As the next week passed, Mr. Stark allowed me out of my room more and more, to the point where I was allowed to roam my floor and go up to the Lab or Penthouse, with permission for the last two of course. I may have abused this power, though it was small, asking everyday if I could go somewhere just because I could. I had never experienced this kind of freedom before and I fully intended to use it.
Though as I went places, I found that there were certain changes happening. Little things, usually either in red, green, or gold, went up around the Penthouse. Some things that resembled giant socks went up on the mantle and an evergreen tree appeared in the sitting room. The tree had spheres hung all over it and a star on the top.
I was thinking about it as I sat at the small table in the kitchen of my floor, drawing. It was just a passing thought, but it still made me put down my pencil.
"Friday?" I asked. Mr. Stark had given Friday the permission to answer questions as long as they were harmless, which I was extremely thankful for. It would have been awful trying to find the lightswitch.
"Yes Cori,"
"Why did Mr. Stark put up those socks and a tree in his living room?"
"Those are Christmas decorations. Boss and Ms. Potts put them up to prepare for Christmas. The socks are called stockings, and they decorate the tree with ornaments," Fridays answered, also anticipating my next question.
I was quiet for a minute before I spoke again, trying to decide if I should even ask the question.
"What's Christmas," Not that I had anything against Peter's explanation, but I wanted a more comprehensive explanation. Because Peter's explanation was honestly terrible.
"Christmas is an annual festival commemorating of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people . Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift giving, completing an Advent calendar or Advent wreath, Christmas music and caroling, viewing a Nativity play, an exchange of Christmas cards, church services, a special meal, and the display of various Christmas decorations, including Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly," Friday answered.
So apparently this Jesus guy was pretty important. He had a whole holiday to celebrate him. I guess that was pretty cool. The whole holiday seemed a little over the top, if anything.
We were both silent for a minute, before Friday spoke again.
"Boss is requesting your presence outside the Lab," she said as the elevator door opened.
I nodded, getting up from the seat and walking into the elevator, whose doors were already open and waiting for me.
The Lab was a cool place, even if I was subjected to waiting outside it, watching as Mr. Stark worked on all sorts of interesting projects. I couldn't complain. Watching him work on some cool projects was still really fun.
The elevator ride to the Lab was short, but it always seemed to take forever. The amount of things I could build with the materials in that lab always excited me, even though I could never touch them. When the doors opened, I rushed out and raced to the window, looking for Mr. Stark in the mess that was always somewhat organized. But I couldn't see him.
I searched for Mr. Stark inside the lab, but as soon as I reached out with my powers, I felt him standing next to me. I was getting too used to this.
I turned to look at him. He chuckled.
"Looking for me?"
"Yes," I said, no emotion in my voice. This only caused him to smile further.
"I heard from Friday that you asked what Christmas was," he said, suddenly turning serious. I glanced up at the ceiling. Friday was, as Peter said, a snitch.
When I didn't answer right away, Mr. Stark continued.
"Pep and I are hosting a small Christmas party on Saturday. You are welcome if you want to come," Mr. Stark stuck his hands inside of the pockets of his jeans, awaiting an answer.
Honestly, I was a bit taken aback. I was told I could come to something if I wanted to. I didn't really know what a party was, but I counted the invitation as a really cool thing.
"What's a party?" I asked quietly. Tony opened his mouth to answer the question, but Friday beat him to it.
"A party is a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment," I nodded.
"We will only have a few people, so it won't be overwhelming. Me, Pepper, Peter and his aunt, Rhodey, and Wanda and Vision if they choose to come. We'll have dinner and watch a Christmas movie afterwards,"
I nodded along. It sounded pretty fun.
"I'll have Friday remind you on Saturday if you want to come," Mr. Stark said with a smile.
"Thanks," I said, before beginning to walk back toward the elevator, but Mr. Stark stopped me.
"You haven't been as awful as I expected you to be," He said. I turned around to answer him.
"Manners are important Mr. Stark. First thing I learned," his smile fell. Manners were important, but I think the way I learned that was more unnerving to the man.
"People are more important. You don't have to be constantly polite," so when I killed people I was being polite? I raised my brow. Mr. Stark rolled his eyes.
"What I'm trying to say is, you're better than where you came from. And that's admirable,"
"I'm not a good person,"
"And neither am I," Mr. Stark shrugged, "But as long as we are better than we were, I'll consider that improvement,"
I nodded before walking back to the elevator. I turned to face Mr. Stark as the elevator doors closed, but he was already inside his lab, back turned to me. I sighed. That was interesting to say the least. I wasn't a good person, I wasn't better than where I came from. I was a killer. Killers could never be good, no matter how hard they tried.
I guess I would just have to live with that.
~~~
The day of the party was rapidly approaching. It was already Thursday and I had no clue what to expect. I had asked Friday so many questions that I was sure she was getting annoyed, though she was an AI and technically didn't have feelings unless Mr. Stark had done some amazing programming that enabled her to have almost human-like processing, which would be pretty amazing. Nevertheless, I still had no idea what to expect.
I had asked Friday what to wear (jeans with a nice shirt or sweater, or a dress if I felt like it), what food would be there (apparently very nice food that I probably wouldn't be able to eat much of), and what activities would happen (movies, eating, talking, maybe a board game). I was still a little confused, but had the basics down. I was guessing it was like how Peter said: I have to experience it to understand.
There was one thing I was unsure about however. Both Friday and Peter had said something about gifts. I doubt gifts by their standard were the same as gifts by Hydra's standard, and I didn't have much to make gifts with anyway.
"Friday, what is a popular Christmas food?" I asked the AI. If she had the ability, I was pretty sure she would have sighed.
"Popular Christmas foods include ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, salads, cakes, cookies," she answered. Her cheery voice disguised her probable annoyance with my questions.
"Can I make cookies?" I asked. Friday was silent for a minute before answering.
"Boss says you can and the ingredients will be down shortly. He does ask why,"
"Tell him I got into the Christmas spirit," I said with a smile. I really hoped that was how you used that phrase, otherwise this would get awkward.
A few minutes later, Mr. Stark walked out of the elevator laden with bags of what I supposed were ingredients. He dropped them on the counter, before walking over to me and handing me a piece of paper.
"Here's a recipe. Now, are you going to tell me why you are really doing this?" he said, a light of humour in his eyes.
"Nope," I said before looking back down to the recipe. It said it would make snickerdoodles and would take an hour to make.
"All the ingredients are here. If you have any questions, you can ask Friday. She is an everything extraordinaire, so you should be able to figure everything out with her help." Mr. Stark started to walk out toward the elevator once more.
"Thank you Mr. Stark," I called to his retreating back.
"Anytime," He said, turning back as the elevator doors closed.
After he left, I clapped my hands together and spoke.
"Time to make food,"
"I believe the term is baking," Friday said. I nodded toward the ceiling.
"Time to get baking,"
All in all, it took about seven batches to get the cookies right.
Apparently I made the cookies too big for the first batch, so they ended up spreading into each other, creating a magnificent sheet that was full of cookies. It didn't taste too bad, but I wanted to be able to hand out the cookies. I ate the rest of the dough that I had, because I didn't have much left.
The second batch I burnt to a crisp. I fell asleep and Friday couldn't wake me. At this time, it was nearly eleven at night, so I had every right to fall asleep and stay asleep. Basically, I almost set the kitchen on fire and had to throw the whole cookie sheet away, nothing able to be salvaged.
After that, I went to sleep and decided to try again the next day.
The next time I tried to make the cookies, I almost cracked my tooth. They were hard as rock and I had to ask Friday what could have possibly gone wrong. Apparently, I probably overmixed my dough, which led to the solid cookies. I had to throw the whole batch away.
At this point, I had to get more ingredients. I was completely out of butter, sugar, and flour. Mr. Stark appeared about an hour and a half later with a quizzical look on his face.
"There aren't that many ways to bake a cookie wrong," he said, dropping the ingredients on the counter once again, "Even I can make a cookie,"
"I made the cookies too large, I burnt my cookies, and I have over mixed the dough. I have almost died and cracked my tooth," I sighed, "There are apparently many ways to get a cookie wrong,"
I looked up and Mr. Stark looked like he was fighting back a smile.
"You'll get it eventually," he said, "But I like my Tower quite a bit. Don't burn it down,"
"No promises," I said with a smile. There was a 50/50 chance that I wasn't joking, but I didn't tell Mr. Stark that.
"I would have liked promises, but I assume it's only going to get worse. I'm leaving. Don't kill yourself," he said with a smile before walking back to the elevator.
I took a deep breath and opened my flour. It was time to get baking. Again, but whatever. I would do it right this time.
I did not do it right that time.
Or the next time for that matter.
The fourth batch I apparently added too much flour. Apparently the all-seeing entity, also known as Friday, is apparently not all seeing. Otherwise, she watched me dump too much flour in the whole time. The batch was perfect otherwise, but the flour is what messed it up.
The fifth time, I did everything right. It was perfect, amazing. The cookies came out masterpieces. Perfectly shaped and spaced and cooked. They were glowing and it was amazing. But then I tried to remove them off the cookie sheet right after they came out and they crumbled. Like, completely fell apart. I waited a couple more minutes for the cookies to cool a little and with a little help from Friday, I got them on a cooling rack.
After a couple of minutes had passed, I tried my cookies. My masterpieces. They were amazing. At least to look at. I bit into them and immediately had to run to the trash can to spit it out. It was far too salty.
"You put in a fourth tablespoon of salt, not a fourth teaspoon," Friday said as soon as I had finished cleansing my mouth.
"And you didn't tell me?" I said, taking a swig of water.
"You didn't ask me to tell you if anything you had done was wrong,"
"You're having fun aren't you?"
"Yes," Friday answered shortly.
"Could you tell me if I'm doing anything wrong this time?" I said with a sigh.
"Of course,"
And so I moved onto my sixth batch of cookies. At this point, I had completely memorized the recipe, but kept on glancing back at it, just to make sure I was doing it correctly. Ingredients were spilled all over it, but somehow I could still understand what was going on. Friday corrected me a few times before I happened to destroy anything. As soon as the cookies came out of the refrigerator, I put them in the oven.
They came out beautifully. I took them off the cookie sheet at the right time and let them cool for a minute before I ate one of them. It was beautiful. It melted in my mouth and was so warm and lovely. I picked up another. And another.
The next thing I knew, I had eaten the whole sheet of cookies. If anyone was watching me, they must have been laughing at how stupid and greedy I was. But the cookies made me happy for some unfathomable reason, so I ate them all.
At this time, it was late again, so I went to bed and resolved to make the perfect batch of cookies in the morning. Tomorrow was the day of the party after all, so I had to make the cookies good.
The next morning, at around eleven, it finally happened. I made the perfect cookies. I didn't eat any of the dough (I felt a little sick after I ate all of the cookies yesterday, so I decided it would be best if I didn't eat any of it, lest I actually get sick). I cooled them properly, then divided them among seven festive plastic bags, one for each person. I put the few remaining cookies on a plate and left them on the counter before stepping back to admire my work.
The kitchen was a mess. A mess that I would have to clean up, but I didn't mind. The cookies were perfect. According to Friday, it was Christmas Eve. All felt good.
I didn't even know what that night had in store, but I felt everything would be alright.