drowning

"Peace in our time."

HYDRA Facility - January 2016

Christa couldn't breathe. She felt something crawl through her body like worms growing and swimming through her veins from the point where she'd been punctured in the neck. She felt like her blood was on fire, she felt like everything in her body was on fire. She wanted to scream and cry and stay silent all at once.

She couldn't comprehend that she'd been drugged. She couldn't comprehend that she'd been kidnapped. She couldn't comprehend that she was stuck on a table, and she couldn't move, and everyone she knew and loved might be dead.

Because all at once, her body was on fire, and the fire, the vacuum, the explosion, the supernova was everything--the galaxy, the universe, time and existence down to the space between electrons, the pure entropy of it all absolutely everything.

And, in an instant, all that had disappeared.

And all was silent.

And black.

And there was nothing.

- - -

And then there was everything.

- - -

Like bombs, light began to explode everywhere. Christa tried to close her eyes to it, but it was impossible.

She couldn't close her eyes.

She couldn't close her eyes.

Instead, the lights overwhelmed her. There was movement, the lights were getting less painful, but Christa couldn't tell what was happening.

It seemed like it was the whole of history in a second.

And the noise--there was so much noise.

And then she began to be able to discern the noise.

Was that music?

Applause?

...a voice?

"Tony Stark."

The lights began to dim, the heartbeat just moments before having jumped to what felt like a half a thousand beats per minute now slowing to a mere quarter.

Something registering in her vision.

"Visionary. Genius."

Two screens, in between them a stage decked in gold and silver, a room full of round white tables at which appeared to sit a hundred clapping, glittering diamonds.

"American patriot."

It was only then that Christa's vision--though her brain seemed to have forgotten she had eyes, as the scene seemed to play only in her head--cleared up enough to comprehend the face on the screens.

"Even from an early age, the son of legendary weapons developer Howard Stark quickly stole the spotlight with his brilliant and unique mind."

If Christa realized she couldn't blink, she would have desperately wished she could to clear her sight even more quickly.

Or perhaps close her eyes.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her side. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn't. Her mind merely wandered through this new reality, and her body was on fire.

"At age four, he built his first circuit board."

The screens, flashing from photograph to photograph of Tony Stark as a wildly godlike man, began to show black and whites of him as a child, smiling at the camera, surrounded by technology most grown men couldn't come close to comprehending.

"At age six, his first engine.

"And at 17, he graduated summa cum laude from MIT.

"Then, the passing of a titan."

News articles from 1991, a picture of a man Christa had only seen in her history textbooks.

Then one she didn't recognize, bald and bearded and as strong as a stone in a suit.

"Howard Stark's lifelong friend and ally, Obadiah Stane, steps in to help fill the gap left by the legendary founder, until, at age 21, the prodigal son returns and is anointed the new CEO of Stark Industries."

Magazine covers of Tony and Stane, father figure and son.

It felt like Christa had been stabbed in the chest. She wanted to jerk forward, bend over. It felt like she was coughing blood out of her mouth, but she wasn't, she existed only in this hellish place, this hellish reality in her mind.

"With the keys to the kingdom, Tony ushers in a new era for his father's legacy, creating smarter weapons--"

A model of a missile.

"--advanced robotics, satellite targeting."

A location of a target.

"Today, Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry--"

Tony again, magazine cover displaying the man in all his glory, the music beginning to swell. And as it swelled, it felt like Christa's torso was being squeezed, tightened, and though she didn't register a sense of breath, she couldn't breathe. Her lungs were on fire.

"--by ensuring freedom--"

The screen became an American flag. Her lungs seemed to fill with water.

"--and protecting America--"

Another photograph of Tony, standing like a god in front of the weapons he'd created, taking its place on the screen. It was like she was bobbing up and down, in and out of an ocean in a thunderstorm.

"--and her interests around the globe."

And then everything shifted.

And she was pulled beneath the waves and into the abyss.

It felt like Christa was hurtling through space and time and a black hole, squeezed through something an atom wide and blacker than black and then pushed back out again on the other side.

And then, panic.

Fire. Explosions. Missiles. Bombs. Guns. "Stark Industries" written on the sides. A village torn to pieces.

Where was this?

Christa realized just moments before she was pulled into the whirlpool again that this was footage she'd seen on the news in her history classes before, though she'd never paid much attention to the name on the sides of the missiles.

Afghanistan. Gulmira.

And then all was black again, and then, the feeling of the air being sucked out of her lungs shoving her mind into the duress of before, she was pulled out.

Headlines, news articles, interviews swarmed in front of her.

EVERHART: And what do you say to your other nickname? "The Merchant of Death?"

STARK: That's not bad.

A dive into the hole again.

Press clips, photographs, news articles showing Tony Stark in casinos, in strip clubs, women in his arms and at his lips left and right, women screaming about how he'd wronged them, abandoned them, warning others not to fall for his wit, his charm, his whispers of admiration, because he never wanted them, he never wanted their names or their hearts or their minds or their souls, he only wanted their bodies, and he never wanted them twice.

And all the while, the pain in her body grew, and grew, and grew, and she wanted to look away from what was in front of her, but she couldn't, she physically couldn't, she couldn't move, she couldn't scream, she couldn't even think. All she knew was pain, her nerves firing all at once, her stomach, throat, and lungs filled with cement, her hair on fire, her eyes filled with acid.

And then the worst came.

She'd seen the news of the battle of New York before, but never this up close. Never this personal.

Never this many bodies lying on the ground, never this much dust filling the air, never this much footage of the destruction of the city and the Avengers in the middle of it had filled her mind before, and it overwhelmed her.

Questions of who these people were, these heroes, these monsters, a green monster roaring, a child crying, a portal above the clouds and a man falling out of the sky.

And then words, and more images, and more sounds, and more crying, and more sirens, and other places, other cities, other men made of metal and other buildings falling down.

"Peace in our time."

A city rising up above the earth.

"Peace in our time."

The name TONY STARK running across headlines, and photos of a city in ruins beside them, and photos of a metal suit of red and a man of silver surrounded by a pile of bodies.

TONY STARK CREATES A.I. THAT NEARLY WIPES OUT PLANET

People crying. People talking about those that they lost, those visiting or living in Sokovia, people talking about the Avengers, how the Avengers had let them down, how they were scared for their lives, how if only the Avengers had never come into existence, if Tony Stark had died in the bombing of Afghanistan, that none of this would have happened, that everything would be okay, that their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, husbands, wives, grandparents, that children had died because of the Avengers, that children had died because of Tony Stark, that children had died because of Iron Man.

"My... fiance had gone there as part of a cancer research team. She was... so excited. I never imagined she'd go like this... because... they were supposed to protect us... and... they say Iron Man created Ultron. I don't want to believe that. But... who else could create something like that? Nobody else has that kind of power... nobody... nobody should have that power...."

Sobbing, a small child's voice screaming. "MAMA!" Standing out in the middle of a street. A piece of rubble crashing down. The voice cut off. Dust.

"My family had lived their for generations. And now, what happens? I am... I am the only one left." A crack in the voice. "There is no one else."

The city floating, high above the ground.

A reporter: "The rate of PTSD skyrocketed after the so-called 'Battle of Sokovia'...."

Another: "The extent of the damage is currently unknown, but experts are saying it may be something akin to the bombing of Pearl Harbor...."

Screams from a crowd.

Graffiti of Iron Man before a graveyard.

A baby lying still in the rubble.

And then it felt like her eyes had taken the place of a camera filming a movie, and she wanted to blink and she wanted to cry and she wanted to scream all at once, but before she could do that, images of a man in iron and cities on fire and made of blood overwhelmed her, and then the news you'd see on t.v., and then, the worst of them all, so familiar, a face, a person standing in a room in front of a crowd, questions Christa couldn't even register, wouldn't register, because all that mattered was that the one who was being asked was Anthony Edward Stark.

And the pain in her body was so much more than before, so, so much more, and she'd never thought she could feel this way, this stench, this sweet, rotten taste, this fire burning through her lungs and into her heart and these bullets spraying into her brain and out the back of her head.

Some ramblings from him, the quiet of the crowd, the words of a murderer in a voice casual, uncaring, and terrifyingly, horrifically proud:

"Truth is... I am Iron Man."

And then the darkness, the whirlpool, the black hole, the nothing, was all Christa knew once again.