Chapter Text
2014
It was night in the desert and the clinging darkness that made it perfect for astrophysicists also made it terrible for the driver. Their headlights lit up the larger rocks and potholes in front of them but failed to illuminate much else, as they headed down a dirt track. And the further from the beaten trail they went, the worse it got. The road was covered in thick patches of sand that Darcy was struggling to navigate, and several times the van squirmed as the tyres struggled to find traction. Eventually they left the road altogether, driving straight through the desert. The coordinates Jane had wanted to visit that night were taking them way out into bumpy terrain much further from town.
“Jane, are we close yet? I don’t really want to have to replace the sump guard on this thing again.”
“A little further,” Jane said, not looking up from her GPS.
Darcy huffed and reached down into her pocket, feeling blindly while steering one-handed. She pulled her iPod from her jacket and plugged it into the radio, keeping one eye on the stereo and another on the road. Eventually, upbeat saccharine pop music bleated out from the speakers and made Jane screw up her face.
“Darcy turn that off, you’ll interfere with the receptors. It took hours to calibrate them,” she complained.
“Nope,” Darcy replied, bopping her head to the cheesy tune, “it’s the iPod, not the radio, it’s fine.”
“Well, I’m not listening to that, it was awful in the ‘90s and it’s awful now.”
“Nuh-uh. Remember the rules, Jane. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts her cakehole.”
Jane pursed her lips and reached out to the iPod to change the track herself, Darcy let out a squawk of indignation and started pushing the back button whenever Jane pushed the forward one. Back and forth they went, starting to squabble and paying less attention to the path ahead.
“Watch the hardware, Janey. There’s already plenty scratches on it.”
Darcy tried to grab the iPod from where it sat on the dashboard, only to knock it down, leaving it dangling from its connection cable.
“Just turn it off,” Jane snapped.
“Ladies, please,” Thor called uselessly from the back.
The van hit a particularly large rock and bounced around, and Darcy had to steer sharply to correct them. But they were too close to the edge of a ditch, which was made mostly of sand and disintegrating rocks. There were shouts and shrieks as the van lurched sideways, the wheel felt like it was connected to jelly as Darcy turned it. The front corner dipped suddenly and hit something hard, bringing the vehicle to a rough, jarring stop. The engine stalled to nothing but a hissing of steam, and there were groans from the jostled passengers.
Darcy felt a stinging where her seat belt bit into the skin by her collarbone, her arms shook a little and she reluctantly prised her hands from the wheel. Jane was in much the same shaken state, unsteady but unharmed. Thor, naturally, had not a hair out of place.
“Everyone alright?” he asked, unbuckling and peering forward between the front seats. Both women nodded, taking deep breaths. The van’s stereo still sang cheerfully, and Jane yanked the connection cable out with finality.
“Shit,” Jane breathed.
“At least we didn’t hit anyone this time,” said Darcy.
Thor passed her a flashlight from the back. The van door opened with a heavy swing and she hopped out to inspect the damage. There was a significantly large boulder jammed into the front of the van’s grille, and had probably done plenty internal damage. And the front left tyre was ripped and shredded. They had a spare in the back but that wasn’t going to get them on the road any time soon. Thor managed to pull the Pinz free from the ditch, something which in any other circumstance Darcy would have taken great pleasure in watching. For science, obviously. But both she and Jane stood in the dark, empty desert, taking deep breaths. They were well beyond the reach of any lights from town, or even car headlights from the road.
Of course, since it was the middle of the night and they were stuck a good ways off the beaten track, none of the towing people that even picked up would come all the way out there for them. After the last name in their fairly out-of-date, tattered phonebook failed to pick up, Darcy threw her phone back on to the car seat with a frustrated grunt. It was really hard to hang up angrily on a touchscreen.
Jane bit her lip and looked down at the mangled grille, “you could, um, call your dad maybe?”
Darcy stood in tense silence before she sighed, “What’s he going to do about it? Apart from nag at me for crashing in a desert with no-one for miles?”
“I mean if he called the tow place instead, maybe they’d be more likely to come out here. Throw his name at them, or his money. Either way.”
Jane was probably right, Darcy thought, although Pepper would probably be much more help than her father. He’d probably get her to call in his place and offer a good incentive for driving out to the middle of nowhere to rescue some stranded idiots. She very much doubted Tony would mention that his daughter was one of them, she did not think he ever mentioned her at all. She was pretty sure Thor remained unaware of her relation to his teammate and she wasn’t about to bring it up. But it was really cold out here and the Pinz was busted so, yeah, Jane was probably right.
Grabbing her phone back from the seat of the van, Darcy climbed back up to the boulder which was the only decent vantage point where there was even patchy signal. After scrambling up the side, she shivered in the cold, and scrolled through her contacts for ‘Dad.’ The phone rang, the tone hazy through the static, and Darcy was filled with dread that he would not pick up. But just as she was wondering whether it would do any good to cry into his voicemail, her father’s sleepy voice answered.
“Hi, Daddy, so… don’t freak out, okay?” she started, “but Jane and I might have gotten into a teensy weensy bit of a car crash. We’re totally fine though!”
***
The common room in the tower was quiet that night, just Tony, Pepper and Steve. And it was late, so all of them were winding down; Steve read, Pepper looked very serious as she tapped away at her tablet, and Tony was already half asleep with his head in Pepper’s lap. It was a warm and cosy evening atmosphere, that was jarringly interrupted by the loud ringing of Tony’s cell phone.
Tony grumbled and made only the barest effort to reach for the phone vibrating angrily on the coffee table. When he couldn’t reach, he pouted up at Pepper, “you answer it.”
“No, you answer it. I’m almost at a new highscore,” she replied, glancing only briefly at the phone, “besides, it’s Darcy, you should definitely answer it.”
Tony looked puzzled and stretched over to grab the phone, checking that the caller ID did in fact read ‘Darcy L.’, before holding the phone to his ear, “hey kiddo, what’s up?”
There were a few beats as Tony listened, and Steve looked up from his book. He did not know who Darcy was but out of all the possible options for who could be calling Tony Stark this late at night, none of them really ought to have the name ‘kiddo.’
“What?!” Tony exclaimed, sitting bolt upright, “What happened? Are you hurt?
Both Pepper and Steve suddenly became very alert, ready to spring into any necessary action, and watched as Tony got up from the couch and started pacing nervously.
“Are you sure? Double sure? Because if you need to go to the hospital, don’t worry about it, just go and I’ll cover you.”
“I am not panicking. No, I am… okay maybe, a little bit, yes. Yes, I am panicking, but it’s gonna be alright… are you sure you don’t need a doctor? You sound jittery.”
“Right. Okay. Mechanic, sure. I can do that. Where are you?”
Tony spluttered, “forty miles?! What the hell are you doing forty miles into the desert?”
“Oh, seventy to Roswell, yeah, that makes me feel so much better. Okay, just… stay where you are, keep warm and… and… I’ll make it all better, I’ve got this, Daddy’s gonna come get you and it’ll all be fine. Okay? Okay,” he hung up reluctantly and grasped his phone in his hand tightly enough to make the plastic creak. He saw Steve’s eyebrows practically hit his hairline, and Tony realised that he’d never mentioned Darcy at all to his fellow Avengers, and now he’d just referred to himself as Daddy. It was a title he probably didn’t merit, and it could easily be misinterpreted by the filthy-minded which, judging by the look on Steve’s face, it was.
“JARVIS, you trace that call signal?”
“I did indeed, sir. I am uploading Miss Lewis’ coordinates now,” JARVIS responded.
“Tony, what happened?” asked Pepper anxiously. Tony was pacing and fidgeting, eyes wide with panic. JARVIS’ lit up a screen with a map, zooming into a spot in New Mexico surrounded by nothing but desert.
“Car crash,” Tony had to take a deep breath, looking like he wanted to throw up, “She says she’s okay but none of the local places will come out to them because they decided they needed to be forty goddamned miles into the desert. So… so… a plan, a plan. The plan is…”
“Tony, calm down. Remember to breath,” Pepper consoled in a firm but soothing voice, “the plan is that we’ll send out a plane - one that can land on rough terrain - to go get her. Happy’s still in LA, we’ll call him, see if he can fly out too. And Darcy can go back to the house. Okay?”
“Okay,” Tony said, finally getting a grip on his breathing, “you call Happy. Get the plane going. I’m… I’m gonna…”
“You’re going to stay here and try to stay calm, I’ll tell Happy to call us when she’s home,” Pepper said. There was a beat, a second, where Tony’s eyes met Pepper’s and they both knew Tony was going to do no such thing.
“Right. JARVIS? Send those coordinates to the suit asap, I wanna be off the ground in five.”
“Right away, sir.”
As Tony strode through to the lab - shouting instructions to JARVIS about flight plans - Pepper gave a heavy sigh and swore gently under her breath. Steve turned to her, still somewhat unsure if he was needed for this or not, “I didn’t know you guys had a daughter…”
“Oh, she’s Tony’s daughter, not mine. I’ve met her, she’s nice, she’s…”
“Is she anything like Tony?”
“She’s… like an alternate universe version of Tony. I don’t know, you’ll see,” Pepper said with a shrug, and dug out her phone.
***
Darcy shivered in an itchy plaid blanket, alternately looking out the window into the dark and checking her phone for non-existent messages. Pepper had sent a text telling her a plane would come out for them, but that was a while ago. Of course, there was no cell coverage apart from that one spot on top of the boulder but Darcy wasn’t about to climb out of the van to stand there. She pulled the blanket tighter around her, clenching her jaw shut to stop her teeth chattering.
“What time did you say the plane was coming,” Jane asked, miserably. Which Darcy thought was rich coming from the person snuggled into Thor’s chest and not wrapped in mouldy-smelling car blanket.
“Another hour or so.”
It really was beautiful out under the sky, the space above them packed with stars and the occasional satellite or plane. The Milky way arched around the heavens, reminding them of just how small they all were. In amongst the twinkling stars and planets, there was a light, clearly man-made, moving towards them at high speed. It was not a plane - it lacked the blinking wingtips lights - and was accompanied by a much louder engine whine than every other jet that had flown overhead. Darcy was sure Pepper had said an actual plane would be coming for them, so what was that flying in? She dug out a pair of dusty binoculars from the van and stepped outside to get a better look. Thor and Jane followed suit, bringing the large flashlight as a beacon as whatever-it-was got closer and closer.
“Wow, that’s a really low-flying plane,” Jane said, “is that us?”
Darcy focused up the binoculars and peered through; her heart froze at the sight of incoming repulsor jets, “oh, no, Dad, you didn’t.”
The roar of engines became deafening and, with a flash of light and a dramatic thunk, Iron Man landed a few feet in front of them.
“Oh my god,” Darcy groaned, hiding herself behind the Pinz. She heard Thor call out to her father, surprised and a little confused, but Tony completely ignored him. He flipped up the faceplate and jetted over to her, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her to his chest.
“Woah, what the hell? This really doesn’t work when you’re in the suit!” she gasped. He released her and she dropped back down to her feet and wheezed in some air. Stark looked her up and down and, finding her unharmed, his pale and panicked face started to subside. He looked around, perplexed, as if only just noticing he wasn’t in the tower anymore. He hissed at the sight of their van.
“Are you okay, kiddo? Seriously?”
“I’m fine, relax,” Darcy shuffled her boots in the dirt, “if I’m honest, I was expecting something bigger. Unless you’re going to fix it up and we drive to LA.”
“Yeah, no, Pep’s on that. There’s a plane coming out to some airfield or other that we might have to trespass on, but…”
“Stark?” Thor asked, “I am glad to see you but how did you know to come?”
“Uh… she called me,” he pointed to Darcy, “And what are you doing here?”
“I… she called you?” his eyes widened, “Darcy, this one is your father??” Thor exclaimed, voice rising with surprise. He looked around to Jane, only to find her watching their interactions with a complete lack of surprise. Tony, true to form, was quickly putting two and two together.
“Wait, he’s the guy you ran over? With this thing, that couldn’t handle a boulder? No wonder Fury gave me the Spanish Inquisition... so Thor’s Jane and Darcy’s Jane are the same Jane. How come you didn’t tell him, or me?” Tony quizzed.
“Well, I signed about a thousand scary forms promising I wouldn’t tell you. And I met him before you did. Back then, he had no idea who you were, and he probably wouldn’t have cared. Although, hey, that would have clued us in to him being from outer space, if he didn’t know who the great Tony Stark was.”
“Ouch.”
“And where do you get off, asking me that? How come you didn’t tell him about me?”
“Uh, we were kinda busy saving the world. We didn’t exactly have sharing time when we held hands and told each other all about our secret kids. His family drama was enough to deal with,” Tony snapped, thumbing back towards Thor.
Darcy huffed, she turned away from her father and towards the beaten up van that had brought all of them out here, “so can you fix the van or not?” she demanded in a thick voice.
Tony could, indeed, get the van at least running again. Enough to get them chugging along through the desert towards an airfield that belonged to a gas company. Her father had thumped and cursed at the gaping hole in their van, alternately demanding that Darcy pass him various tools or materials. Both she and Tony got snappish and antsy when he started asking for things Darcy didn’t understand the name of, until Jane swapped in as assistant instead. Darcy noted dejectedly that Jane and Tony progressed much faster than she had with her father. But here they were, nursing the van along rough terrain to go trespassing on a dirt airstrip. Tony flew ahead of them in the suit leading the way, for which Darcy was grateful since it meant the van wasn’t weighed down by the suit, nor did she have to face talking to her father for just that bit longer. She didn’t really want to talk to anybody. Thor tried a few tentative questions, but was shot down almost immediately and got the hint to just sit in the back quietly. Darcy was annoyed and tired and just wanted to stop.
They trundled along dirt paths, at a sedate pace which no-one questioned, until they arrived at some sort of small gas processing site. They were met with the welcome sight of a US Air Force cargo plane waiting for them off to one side. There were no security guards or fences, just tracks where small aircraft came and went, and a sign reading ‘Roxxon.’ The security of the place obviously hinged on it being too far out into the desert for anyone to notice or care about. Darcy parked the van, lining it up with the plane’s loading ramp, and the engine reduced itself to a hiss and a knocking noise that she didn’t like the sound of. She wasn’t altogether sure the van would start itself again but Darcy was past the point of caring. If Thor could haul the van out of a ditch, he could push it up a ramp.
Waiting inside the plane was Colonel Rhodes, as well as an entirely too green-looking airman who skittered around trying to avoid eye contact with either Thor or Iron Man. They were all quickly and efficiently strapped in and on their way. Rhodey kept her father occupied - informing Stark that Air Traffic Control was definitely pissed at him - and Darcy had to resolutely look away from Thor, who was staring alternately at her and her father, determined to spot the similarities.
The van was offloaded into a storage hangar at the airport, until they could arrange a more permanent repair job. Thor pushed it backwards into a space between two smaller Stark Industries jets, while Jane fretted and triple-checked her equipment. She told whoever looked at her too long that the van itself and some of its built-in systems don’t do well in storage. Everything would need cleaned, and recalibrated if it was stored incorrectly and left too long.
“We had to clean out a million spider webs after we got back from London, it set us back a whole week,” Jane moaned.
“London?” Tony queried, rounding on Darcy, “You mean all that shit being blown up? Alien invasion number two? You were in that?!”
“Yeah,” Darcy admitted softly, “I’m still fine. I’m sure someone would have told you if I’d gotten my leg shredded or something.”
“Oh, that’s just great. What else don’t I know, huh? Are you working for SHIELD? Are you Captain America’s bit on the side?”
“‘Bit on the side’? Dad, stop being ridiculous.”
Happy chose that moment to swing a Bentley around to them, distracting Tony from his delirious anxiety over what Darcy was and was not telling him. Happy fussed over her a little too, but was easily assuaged and focused on getting everyone into the car. The Iron Man suit was too heavy to go for jaunts in a luxury car, however, and Tony jetted off ahead. Darcy sighed in the momentary relief, more used to her father being distant and uninterested rather than this new intensely-concerned behaviour. She knew that, yes, it was an unspoken, long-held desire to be closer to her father, to have him look out for her like fathers ought to. But this was the deep end.
“You okay?” Rhodey asked. Darcy told him, for what felt like the thousandth time, that she was fine and pleaded with him to accompany them back to the house.
“Sorry, short-stack, I gotta put this thing back where I found it. We’re calling it a training exercise,” he said, gesturing to the cargo plane, “Just give him some time to calm down, don’t take everything he says to heart.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said despondently. She promised to send him, and Pepper, a text when she was home safe and was swiftly bundled into the back of the car.
Jane perked up as they drove through LA, late though it was. Neither she nor Thor had ever been to this city and Darcy was strong-armed into spending some time exploring over the next few days. It would take a while for the van to be fixed up and ready to go, and Darcy wanted that time to go by as quickly as possible. Oh, it was good to see Rhodey, and Happy, and, yeah, her dad. But there was a huge sense of dissonance as two previously unconnected parts of her life were smushed together.
And it only worsened when they arrived at the house, as Thor found that the login he used in the tower worked out here too. JARVIS greeting him, calm and collected, and Jane peered into the holographic interface as Thor tapped in a message back to New York, letting Pepper know they’d arrived. Tony came up from the workshop, wearing comfortable clothes which - judging by the creases and grease marks - he’d flown around in the suit in.
“Is it true you have a miniature particle accelerator here?” Jane asked, with excited curiosity lighting up her face. Darcy had seen the same expression back when she’d first told Jane she was related to Tony Stark in the first place. It had been annoying then but now it gave Darcy a sinking feeling she was about to be abandoned. With Iron Man standing right there in front of them, there was little Darcy could do to prevent Jane or Tony getting distracted by each other.
“Technically I dismantled it, but yeah,” Tony answered.
“And you used it to synthesize an entirely new element that powers the arc reactor? That stuff is revolutionary. This girl I knew back at Culver wrote an article about how it’s a huge game-changer for renewable energy.”
“Yup. I figured if it was good enough for the ol’ ticker,” he rapped his knuckles off his chest, “it was good enough for clean energy. I still have the schematics downstairs, I built a virtual simulator… if you want to give it a whirl?”
Jane looked fit to burst at the thought, clearly trying to temper down her excitement.
“It has a 3D interface…” Tony tempted, walking backwards towards the staircase.
Darcy watched as Jane disappeared after Tony down into the shop, both of them chattering away animatedly. She heard the secure door slide shut and a bleep from JARVIS’ system, letting her know they were well and truly ensconced in the workshop. A place it had taken years of good behaviour and multiple promises not to fiddle with anything for Darcy to be allowed into. Standing there in the silent living room, she felt incredibly lonely even with Thor next to her. This was a house she had visited about a dozen times over the years, but every single time the place looked different. Either it was new furniture, a new AI interface, or more recently new Iron Man suits making her feel out of place all over again. And, where before she’d had Pepper or Rhodey to keep her company, now she was left on her own.
“You want a drink, big guy?” she asked Thor, grateful that at least the bar hadn’t changed. She dug out one of the frozen glasses and poured a beer for Thor and opened a bottle of wine for herself. She carefully avoided looking at how expensive it was. Thor waited a few beats before looking at her with a sad, knowing expression.
“Do you quarrel with your father often?” he questioned softly. It was then that Darcy realised that, out of all her friends, Thor was in a better position to understand her feelings than most. And she felt a little guilty for not telling him before, it hardly ever came up and, honestly, she would admit to enjoying the parts of her life that did not have her father inadvertently hanging over them.
“I guess so. We don’t really see much of each other,” she answered, “I mean, you heard him. I’m a ‘secret.’ And probably not a good one.”
“Sometimes our elders do things with good intentions that have consequences that even the most enlightened cannot foresee.”
“I know,” she said into her wine, “I get it. Weapons development and alcoholism aren’t really kid-friendly. He probably did me a favour, letting me grow up with Mom and my grandparents but… ever since the whole,” she held her hand up to where the large hole would be in her father’s chest, “thing… it’s like everything got a fresh start. Except me. It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m not right, I’m not included.”
Thor gulped the last of his beer, “I do not know if I am grateful you never met my brother. He had many of the same feelings, and truth be told I still cannot offer much comfort for them.”
“Me and Loke-ster could have ruled the world,”
“Not if you called him that,” Thor laughed.
They fed themselves on sandwiches made with leftovers in the fridge and Darcy made extra to leave for her father or Jane, if they ever decided to surface for air. Pepper called, at what must have truly been an ungodly hour for her, seeking reassurance that everyone was safe and sound. Darcy gave up waiting for either Jane or Tony to appear and made sure there was a guest room set up for her boss and Thor before heading to her own bedroom. It was just as she’d left it, exactly as she’d left it. Even down to the sweater she’d accidentally left behind last year, draped over the back of the chair. The floor and windows were clean, her room clearly being included in some cleaning schedule - whether by person or robot - but there was a thin layer of dust on the desk and the artwork on the wall. The bed looked neat enough though, with a set of bed sheets she’d never seen before, so she threw herself down on them and buried her face into the pillow.
It only felt like a few breaths before Darcy jumped awake when JARVIS chirped at her.
“Good morning, Miss Lewis. It is 7:47am, weather today is projected to be in the low 80s with a 30 percent chance of precipitation. You have one new message from Ms Potts, and Mr Stark has asked me to inform you your breakfast is almost ready.”
It took Darcy a good few moments to process any of JARVIS’ information, she winced at the tight stiffness in her shoulder that reminded her that she had in fact been in a car crash the night before. It was not Thanksgiving, despite the fact that she was only ever in this house on Thanksgiving. It was sunny, but not in the dusty and baking kind of way she’d gotten used to in New Mexico. And, god, it was too early. Astrophysics assistants only did morning in the ‘2am’ kind of way, and she wanted to just roll back into her bed. But there had been mention of breakfast and for once she wasn’t going to have to make it herself. She slowly slid out of bed feet first and stood, patting her hair into a vague sense of order and pawing the bedside table for her glasses.
“Shall I display your message, Miss Lewis?” JARVIS asked.
“Uh, yeah… okay,” Darcy dearly hoped it was neither long nor complicated. Pepper’s message was that she was taking the earliest possible flight out and to expect her sharp. Darcy simply could not fathom the motivation to get dressed, and shuffled, bleary-eyed, through from her bedroom to the staircase. She could hear Thor still snoring from the guest bed, and if Jane had gone to bed there was no way she’d be getting out of it now. Downstairs, Darcy padded through to the kitchen, which was filled with light smoke and the smell of burning, and her father waving a fish slice dramatically at a frying pan.
“Dad?”
“Oh! Hey, Darcy-girl. Uh, I was gonna make you pancakes - you like pancakes, right? - and it went really well so… I got JARVIS to get you up. But then, uh, it went really badly and well…”
The smoke detector went off, beeping wildly.
Darcy strode up to the stove, taking the frying pan away from her father and dumping it into the sink. A run of cold water made a hiss of steam and she stood watching the last pieces of burned and congealed pancake batter wash off and into the drain.
“JARVIS, kill the alarm. Ventilation, please,” Tony ordered. An overhead fan whizzed into life, clearing the smoke. Darcy noticed there was a plate with less-burnt pancakes sitting waiting for her on the countertop next to a bowl of banana slices and a weird-looking smoothie.
“I don’t like bananas, Dad,” Darcy complained, sure in the knowledge that he had not remembered. It had taken him ten years to commit Pepper’s strawberry allergy to memory, Darcy didn’t have a hope in hell.
“Uh, that’s for me,” he said hastily, sliding the bowl away from her pancakes. On second thoughts, he moved the smoothie over as well, “this too.”
Darcy stared at her now lonely plate on the counter and sighed, sleep-soaked and entirely unready to face the day. Her father cleared his throat and suggested they go out for breakfast instead, now that it was clear his own was not going to merit any kind of impressed response.
“I don’t want to go anywhere, Dad. Did you get any sleep? Or did you and Jane pull an all-nighter?” Darcy asked, allowing a hint of bitterness to seep into her voice.
Tony cleared his throat, “Yeah, I got a few hours. Look, I shouldn’t have left you up here. I guess my rescue didn’t exactly go as planned and… I was worried and then you were okay. I just didn’t know what to do after that, so I let myself get distracted.”
Darcy took a deep breath. Jane getting her dad’s spotlight was only a symptom of the laissez-faire attitude Tony had to Darcy. He had always been afraid of doing her wrong, but often chose inaction over control or dictation.
“I’m sorry. I panicked,” Tony said, “a lot. You know, one morning I got woken up and my Mom and Dad weren’t there anymore. And you called and I just… I couldn’t let the same thing happen to my baby girl. Even if I don’t deserve her.
“And that Cap comment was out of line and, frankly, gross to even think about, I’m sorry for that too,” he continued, grimacing at the thought of it.
“Okay, I promise that if I ever do get the chance to be Captain America’s side ho, you’ll hear all about it, Dad,” Darcy teased.
“Ack. I know I would deserve it but please, no. Yeurgh.”
Darcy smiled a little, for the first time in what felt like a full twenty-four hours.
“So… are we okay?” Tony asked, laying on the puppy dog eyes.
They had a long way to go, really, for them both to include each other in their lives the way they wanted. But for now, “yeah, we’re okay.”
Before she could second-guess herself, Darcy flung her arms around her father’s waist and hoped to get the most out of a hug before it became weird and awkward. But instead of the usual stilted pat on the back she normally received, Tony hugged her back and pressed a small kiss to her temple.
“Better without the suit, huh?” Tony asked, fondly. Darcy hummed happily in response and relaxed in her father’s arms. But it occurred to her that there was something distinctly missing. She drew back in confusion and placed her hand flat against her father’s chest where there was… no arc reactor. No hard metal, no humming of generated power.
“Uh… yeah… about that…”
Tony explained in a rather strained voice, anticipating the resultant shock and shouting, about his decision to finally have the shrapnel removed. He emphasized the professionalism of the surgeons and the fancy, expensiveness of the hospital. But it achieved little and the first thing Pepper and Steve heard as they walked through the front door was still Darcy’s indignant shrieking, “No biggie?! Oh yeah, by the way, I had major fucking heart surgery! Oh my god!”