Steel Meets Iron

Chapter 17

She was on an ice rink. Her feet were cold and bare, the air was cold and snow blew against her face. Where she stood was white but a fluffy white, the surface wasn't smooth like walls. It was rounded and unstructured, curled in layered fluff. Everything was white, white lights, white breeze, white snow, white clothes, white skin. White world.

Everything felt white too. Clean, soft, fresh, blank, bland, plain.

The rink of ice was not white. It was blue.

It was every single shade of blue in the world. Moving waves, crashing foam, turning storms, swinging breeze, burning light, blazing fire, soothing touch.

It was simply blue.

She sat on the ice watching the blue turn beneath her. It was like a snow globe and kaleidoscope with the song of a wind chime. The blue moved like ink blots and danced like music.

She put her hand on the ice it was warm with brief strokes of cold. It sweated and it chilled. It pumped and pounded. It was alive. She put both hands on the ice. The shapes became similar and blurry like clouds on a sunny day.

Blots were gathering and herding. They were becoming something. Connecting and extending.

Someone else was on the ice.

She looked up from the ice and there was no one, but she knew she wasn't alone. She turned around and there stood a ball of light. White naturally. She grabbed it with both hands and it became blue, it burned darker and darker. It expanded until it burned to black. Once it was black it exploded and out of it came a black bird. Leaving a curtain of feathers with each flap of its wings.

It was a raven.

For the first time Tony couldn't blow something up. The urge to destroy something was eaten out of him, gnawed out from its core. In its stead was a dreadful ice block, an ice block that stole all fire from him. The will to fight something through. To press on. To look ahead. To cross that bridge. It was gone. He was a statue of a man in that waiting room. The furniture had more insight than him.

It was no ones fault. It had been a possibility but that didn't give it the right to happen. He didn't believe in God but he did believe in karma. If anyone needed a major cash out from karma it was her. She had suffered enough in her brief life but still she suffered. This was why he wasn't big on the God thing. Bad things happened because of statistics, facts, probability and unfortunate timing. Still. Still. Still. That didn't make it fair. Far from it.

They were running their tests but he already knew the diagnosis before they told him and Pepper. Heart failure, specifically, heart pump failure. What they said afterward was what he wasn't expecting.

"I fear that Raven's heart is beyond repair. It can no longer pump the sufficient amount of blood she needs. The slight indent of her heart as expanded and it crippling the valves of her heart. The only option we have is a heart transplant."

"But she's only seven," Pepper protested. "How are you going to get a heart that will fit?"

"I assure Miss Potts, when we have a heart then we will get it to fit. This a common procedure and once we have a healthy donor and her body doesn't reject the organ. We'll be fine."

"Reject?" She repeated. "She can reject the organ?"

"Her body can, but there are medications to counteract this reaction."

"How soon can we have her on the list?" Pepper asked panicked.

"We have already put her on the donor list. She has been placed at the top of the list as a high priority and I'm afraid that all we can do now is wait."