Retrospect『 avengers au 』

Chapter VII: Déjà Vu

"No one has a perfect life. Everybody has something that they wish was not the way it is." - Stan Lee

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Chapter VII: Déjà Vu

Tony stood alongside Doctor Banner as he gazed down at the papers spread out on the table before them. They had taken what seemed to be an endless river of notes, but they all went off a cliff into a waterfall of jumbled probabilities. Nothing seemed to make sense. Just when one possible outcome became the most reasonable explanation to them, something else always contradicted it. Trying to uncover the whereabouts and happenings of this young woman before the day she was found was like dumping a ton of puzzle pieces from different boxes into a blender and hoping the finished product would still be a sensible picture.

"So I'm thinking she doesn't have any facial recognition because she has been in constant isolation her entire life," Bruce began and Tony hummed to let the man know he was listening. "Not to mention she didn't even know what a fork was. The only problem with this scenario is, how was she isolated for, let's say, seventeen years before she supposedly escaped? We don't know her exact IQ but she's clearly very intelligent, so why did it take her seventeen years to figure out an escape plan?"

There was a brief silence, Tony running his fingertips over his chin absent-mindedly as he mulled this over in his mind. He then lifted his head to look at Bruce. "Unless she didn't want to escape," he suggested.

Bruce stared at him in disbelief. "What person in their right mind would want to stay in isolation where they are being abused and possibly tested on?" Bruce raised his voice slightly as he spoke the ridiculous possibility out loud.

Tony sighed through his nose and gave Bruce a look that suggested he wasn't looking in the more intelligent section of his brain. "Think about it. You're a scientist with a goal to replicate superhuman abilities seen in people like the Avengers today. You have the perfect test subject- a child who doesn't know better. But the child's instinct is to cower away unless they are shown reasons to trust. You create a bond with the child, give them a sense of safety and make them believe you are incapable of wronging them. That's your easy way in to successfully begin the testing process."

"You're saying this psychopath created a parent to child bond with- what is it we're calling her now?"

"Ariel."

"Ariel. You're saying this guy could have created a parent to child type bond with Ariel to make her have a love and trust for him so deep that she's more afraid of leaving than staying," Bruce concluded.

Tony nodded his head once. "Possibly. It would require a lot of patience but guarantees a successful testing process," he explains further. "The patient psychopaths are the ones you need to be more afraid of. It means they're smarter and they rarely slip up."

Bruce chuckled slightly, though he found Tony's words to be true the more he thought about it. "Still doesn't explain why we found her frostbit on a beach," Bruce remembered and Tony sighed. "Is an underwater laboratory too far-fetched?"

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Is anything too far-fetched these days?" He countered and Bruce shrugged. "Look, I'm taking Ariel back to where I found her on that beach and hopefully some memories will come back to her. I'm bringing Peter along too. I'm sure we'll come back with some answers," Tony added as he grabbed his jacket off of a chair nearby in the laboratory.

"Alright. I'll continue going over some stuff with a fine-toothed comb. There's gotta be something I'm missing," Bruce responded, pushing his reading glasses higher up the bridge of his nose and examining Ariel's file more closely.