Blind Eyes

Chapter 4

My muscles were screaming in protest, begging me to stop. My heart was pumping madly. I listened to the sound of my feet slapping against the damp sand as I tried to clear my mind of everything worrying me. Dad, the suit, the Senate, everything.

I ran up and down the deserted beach until the sun began to dip behind the mountains. I finally stopped and began sucking in air in deep breaths. I was glad we had our own private beach so close to the house as I began slowly walking up the small, rugged path that led to the bottom of the driveway.

I had started running daily after the accident as a way to keep my strength up. And to prove that no one could break me, not even Obadiah. My leg ached during the run but I was determined to push through it. I was fine.

As the house came into view (I still liked to think of it as a house even though a more accurate description would be mansion) my mind couldn't help but think of the future. I was scared of what might be coming.

I had never felt like this before. I had never had to worry about the future. Everything had been set out before me, I didn't have to question my life. Now I questioned it every day. And I was scared, for both myself and dad. Was the government eventually going to get their hands on the suits? Was someone else going to try? The videos I saw at the Senate...they had been failed attempts at replicating our suit, but would someone, somewhere, eventually succeed? I had so many questions and no answers.

I would ask Dad but I knew he didn't have the answers either. And I was beginning to see that when it came to the Iron Man suits, he was blind. All he saw were the suits and the good they were doing. He was ignoring the debates and controversies that surrounded them. I didn't know what was going to happen and that scared me.

I reached the driveway gates I had to go through the process of proving my identity. After voice recognition, a fingerprint and retinal scan and punching in a four digit code, the gates swung open to let me in. Six months ago after Obadiah disabled J.A.R.V.I.S and got into the house so easily, dad had increased security tenfold. It was a pain sometimes but I knew it made him happier knowing that it was in place and it did make me feel more secure in the house. For weeks after the 'incident' I had felt so unsafe at home, jumping at every noise and shadow. Even with J.A.R.V.I.S's constant reassurance that there was no one in the house I had still been paranoid and scared.

I jogged up the driveway, trying to forget. I entered the house to immediately hear dad and Pepper's voices from the garage. Arguing. I wondered what it was about. There were so many things for her to be yelling at him for. Sometimes when they fought I would help alleviate the situation but right now I felt dad needed a little yelling at. He needed to get his mind right and realize his action weren't just affecting him anymore. From now on, everything he did was going to be twisted and spun and used against him in an effort for people to claim the suits. And because of his attitude and inflated ego, he didn't care because he believed he was untouchable and that no one else was as smart as him and could make a similar 'weapon'.

I crossed the living room and climbed up the steps then I realized that it was the first time in six months my eyes hadn't found the waterfall and replayed the accident in my head. I smiled. I was moving on. I wasn't going to let one event haunt me for the rest of my life. I hadn't even been hurt that badly...okay that was a little lie. But it wasn't my injuries that kept me reliving that night every time I closed my eyes. It was because that night I had seen that my father wasn't invincible, with the arc reactor sitting in the middle of his chest, keeping him alive. And that was the night I thought he would die. I never, ever wanted to feel the way I had felt that night. Lying on the stairs in pain, thinking my father was dead above me and I couldn't help him.

Even as I thought about it now, I had to swallow a painful lump in my throat. I pushed those painful memories aside and quickly showered. I pulled on a pair of baggy sweats and my favourite purple singlet.