Hollow Scars

“No!” Scarlett cried out suddenly from sleep, jumping upright in bed. Her hands were shaking and her back was sore from the phantom pain created by her nightmare. Dripping in sweat, she could taste the unfamiliar burn of bile in the back of her throat. Where was she? She couldn’t recall. The fog of her nightmare hung in her mind, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Where were the demons that haunted her? The men with guns, knives, and whips had disappeared and left her in the darkness. Had she been given a chance to escape?

Glancing around and barely recognizing the dark room, Scarlett furrowed her brow and closed her eyes tightly in hopes of shutting out the combination of pain and confusion that overwhelmed her. Her efforts were in vain, even though she felt like the secret to her location was on the tip of her tongue. It didn’t feel like the prison cell she’d been kept in and it didn’t remind her of the laboratories at the MedCo facility she’d been held in. The bed beneath her was comfortable, but the pain surged through her body. Bile surged again in the back of her throat and the nausea was overwhelming. Scarlett made an attempt to ignore the feeling and her stomach groaned in objection.

Jumping out of bed as quickly as she could, Scarlett rushed through the darkness and stumbled clumsily across the room in search of a bathroom. Groping blindly along the wall for a doorway, Scarlett knocked over several items scattered across a shelf before finding the frame at the far end of the room. The door was partially ajar and thankfully once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness she could see the silhouette of what she had been searching for. Just in time, Scarlett located the toilet in the bathroom of wherever she had woken up and emptied the contents of her stomach. The phantom pain still ran through her, making her nauseated and causing her to throw up a second time.

Tony jumped in bed when he heard something crash across the room and rubbed his eyes sleepily to help focus his vision. Instinctively he sat up and prepared for the worst. Usually when things went bump in the night, he would be in for the fight of his life. But when no unseen assailant came for him, he let out a sigh of relief.

“Jarvis, lights.” He muttered beneath his breath only to realize that he was still in a hotel and while it was a very high end hotel, unfortunately Jarvis had absolutely no control over anything. Grumbling in aggravation he reached for the lamp next to the nightstand and flipped it on after taking a minute to find the switch. Everything seemed just as it had been before he’d fallen asleep the night before with the exception of his watch, razor and cell phone having been knocked onto the floor across the room. They were now scattered on the floor in front of the open bathroom door. Obviously, that had been the source of the crashing sound that had woken him up, but how they’d gotten there was something else entirely.

Rubbing his hand over his eyes in order to wipe away the remnants of slumber, Tony stumbled out of bed initially to pick up the items that had fallen off of the dresser, his feet numbed and tingling from the night before. Once he’d picked up his razor he heard sounds in the bathroom of someone shuffling around on the tile. Stomach suddenly in knots upon realizing he wasn’t alone, Tony slowly got to his feet. Setting the razor cautiously down on the dresser, he slowly walked to the bathroom and peeked his head through the doorway.

Inside he saw Scarlett leaning against the wall across from the toilet, still as naked as she had been when she’d gone to sleep. Leaning back up and looking at the bed, he saw the covers kicked back and the sheet half hanging off of her side of the bed. He hadn’t noticed her absence when he’d first gotten up, mostly because he wasn’t used to being in bed with somebody else.

“Scarlett,” Tony sighed, assuming at first that her illness had only worsened while she’d been resting. Perhaps their antics the night before had worn down her immune system. Here he thought she’d been getting better. Maybe he’d been an idiot for not taking her to the doctor when he’d had the chance. Now she’d never agree to go. Scarlett didn’t acknowledge Tony’s weary and scratchy voice and instead she let her head rest against the wall with a resounding thud. She didn’t look like her usual self.

Stumbling back into the bedroom Tony groped along the floor and slipped his boxers back on. He then retrieved his Black Sabbath shirt and grabbed the sheet that was already half hanging off the bed before returning to the bathroom. He found Scarlett still in the same position against the wall. Without looking down at what was inside, Tony closed the lid to the toilet and then flipped the handle to dispose of its contents. He’d spent one too many nights in the same position. If he didn’t know better he would’ve assumed that Scarlett had too much to drink. She even had that hazy look in her eyes like she didn’t quite recognize where she was or what she was doing.

Crouching down, Tony urged Scarlett away from the wall, preparing to be attacked as he often was by the volatile woman. But instead she let him move her and manipulate her like a rag doll. In fact, she didn’t even flinch when he carefully urged the shirt over her head and helped her slip her arms through the sleeves. Leaning heavily against him once he was done, Tony then slipped the blanket behind her and let it hang over her shoulders.

Brushing his fingers gingerly over her forehead Tony wiped the sweat away from her skin only to realize how cold her skin was in comparison to what it had been before they’d gone to bed. Was it possible that the only reason Tony couldn’t detect her fever the night before was because he hadn’t realize how cool her skin was actually supposed to be? Now it seemed obvious that she no longer had a fever.

So if it wasn’t the illness getting worse as he had suspected, considering her fever had obviously broken during the night, Tony knew there could only be one other thing making Scarlett so ill and keeping her so distant. He recalled the nights where he hadn’t been able to find rest and had noticed her tossing and turning from night terrors. When she’d first arrived at his home in Malibu he’d been so curious about, and some would say obsessed with, her that he’d watched her through security cameras and had seen her struggle against unseen forces, locked away in her mind. Some horror haunted her each time she closed her eyes, and that was the only logical thing he could come up with to explain her sudden upset stomach.

“What the hell are you dreaming about that does this to you?” Tony sat on the cold floor of the bathroom next to her, asking his question before he’d completely thought it out.

“Hmm?” Scarlett looked up at him and seemed to very suddenly recognize him for who he was and recall where she was. Maybe it was time for Tony to start studying the human psyche when he decided to further his education once again. He had no idea what could leave her so distant and felt at a complete loss when it came to helping her snap out of it.

Could nightmares really manifest so vividly that it would disrupt Scarlett’s sense of reality? Or perhaps she was suffering from a psychotic break. He’d had one of those before, about ten years earlier. Too much alcohol, not enough food, too much stress from his job and a few other recreational drugs had made that one hell of a week and Tony wasn’t keen to relive it ever again or watch anyone else suffer through it.

“I asked what you’re dreaming about that’s kicking your ass. That’s why you threw up, am I right? And knocked over all my stuff by the way…” Tony drifted off slowly. Scarlett shook her head and refused to answer initially. When she offered no further word or gesture in response, Tony scowled. She was shutting him out. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Scarlett’s voice sounded weak and frail. Tony didn’t like when her voice was so small. She was usually such a strong woman, and when she sounded weak it made him unsettled.

“Don’t subvert the topic. You’ve been having these nightmares since the moment I met you and while I’m not one to usually pry into what messed up things are going on in anyone else’s heads seeing as I have plenty of material in my own mind, you’ve piqued my curiosity. What could be so terrible that it scared you into throwing up? Unless you woke up after I passed out last night and drank all the liquor in the mini bar that is…” Tony nodded toward the bedroom and for half a second considered that his jest could actually be true. Just because it was something he would do didn’t mean that it was something Scarlett would do. Maybe he was a little more twisted than he had initially thought.

“You know when you were calling me a Bond girl back on that first date?” Scarlett sighed, knowing that the only way she’d get out of sharing what was plaguing her would be to offend him and quite frankly she didn’t have the energy to get into an argument with Tony. Being ill was doing a number on her. Usually she’d come up with some half assed excuse but for some reason she expected Tony wouldn’t believe anything less than the truth anyway.

“I still call you Bond, just not to your face mostly. Don’t be surprised if you get a reputation.” Tony shrugged his shoulders and wrapped the blanket better around her. He hadn’t done a particularly efficient job at first, he’d been far too proud of himself for being able to deduce, merely by touch, that Scarlett no longer had a fever.

“You know what you don’t get to see in those movies?” Ignoring Tony’s quip, Scarlett spoke, closing her burning and tired eyes.

“The boring travel sequences? Seventeen hours on a flight to Beijing wouldn’t make very good film.”

“The scars.” Scarlett scoffed, continuing to ignore Tony’s distracting comments. “It seems like one big adventure when you’re watching it on the big screen but until you’ve been in the thick of it? You have absolutely no idea the toll it takes on you. I’ve managed to avoid the backlash of screwed up jobs, morally reprehensible decisions, and sometimes even the more successful jobs at least until the last few weeks.” Tony stayed silent as he considered this notion. Was Scarlett was dreaming of moments from her past? She’d mentioned something about a job gone wrong in the weeks prior but he’d been too caught up in his own libido to pay enough attention to her. Plus, what was in the past was in the past. Why was she suddenly struggling with it?

“So, you’re saying that you never see the aftermath in James Bond films where 007 has to go to therapy because he shot some guy between the eyes and his girlfriend was murdered?” Tony was only partially joking.

“You know what? Forget I said anything.” Scarlett wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders and got to her feet with the assistance of the wall behind her. She may not have had the energy to deal with fighting with Tony she didn’t have the patience to deal with him making everything into a joke.

“Don’t be like that, Scarlett.” Tony skittered to his feet to follow her, but stopped to flush the toilet a second time before leaving the bathroom just in case.

“You asked and I answered, isn’t that enough?” Scarlett’s feet felt strangely numbed. It was likely from how she’d been sleeping or maybe it had something to do with the night before that was returning to her in a haze. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was reminded of the reconstruction that had been done on her feet in order for them not to cause her pain every time she took a step.

The past was catching up with her faster than she could escape it.

“If it was enough you would be able to sleep at night without waking up at random moments to vomit.” Tony walked right behind her as she slowly lumbered into the living room.

“I went from one job to another. There was no point in reflecting on what I’d done at the time. There was only the next job and how to figure out that puzzle. It was too boring to look back. But imagine that you spent years forcing puzzle pieces together in ways they didn’t actually fit without looking back before you went onto the next box… then suddenly you stopped, turned to look at your accomplishments and saw the mess of pieces you left behind that never went where they belonged.”

“I guess…” Tony had very rarely looked back and never regretted a thing he’d done in his life. There was no point in getting lost in what he couldn’t control or change. “What is it that’s caught up with you then? Old jobs? Something to do with MedCo maybe?” Even when he’d been prying at her to get information on the rogue terrorist company, Tony had been able to get very little. Of course, she’d told him what had transpired overall but he never considered that she could’ve suffered at their hands in ways that he couldn’t even dream of. He’d been through torture experiences of his own, but considering what a cavalier lifestyle he’d lived when Scarlett had spent her life on the underground getting her hands dirty, he couldn’t imagine the darkness she’d seen. Tony had only recently had his eyes opened the nastier side of the world.

“Sort of a combination of things… well… more of an old job.” Scarlett nodded, deciding that was indeed what she was dreaming about. It was hard to describe when most of it was locked within the confines of her memory. She had only started to actually recall bits and pieces of her own story in the last day or so. Sharing it with Tony seemed absolutely out of the question.

“How is it only sort of those things?”

“Why must you continue to pry when you can see me struggling with it?” Scarlett sat down on one of the plush chairs near the window of the hotel suite. Her body was aching and sore, weak even after days spent fighting her illness coupled with the nightmares that plagued her while she attempted to sleep.

“Because you never give me a straight forward answer so I choose to pry instead. I’m very good at prying you know. If you just told me what I wanted to hear then we wouldn’t have to do this ridiculous dance back and forth.” Tony sat on the arm of the chair she’d sat down on, despite there being a comfortable couch nearby, and watched her. Now that she had woken up a bit more she had become more obstinate. He’d have to remember for the future that Scarlett was considerably more pliable when she was half asleep.

“I got hurt on an old job. It went wrong in every sense of the word. I got caught in a bad place and the pain was unbearable. Took me months to get back to the condition I’d been in beforehand. I already told you about this once, didn’t I?” Scarlett grunted and leaned her head against the cushioning of the couch but instead found Tony’s knee in her way.

“You alluded to something going wrong at an old job with as few details as you could get away with and this being part of the reason you took the job with MedCo in the first place.” Tony recited.

“Aw, you do listen.” Scarlett rested her head against his knee when he refused to move out of her way. “This is just my past catching up with me. I can’t even remember ninety percent of what happened, Tony. You shouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“But it’s bothering you. How am I supposed to ignore it?”

“Well, obviously it’s going to bother me. It’s not like this is something as petty as spilled milk.” Scarlett sighed and curled her toes, trying to regain the feeling in her toes. “It’s only this bad because I’m sick. Shit is catching up with me because I’m trying to make amends and I can’t recover enough to deal with it so it keeps beating me back down.”

“In my experience the subconscious more often reflects the present than it does the past.”

“Oh and what makes you such an expert, Sigmund?”

“Nothing, it’s just about the one field I have absolutely no interest in. I’m speaking from experience.” Tony cleared his throat, resting his hand in her hair and brushing it away from her face, the action still comforting him. “When I have nightmares, yeah, elements from my past are often replayed but it reflects something I don’t want to deal with right now. Do you know how long I dreamt about Stane telling me that I betrayed him? I didn’t want to deal with the guilt that I had after his death because it was misplaced. He tried to murder me and Pepper. If I hadn’t stopped him then he would’ve done far worse than he’d actually done. And yet, I felt guilty that I had killed a man that had practically been my father growing up.”

“Because you’re a half decent person, I’d guess.”

“Don’t change the subject. What is it you’re feeling guilty about? What is it you don’t want to deal with? This job that you had… what was it? Why did you get so badly hurt? Who hurt you? Is there something you’re overlooking about that time that you don’t want to believe because it’d be too painful to accept?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Then who would you prefer to talk about it with? Are you going to just keep moving to the next job? Are you going to continue torturing yourself until you’ve crawled so deep inside a bottle that you can’t get out? Because I’ve been there before and it’s only a temporary solution.”

“Stop trying to shrink me, Tony!” Scarlett glared at him in annoyance.

“I think that you won’t stop having these nightmares until you figure out what they’re trying to tell you. You’re ignoring something important.” Tony shrugged nonchalantly, watching as Scarlett got up once again and leaned against the counter of the attached kitchen. Clearly she was irritated with him and for a very brief moment he could see the all too familiar look of the world seated on her shoulders. Did she not know that she didn’t have to carry all that weight on her own? He recognized the look well enough to know that it was the same thing he’d done after he’d gotten home from Afghanistan.

He’d learned the hard way that he didn’t have to do everything on his own and he didn’t have to keep the bad things a secret. It was still something he was learning to put into practice but at least he recognized the problem. That was the first step toward recovery right? Or were those the rules for a different vice? Tony couldn’t keep track anymore, he had one too many vices.

“I know what they’re trying to tell me Tony but what I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t have time to deal with it, not yet. It’s going to have to wait until I’m not in pursuit of a terrorist organization.”

“But what if it’s got something to do with what’s going on now? What if your subconscious is trying to tell you something about MedCo? About these experiments?” Tony knew that he was pushing her buttons and she would very likely snap at him soon enough, but he wanted to see how far he could push her and just how much information he could get out of her.

“I don’t know how many ways I can explain this to you before I start repeating myself.” Scarlett slid down against the side of the counter and sat against the cold marble floor, covered in the silk sheets. “Look, I’m far too tired for this discussion. I know what my dreams are trying to tell me. When you found me in that desert after MedCo… did what they did I started suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I wanted to ignore the signs and pretend that everything was okay but since then I’ve been having these horrific crippling panic attacks. Something snapped inside me after you saved me from MedCo.” Tony cautiously got up from his spot on the arm of the chair and walked over to where she sat on the floor, crouching in front of her.

“What do you think it is that was different?”

“I don’t know,” Scarlett muttered. “Nothing has been the same since then, I’m not the same.”

“Do you think it has something to do with me?” Scarlett didn’t immediately answer Tony, mostly because she couldn’t honestly tell. When she’d been held captive her thoughts hadn’t betrayed her. She’d managed to focus on trying to escape while saving Scott at the same time, and while it hadn’t exactly panned out the way that she’d expected it to, she certainly hadn’t been second guessing her entire life. Or maybe the change within her had been a long time coming and that was why she had allowed Scott to talk her into working for MedCo as a safer career move. If she removed the danger from her life, maybe she could cope with the demons haunting her.

So much for that working out.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Scarlett finally decided that Tony might actually have had something to do with the drastic emotional change that had taken place within her mind. He most certainly wasn’t the root cause of the shift, but finding out he was innocent of the crimes she’d prematurely convicted him of had made a huge impact on her. Falling in love with him despite all of that had made an even bigger one.

It was still strange to think about. It was becoming another thing Scarlett didn’t have the time to really consider with everything that had transpired. The tension suddenly felt thick in the room. Had falling in love really changed her? Or had the change been what had allowed her to fall in love?

“Is that a bad thing?” Tony furrowed his brow. Was it doubt that was manifesting within her dreams? It wasn’t like he didn’t have doubts of his own, but being with Scarlett felt right and no doubt was going to mess that up for him.

“I don’t think it’s bad.” Scarlett shook her head once she’d made a decision. Even if she was scared of the changes being with Tony made in her life she wasn’t going to stop being with him because of that. “Look, I very plain and simple don’t want to deal with this right now.” Tony frowned and shook his head in objection. There was something more to the nightmares she was having, but he couldn’t really draw a conclusion with the limited information he had. At the same time, he could tell that Scarlett was struggling. Was it possible that she couldn’t tell him more? Was it too much for her to cope with and not just another excuse?

“Can you at least tell me what happens in your dreams? If we can figure out what you’re trying to block out then maybe we can help you move past… Even keeping a journal would help.”

“Tony I know what I’m trying to block out, okay?” Scarlett snapped at him, clearly having had enough of the subject at long last.

“I’m trying to help you!”

“What do you want me to do? Sit and cry on your shoulder while I tell you all about what went wrong? Tell you how I got hurt and I thought for certain I was going to die?”

“No, I didn’t say that.” Tony grimaced. He’d finally reached her boiling point for the night and knew that soon he’d have to back off.

“I’m not ready to deal with whatever I’m holding back and when I’m ready I’ll deal with it! You don’t get to decide when I’m ready.” Leaning her head back against the side of the counter Scarlett smacked against it repeatedly. Tony immediately reached behind her to protect her head so she would stop it or at least wouldn’t get hurt if she continued.

“You’re avoiding dealing with this. You have been since the moment I met you. If you keep avoiding it then you’re going to drown.”

“Right, like you can talk to me about avoidance.” Scarlett curled her lip in a snarl but then held her hands up in front of her to stop Tony from whatever nasty retort he had and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m exhausted.”

“Well, maybe that’s because you don’t sleep.” Tony rolled his eyes.

“Really?” Scarlett scoffed and made to get up and walk away, but found that she was just too damn tired to do so. Throwing up, even when it wasn’t caused by illness, took too much energy and with her immune system weakened from days of fever, she had barely any energy at all to spare for such efforts. “I’m not trying to avoid dealing with it, I just don’t know how.”

“Which is why I’m trying to help you.”

“I’m not used to having someone trying to help me, Tony.”

“And I’m not used to trying to help someone!” Tony held his hands up on either side of him and then dropped them, exasperated. “I don’t want to end up watching you doing something that you’re going to regret because of some nightmares skewing your judgment.”

“That’s the thing, Tony. I’m finally doing things that I don’t regret.” Scarlett didn’t include that every nasty mistake she’d made in the past she had never done anything that had filled her with regret. What she had done something reprehensible it had always been for a job. There were no emotional attachments involved in her old career. If someone wanted to ruin someone else’s lives and hired her to do it, then she was merely the tool that was used, not the person responsible.

But somehow, that thought no longer comforted her. She’d done terrible things and had terrible things done to her and now all she could think about was the regret and the guilt, so she opted not to think about it so she wouldn’t break down. At least outside of her dreams she tried not to think about it.

“Look, I’m not ready to deal with it.” Scarlett urged her hand to his cheek gently. Her fingers were cold and clammy and she looked drained, even a little paler than she usually did. Tony knew that he had to relent. She wasn’t lying for the sake of avoiding dealing with something difficult. Scarlett wasn’t ready to deal with what had happened to her in the past.

“I know.” Tony offered a sly smile but it quickly faded as he considered what to do next. Taking her hand from his cheek and kissing the back of her knuckles he sighed. “Fine, we don’t have to talk about it. But… if it gets worse or starts interfering with what needs to be done next then we should address it. But I can’t force you.” Scarlett felt guilty immediately for not telling Tony the whole truth, but she wasn’t yet ready to accept the truth on her own nonetheless share it with anyone else.

“Just like that?”

“What, you think I’d rather fight with you when you’re not ready to fight back? It’s not fun unless you’re fighting with me and we end up tearing each other’s clothes off.”

“God, you’re still such a pig.” Scarlett shook her head in dismay, leaning against the counter gently.

“You weren’t really expecting me to stop being one suddenly, were you?” Tony smirked, glad to see the relief flooding through Scarlett.

“I suppose I knew what I was getting into with you.”

“I certainly knew what I was getting into.” Tony didn’t miss a beat, and his face was still so serious that Scarlett couldn’t help but stop to laugh. “Really, Scarlett, this says more about you than it does about me.”

“Trust me, I have thought about that a number of times.” Scarlett rolled her eyes, but was glad that Tony was letting her off the hook from discussing her disturbing nightmares.

She wondered if he was right with his theory though. Maybe her dreams were trying to tell her something about her pursuit of MedCo as Tony had suggested. But what else were they suggesting other than Scarlett might have been a failed experiment? Unless she wasn’t a failed experiment at all, but rather a successful one. This did nothing to comfort her thoughts at all.

It couldn’t be true. There had to be something else going on beneath the surface that she wasn’t remembering. Being experimented on wasn’t an option.

Tony watched her consider his words and even though she said nothing in regards to it he knew that their argument had gotten to her. It had gotten to him too. If she was having nightmares about the time she’d spent in Afghanistan then something significant must have happened there, and something that related to what she was currently dealing with. Dreams usually weren’t random, as far as he could tell. But what, if any, connection was there to the time she’d spent back then? Tony wanted to dig deeper, but without more information on what had happened to her, he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to make the connection on his own.

What Scarlett had gone through had clearly been extremely traumatizing and even if she refused to admit it, it was obviously something she struggled to deal with. Tony knew that she was almost as stubborn as he was and that prying would only distance her and discourage her from speaking about it. He’d finally gotten her to rest and wasn’t going to push her until she was feeling better.

But he couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing either. Looking back up at Scarlett he saw her with her eyes closed against the counter. Had she really thought that something was wrong with her for falling for him? He wasn’t sure if he was insulted by that or not. Then again, considering their rough beginnings he could understand how she’d think that even if he didn’t want to.

“Scarlett?” Tony brushed his fingers over her knee. Making a noise of recognition she slowly looked up at him. “You’re falling asleep.”

“No, I’m not.” She muttered under her breath, swatting at the hand he reached toward her to try and pick her up to stop him. Sliding around to her side, Tony picked her up and cradled her in his arms. “Sometimes no actually means no, Tony.”

“You didn’t tell me to not to do it. You never said no. You just said you weren’t falling asleep which was a blatant lie.” He shrugged and gently laid her down on the bed. Sitting next to her, he brushed his fingers against her cheek. Scarlett shook off his hand and held hers up in front of him to keep him from kissing her. “What, you’re giving me the cold shoulder now? Come on, I wasn’t that mean.”

“No, I just threw up, remember?” Scarlett rolled her eyes and then pulled the blankets higher over her.

“I don’t care.” Tony puckered his lips playfully.

“You can’t always get what you want, you know.” Scarlett smiled, feeling slightly comforted that Tony would want to still kiss her even when she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to rinse out her mouth.

“Says you.” Tony smirked and then turned her to look up at him again. “Come on now. Give me a kiss.”

“Fine, but only because you’re sorta cute.”

“Only sorta?” Tony grinned, cocking an eyebrow as he ever so slowly leaned closer to her. Even if she had told him no, he had a feeling that she would’ve given in. Slowly he brushed his hand over the side of her neck, letting his lips linger dangerously close to hers. Her heart was beating faster at just the prospect of him being so close to her. Even though they’d practically committed to a relationship, things felt forbidden and exciting.

“Don’t push it. You’re definitely not getting any compliments right now.” Scarlett laughed and then coughed lightly as the cling arose in her throat. When he continued to brush his fingers over her neck and eventually urged his hand behind her head, Scarlett felt her heart skip a beat. Tony leaned down to kiss him gently, met halfway by her lips that were just as eager to meet his. There was no danger to interrupt them, no Pepper to come in at the wrong time, just them together in their kiss. Once they parted ways, they lingered close to each other’s lips. Before Tony kissed her again, she interrupted and stopped him. “Are you going to lay down with me?”

“No, I’m too awake now to try and sleep.” Tony reached for the comforter from the bottom of the bed and pulled it over Scarlett so she would be warm and hopefully able to sleep longer than a few hours without a nightmare.

“Okay,” Scarlett whispered lethargically, closing her eyes and rolling over in bed. Despite how much adrenaline had pumped through her veins after the nightmare, the act of vomiting and then fighting with Tony had worn her out and had made her want to sleep. It didn’t take very long for her to finally find the rest she so sorely needed. Tony watched her fall asleep quickly and could only hope that the nightmares would be kept at bay, at least long enough for her to get some rest.

Walking away from the bed, Tony grabbed a bottle of scotch he’d purchased for them to enjoy together from the refrigerator hidden beneath the entertainment center. Sitting down on the couch he poured a glass for himself and then took a long drink out of it. His thoughts were betraying him. Scarlett would never let him look into her history and he doubted she would be open to investigating it, even on her own.

And yet, Tony couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

If someone had experimented on Scarlett the perfect opportunity would’ve been when she had been held in captivity and too injured to remember it. But she had said the incident was before she’d had her run in with MedCo.

So Tony did the only thing he could do. He finished his glass of scotch, pulled out his laptop and searched for as much information as he could on Scarlett and what jobs she could’ve possibly taken in Afghanistan. Now that he had more access to Scarlett’s personal information maybe he would have an easier time finding more about her history.