QUIVER [IRON MAN]

04.

"This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me."

Fight Song by Rachel Platten.

"O-Obadiah,"

Easton Stark was launched up against a crumbling red brick wall, over and over again.

Her fingernails bled down her hands, her index finger quivering as she made an attempt to retrieve the knife she'd hidden in her boot.

Drops of crimson like rubies fell helplessly down onto her torn ebony shirt, along with her salty tears. A rasped, worn cough erupted from her lips, "O-Obadiah."

Obadiah Stane stood over her, the man whom she'd called her uncle, the man who'd worked effortlessly with both her father and grandfather - the man people raved about.

He laughed a maniac cackle, his knuckles bloody from the continuous slapping of the helpless teen at his feet.

"Easton, honey," he spoke nonchalantly, "you're gonna wake the entire neighbourhood - and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Easton's dull eyes went wide, as Obadiah produced a black swiss knife from his back pocket, waving it teasingly inches from her face.

She attempted to clamber to her feet, but became unbalanced, falling to the concrete below with the echo of her forehead banging against the stone amplifying around the dark alley.

Obadiah laughed once again, darker this time. He knelt down to the young girl, taking her crimson-soaked hand in his.

"G-Get," Easton swallowed, "the hell away from me," she coughed, trying to bat away his hand, but he clung to it tighter, and turned it so her palm was facing upward towards the blackness of the sky.

"You always were stubborn," he spoke lowly, placing the tip of the knife in the dead-centre of her palm, "just like your father, and your bitch of a mother."

At hearing of her mother, Easton used all of her strength to kick her way free, but Obadiah simply dug the knife deeper into her porcelain skin, making her groan in pain, her body rippling inward.

"Yes, your bitch mother," he continued, "she didn't know what was good for her, hell - if she'd listened, maybe I'd have been your doting daddy!"

Boiling tears streamed their way down Easton's rosy cheeks, as with each word Obadiah dragged the knife down to the tip of her index finger.

She tried to scream, but she felt like her voice box had been ripped from her throat, it was hopeless. Blood gushed and pattered onto her now ripped jeans, as her screams filled the air.

WAKE UP.

Obadiah started from the beginning now, dragging the knife along her second finger, "where's your hero, Easton? Where's your old man, huh? Where's Iron Man?"

Easton closed her eyes, her legs giving in as her arms slumped to her sides. Her raven hair frizzed and clung to her flared cheeks, tangling down her back.

WAKE UP!

He raised the knife from her hand and pointed it directly towards her, a deep chuckle emitting from his throat.

"Seems he won't have to worry about your pretty little head anymore," he hissed, tracing his thumb from her jaw line up to her temple, bile beginning to rise up her throat.

"Don't do t-this," she pleaded, a single tear escaping from the duct of her eye.

He simply adjusted his grip on the knife, and aimed at one thing - her heart.

WAKE UP!

Easton shot up from the cushions of the couch, her breathing laboured as her watery eyes darted around the room. Her living room. She was safe.

As soon as her father came into sights sprawled on his back across the opposite couch, drool tracing its way along his chin, she took a breathe of relief.

Her hands darted to her back, and then her hair, and she took yet another breathe after realising that her hair was still hanging at her collarbone.

Ever since Obadiah had kidnapped her after her father's troubles in Afghanistan, she'd cut it herself from the curve at her lower back so that it rested above her collarbone; it gave her security.

She looked to her hands, still seeing the prominent but hide-able scar that traced from the middle of her palm to the tip of her index finger. She shuddered at the thought, and curled her dainty porcelain palm into a tight fist.

She stood, steading herself on the edge of the leather couch and instead of shaking her father awake, she went to the bathroom to splash water over her flushed face.

"Miss Stark,"

Jarvis' voice startled her, but she composed herself and swallowed the lump in her throat, taking a deep breathe of well needed air.

"Yes, J?"

She brushed her tremoring hand through her hair and then dried her face as the AI spoke back to her, unaware of her sleep-concealed demons.

"Good morning."

She sighed, her hands gripping the sides of the toilet as an acidic bile came up helplessly from her throat like it had in the nightmare.

She pushed herself up, her body feeling as frail as it had that night, and looked up to the ceiling saying a silent prayer.

"Not so much, J."