𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚗

Ch.16

📍Avengers Compound
Valencia Onyx (1st Person POV)
10:00am

I wake up in a familiar place. My room. I realize we're in the tower and I sleepily smile. It's good to be home.

"Look who's up!" I hear a voice say from beside me.

I look to my left and see wanda sitting on the side of my bed, Nat sitting at the foot.

"Oh! How are you? How do you feel?" Nat turns her body toward me.

"I feel like I've been in a grave. Can we walk?" I ask.

"Totally." Nat responds.

The girls come around to me, but I signal for them to stop. I can walk on my own. They're cautious, but give me my space.

We walk down the hall and I suddenly stumble. I swear I only tripped, but they don't believe me. They insist to help me the rest of the way, and we end up just going into the conference room.

We sit down and the girls try to make small talk with me. They're asking how I am and about my physical therapy and telling me how much they missed me. It's obvious they're trying to avoid the whole kidnapping topic, but I bring it up.

"I just can't believe Tony didn't pay. I thought he cared more about me, you know?" I confess. I had to get it off of my chest.

They give me a confused look.

"Pay what?" Nat asks.

"The ransom. I'm assuming you guys did all you could. I know how stubborn he is." I keep going.

"Ransom?!" Wanda raises her voice. "What ransom??"

"You know, the fee that they sent him to pay. I guess ransom is sort of a harsh word but that's what it is."

"...we don't know about any fee, Val..." Nat shakily says.

Then it hits me. Tony didn't tell anyone. No one in the compound knew where I was for those 4 days, but him.

"...How exactly did you guys find me?" I ask, figuring out what he did.

"Through your card records." Nat tells me.

My heart sinks. This was sick. He knew where I was and what situation I was in, and didn't say a damn thing.

"Wait wait wait. Backtrack. What ransom are you talking about and what did Tony know about it??" Wanda asks, visibly confused.

"While I was in the cave, they took a video of me and sent Tony a ransom note with it. They asked for $5M in exchange for me. You guys really didn't know?"

Both of their faces go white. They look at each other, obviously in shock. Nat suddenly jumps up and rushes out of the room. I'm left with an obviously confused and angered Wanda.

Nat returns with Bruce, Thor, and Steve.

"Tell them what you just told me." Nat instructs.

I tell the boys about the video and the ransom note. They all grow angrier. Steve rushes out of the room and returns with Bucky. Then tells him what I told them.

All of the boys might as well have had steam coming out of their ears. Wanda and Nat looked like they were in shock. We sat for a second in silence. No one knew what to do. Then, Thor storms out of the room.

I hear two sets of footsteps coming back. Thor emerges in the room with Tony. He's holding Tony by his collar, and throws him in the room.

Tony's cracking jokes and obviously doesn't understand the gravity of what's happening.

"Why're you guys all here? Some meeting I wasn't told about-"

Bruce cuts Tony off with a hard punch to the face. Tony stops and is taken aback. I think he can tell that we're serious now.