Lucky: Super heroine

The Cracks Are Showing

Kiara is sleeping for the first time in her new room when her dream turns into a nightmare. In her dream she's trying to hide from someone but she doesn't know who they are. Everywhere she tries to hide, seems not quite good enough and she feels herself get more and more panicked as each second passes. She's in her childhood home, she gets into her closet when all of a sudden a hand grabs her by her hair and pulls her backwards towards the ground, as she's falling she wakes up! A strangled moan of fear comes out of her mouth as she jumps up, fists ready to punch someone then she notices where she is and sags back into her new bed and sighs in relief. Her dream leaves her feeling unnerved and anxious. She looks over at the clock beside her bed which reads 5:51AM. It's not too late to sleep a bit more if she really wanted to. It's not too early to be questioned about why she's awake so early so she decides to get out of bed to grab a cup of coffee so she can attempt to forget her nightmare which is already faded from her memory. All that remains in the vague anxiety in the back of her mind that she knows will low key bother her for the rest of the day.

Tony Stark is standing in the kitchen nursing a fresh cup of coffee in his hands. When he sees Kiara enter looking surprisingly alert for almost 6am he wonders if she's naturally a morning person or if she also has sleep issues like him. He can't just outright ask her because that would be suspicious so instead he does what he knows best which is sleuth for hidden clues that will answer his questions.

"Good morning Tony, I hope you slept well." Kiara greets as she grabs a cup of coffee adding oatmeal milk and some honey before taking an appreciative sip.

"I slept well. Are you usually up this early?" Inquires Tony curiously.

She shrugs as she replies, "Ehh it depends on how soundly I'm able to sleep the night before. Today wasn't my best night honestly but it could be worse ya know? At least I got to sleep more than my usual bad nights."

Tony decides to take this as an opportunity to probe for more information. "Do you have bad nights often? What do you usually do when you can't sleep? I personally just head down my workshop when I'm having trouble sleeping."

Kiara takes a moment to figure out how much she wants to reveal about her mental health before answering "It used to happen more frequently but most of the time I just don't remember my dreams luckily" she laughs trying to make her statement seem more light. "Typically when I can't sleep, I just read or depending on if I'm planning to stay awake or not, I'll grab a cup of coffee to wake up."

"Well if you're ever having trouble sleeping in the future, feel free to ask Jarvis if I'm available for company and he'll let you know where I am. I have an odd sleep schedule so who knows maybe I'm already awake at the time; I don't mind having company while I tinker on my latest project or an excuse to take a break." Tony offers partly because he genuinely hopes he could help his newest teammate out and partly so he could learn more about her secret that he knows is being hidden from him. "Wanna try out some hand to hand combat when breakfast is done, I'm just about to order some breakfast. Any requests or should I just order 2 of what I usually eat? I'm ordering a protein berry smoothie with sliced avocado, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce on the side."

"I'll have the same as you." Kiara answers smiling before taking another drink of her coffee. "Btw where are the rest of the Avengers?"

"Bruce is here, he's been working on some science research in his lab and doesn't usually go fight bad guys unless it's absolutely necessary which is why he wasn't with me when we first met. Natasha and Clint are out on Shield business and Thor is spending time with his girlfriend, Jane out of town."

~Time skip~

Kiara is trying to balance defensive and offensive moves that she remembers from watching action movies and isn't doing too bad sparring against Tony in his suit. Unfortunately for her, she momentarily loses her upper hand and gets flipped onto her back with Tony pinning her to the ground. Now normally she'd be able to handle this but her nightmare from this morning, threw her off her usual ability to hide her emotions. Looking up at Tony, she feels her breathing become shallow and erratic. Her mind starts to race but on the outside she looks calm and collected. Tony notices the panic in her face and quickly gets up, holding his hand out for her to grab. "You did pretty good, let's take 5" says Tony in a smoothing even voice. "Wanna talk about what's going on right now and don't tell me it's nothing. I can see it in your eyes that you're anxious about something.

"It's nothing seriously; I'm ok I just got reminded of something from my past and it freaked me out momentarily." Kiara explains. She takes a deep breath while closing her eyes as a way to ground herself back in the reality again. "I don't wanna get into this really, I'm just gonna say for now that I've lived through some tough shit and I struggle with complex ptsd. Sometimes it gets to me like now but most days I have it under control."

Tony nods "That's understandable, I don't talk about my trauma either so I won't push you to open up to me or anything. Just know that I'm here if you ever feel overwhelmed again and wanna talk or not talk and just have someone to sit with. Would you like to meet Bruce tonight? He's been cooped up in that lab all week so I need to drag him out of the lab for a break and a real meal and not whatever healthy junk he eats whenever he gets caught up in his work."

Kiara nods excited at the prospect of meeting Bruce and immediately says "Yes!!"

Authors note: please let me know what you think of the way any of the Marvel characters are portrayed in this story. I will attempt to capture their authentic essence but of course I could mess up and I'll appreciate any constructive criticism. I'd also like to address the fact that I will not be perfect at portraying ptsd, I can only speak from my own personal experience with ptsd and am aware that other people experience this mental health problem differently than I do. I do not claim to portray this in a way that will be a perfect representation of ptsd. Thank you to anyone who reads my story! I really appreciate it 🙏🏻❤️ it's been years since I've felt so inspired by writing a story so I'm going to be updating this story a lot! I won't have a set schedule or anything so my updates will be whenever I finish writing a chapter. I know they're not long but I'll work on slowly increasing my word count in the chapters as I get back into practice.