Stark's Shadow

Chapter 31 - The Secret is Out

The image above made me think of Steve.
~~~

I trip and fall flat on my face. I hear Belladonna's dark laugh, adding salt to the wound. I roll over to lie on my back.

"So close," Bucky tells me, crossing his right leg over his left. "And by close I mean that was pathetic. Do better."

Steve flicks his forehead and scolds him then turns to me, "You're doing great, ignore him,"

I push myself up so I'm sitting. "Don't worry, I usually do,"

I hear a gasp from Bucky and laughter from Steve.

I get up and try again, throwing a punch at the punching bag. This time Belladonna fights me on moving my hand. I struggle for a few minutes before my fist lightly brushes the bag, "HA!" I yell. "Take that, you fucking bitch!" I get knocked over.

Ha! You take that! You'll never succeed. You're nothing without me.

I'll happily take nothing over whatever this is.

I keep trying to punch the bag. Once I finally managed to softly tap it without Belladonna stopping me, Steve decided I was done.

"Already? That was so entertaining," Bucky tells me.

Steve shakes his head, giving Bucky the disappointed look that makes Peter rant about some stupid detention video.

"At this rate, I may as well accept defeat!" I sit down on the bench with more force than I meant to. "It has been a month and all I could manage was to tap the bag without extreme resistance?"

"You haven't stabbed anyone in a week!" Steve says encouragingly.

"And you've only set Steve on fire once," Bucky adds with a smile.

"I wanted to do that! You saw what he did to the spaghetti!"

"I'm sorry!" Steve cries out, dropping the punching bag. "I still ate it!"

"Yes, which was almost as bad as burning something that was in water!" I throw my hands up in frustration.

We sit in silence for a few minutes while Steve cleaned up. I wasn't allowed to help thanks to my injuries. Bucky didn't help because, as he said, he's too pretty to work so hard.

The door bursts open, "Did I miss it?" Sam pants as he stands in the doorway.

"Yeah," Bucky nods.

"Miss what?" I demand, crossing my arms.

The two look between each other and back at me and spew a bunch of nonsense I can't understand in the mix of their voices.

I glare at Bucky, "You can't keep inviting people to watch me embarrass myself!"

I shove past the two of them as I limp out of the door.

I hobble back into my room and sit on the floor. I decide to meditate instead. Mental health is important too. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot. Ignore your mental health for too long and your evil alter-ego who wants to stab people and listen to bad music will show up and cause problems.

You want to be in your head? Okay.

I feel dizzy and try to shake it off. It gets worse, so I go to get up for my water. Right before I reach it, I collapse.

I walk up to a building. The moon was full and bright. The sky was clear and the few stars that you can see in Malibu dance in the sky. I have a mission. Kill some useless genius billionaire playboy.