CHAPTER 37
TWO MONTHS LATER (ROUGHLY)

The assassin is coy, sticking to the shadows, where she belongs. Despite the sunny day she finds cover in the slices of shade produced by the afternoon sun. Her prey, a balding, middle-aged man, is ignorant to her pursuance. He's gotten fatter since she last remembers, indulging on his benefits a little too much.

He meets his associate in the park, they lock hands in a friendly gesture while she climbs a windowsill and perches on the roof of a nearby residence. Strapped to her back, she produces a long-barrelled sniping rifle of her own design. Feeling untrusting in her newfound abilities, she briefly dips the bullet in a cup of mercury she bought with her. The target will die either way.

She waits patiently for Gulliver's associate to leave and he does. Leaving the doctor alone and clean for the shot. He fumbles with his papers, her dark iris following his movements through the long sight.

The aura of death is so prominent around him that it may as well suffocate others. It's dark, thick black, the same colour as the darkness in which she finds comfort, it's warning clearer than a thousand bells singing the death of the age, but only for the ones who listened for it. He sits back up, looking down. She pulls the trigger.

A clean shot. A merciful shot. Something he didn't deserve.

Parkgoers scream and cry and watch in horror, shielding their children from the sight. The human nature is drawn to horror, to bloodshed and children peer through their parents' fingers.

But she is already gone.

...

I sleep that night, surprisingly without little interruption. Well, except for the visit from Mum and the rather odd dream.

A girl is lying on the main couch in what I can assume is one of the Stark Mansions. She's bored, it takes no stretch of imagination to see that. She presses her hands to her freckled face and groans. In the image of sun's rays, her hair is splayed around her. It's a natural, dark red. Her skin is pale and she has small lips that purse into a pout. She's probably about four.

She nimble but not frail, she's shaped to be a ballet dancer with that porcelain doll face. She stirs an edge of familiarity within me but I can't place it.

Footsteps thud and the girl practically leaps to attention, up walks Tony. "What are you doing kiddo?" He asks, her mouth drops open in shock and joy that he actually saw her. Once upon a time, this could've been me. I think to myself.

"I-I-I uh," she scrambles to find the words she's looking for.

"Well spit it out." He snaps, she shrinks back. Tony sighs to himself and goes over to the fridge. "Why did I think this was a good idea?" He mutters to himself. I study him, the dream Tony. He looks younger, perhaps in his early thirties? There's less grey in his hair and less wrinkles in his face but his eyes are lost, broken, shattered. The room I'm in is newer than what I'm used to, we're at the Malibu house, the one rebuilt after it was destroyed in Iron Man 3. Everything looks, different somehow, even though I've never been.

"Just listen to me!" The girl cried, stamping her foot. Tony stopped in shock. "Why do you always ignore me! Why do you never tell me about mummy? Or the girl in the photos? And why do you just keep me here all the time? It's boring and it gets nothing done!" She tried to keep in her tears but her entire body shook with sobs.

I looked to where the young girl had pointed in her rant, noting how her vocabulary was much older than she looked. I moved towards the collection of tacked up photos, they were done up with a collection of sticky tape, blue tack and the stuff you put in pin boards to make it stay.

There were photos, kind of like a memorabilia wall or a shrine, of me, Lana, there was one cropped from security footage of me in the hallway. Another of James and I when we were in the lab, we'd taken a photo of ourself together, one of Becky and I on the road in Orlando and the picture that Gale had taken of us while we were in Disney World. I had a wide, cheesy grin on my face and had leaned into him slightly. The thoughts going through my head were the complete opposite but at least here, we looked loving, here, I was smiling.

"You wanna know?" Tony shouted. The young girl stood her ground but in her eyes was pure fear. "You wanna know, Zo?" His voice softened but the hatred and hurt in no way did.

Zo pushed her lip out and gave a sharp nod.

"Well." Tony snapped, his anger burning his words. "That girl is your sister. Your mother died when she had you. That girl, killed her. Then she tried to kill you. Happy now?"

The vision moved, kind of like it was zooming out but in timeline, it fast forwarded to Zo, but when she was older, maybe eight. She was tip toeing around in a ballet outfit, carefully and rather strategically, she placed a flyer for the end of year ballet concert so that it could easily be seen. The sound of a car stopping sent Zo zipping up the steps, she peeking down, watching below.

Tony came in, tossing his keys onto the counter, for a moment, he paused at the flyer, studying it. He muttered something negative to himself, throwing the flyer in the trash can. Zo's eyes filled with tears and she ran to her room, sobbing.

The scene moved again, Tony and Zo were in a fight. She was probably about twelve but he looked no older.

"Big girls don't wear dresses and do ballet, do they?" Tony sneered.

"Fine!" Zo cried back, ripping the ballet ribbon from her hair and then tossing it on the floor. She left the room in tears and Tony sunk into his chair, muttering obscenities.

The image moved again to a fourteen-year-old Zo who wore baggy clothes and listened to music. Instead of Tony's normal rock, I heard the faint strains of a classical score. Zo was studying herself in the bedroom mirror with disgust. "Worthless." She muttered to herself. "Doesn't even give a shit, so why should I?"

She went to scratch the back of her head, her sleeve slipped, showing a flash of raw scars, struggling to heal. Everything inside of me dropped. Tony's bitter words had forced Zo to stop ballet, her therapy, her purpose, sending her spiralling into this.

I knew this, I knew what it was like. To have everything around you fall apart, glistening streaks on a naked canvas, jagged mountain ranges in the distance, highway roads cutting into the dirt.

The image moved again and I braced myself for it. Zo, lifting her chin to the wind, leaning heavily against the rail of the balcony. Her eyes were sunken and the aura around her showed sickness and hurt and bitterness and self-hatred and loss.

Zo slid over to the other side of the rail, leaning forwards so that only her hands were holding onto the rail, her body leaning precariously over the sea below.

"No Zo," I whispered. "Don't do it."

I wanted to spare myself the sight of death, but some things need to be seen. Some things need to be remembered, recorded, reminded, so that they may never happen.

Zo let go of the bar, delicately slipping through the air and swallowed by the churning surf below.

A premonition? A vision of the future? But this life that Tony shaped for Zo, I couldn't let occur.

Perhaps he'd die like I'd seen in his death and Zo would be slipped into the care of others or into the foster system. But maybe that death I'd seen of his wouldn't happen until much after this one.

A familiar landscape formed and the sight of my mother, lounging on her throne didn't exactly fill me with joy.

"What did you see?" She asked, glee turning her words.

"A vision." I replied dully, "of the future I think."

"And how was the ending of your mission?" She asked coyly.

"Your mission." I reminded her. "Regardless, I still have things to clear up."

"That's right." Mother nodded, "the whole, truth coming out and the whole betrayal and now you're on the evil side."

"I justify my own side." I replied stiffly.

"Yes but, in the movie, you'd be the bad guy." She toyed, grinning.

"Thank you." I spoke, my teeth gritted.

"But these, assassinations, you've justified them and you've recognised the need for them, despite them having, friends, families, lives, all things you don't have."

"You make me come back to life to criticise my lifestyle choices?"

"And that's what death is, taking without rhyme or reason, but the eventual goal being that the human's stupidity does not destroy itself."

"Where is this going?"

"Therefore," my mother waved her hand intricately, "if you return to the Afterlife, you will become Death."

"What?" I cried, feeling slightly nauseous. "I don't even remember applying for a job as Death."

"Your choice." My mother grins as the vision turns to smoke.

...

"What are you doing?" The red-spandexed merc hovers beside me, leaning over my shoulder, peering at what I'm doing. I swat him away like an annoying fly and he jumps back. "Why are you tracking down a pregnant lady?"

"When you say it like that, you make it sound bad." I spoke absentmindedly.

"In any way I say it, it sounds bad." Wade snickered by my ear.

"It's important for the mission." I replied shortly. Currently, Pepper was in a specialised SHIELD hospital. She was having a few, maternity bumps as so to speak. The other part of my brain was assembling the plan for the big, final conflict.

The villains, want world domination, I want to die, aside from the whole turning into Death thing when I die. Perhaps I could lead the villains on long enough and then escape somehow? Retreat without them noticing? I needed to find a life for Zo that wouldn't involve her killing herself at my age.

"Swear on Death that you'll do this?"

"Swear on Death that you'll hold up your side of the bargain?" The usually sarcastic merc was sullen with a foreboding sense of damination.

"If you uphold yours, then yes." He replied back.

We turned to the screen at the same time.

"You know, once upon a time, she could've been you, snatched away." He speaks lightly but still with a sense of respect. Rare for the merc.

"Don't be ridiculous." I huffed haughtily, snapping the laptop lid shut and sweeping off.