ripped at every edge (but you're a masterpiece) (Hp x Mcu) by Lissy

Chapter 2: a vision in the morning

Summary:

Tony and Hari, the morning after.

Chapter title:
Colors - Halsey

Notes:

Timeline:
[x] (2012) The Avengers
[x] (2013) Iron Man 3
[x] (2013) We are here
[ ] (2013) Thor: The Dark World
[ ] (2014) Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Guardians of the Galaxy; Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2
[ ] (2015) Avengers: Age of Ultron; Ant-Man
[ ] (2016) Captain America: Civil War; Spider-Man: Homecoming
[ ] (2017) Doctor Strange; Black Panther; Thor: Ragnarok
[ ] (2018) Avengers: Infinity War

Hari wakes up quite suddenly. She blinks blearily, looks around in confusion. A glance outside her bedroom window shows the sun just beginning to crest over the horizon, painting the sky in beautiful oranges and blues and highlighting the Manhattan skyline. It's a relatively quiet morning, no New York City traffic filling the air quite yet.

If that's not what woke her, then what...?

There's movement to the side of her, and she turns to look at the man she brought over last night. His body is rigid, fists clenched in the sheets, grunting as if pained, and then he starts to tremble. Hari frowns in concern, leans over to shake him awake but then hesitates.

He never answered her last night if he was a copper or not, and although she doesn't have a lot of experience dealing with Muggle coppers, they can't be that much different from dealing with Aurors. And that means that waking him up can potentially make him violent.

She herself has woken up from nightmares, swinging and ready to fight off a cackling Bellatrix Lestrange that isn't even there anymore.

But then a whimper escapes Tony's mouth, and she doesn't hesitate anymore.

Hari places her hands on his shoulders, tries to gently shake him awake. "Hey," she says softly, "you're having a nightmare. Wake up; you're safe."

Tony doesn't wake up. He shudders, tries to pull away from her and curl in on himself. "No," he moans. Tony turns violently to one side.

Hari makes calming, shushing noises, starts to run her hands through his hair. "Hey, no, it's okay," she says. She doesn't know if this will work, only has experience soothing her children, but she can't just watch him suffer.

Tony wakes with a gasp, pants like he's been running a marathon, and when he looks at her, his eyes are wide and unseeing, full of horror, and he shakes his head. "They're coming," he croaks out. "God, they're coming, and we're not ready!"

"No, no, it's okay," Hari tries.

Tony shakes his head, sits up and cups her face. "We're so unprepared," he whispers, panicked, and his eyes glisten wetly though no tears fall. "I keep warning them, but nobody will listen. And now...there's not going to be anything left to defend or avenge."

Hari's heart clenches painfully. She doesn't know what this man saw that still haunts him, doesn't know who he is or what he's been through, but she feels his pain. She kept saying until she was blue in the face about Voldemort's return, tried to get people to wake up and prepare themselves, but nobody listened. They buried their head in the sand, slandered her name in the paper, made a scapegoat of her.

They learned. As soon as Voldemort rose to power again, started rounding up the Muggleborn students like cattle, furthered his Pureblood agenda, there was no denying the Dark Lord's return. And because they spent so long pretending the Girl Who Lived had just gone insane, craved more fame and attention from having an adversary in her life and so just fabricated the return of He Who Must Not Be Named, it was easy for Voldemort to take over.