Shadowplay | Tony Stark

FOURTEEN - HONESTY

TW: mentions of SA, emotional, physical & drug abuse.

Mila hadn't always seen the world in black and white, recognising cold truths easily and being able to pick apart a lie without ever having to second guess her instincts.

There had been a time that Mila's world was tinted red, filled with love and happy colours, free falling trust and selfless, unconditional devotion, never daring to so much as dream that any darkness could ever wash away the rose.

She had been a bright and cheerful child and not much changed when she reached her teenage years. Mila was gentle and warm, always a go-to confidant for her friends in need of help or advice. She was somewhere in between an introvert and an extrovert, striking a balance that seemed to make everybody she crossed paths with like her.

Mila thought she'd struck gold when Logan Whitlock kissed her at a party one late summer evening when she was just shy of 16. She'd known Logan for as long as she could remember but it was only when she watched him start to change from a boy into a man that she began to see him differently.

Logan charmed Mila with his golden hair and bright blue eyes, gentle hands and laugh that sounded like the sweetest of songs. He was kind and polite, loved by her parents and her friends alike, all of them envious of the childhood sweethearts and what appeared to be a once in a lifetime love blossoming for them all to see.

The silence was deafening as Tony stared into Mila's eyes, watching her recall what were clearly painful memories that felt like scratches on old scars.

She was struggling to speak, her lips quivering but no words were ever said out loud. Tony began to wonder if he'd overstepped a mark by asking her to tell him the truth, something that she evidently had no intentions of sharing with anybody. He felt a need to help her, however, his soul restless at not knowing what it was that had plagued her so harshly, an intense desire to right the wrongs that Mila had to live with.

"Sit down, you're alright, it's okay."

Tony walked over to the bed and with a gentle hand on her back, guided Mila with him. They perched down on the edge and Tony kept his hand on her, their thighs touching as she continued to twist around the ring on her finger, her breathing slowly staring to return to normal again.

Mila looked up and drew in a long breath, letting her shoulders slouch as she worked hard to figure out what exactly she should tell Tony, if anything at all. While she trusted him with both her and her son's lives, Mila wasn't sure that she wanted to bear the weight of her past on anybody else when it wasn't necessary.

She'd never confided in anybody about the other side of her relationship with Tristan's father, and while part of that was because she wanted to forget about everything that had happened, the other part was because when it was happening, Mila's rose-tinted glasses made it almost impossible for her to believe that the love of her life had even a sliver of bad in him.

Now, however, Mila knew that the man she once saw bathed in perfect red, pure and loving like any man who loves a woman is, was nothing more than the physical manifestation of a never ending raincloud that had turned her world grey.

"When Logan started taking drugs and drinking a lot more, that was when he started to change. And it wasn't ever around anybody else, nobody else ever saw it, only me."

Mila was staring straight ahead out of the bedroom window as she spoke, a stillness possessing her suddenly, serenity in her eyes, though Tony knew that she had simply disassociated inside her mind.

"The night Tristan was conceived, and most nights six months before that and every night after, I-I hadn't wanted to..."

She paused and bit down on her bottom lip, sighing heavily before blinking once. Tony knew what Mila was about to say and while he wished he didn't have to hear it, he knew that having to deal with listening to her tell her story was not a patch on actually living through it.