#stark!

     Tears welled up in your eyes and you couldn't stop the whimpers from spilling out of your mouth while your mind started to race. Questions flashed by your mind: where were you? How did you get there? Who did this to you? But there was one thing that worried you the most — where was your dad?

     You knew in a situation like this, your father Tony Stark would tell you not to panic, tell you to stay calm and be aware of your surroundings despite how much you would want to freak out. So you tried to relax your muscles, but it was hard to seeing as your body was bound to the chair and you could barely move your limbs. You wanted to be strong for your dad, but the fact that you had no visible way of escape was stopping you from finding any source of strength in this situation.

     But suddenly someone appeared in front of you, a man who looked familiar. In fact, you realized, the same man who had taken you and brought you to this place, wherever it was. Your heartbeat was racing now and your breaths were deep heaves.

     "Relax," said the man, a sick smile spreading across his bearded face.

     He was approaching you, and once he was right in front of you, your feet thrashing to try and keep him away, he bent down, pulling down the fabric from your mouth. You looked at him, trying to take in all information you could about who he was, from his maroon cape to his tech-savvy armor suit. You were breathless and couldn't speak, and you weren't even sure of what to say in any case.

      "You seem distressed. Simmer down," the man continued to speak, but his words were anything but soothing. He pulled something out of his pocket - it was your phone. "Your password is your father's birthday, how adorable." He turned the phone screen over to you and dragged down the notification center where you read: (dad! (30 missed calls) and (dad! (21 text messages). "Tony's been very worried about you."

     You finally found the nerve to speak,

     "Leave my father out of this!"

     "It's a little too late for that, YN."

     You let out a bark-like sob,

    "Who are you? What the hell do you want?"

     "I'm Quentin Beck. You will call me Mysterio only. And what do I want? Easy. Your father made a mockery out of me. Only to claim my creation that he ridiculed as his own, while I became a laughingstock. Do you know what he put me through?"

You laughed bitterly,

     "My dad has nothing to do with your failure. People like you don't deserve half of the credit my father gets. My dad is a hero."

     "Or... was," Mysterio shrugged nonchalantly. Your mind failed to cognize his words fully, but the way your face paled was enough for him to know that you knew what he meant.

     "What?" you choked out, now genuinely fearing Mysterio had done something to your dad.

     He had a faux frown on his face and in a theatrically apologetic tone he said,

     "It isn't my place to tell you this... it'd be better to just show you."

     And before you could even garner a response, your body was tilting forward out of the chair as the room began to morph around you. You fell forward out of the chair and were bound towards the floor, all restraints gone from your body.

     You panicked, thrashing around on the floor, which was pitch black and showed no boundaries. And you were wet - the floor was like one big puddle. Your body was limp from being tied up for so long, and all you could do was thrash around on the floor. You turned around, but the chair was no longer behind you. Wherever you were, there was nothing - just a black abyss, like walking around on a TV screen when it was shut off (picture the void from stranger things.)

     You tried to call out, but your voice didn't even seem to come from your own lips - it was just an echo that ricocheted around the room.

     "Dad?" you called out, first worried but curious, now panicked. "Dad?!"

     You lugged yourself off of the floor, wanting to get out of here. Tony was nowhere to be seen and this place was giving you the creeps - it felt like there were bugs crawling all over your skin and into the seams of your clothes. You ran, trying to escape the nothingness, but as you looked ahead, there seemed to be no end, and when you looked back, it was just blackness winding behind you.

     And then you heard his voice, and you weren't even sure it was him. You had never heard your father sound so meek, so not like his typical, strong, arrogant self. Nothing like the man who read you bedtime stories when you were too scared to go to sleep because he kept showing you horror movies that you shouldn't have been watching as a kid, nothing like the man who taught you everything he knew "just in case", nothing like the man you were proud to call your father, Ironman or not.

     "YN!" he called out, and you ran towards the source of the sound, the tiny speck that was your dad growing bigger as you got closer to him.

     Finally you stood in front of him, a battered and bruised, weak man on his knees on the wet floor. Tears welled up in your eyes when you saw him and you bent down to be at his level, reaching for his face and cupping his paled cheek in your hand,

     "Dad? Dad, what's going on? Are you okay? Mysterio said... he made me think you were dead."

Your voice was frantic, and no matter how much you were trying to tell yourself to stay strong for your father, you couldn't mask the worry that was penetrating your voice.

     Tony gave you a weak smile, one that didn't reach his eyes, which were filled to the brim with pain and tears. You could feel his hand overlapping yours, and the true regret in his eyes. But still, he was smiling, as always.

His breath was shallow and his voice was quiet, lacking the brassy, loud and matter-of-fact quality that made him Tony Stark,

     "I don't have much time left." Just those words alone made you whimper, but he just grasped your hand harder. "Just remember, I'll always love you."

     You couldn't stop the hot tears from streaming down your face, red and flushed, as you tried to hold on to him, wished that you had healing powers so you could help him. But you felt so defenseless in the moment, with nothing to do to save him.

     "Dad..." your words got lost in a choke that rose up your throat. It seemed there was nothing to say.

     "Bye," he said, and his eyes began to glaze over, his tan skin gradually turning pale and white.

     But more than that, he started to disintegrate right in front of you. You were confused at first, trying to catch him in your arms before he faded away, but you realized quickly that you could do nothing. He disappeared right in your arms. You wanted to scream, but your words came out in the form of hysterical gasps, calling for your father over and over because you didn't want to accept that this was real.

     You stood up, turning around in circles, trying to find him again, thinking maybe he had just teleported elsewhere- you didn't want to accept the truth. But it seemed there was no time to grieve, because before you knew it, you were catapulting to another destination.

     Now you were in a room, this time one with boundaries, four walls around you. The entire room was glowing red with the color of ambulance sirens or emergency exit signs. You felt a wave of paranoia over your entire body like no other, and your whole body was enveloped in chills that gave you goosebumps. Your sight was blurred from the tears and so was your mind - what was happening? Where was your father, and where was Mysterio?

     Your hands grasped at your face, your nails clawing into your skin as if you were trying to rip it off. You were in distress, confused and all out of sorts - you hadn't even been given time to grieve. But rather than sadness or paranoia, anger took over all your senses and you screamed out, your knees buckling as you dropped to the floor.

     "Fuck you!" you screamed out. "Fuck!"

     You heard a laugh that seemed to come from nowhere, the sound of it surrounding you. You perked up to listen, knowing it was Mysterio.

     "The way I see it, you have two options."

     "Get me out of here, I wanna go home," you sobbed out, and everything you said became an incoherent mush of words. "I want my dad, I just want my dad."

     "Listen carefully, YN," Mysterio's voice became dark and distorted as he disregarded your screams. A gun materialized in front of you as he continued to speak. "You have two options. You can either die trying to escape The Red Room and be trapped in a collage of illusions forever, or you can die here and now, and know that you will see your father again in the afterlife."

     You looked down at the gun that was at your knees and then looked up, your face contorted and your eyebrows furrowed, although you knew good and well what Mysterio meant.

     "You know what it's there for," Mysterio said, another chuckle building up like a growl. "Or, you can die in pain, and never see Tony Stark, Mr. Great Big Hero, again. What's it gonna be..."

     You closed your eyes tightly and opened them again, telling yourself to wake up from this nightmare, but when you opened your eyes the gun was still in front of you, the red lights were still glowing around you. You were crying, not because you were sad, but because it seemed to be the only way you knew how to react.

     Your mind, the logical, rational mind you had before you got dragged into this mess, was screaming at you to stop, telling you that this wasn't what Tony would want for you and that you were better than this, telling you that you were just being manipulated. But it was like some invisible force was shutting down your rational mind, and at the moment you knew one thing only - you had to die. Your shaky hands reached for the gun, the metal cold and hard beneath your fingers which were burning hot.

     "Good choice. You should really consider yourself lucky, YN, not everyone gets to choose how they die."

     "Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" you yelled, your shouts so gravelly and guttural that you knew you had lost your voice.

     "Woah, YN, little hostile there."

     You bought the gun into one hand and slowly, hesitantly, pressed it to your temples. A quick and easy death would be better than the other death Mysterio had promised. You weren't thinking at the moment, that was clear. All you knew was anger, grief, and hopelessness- you'd die if it meant you got to see your dad again.

     You could feel the cold barrel of the gun against your skin which was smeared with tears and sweat. Your eyes closed, hoping it would relieve the short pain you'd feel, relieve the exhaust.

     "Dad..." you whispered to yourself. "I love you."

     Your fingers pressed against the trigger, but before you could pull it, you heard a thudding behind you, an all too familiar sound. When you looked up, your dad was behind you, in full gear, as if he hadn't died in front of you minutes before.

     "Show yourself," he said, and you knew it was him, really him. Your mind wasn't playing tricks on you - you hadn't died already, and it was really your father. Which meant that whoever you had been talking to earlier, whoever you thought was your dad, hadn't really been him. You jumped up, your eyes widened.

     "Dad?"

     "Get back, YN!" Tony shouted, and before you knew it, you were being propelled forward.

     Everything was a blur, you sat crumpled up in the back and watched as your father took on Mysterio, who had materialized from thin air. You wanted to get up, wanted to fight, but you were too weak. And you were exhausted — this whole time you had been being deceived, your energy had been depleted. You felt like you were under the influence of a very strong drug that made you drowsy, your eyes fluttering closed as you lost consciousness.

     When you woke up, you were in your bed. But you hadn't realized this at first — at first you thought you were in another simulation, all the events of yesterday rushing back into your mind. You jerked in your bed, sitting up in a panic, a string of gibberish leaving your lips as you jumped up.

     "Shh, shh," you heard a soft, calming voice shushing you, and felt warm, strong hands on your shoulders pushing you back down so your head was back on your pillow.

     You were panting heavily as you turned to face Tony, who was sitting next to you on your bed.

     "Dad?" you squinted at him, then started looking around the room, realizing finally that you were in your bedroom and not in some void or dark abyss anymore. Your breaths slowed to their normal pace and you sighed in relief. But you turned to face him again, that glimmer of doubt still shining in your heart. "Are you real?"

Tony's eyes seemed to shine as he answered,

     "Honey, I'm as real as they get." He reached down to hold your hand. "Want me to prove it?"

You smiled hesitantly,

     "Yeah."

     "Mkay," Tony squeezed your hand. "In third grade, you brought a robot that we made together to school for show and tell and they had to cancel show and tell because you were quote-unquote bragging. In seventh grade you punched a boy in the face for bullying your friends and I took you out for ice cream afterwards. Ninth grade, you had your first boyfriend and you tried to keep it from us and you cried when we found out-"

     "Okay, enough," you mustered a laugh, feeling confident in the fact that this was real, that everything was over.

     "Are you sure? I can go on," Tony said, and you giggled, but suddenly felt a wave of sadness rush over you.

     Your mind hadn't been in the right place last night - you had let your mind be taken over, you had let yourself be defeated. Obviously, if you were in your right mind, you would've fought back harder. You wouldn't have picked up the gun. You knew you had made the wrong decisions last night and now you felt full of the deepest regret. 

Your eyes got watery as you remembered what you had been so close to doing had your father not interrupted,

     "I'm so sorry, I really am."

     "Don't apologize," Tony said, his tone short and almost cold. He pushed strands of your hair behind your ear and his warm, comforting hand caressing your cheek. "Mysterio is a master of manipulation. None of this was any of your fault... he wanted to get revenge on me, and he knew the best way to do that would be to get you involved. If there's one thing that's one hundred percent true, it's that you are the most important person in my life."

He kissed your forehead and continued speaking. This was probably the most serious you'd ever heard your father,

     "I mean that. I love you more than anything in this world. And I'm sorry I let things get that far, I should've known sooner, should've gotten there sooner."

You decided not to cry, and laughed instead,

     "You left me so many missed calls. I think that's the most 'dad' thing Tony Stark has ever done. And I love you too, dad."

     Tony laughed too, but you could see tears building in his eyes too. He leaned forward and wrapped you in a hug, and you stayed there for god knows how long. When you pulled apart, you had shed a tear, but your dad remained resilient and strong for you and didn't let his fear show. He had never been so scared in his life, had never felt so guilty - because of him, his daughter, his treasure, had almost lost her life.

But when he looked at you, it was as if nothing had happened. He was smiling, and that made you smile,

     "I'm ordering your favorite."

     "Lin's Noodles?" you asked hopefully.

     "Yup," Tony replied. "And I promise nothing like this will happen to you ever again."

     "It's not your fault, dad," you said, feeling sorry for him. "And it's okay, I'm here. You're here, we're fine."

     "It is my fault. And it's not okay," he said, shutting those ideas down immediately. You bit down on your lip. "But, you're here, and you're okay. And that's the best part."

And he reminded you of that everyday from that day on- so many great things had happened to him in this life, but you were the best part.