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TONY
THREE YEARS AGO
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She was easy to spot among the sea of faces. Simply because she was hard to keep clandestine in the quiet rivers of humanity. A single breath was all it took for his world to spin haywire and off its axis. It was maddening how vulnerable he could be in the presence of a mere person, yet satisfied that he was leaving no holes bared.
Elle stood in line at the check-in desk with a single suitcase at her feet, no carry-on bags except her passport and a small purse. It disturbed to see her take nothing from her place of stay, just the little things that were left untouched by the collision and wreckage. Perhaps that's why she was dressed more different than usual. She wore simple jeans, a pale tee and jacket that was frayed at the ends. He picked it up as borrowed since Elle was kind of person who never wore the same thing twice.
It was his fault.
Doom was upon them. The Avengers initiative, the one he thought that had been scraped away, was reawakened and on emergency gathered in. Without reimbursements, Tony already knew what he had in line. With an incident on a scale as large as that, he could collectively lose a lot. And nobody told him how painful it would be to go from lovers to strangers.
Tony watched her snap out of her trance and train her gaze on the phone in her hand. To watch her reaction was like having every ounce of breath knocked out of his chest and feeling the world itself stop. Nobody impelled around him except her, her light lips lifting to a smile of—adoration? Relief? Satisfaction?
Hopefully, it was all of the above. With a slow shake of her head, she answered it quietly. From where he stood, he watched her open her mouth to speak. An air of mischief overcame her smile, flopping it close again. Tony willed his mouth shut, too. Mirroring her smile and defying her expectations of him speaking first. His amusement heightened when he heard her breathless chuckle from the other end, breaking the silence.
'Tony,' her voice was delicate and melodious, 'glad you had the time to call.'
'Hi,' he thought of something witty to say but as usual, his repartee functions seemed to scramble themselves every time she spoke.
'I'm glad that you're glad.'
He watched discomfort and hurt bloom in the fall of her smile, chewing her cheeks to conceal it. She looked away from her feet to somewhere near where he stood, the mediocre lights causing him to see the glossiness in the dusky cerulean eyes. It was as if the iron vice on his chest was tightening with her every change of emotion, bobbing his head past the sea of people to see her more clearly.
