Lamborghini | Tony Stark

FORTY EIGHT - DATE NIGHT

"Is this a mistake? Should I be moving away like we did when Mom and Dad died? Should I be starting fresh like we did? I don't want to feel like I'm quitting, running away, but it seems like when it's fight or flight, I'm always choosing flight."

Sasha sighed. She was sat on the grass in front of her brother's grave, an orange sunset above her with the moon creeping over the horizon, a calmness in the air and whispering of leaves falling to the ground now autumn had well and truly arrived.

It had been three days since Sasha had kissed Tony and like all the days before then, she had been unable to think of anything else. He had consumed her entire being all over again, the thought of him making her short of breath or her heart skip a beat, nervous flutters in her stomach.

All of that, though, didn't mask the worry, the fear. Her natural instinct to preserve and protect herself kicked in the moment she noticed the way Tony started to look at her differently. She'd let herself fall in love with him once and although nobody in her life had ever been gifted a second chance, she had wrapped one up for Tony and placed a red and yellow bow on the top, sealing it with their kiss the other day.

She'd returned to The Plaza not longer after, checking back in to the suite she had left earlier that morning and putting the move to Maine on hold for the time being. She didn't want to completely call off the move, still cautious that things with Tony wouldn't work out the way they both wanted them to, and so kept the option open just in case.

Sasha hadn't seen Tony since that day, telling him that she needed time to think all of it through and sort her arrangements out. He had, of course, opened his home to her, though Sasha quickly declined, insisting that they should start over fresh.

And so that's what they'd done. Sasha had called by the cemetery that afternoon before heading back into the city to meet Tony for dinner. He had called her yesterday asking her out on a date, the term date making Sasha's heart flutter inside her rib cage.

"Funny thing is, I know exactly what you'd say to me right now if you could."

Sasha didn't visit her brother's graveside expecting a sign from the universe in the shape of Phil Coulson, or a whisper in the wind that sounded like his voice. She sat on the grass to talk, not in the hopes of an answer, but to know she was being heard, and that was all she wanted.

Sasha never really liked being handed solutions to her problems, in fact, she rarely shared her struggles with anybody, meaning that anything she'd overcome in the past had usually been done all by herself.

She had never been one for telling her brother about her boyfriend troubles or what one of her ex's had done that particular week to irritate her enough to question their relationship, but as she sat staring at Phil's headstone, she needed to get things off her chest to her big brother for once.

"I know you'd look at me and say something like, 'you have a great guy who cares about you, everyone deserves a second chance, we all mess up'," Sasha shrugged her shoulders, "And you'd be right. Tony is a great guy, he's the guy but..."

For the first time in a long time, Sasha had nothing else to say. She'd reached the but, the problem, the query, however it turned out that her hesitations and reservations were nothing more than Sasha wanting there to be one.

"I love him," she continued, "And I'm scared that one day he'll decide he doesn't love me anymore, I guess that's the only but."

Sasha's phone began to ring, forcing her to shake herself out of a few long moments of silence in an empty churchyard, grabbing the mobile from her purse and sliding her finger across the screen.