" all that blood was never once beautiful... it was always just red  "

Chapter 3:

Sometimes I won't hurt you 

Tony sometimes used to think that there was a rubber band holding on to his sanity, wound too tightly, liable to snap viciously at any possible moment. Nothing efficiently was in his control, everything just out of his nervous hands, no matter how desperately he would eagerly try to maintain some sort of imaginative grasp on everything that surrounded him. The stress would build and build and build, stretching him thinner and thinner, and yet, he would still try so hard to hold on, pulled in a dozen unknown directions at once.

He could feel himself beginning to crack around the raw edges, coming apart at the seams, one false move or ill-placed comment away from imploding on himself. He was in much simpler terms a slow-burn disaster, coming apart piece by piece, decaying a little more with each day that went past, petrifying in the radiant sun.

Tony would pray that no one saw his tenuous hold on reality, lest they should try to verify it, wrestle it away from him, finish driving him truly mad. That was not the chaotic world's duty, their right, their privilege. It was rigorously his and his all alone, Tony's God-given right and his own cross to bear. As much as it wasn't true, Tony wanted to fervently believe that he was the architect of his own creation, and only he could devise his own demise. And yet, the entire while, the world attempted to usurp him, hauling him just that much harder, just that much further, until he was no longer quite certain who was behind the cutting wheel of his life.

Forcing her back to him after years that had passed in a moment and forever was cruel... like an illicit affair the world had beckoned upon him in the specific name of fate and coincidence. Tony was a man of practical science. He didn't believe in fate.

The eccentric billionaire stood up with his eyes narrowed but carefully watching as the young brunette allegedly entered his office.

That windless morning had been a blur. He had risen when sleep had ceased to remain an option and dressed hastily and quietly. He could barely remember his first walk into the private office, had only a vague recollection of greeting Pepper as he entered the elegant building. He had immersed himself in the pending paperwork, mind not truly with him as he fumbled through his duties but when the door to his office opened, all he underwent was one look before his world shattered once again.

It promptly took him less than a minor fraction of a possible second to pinpoint who it correctly was— Annabeth or as someone else might undoubtedly prefer to dub it, the love of his life.

She looked just as Tony remembered if not more beautiful, her brown eyes wide and hair cut short. It was the kind of beauty that one would think can only just come with age and maturity. It was her, the most bizarre woman he had ever had a chance to love.

Love.

Love to the inventive genius typically had over-anxious time become an extraordinary wave reluctantly approaching the beach, scared of the break— because it will hopelessly break, as all extraordinary things do, as his rubberband will. And the wave will always realize, far too late, that it was merely water all along. That it had only ever been moonlit water. Tony was consistently standing on the beach, in this metaphor. He was just standing there, scooping his calloused hands desperately into the shallow ocean, trying to make something solid from liquid and feeling it all slip through his blistered fingers. Because all things break.

No, Tony did not believe in potential fate but perhaps, the greatest love story he had ever known himself was the one that was most damaged of them all.

Annabeth looked tired— as if the entire world had gathered up and brutally beaten her down to the ground till she had escaped gasping for ragged breaths. Tony knew that look.

He'd recognized it in the mirror before after the long days and lonely nights when there was nothing but justified anger that resided in the broken shards of his wounded heart. But Tony had learned to conceal it— as might be expected, he did. He merely learned to hide it with the booze and his never-ending list of shallow girls.

Annabeth looked at him, clearly surprised and it mortally hurt Tony to grasp that even though she was back here in Malibu— it wasn't for him. Tony's soulful eyes went down to the file Pepper had left for him yesterday —steadfastly insisting that he read it but he didn't— and carefully picked it up to instantly read what was written therein bold letters:

APPLICANT 08: ANNABETH CARTER-PIERCE

Putting aside all of the other (sad) thoughts that infiltrate his bewildered brain, with a smirk, Tony motioned Annabeth to take a seat. This entire situation seemed like it was right out of an adapted movie and really, it was all bringing him into a headspace that's, for woeful lack of a better term, dangerous. Not physically, but emotionally.

"Miss Carter," Tony nodded in proper acknowledgment, gesturing at the chair in front of his desk, "I assume you are here for the interview."

She looked uncomfortable under his intent gaze.

"Yes."

"You're hired," Tony carefully closed her personal file with a satisfied smile. It by heart was a bittersweet smile, one made of the sweetest honey and the most bitter poison. The dead poet in Tony justly compared it to his heart. He didn't want to hire her; he would never want to after what happened between them, but he did and now, it's was out there between them and he had no choice.

Back when it had inevitably happened, there was profound grief. 

Annabeth left so Tony mourned her because it felt more effortless to think ruefully she was dead than to know that she had abandoned him. It made him resolve into throwing himself further into his vicious spiral of self-destruction, working harder at unmaking himself, forcibly dissolving into the nothing as if he never were. He leaned just that bit too far to peer down into the abyss, and now he had fallen, repeatedly falling, lost to the sands of time, lost to eternity, lost to everything and everyone, with nothing but his own thoughts for the company and the girls in his bed as still continued to plummet.

Looking at Annabeth now, after five mature years of genuinely trying to move on, the rubber band that had been holding Tony's sanity together finally snapped.

"I think I'll just go— What?" She looked like a wounded deer caught in headlights and Tony fought the urge to inevitably fall down laughing hysterically like a maniac. Sure he was pissed as everlasting hell at Annabeth, but that had never stopped him from invariably finding the absurd humor in the unique situation.

Or any dire situation, really.

"You're hired, Miss Carter," Tony finally decided to elaborate, "As my second assistant. You will essentially be my second Pepper because she claims to be too busy 'running this company'. Do you have any queries or possible objections?"

Annabeth's luminous eyes seemed to naturally just grow in size as the breathless minutes in Tony's office ticked by. It seemed to dawn on her that she was going to precisely be this man's assistant, the same man she willingly spent the last five years trying to stay away from. The peculiar way Tony was glancing at her was also sinister because Annabeth knew him damn well enough to know he was having fun with her current situation.

But Annabeth really needed this fucking job.

"If I accept this job, c— can I continue with school?"

Tony reasonably looked at her in possible confusion as he instantly remembered that Annabeth had yearned to go to the medical field. Becoming a doctor had eternally been her dream as far back as Tony could remember. But then, even though he was a self-proclaimed genius, Tony conveniently forgot random things— like what he had for breakfast that same morning.

"I— I wanted to continue with med school, and I only have my last year to do," She informed him, "And it would be online, T— Mr. Stark!" (Mr. Stark felt incredibly weird to say, subtly reminding her of Howard) "That is if you don't mind."

Tony wondered then, what invariably led Annabeth to drop out. Before she intentionally left, she had told Tony that she was going to merely continue in London. He vaguely recalled Andrea, Annabeth's mom getting sick and the girl hiding more possible things than she let on.

There was so much that he still didn't know.

"You can," he told her, "I'll even pay —" she started to interrupt but he continued, "I think you have your residency left to go," she nodded, "so— company policy."

She nodded gratefully.

"You start on Wednesday so move into the Stark Mansion by Friday. Pepper will help you."

He walked out of his luxurious office as Annabeth hastily stood up and Tony wondered for once in his miserable life, how Annabeth felt witnessing him go.

It was cruelly an unspeakable tragedy the way their forgotten story always went: maybe, perhaps, almost. Annabeth maybe should have told him the truth. Annabeth perhaps should have said sorry. Annabeth almost didn't let him go.

The nurse smiled at her and Annabeth recalled her name— May. The entire time during the successful surgery, the woman had stood beside the youthful Pierce, holding her hand and distracting her by telling her stories of her fiancée, Ben in New York and his family.

It was comforting to have someone during this, even if it was just a stranger. Annabeth wondered where Tony was as he promised faithfully to be at the overcrowded hospital by nine. It was almost twelve now.

May was still smiling at her and that's when Annabeth noticed the little bundle of blankets in her muscled arms. Annabeth naturally tried to withdraw her own arms, but she felt extremely drowsy.

"You have a charming baby boy, Miss Pierce," May said admiringly.

Annabeth gradually shifted her brilliant eyes to the lovely face of the adorable baby that May held, finally managing to loosen her eager hands enough to carefully hold him steady.

"What's his name?"

"Peter," Annabeth replied heartily, "Peter James St—"

She just felt extremely exhausted— a great deal like she had felt dreadfully when she was drugged at her college party.

Just at that moment, Annabeth could manage only three shabby men who burst into her hospital room as May took back Peter into her arms. Annabeth felt so sleepy.

"Take the boy! And her? I told you no witnesses—"

It sounded like Howard and her terrible father's longtime friend Obie.

"I— Obie? What's happening?"

Nobody uttered anything.

"The stupid drugs should have worked by now," She heard someone whisper.

"Peter? Who— My son! Please g— give me back—"

Nobody answered, and Annabeth felt acutely her body shut down slowly.

"Help me, please just h— help," she whispered fiercely.

Annabeth could barely see through the drugs and her countless tears, but she could merely hear May crying.

Peter was also crying.

Annabeth tried mightily to agitate it off, but she couldn't.

She couldn't and thus on August 10th, 2000, Peter James Stark was declared dead.

Peter ever being alive remained just a dream that plagued her memories.

"Help..."

Annabeth found out that unforgettable evening that Peter was dead.

"Help..."

Tony had been the chosen one to tell her. He had carefully held her close to him, himself grieving the gradual loss of the beloved son he had constantly dreamt of having with Annabeth.

"Help..."

And with a start, that realistically was how Annabeth woke up every night, drenched in sweat and tears. The rest of her harsh life had been difficult for her, after everything that happened in New York, the blistering summer before she typically left. There was no Tony to fall back to, no promise of family in the hallways of the future, just a shattered dream that lived only etched in her memories.

And they also don't last forever.

AnnabethPierce01: Look who just got a new job <3

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EDITED: 24/ 01/ 2022