Researching

The last three weeks since his coffee dripping Iron Man suit embarrassment Tony started talking to his invisible visitor when he was in his workshop. Originally he would talk to Jarvis and his bots but now he included his coffee deliverer into the conversations. More and more often he would get a feeling that he was not alone in his workshop. Her presence would be stronger in the evenings so he talked the most at that time. He talked to her about nothing and everything. One time he even mentioned Afghanistan and Obi, he supposed it was easier to talk if he couldn't see the other person.

If he told flying his Iron Man suit almost exclusively in the evening was because of the beautiful evening sky, so that he could admire the nightlights in the dark and not because of her presence then no one could disagree. If the suiting up, starting and landing of his suit impressed her then that was a nice extra.

Over the last weeks he began to feel less lonely, he was still working on his next trap for her but he felt less and less motivated to try for fear of driving her away. He learned the hard way that people didn't always see things the same as him. Always doing things normal people didn't approve of. So, yes he felt fear, not for his life even though he was certain she had the potential to harm or kill him, but of losing the one connection he felt had meaning beyond simple companionship. On the other hand, he was terribly afraid to bore his invisible gift bearer, so doing nothing was not an option either, not to mention he liked their chasing game, it nearly felt like a strange courtship.

In the last three weeks, he didn't quite know which way to lean, but he supposed that she wasn't tired of him yet so, growing boring was not a big concern seeing as he wouldn't live much longer.

Although dying was also the reason why he needed to catch her because he swore to himself he would `know` as much as possible about her before the inevitable end. Including how she looked like, her voice, her opinions, what she was and if she was female. He would be lying if he claimed not to be devasted if it turned out his little ghost was a male because he had fantasized about how she would look like if he got to see her: her eyes would sparkle with mischief, she would laugh often, her entire being would emit a roguish air and if he made a joke she would smirk at him mischievously.

His looming death was also the reason why he began thinking about leaving a legacy behind, something to remember him by. His first idea was to reestating Stark Expo, a milestone of technological advancement, and he intended to introduce some revolutionary things during the show. Since he knew he was poisoning himself with his arc reactor he began planning the event and now it was right around the corner. There wasn't much time left until the Expo so he was extremely busy with preparations for the exhibition and plans to unmask his guest.

Researching potion making was taking longer than Valerie had anticipated because she didn't think she had to study herbology too. It became inevitable as soon as she tried to substitute some herbs in the health potion recipe.

The first problem she encountered was her own fault: on Terra, she only stored rare magical plants in her ring, she didn't take normal plants with her at all. To brew a less potent version she had to substitute some plants with nonmagical herbs. Without prior knowledge in Earth plants and herbology, it was impossible.

So she studied the flora and fauna of Earth and tried to find similarities with herbs that grew on Terra.

One week after the incident with Tony she finished with her theoretical research and she began to collect herbs all around the world.

Naturally, she didn't forget to bring Stark his daily dose of caffeine and visited him often in the evening after she finished her research of the day. On one of those visits, on the kitchen counter where she usually left the first coffee for the day, she noticed a platter full of chocolate chip cookies. It was obviously meant for her. She could smell the trap right away but she would accept the challenge. Casting diagnostic spells to find drugs or poisons, she took two cookies after finding out every ingredient of the cookies and deeming them safe. Stark obviously wanted to first install a false sense of security in her. Vali was looking forward to seeing what he had planned.

Teleporting first to cities or villages and from there wandering into the wilderness to explore and look for herbs, Vali had enough time to try the local food specials. Scouting out the different sights she often caught herself thinking about Tony and that he would have liked this or that. So she brought him snacks, fruits, berries or something else edible which aroused her interest. Tony, she realized, often forgot to eat when he was working and it was no hardship to think of him on her travels.

The night she successfully made her first health potions, she searched for the nearest hospital with a coma patient ward to test them. Sneaking into the hospital around midnight, she fed them her health elixirs.

With the original health potion, they would be cured after the first time but she needed to test longterm exposure. Her potions were not as potent as the original, but also shouldn't get poisonous after longterm consumption. If they woke up after she fed them the potion, it would be counterproductive to her testing, so she casted a sleeping spell on the coma patients that would keep them asleep until she canceled her spell. Figuring they owed her for curing them she didn't find anything wrong in keeping them two to three weeks longer in a comalike state to make them drink her potions again.

Valerie was planning to run diagnostic spells on them after she came back to administer the second potions in one week, the third potion two weeks after and so on. Checking how repeated drinking of her health potion would affect the patients so that she could stop feeding them her brews as soon as she knew that there wouldn't be any side effects or if the elixir was too potent as soon as the first signs appeared that the potion was turning to poison for the body.

Done researching und brewing health potions, for the time being, she could concentrate on her bistro again.

During one of the evenings she had been visiting Tony, he had talked about Obediah and how he liked to eat pizza. Planning her opening menu was easy then: blueberry muffins, chocolate lava cake, and pizza as the main course for the opening week. She was planning to extend the selection of muffins and cakes and only change the lunch meal every week.

Writing the meal on a blackboard outside, next to the entrance, she hoped to attract as many customers as possible with the signs as she wouldn't make any advertisements for her bistro. Naming the shop would have been an impossible thing for her because she knew she had zero naming sense. Luckily her lover and her two best friend had discussed the name on one of their assignments. Considering how they would like to provide a safe place to relax and enjoy, they thought about many names such as The Grind, or something similar to that. Her lover Xeon had the idea to name it Eden because they wanted their customers to feel like they were in paradise, When they couldn't settle on a name they voted and the winner was...

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