Valor ↠ Prequel [0] ✓

01 | Sleepless Nights

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VALOR
i. SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

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   THE YEAR IS 2013, but to Riley O'Dair, every day felt like the Battle of New York was just yesterday.

   In all fairness, the days were flying by. Maybe that's just what happens when you're kept busy for essentially every waking moment of your life. Though, the weird part that no one ever talks about is that no matter how busy you are or how fast the time goes by, sometimes you can't help but think about the past.

   Riley did that more often than she liked to admit. She thought about her biological parents and their untimely deaths; she thought about her training; she thought about her spiteful coworkers who still seemed to dislike her after all these years. Today (and for the past year), Riley had been thinking about the Battle of New York.

   Well, that and also the fact that she wished her closest friend wasn't a grown man.

   Riley eyed the famous Iron Man as she leaned against the table that stood between them. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she wondered as Tony Stark tinkered with a random invention he was working on. "Because it looks like you don't."

   Tony hardly glanced up at her. "I'm sorry, which one of us is barely five feet tall?" he retorted. "Now, check the flow meter rate for me, yeah?"

   "I'm just saying..." Riley trailed off, stepping away to read the monitor closest to her. "Just 'cause you can make a bunch of fancy suits doesn't mean you know how to make a self-functioning toolbox." The idea behind the invention was that the toolbox would contain every tool Tony ever needed. It would merely give him what he needed as he called for it rather than having to retrieve it himself.

   "When?" Tony suddenly asked.

   The 12-year-old glanced over her shoulder, perplexed. "When, what?" she inquired.

   "When did I ask?"

   The past year had been hard for Tony and Riley. For Riley, she was still processing the fact that she'd already fought in a war, met aliens, been officially inducted as the youngest superhero in history, and faced countless deaths. On top of that, Riley was recently diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety, and she was now required to attend mandated therapy — courtesy of one guilt-ridden Director Fury. The therapy didn't help much, but it made Riley feel validated, seen, understood. That feeling was hard to come by, so whenever she found it, she clung onto it for dear life.

   For Tony, he had nearly died in 2012 after sending that nuke through a wormhole. He didn't like talking about it, but his reactions to the topic whenever it arose were enough to tell Riley everything. He was traumatized, dealing with PTSD of his own. The two could relate to one another. Of course, add the fact that he recently "died", ended up in Tennessee, took on a villain called the Mandarin, removed the shrapnel that nearly went into his heart, broke up with his longterm girlfriend, and destroyed all of his suits...