Snooping & the Winter Soldier.
Mazzy Stark couldn't really describe how she felt watching her father in his Iron Man suit as he flew up higher and higher into the sky with a missile in his grasp. Heading straight through a wormhole, not to mention. All Mazzy could do was scream and cry while the police officer behind her held her back from being able to run back into the wreckage and reach someone who had an earpiece. She wanted to scream into one of those earpieces for her dad to stop.
No other time in Mazzy's life did she feel as scared as she did when her dad flew through that wormhole. Or, at least, not that she could remember.
The silence of those few seconds as the wormhole began to squeeze itself back shut with Tony on the other side was deafening. Mazzy tried to scream, but her throat closed up and she could hardly even breathe.
Was her dad dead? Was he lost in space, never to be seen again? Was she an orphan? She couldn't even remember further than a year or two ago; would she even be able to remember him at all, or would he just be an unfamiliar little echo in the back of her mind?
Nope. He was perfectly fine and craving shwarma.
All that panic and fear was for absolutely nothing. Great. Fantastic. Mazzy wanted more than anything to be furious with him and hate his guts for nearly orphaning her, but she was too relieved that he was alive to do anything other than cling to him like a leech. Tony didn't mind, though. He was just as afraid as she was, flying up into that wormhole. And he was also terrified when he saw her standing there in the middle of the fight, no matter how calm he pretended he was.
So, when he found Mazzy with the police and she came barrelling towards him, he caught her gratefully, holding her so tightly that she felt like her bones would break. He kept assuring her that she was fine, and he was fine, and Nat was fine, and Banner was fine, and everyone else was just fine, but she kept on crying, sputtering out words that Tony couldn't understand.
The only sentence he could actually understand out of Mazzy was, "Avengers is a dumb idea!"
He agreed with her and continued on reassuring her that everything was okay. But how could everything be okay when there was a portal in the sky of New York and everything was destroyed?!
In the end, everything did turn out to be okay. All of the wreckage in New York began to be rebuilt, and Tony and Pepper started working on a new design for Stark Tower. It was unfortunate that, as soon as they got the thing finished, it had to be destroyed, but maybe it was for the better because the new idea was much more useful.
The new design for the tower included open rooms for any of the Avengers to stay in if they wanted to. And, per Mazzy's request, included a bunkbed in her room, despite the fact that she had no one to share the bunkbed with. She just really wanted it, apparently, because it was all she asked for when Tony wanted to know how she wanted her room to be. Well, she also asked for her very own ice cream freezer, but Tony said no to that.
Time was flying by and now Mazzy was nine, nearly ten. She didn't feel much older. She was definitely a lot smarter than she used to be, but now she had even more questions. She felt stupid when she couldn't remember things. She knew, now, that Tony, Pepper, and who knows how many more people, were all hiding something from her. But she couldn't figure out what. She had plans of doing some more snooping around whenever she got the chance, but she wasn't usually left alone.
If Tony and the other Avengers left to go take down another Hydra base, bringing themselves one step closer to retrieving the scepter they've been after all this time, Mazzy was always at least left under the supervision of Jarvis.
But there were ways for Mazzy to figure things out even without sneaking around and looking through things she wasn't supposed to be looking through.
There were people living in Avengers Tower who weren't so good at keeping secrets. And ever since last summer, Steve Rogers had been keeping a secret. Mazzy could just tell. He and Natasha knew something that she didn't. They would exchange meaningful glances when Mazzy entered the room, and they would talk about her when she wasn't there.
Mazzy heard them once, last summer when she was pretty sure that Steve started keeping the secret. They were in the kitchen, rough and beat up from the mission they'd just returned from, drinking what Mazzy was pretty sure was whiskey. Or maybe it was wine. She couldn't be sure. Either way, whatever they were drinking had Natasha letting her guard down.
With intentions of popping a bag of microwave popcorn, Mazzy left the movie theatre room she was in with Tony and Pepper that night, and headed toward the kitchen. She stopped around the corner, though, when she heard Steve say her name.
Honestly, Mazzy couldn't think of a single reason why Steve would be saying her name in any given scenario unless she was there talking to him. Or, perhaps, if Tony or Pepper had brought her up for some reason. But Tony and Pepper were waiting for her back in the other room to start the movie, so they obviously hadn't brought her up.
So, who was Steve talking to and why was he bringing Mazzy up?
Breathing as quietly as she possibly could, Mazzy eavesdropped on whoever was in the kitchen. She could hear Steve, along with Natasha's voice. Maybe Nat brought her up. But why to Steve?
"He remembered you. He saved you, getting you out of the water," Mazzy could hear Natasha say. Then, a short, audible sigh. "He could remember her."
"And what if he does? You said they were placed together. Do you really think he would hurt her? Wouldn't it be his instinct to do the opposite of that?" Steve replied.
He. That was something Mazzy had noted for herself. Somehow, whatever secret was being kept from her was connected to this He. The He was important and she was determined to find out who it was.
"Well, he'll do anything they tell him to when he's under their control," Natasha said. Mazzy could hear her place her glass back on the table with a quiet dink sort of sound.
"He didn't kill me. I would have let him, but he didn't."
The He must have been whoever Natasha and Steve were up against for the past few days. Mazzy wasn't sure who they were fighting, but she figured that if she asked now, they would know that she was listening in. So she stayed quiet, keeping herself hidden around the corner.
"Because you broke him."
"That doesn't mean he's completely free," Steve said with a defeated sigh.
"We'll figure this out, Cap. She's safe here, for now. And if something else comes up, we'll deal with it. Stark's got this under control," Natasha replied.
Stark didn't have it under control, though. He thought he did, and everyone else who knew thought he did, but he didn't. Because as she grew older, Mazzy learned one thing that rose above all the others in importance. And that thing was that the more she asked questions, the more everyone lied to her. She learned that it was better to watch and to listen, and to figure things out without the help of anyone else because there was no one who would tell her the truth.
It was like another subject in school, only this one didn't have a course to follow. It wasn't like she could read the textbook of her own life and memorize the formulas needed to solve each and every problem. In this situation, she was more like all the scientists and researchers who discovered the things that are now kept in textbooks for the first time. The ones without guidance. The ones who were driven by nothing more than their own curiosity.
Old scientists, before anyone believed in or knew of evolution, were thought to be crazy by the common people. How could anyone not believe that God put everyone there on that Earth? How could humans have changed from primates to people? It was nonsense to them. So the old scientists did their work in secret until they had viable evidence of their ideas to prove that weren't crazy.
So Mazzy Stark would do her work in secret. And, when she knew the answers and had the evidence to prove them, she would go to her dad and she would confront him about it.
She couldn't do that now, though, because all she'd get were lies. She had to be patient and precise.
In order to keep her evidence as precise as she needed, Mazzy began recording all of the things she had figured out in the back of her calculus notebook. When she had enough evidence, she would show that notebook to her dad.
In it, she listed all of the things she had ever heard or read about herself and what those things told her.
I'm not normal. Something was put in me that made me different. I'm not supposed to be like this.
I wasn't seen in public for almost three years. The same three years that I can't remember. Dad says I was sick. I don't believe him.
There are no hearing aids on me in pictures until after I'm "sick".
Loki said I've hurt people.
Natasha knows. Steve knows. Pepper knows. Dad knows. Happy knows. Nick Fury knows. Dr. Banner knows. Thor knows, I think. Clint knows. Maria knows. Agent Coulson probably knew.
There's a He. There's a man who knows me, but I don't know him. We're connected, somehow. Natasha and Steve fought him. I don't know who yet. Hydra controls him.
Hydra, Mazzy had learned, was Sheild's enemy, but Sheild was also somehow Hydra at the same time. Everything was messed up and it was making it ten times harder for Mazzy to figure out what she had to do with a man who worked for Hydra.
So far, all she had about Hydra was:
Hydra is bad.
That was it.
That night, in the kitchen, Mazzy greeted Natasha and Steve normally, like she hadn't heard a single thing they were saying. She put on her fake smile and cheerful demeanor, and they didn't know a thing. If everyone was going to lie to her, she was going to lie to them right back.
The most frustrating thing for Mazzy was that she was almost ten, and she still felt like she had no idea who she was. She knew she was smart, like her dad. She knew she was strong. She knew she was brave. But she didn't know if she had those qualities because it was really who she was, or if it was because those qualities were put in her with whatever medicine or serum was injected into her.
She was determined, though, to figure it out. So she would. Soon. Tony couldn't hide it forever.
In very early 2015, Mazzy was nine years old, only a month away from being ten. And she was left alone at Avengers Tower. Well, of course, there were always tons of other people in the tower, like scientists, detectives, agents, as well as who knows how many government officials. But that was all going on below her. Where Mazzy was, was away from all of them. She was on the floor that she called home, which just so happened to be the same floor Tony called home, considering he was her father and all.
It was Mazzy and Jarvis left on that floor, and Jarvis was just a voice. Well, he was more than a voice, obviously, but he wasn't a physical being, which meant that he couldn't pick Mazzy up and throw her over his shoulder when she tried looking through all of the data stored in her Dad's computers.
After looking through each room to make sure that she was truly alone, Mazzy started on her mission. Her mission was to look through files and find out who Steve and Natasha were fighting last summer, and maybe, if it was possible, find some sort of file or piece of evidence that would tell Mazzy where she was and what she was doing before the age of six.
This wasn't an impulsive sort of plan, either. It was a real, proper plan. Mazzy had just been waiting for a day when every single Avenger was out on a mission at the same time as Pepper was working.
Today was the day.
Usually, Mazzy would pitch a fit over the Avengers leaving her behind. But this time she was grateful for it.
With her calculus notebook in hand, Mazzy made her way to the lab. The lab was where Bruce and Tony would often do experiments and research on whatever they so pleased. Lately, they had been working on inventing other kinds of advanced artificial intelligence, similar to Jarvis. Mazzy had watched, and sometimes even helped, as they ran their tests and tried different things, but so far, they had been drawing a blank.
The reason Mazzy had been so interested in helping them with their AI research unfortunately wasn't because she was sincerely very interested in the subject, but because she needed to memorize all of the passwords and verifications she would need to get through in order to reach the information she needed.
So, when she got to the lab, Mazzy climbed up onto one of the desk chairs and took a deep breath. Her heart was pumping hard in her chest. The stakes felt much higher than they should have. If she got caught, her dad would know that she was still trying to find answers, and he would get all strict and fill her head with more lies. She didn't need that. She needed the truth.
"Miss Stark, do you need assistance with your work?"
Mazzy nearly jumped right out of her skin when Jarvis spoke, illuminating all of the computers and lights around her. She knew he would be there, but it was still scary to hear anyone speak unprompted when so much adrenaline was pumping through her veins.
"No," Mazzy grumbled, keeping her eyes on the computer.
She loved Jarvis, but sometimes, she wished he would just go away.
"Are you sure? I can always assist you," Jarvis replied, unphased by her hostile tone.
"Yes, I'm sure. It's not homework It's just... for fun," Mazzy lied easily. Lie and be lied to.
"What are you up to, Miss Stark?" Jarvis asked. Gosh, Mazzy wished he would just stop asking questions. What she didn't know, though, was that Jarvis knew exactly what Tony didn't want her to, and he wasn't supposed to let her figure it out.
"None of your beeswax, Jarvis," Mazzy replied, typing away. She already knew the password to get into the computer before she even had this plan hashed out, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was going to be getting to the files that were, for some reason, very locked away.
Most Avengers missions weren't very secretive. Mazzy was sure that the files about whatever mission they were on in Sokovia at that moment would be easy to access, but the files about Steve and Natasha's mission were locked up times a thousand. From that, it was obvious to Mazzy that there must have been some sort of answer in there.
"Are you snooping, Miss Stark?" Jarvis asked. Mazzy huffed. "There is a strict no-snooping policy in this laboratory."
"I'm not snooping. I live here," Mazzy argued.
There was a file on the computer titled TWS: Mission Report. That was one of the files that was very protected, and the date on it seemed to be what Mazzy could remember was a few days after Natasha and Steve returned.
After a deep breath, Mazzy clicked on it.
It didn't open.
Another password prompt popped up on the screen. This was what Mazzy knew she would have trouble with. She hadn't ever seen anyone open this particular file just yet, so she didn't know what the password for it would be. She did, however, have a list of all the passwords she had ever watched her dad type in.
Flipping open her notebook to the list, Mazzy began typing away. After each time pressing the enter button, she was met with bold, red words. INCORRECT PASSWORD.
"Oh, phooey," Mazzy muttered. She was about halfway through her list now, and none of the passwords had worked.
"I don't believe you're authorized to open that file," Jarvis spoke firmly.
"I'm not opening any files," Mazzy told him, even though she knew very well that Jarvis could see what she was doing.
"Shall I call Mr. Stark?" Jarvis asked.
"What? No, you shall not," Mazzy spat in response.
Faster and faster, Mazzy typed away. Every password was wrong.
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
"Calling Mr. Stark now," Jarvis announced.
"No. Don't do that!" Mazzy shouted. She began to panic, ditching her list and going rogue.
Quickly and recklessly, Mazzy began typing out random guesses for what the password could be. She used Natasha's name, Steve's name, their superhero names, and their favorite colors. She tried her dad's name, and she tried his birthday. But no. She even tried her own name and birthday, but that didn't work either.
She could hear the ringing noise that came from Jarvis calling Tony, and it sounded like a ticking time bomb, just getting closer and closer to everything being ruined.
NatashaMazzy123
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
SteveNat345
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
MazzyPurple214
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
TWSfile11111
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
TNatWSteveSMazzy
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
Secret
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
StupidpasswordIhateyou
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
NatSteveTWS
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
NatSteveTWS565
A small circle appeared on the screen, spinning in a circle. Mazzy's breath hitched in her throat. The line continued to ring.
The file opened.
In big, bold letters at the top of the page were the words: THE WINTER SOLDIER.
The ringing stopped.
"Hello?" Tony's voice said. Mazzy quickly exited out of the file as her father's face appeared in the corner of her screen. "I've kinda got a lot going on right now," he pauses for a moment and Mazzy hears a shout of pain from someone else, "so, how 'bout we make this quick? What's going on?"
"Cookie clicker won't work," Mazzy said, wringing her hands together anxiously beneath the desk.
"That is not an emergency," Tony huffed.
"I didn't call you. Jarvis did. Without asking," Mazzy told him, narrowing her eyes at the air around her. She could exactly glare at Jarvis, considering he was a non-physical being.
"Sir, Mazzy has been attempting to-"
"To play Cookie Clicker. Yeah, I already told him that," Mazzy interrupted quickly. She pretended to type something into the computer, then put on a smile. "Oh, it's working now. Thanks, Dad. See you later, alligator! Love you! Bye!" she said before spamming the button to hang up.
When the call ended, Mazzy let out an extremely relieved breath. She picked up her pen, flipping to the very last page of her notebook.
The Winter Soldier.
File password: NatSteveTWS565
"Miss Stark, you know you're not supposed to be looking through these files," Jarvis said, his voice both sad and sympathetic.
It took Mazzy a moment to come up with a lie that she was confident would work on artificial intelligence. "I'm just doing research for a project, Jarvis. It's for history. And it's about my dad, so it's a surprise. I was just making sure he wasn't on that mission, so I wouldn't leave it out if he was."
For a moment, Jarvis was quiet. Then, "Very well, Miss Stark."
"Yeah. Very well," Mazzy murmured with a new question on her mind.
Who was the Winter Soldier?