Disarm • Stark

29. Monsters & Honesty.

In all the eleven years Mazzy has been alive, Tony is pretty sure she has never once before been as clingy as she is now. Maybe when she was learning to walk? She would follow him around all day as soon as she could take more than five steps without falling down. But, even then, Tony doesn't think she was this clingy.

Ever since leaving that abandoned Hydra base in Siberia, Mazzy hasn't let go of Tony's hand, arm, shirt, anything. Though she feels a little childish doing it, Mazzy can't help but cling to the back of her dad's shirt, hiding herself behind him, whenever they are around anyone else. Especially around any government agents. Even the ones Mazzy used to like. She can't look any of them in the eyes, terrified that they're suddenly going to remember what she did and take her away.

What Mazzy is surprised to see, though, is that they don't. Sure, she gets glares and whispers, but no one puts her in handcuffs and locks her up in some sort of prison cell. Tony would never allow that, anyway. And maybe Mazzy should have realized that before now, but in a way, she did. She just couldn't believe herself. Couldn't trust him. She sees herself as equal to Bucky Barnes, after all, and Bucky Barnes is who Tony has been after this whole time. So if Bucky belongs in prison, doesn't she, too?

It doesn't make sense. Not logically. But emotionally, sure. Tony Stark stares at his daughter and sees the baby he held in the hospital. And now, he stares at Bucky Barnes and sees the monster that killed his parents.

Either way, though, Bucky is gone. He and Steve left Tony and Mazzy there alone in Siberia. After that, Tony's only priority was bringing Mazzy back home to safety, though Mazzy seemed to think she needed to bring him back home to safety with how beat-up he was.

The Avengers' compound wasn't much of a comforting, warm bed to come home to, though. With Pepper and Tony split, a house to themselves was much too empty, so Tony decided for them to stay at the compound. It was lonely there, too, though. The rest of the Avengers— the ones who fought on Steve's side— were locked up in that prison for a little while, but Steve was quick to break them out. Now they're on the run. Mazzy doesn't think she's going to see them for a very, very long time.

She's been a lot quieter lately. Tony hates it. He likes her chatter much more than the silence. Every time he looks at her, she's either staring blankly at the ground or writing fervently in her journal, which no one is allowed to look at but her. Tony being Tony has already tried taking a peek himself, but Mazzy is smart enough to have seen that coming, so every night, she sleeps with the journal tucked beneath her pillow. Not that she does much sleeping, anyway.

Mazzy's nightmares are persistent. Every night, she has at least one. Sometimes two or three. Sometimes she goes for days without sleeping at all, and when the tiredness is finally weighing her down so much that she can't even stand up on her own, she insists on sleeping in her dad's bed so she can finally feel a little bit more safe.

She reminds Tony a lot of himself after going into that wormhole in 2012. Every time Mazzy wakes up either crying, screaming, or some combination of the two, Tony can't really look her in the eyes, because when he does, he just can't stop thinking about how he knows what she is feeling. Knowing that she is feeling the same things he felt at the end of 2012 kills him.

The anxiety attacks are the worst, though. They were for Tony, and they are for Mazzy. Sometimes Mazzy is convinced that she's drowning, despite not being in water, and she thinks she is going to die. Tony wants to help her, but he is far from a mental health expert himself and Mazzy refuses to go to any kind of doctor, somehow convinced that they're going to be the same as the fake psychologist, Zemo.

That's the thing Mazzy is most terrified of; someone taking advantage of her and using her to hurt someone. She practically never leaves the compound at all. She says she can't be around innocent people until she's fixed.