AN. At this point, cussing just spices up my vocabulary. But some people *cough* American's may fine the C-bomb in this chapter offensive. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Jane tried to force the tension out of her muscles as Tony worked on her arm. It was even harder getting used to the fact that she was most likely Indiana Stark, although the name felt more familiar than it had forty-eight hours ago. The name clung to her. An itch she couldn't scratch, a memory caught between her teeth that refused to budge now, a stone in the pit of her stomach. Tony Stark was a neon sign that told her that the past had a way of catching up to everyone eventually.
So, Indiana looked at Tony, wondering what was going on inside his head. Had her return drag up memories from the depth of his mind, the ones he didn't want to think about? Their parents?
Her mind worked like muscle memory when she thought about the distant outlines of what could've been parents. Howard Stark brought a hot, red feeling that she would shove away. When she thought of her mother, something akin to the lingering warmth of a put-out fire kindled in her chest. She could just hear echoes of a voice that washed over her like silk and a melody—Try to remember the kind of September. When grass was green—and a pearl necklace covered in crimson blood. The fire would turn cold, and the ashes would flit away in the wind, grey and gone.
God, she wished she had some cocaine.
"Those scars on your arm," said Tony, breaking the silence, as if half her arm wasn't a prosthetic. "You tried to jump a barbed wire fence like Steve McQueen when you were twelve."
Bruce made a choking noise. "What?"
Indiana thought for a man with breath-taking anger issue he had quite the opposite deminer, proffering to be almost invisible. But when she thought about it, she couldn't blame Bruce, she knew the hollow eyes of someone that had been hunted.
"Looks like thing haven't changed much, hey, Goose?" His expression quirked curiously, and eyebrow raised, as if asking how much really changed in his own Tony Stark way. "But you've outdone yourself. How'd you manage to lose half your arm?"
Indiana studied her brother like he was a scary device—one that might explode if handled incorrectly. Tony, while not exactly at ease either, had a cap on it, as if he was used to stumbling across stranger things than long-lost relatives. But still he regarded Indiana in a kind of amazed trance, maybe remembering a little thirteen-year-old who pretended to be Davie Balfour from Kidnapped for a whole year.
"Do you remember anything?" he asked when she stayed silent.
She nodded slowly, carefully choosing her next words. "I escaped from the base in Siberia where they kept me. Put my tracker in a hare and watched the Winter Soldier chase it for five hours." Indiana saw in his face that she'd answered more than one question. "And then, out of nowhere, the biggest bear you've ever seen! His hide littered with the weapons of fallen warriors. His face scarred with one dead eye."
