Chapter Text
374 miles.
That number didn’t feel as big when you saw it on the computer. The line on the map you brought didn’t look that long.
But your shoelaces are fraying and ripping. The soles of your dirty sneakers have worn down and there is a hole near the ball of your foot that little pebbles keep sneaking in through. You stopped pausing to get them out about three days ago. Your feet keep switching between burning and numbness. At this point you are not sure which one is better.
You’re not sure how long you’ve been walking anymore. The days started to blend together after the first few nights, though you know it's been at least a week.
You’ve learned to avoid the road and the wilderness that surrounds it, instead sticking to the tree line beside the road that hides you from passing cars but doesn’t risk an encounter with any scary predators.
Now animals aren’t the scariest thing around. The farmland and forests have morphed into large suburbs. You are careful to avoid anyone as there is a missing child report out for you after all.
It’s nearing dusk and you need to stop to find somewhere to spend the night soon. You can finally see the city clearly up ahead in the distance. It’s no longer a blurry mess far off in the horizon but now clear and looming.
After some more walking you finally find an old church parking lot with a gazebo in the back. Out of sight.
You settle down in the small structure and pull your small backpack off. It’s the same one you used for school, not one of those fancy ones people use when they go hiking on TV and it shows. The bag is ripped and scuffed in multiple places. The zipper gets stuck due to mud and dirt getting between the plastic grooves. But it has everything you own. Or at least everything you own that was important enough to take.
A wad of cash you’ve been saving for years now from your mother. Most of it is gone now, only eight measly dollars remaining. You only had fourty-seven to start with. An old hoodie you received as some donation when you first got put into foster care. Your last two granola bars. The map you barely understand but are using to try and navigate your way. And lastly, the photo that started this whole journey, your parents.
The photo is one of those old polaroid ones. It is starting to peel at the edge. One corner is bent and another is torn. But you cherish it all the same. It’s the last thing you have of your mother.
Her smile is as pretty as you remember. She is laughing in the photo, wearing a fancy black dress at some posh looking party. Blurred people are surrounding her and the other person in the photo. His arm is around your mom’s waist. A nice suit adorns his figure, his hair is styled back, and his well-known smirk is present as he looks at the camera.
Tony Stark.
Or as your mom said whenever you asked to look at the picture, “He’s your dad, but don’t worry about him. We don’t need a sleazebag like him. Remember sweetheart, while this man might be your father, he’s not worth your time. By the next morning, he was gone without a word.”
You agreed with her. She’s your mother and your life with her was more than enough for you.
Until the day “a fun trip to the mall” turned into your mother on the ground as adults around you calling for 911.
You remember the ambulance. You remember crying. You remember everything being too loud as medics called for something that made a loud buzzing sound as another medic pushing on your mom’s chest over and over. You remember some adults trying to pull you away as you cried and wailed.
You remember being confused when the medics eventually stopped and stood up even though your mother was still on the ground. You begged them to wake your mom up and all you got was pained faces.
You don’t remember much else after that.
Eventually some other adults with syrupy smiles and furrowed brows met with you. Something about a “heart attack” and “foster care”.
Those words and concepts didn’t make much sense to you at the time, being five. Even now, as a ten year old, the concepts just feel like too much to really process.
They said there were no kinship options due to your father being absent on my birth certificate and my mother having no living extended family.
Things never really went back to normal after that. You stayed in a few homes with strangers and other kids. There was normally yelling, sometimes at you, sometimes at one of the other kids. Your mother never yelled. So that was an adjustment.
The first house was a blur. You were only there for a few months.
The second house was your favorite. It was an older grandma who didn’t have as much energy to yell. Things were calmer there. You got to be there for a year but you eventually got moved because one of the other older kids in the home kept causing problems for you and it was deemed easier for you to move rather than the other kid who apparently needed the “calm environment”.
The third home was loud. The fourth was louder. You spent around nine months at both.
That’s why the fifth home seemed like a blessing. It was quieter and calmer. No other kids to fight with.
Just you.
And Mrs. Alma.
In the three years you had been in the system jumping from house to house, this was finally the one that seemed right. To you, Mrs. Alma, and your case worker.
Mrs. Alma is an older woman and widow. She has that stern but maternal energy that can put you at ease or make you tense depending on how she uses it.
The first ten months were great. For the first time since your mother passed it felt like you maybe had someone else you could fully rely on. Mrs. Alma read to you, packed your lunch, helped you with homework, baked you cookies when you felt sad, and calmed you down after nightmares.
It started to feel like home.
And maybe that’s why you ignored the way things started to change.
Or maybe it’s that it happened so slowly and subtly that it was hard to notice.
Being too loud earned a reprimand. But that’s okay because you liked the quiet. But soon talking at all was too loud to Mrs. Alma and reprimands grew harsher.
Then, attention had to be earned. Windows cleaned, floors washed, clothes folded, dishes washed, homework done.
Soon food had to be earned too.
The house began to grow too quiet.
Creaking floorboards or dropping something made your chest grow painfully tight.
One day, sometime around the year and a half mark of staying with Mrs. Alma, you did badly on a test. You remember being lectured sternly and sent off the bed without dinner. But you hadn’t earned breakfast or lunch that day either. You thought it was unfair. So, you did something stupid.
You tried to sneak downstairs after Mrs. Alma went to bed.
You were halfway through an apple when the kitchen lights flicked on and caught you mid-act.
You went to bed crying that night and by morning there was a new colorful bruise blooming on your cheekbone and around your wrists.
They were mostly faded by the time school came around Monday morning.
That became more regular going forwards. You got use to bruises, though they were often in more hidden places.
Nobody noticed.
You tried to tell your caseworker, but the words came out wrong, and it was dismissed.
You tried again. But bureaucratic overload meant that your caseworker took three extra days than required before she came out to investigate. The bruises had faded by then. That’s also the day you realized how good of an actor Mrs. Alma was. Her perfect smile and full cooperation meant her claims of attention seeking were believed. The case was marked as unsubstantiated.
That was around the time that you brought the picture of your father out. Your mother never told you his name, just that he was not worth your time. He didn’t feel like an option before. Maybe because it felt like betraying your mom if you reached out. Or maybe it was just that you had no clue who he was.
He wasn’t exactly hard to find online with one picture of the said picture, however.
Billionaire, Playboy, Genius, CEO, Philanthropist, Iron-Man, Avengers.
You finally learned your father’s name, Tony Stark.
When you learned who he was he became that much further away. A pipe dream that you quickly abandoned.
Every few weeks you would look him up again while at school. And every time you would shut down the idea.
It was a week past the two-year mark with Mrs. Alma that you realized you didn’t have a choice.
You had been stockpiling shelf-stable food in a box beneath your bed. Some of it was from friends. Some of it was from school lunches that you saved. The rest were things you had stolen from the kitchen and the school cafeteria. It was your stash for bad days where the hunger was too much. Or maybe it was for when you were planning to run away even though you denied that thought.
Mrs. Alma found it while cleaning your room while you were at school. Something she had never done before nor did you expect.
You don’t remember it clearly, just that one moment you were frozen in the doorway and the next you were on the floor crying and in the worst pain you had ever felt.
You didn’t go to school the next morning. Mrs. Alma let you stay home and comforted you. She wrapped your left wrist up with an ACE wrap and iced some of the worst bruises.
She gave you some painkillers before leaving you alone to attend a meeting in her at-home office.
Something in you knew that you couldn’t ignore it this time.
So, you packed your bag within five minutes even though movement felt like agony. Every bruise throbbing and your fractured wrist burning with every minor jostle.
You snuck a box of granola bars from the kitchen and stuffed them in your backpack along with a water bottle and then left. Your stash of food has already been thrown away, and the trash truck had come that morning. You checked anyway.
You had already planned the route a few weeks ago at the school library. That didn’t stop you from hesitating at the end of the street. Or at the entrance to the neighborhood. Or as you passed your school down the main street.
The thing that stopped you from turning back was the fear of what would happen if you got caught.
You walked for days and days. Stomach pains, injuries, scary sounds, thirst, exhaustion. It all brought you to where you are now.
Curled up in this gazebo, just miles outside of New York City.
You’ll be at the tower by tomorrow afternoon if you start walking again at dawn.
Your father. Tony Stark.
Your finger rubs across the picture clutched in your hand as your eyes trace from your mother to your father.
You pull the polaroid closer and curl up under the wooden bench of the gazebo as it grows darker, using your hoodie as a pillow.
A spider web looms in the corner above your head.
You don’t really care anymore as you drift off in the safest place you’ve slept in at least a week.