This Kitten Has Claws

AU. Set a few months after The Avengers... Iron Man 3 hasn't occurred yet. My time frame is the battle occurred around June/July and its now mid-October. For my story Tony is about 34 yrs old and the Avengers ages kind of revolve around that.

Disclaimer- I do not own the Avengers or The Night World or anything else that you may recognize. I do however own Adelaide Bennett and the plot.

Chapter 1

Adelaide was nervous and the constant looks from the people around her did nothing but encourage those feelings. It wasn't the actual looks that bothered her- she'd been receiving them all her life- it was the new feeling of paranoia that washed over her with every look.

Adelaide was very aware that she attracted attention; it could have been the fact she was 17yrs old and not in school or that she looked unnaturally attractive but she knew the real reason.

At a glance people saw a teenager with dark brown curly hair that looked black; chocolate coloured eyes and mocha tanned skin strolling down the street; but some people could sense something- see something else when they looked at her, they could see a sort of… prowling grace when she walked. They would see the bright green that flecked through the chocolate brown of her eyes- something unnatural to humans.

Adelaide knew she didn't look quite human and that's because she wasn't human. She was a mutant- a shape shifter- to be exact.

When Adelaide wasn't walking around looking like a teenager, she was hidden in the shadows looking like a panther. It was the reason some people stayed away from her, their instincts knew she was dangerous and warned them away.

Not everyone could sense it enough to make them stay away. She knew everyone felt something but most humans were so out of sync with their instincts they brushed it off as nothing.

She'd learnt that from him.

He was the reason that the looks she'd received all her life made her feel paranoid; the reason why she couldn't separate the fake memories from her real ones; the reason why shifting sometimes left her feeling dirty. It was all because of him.

Thinking about him triggered her tortured memories the ones were she wasn't sure what was real anymore. She would never forget him or what he did to her. The torture, the tests and experiments, the inhumanity of what they subjected her to nearly every day for the past 3 years.

What happened broke her. She knew that, she admitted it. But Adelaide knew that if something was broken it could be fixed, not always but there was a chance she could fix herself.

She could never erase the scars that covered her arms or the nightmares that haunted her dreams. Or reverse what they did to her but she could become stronger, try and overcome what happened and when she was ready she would destroy them all.

Pushing her dark thoughts to the back of her mind, Adelaide checked the building in front of her. There was a giant A at the top instead of Stark but the address was right. This was it, the first step to fixing herself- safety.

Adelaide took a deep breath before entering the building and making her way towards the secretary. If this didn't work she had nothing else to work from.

Even though Adelaide didn't believe in God she sent him a small prayer- she prayed that the memory of her Mom telling her that Anthony Stark was her Father was real and that she hadn't been lying.