began, mentally trying to whip up some sort of explanation that won't alarm her too much. "I want you to know you're safe here. Probably the safest place you could possibly be right now," he continued, and he noticed her body relax ever so slightly. "I'm sure Natasha told you we're a team working to help you. We work closely with governmental authorities and law enforcement. In short, we take out the bad guys to keep people safe. We have the same level of- if not higher- medical care and stability as any good-working hospital would. My first instinct was to bring you here when I found you because I had a feeling you may not be completely safe outside of our protection for now."
There was a pause as the girl stared back at Tony with an unreadable expression, and then she wrote another message. Why would I not be safe somewhere else? Do you know what happened to me?
Tony chewed on the inside of his cheek in thought for a long moment as he stared at the notepaper with furrowed brows. She was so young and so unsure of her situation. How is he supposed to put this lightly? Should he even tell her at all what he thinks may have happened?
Taking a deep breath, he answered, "Unfortunately I can't tell you what happened to you exactly because I don't know. All I know is you were frostbitten, starved, and scarred when I found you." The girl swallowed, her chest rising and falling a little faster than before and Tony leaned forward, softening his tone in an attempt to calm her as he continued, "I'm not saying someone did this to you or that you need to be afraid of anyone being after you. Your scars could have been from something else entirely. But I want to be honest with you. If someone did this to you, or if someone is looking for you, I think it's a really bad idea for you to leave our protection until we figure out what's going on."
The girl remained silent, as expected, and she didn't move for what felt like several minutes, one after the other feeling as though time stands still. Tony wondered if what he said was wrong- if he scared her, and if he should have just kept his mouth shut. But she asked him a question that couldn't easily be deflected or given a loopholed answer to. Finally, she retrieved her pen once more and wrote.
What exactly is this team that you are apart of and how does it work? Are you officers or investigators?
Tony tried to refrain from chuckling at the question. He had never thought of himself becoming anything else but Iron Man. It was who he was. But he knew this girl was in the dark about everything at the moment and it was actually a logical question.
"There are six of us on the team. We're called the Avengers, and-" Tony was interrupted by a raspy chuckle leaving the girl's lips and he did his best to disguise his shock at the action, the sound that just emitted from her. He simply stared at her as she cracked an amused smile. He then raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm sorry, is the name 'Avengers' funny to you?" The man responded in a playful tone, which caused her to chuckle quietly again, followed by a broken cough. "Well, then, what would you have called the team?" Tony challenged with a small smirk on his mouth and it expanded as the girl shrugged her shoulders gently. The man shook his head and chuckled. "Well, anyway," he continued and the girl smiled slightly as she looked at him, "Every member of the team has a special ability of some sort that makes them stronger than the average person in one way or another. We fight the wars that others can't."
The girl immediately grabbed her notebook again and scribbled more words down. What is your special ability? And who are the other members and what are their abilities?
Tony held back a smile at the young girl's excitement, him finding it endearing that she found this to be such a wonderful topic of conversation now.
"People call me Iron Man. I build suits made from iron that protect me when I'm fighting. And I can kind of fly in it," Tony explained and the girl smiled. It was as if he could see her imagination running wild in the brown of her doe eyes. "Natasha is known as the Black Widow. She's really strong and fast and has all these cool gadgets that she uses while she fights. Then there's Dr. Bruce Banner. He's the Hulk. When he gets angry, he becomes thousands of times stronger than he is," he continued, leaving out a few details about the Hulk that may shock and frighten the young woman. "Captain America is the head honcho around here. He's got it all, basically, he's got super strength, super speed, trained in hand-to-hand combat from when he fought in the war. Then there's Thor and Clint. Thor is the God of Thunder, he can control storms and he's crazy strong, well, you know- God-like. Clint is called Hawkeye because he's an expert marksman and an archer. He's also trained in hand-to-hand combat and has a lot of the same skills as Natasha. There's also a boy around your age I'm currently training to maybe become an Avenger one day. Spider-Man. He was bitten by a radioactive spider and now he can do pretty much anything a spider can. Kind of cool, kind of creepy."
Tony enjoyed the girl's ever-changing expressions of wonder and curiosity as he explained everything to her about the team and the tower they resided in. He told her about Director Fury and the kinds of battles that the team has fought together. He could feel the girl relax the more he told her stories about the people she barely knew yet needed to somehow trust. No matter how hard Tony tried to ignore the tugging feeling in his heart as he spoke to her, he couldn't deny that there was an internal connection he felt to this girl like she was his. He knew that of course, she wasn't, but never once had he ever wanted children or considered raising one until that moment. Something about this unknown mutant of a teenage girl felt like a part of him- like he was supposed to find her all this time.
It had been over an hour by the time Tony felt as though he had explained as much as he could to this girl about where she was and who was taking care of her. He almost had sent people right away to arrange a temporary living space for her but now he felt like he already knew this girl so much better that he wanted to create not just a room for her to sleep in, but a sanctuary where she could feel safe and comfortable in her own skin as she was. Surely she must be aware that she is no ordinary human being. She heals faster than anybody Tony's ever known- even Peter Parker, who heals ten times faster than an average human. Part of Tony was afraid if there were more abilities of hers he still had yet to discover, and whether or not she was more dangerous than she appeared. The possibility of her not being in full control of her immense power still lingered and that sent a small spear of worry through Tony's chest. Not only could this girl be a danger to the people around her, but she could be a danger to herself if she is unsure of what she is capable of.
As the girl's brown doe eyes began to drop with exhaustion, Tony decided to push his worries and concerns about her to the back of his scattered mind for the time being in order to focus solely on her health and creating a place for her in the tower where she felt safe and at home. So he stood to his feet carefully so as to not alert her senses, as she needed her rest desperately, and he cast one last look down at her.
"Remember you're safe here," Tony promised, and the girl looked up at him through her eyelashes that flitted drearily. "Whatever happens, the team and I will make sure harm comes nowhere near you."
Tony had made many promises in his life that he intended to keep but simply couldn't because it wasn't realistic to keep every single little promise in your life, no matter who you were. But please, he thought, please let me keep this one.
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A/N: Thank you sm for reading! Pretty please comment and vote if you like it. It means the world to me.
–Blys♡