Chapter Text
Maria Carbonell had once dreamed of dancing and singing on a Broadway stage, but her scholarship to Julliard hadn’t done more than get her jobs as an understudy. She was waiting tables in a Manhattan café when Howard Stark came in for coffee with Margret Carter. Maria had been singing softly while cleaning the table next to theirs and he kept coming back every week until she noticed him. Howard was charming and sweet but so much older than her, and Maria didn’t believe that anything would come of it until the beautiful British woman pulled her aside and explained that for all his flirty manners, Howard was serious about this. Maria looked into her sad, dark eyes full of loss and pain, and decided to give him a chance.
Years later, the only thing missing in their life together was a child. She and Howard had tried for years, suffering through countless embarrassing doctor’s visits and a few early miscarriages, until one day at last, came the cautious hope of her first full term pregnancy. Maria felt as if she was holding her breath for months, waiting for the other shoe to fall but each milestone passed, exactly as expected, no complications, no major issues, no real morning sickness, all in all a dream pregnancy. Howard was thrilled, doting on her, buying the newest, best and most expensive baby things he could find from all over the world, outfitting a decadent nursery as a surprise, and tinkering in his workshop only to emerge with increasingly ridiculous “inventions” for the baby. Maria loved her husband and his brilliant mind, she really did, but most of his contraptions were not at all practical. She did like the radio and receiver that would allow her to hear the baby cry from a few rooms away and told him so. He rushed back into the workshop to perfect it and a week later, she helped him pitch the finished project to the Stark Industries board.
Then in the early hours of May 29, 1964, she gave birth to a little girl in a private hospital room in the heart of New York City. Somehow, in all this time it had never occurred to Maria that she wouldn’t have a boy and she tried not to let Howard see that she was a bit disappointed. She had been picturing a boy that he could tinker with, but there was nothing for it now. Howard was beaming at the little bundle in his arms, his finger tracing her little red cheek gently, and Maria let her misgivings go in the face of his happiness at becoming a father at last. They named her Kathryn Elizabeth Stark and for a time, things were perfect.
It became increasingly obvious that Kathryn was her father’s daughter, with her round brown eyes, soft wavy hair and her penchant for tinkering. It was all Maria could do to keep track of her young daughter, let alone force her to sit still long enough to teach her any manners at all. Thankfully, she loved music and dance, so Maria hired all the best tutors and instructors, trying to keep little Kathryn out of Howard’s workshop. After some years of begging and despite Maria’s disapproval, her husband caved and spent alternate weekends in the workshop with their little girl, the two of them tinkering together for hours. But the real trouble began when she fixed a circuit board Howard had been struggling with for a week when she was only five. Maria had never seen him so completely gobsmacked; he locked himself in the workshop for the better part of a day before emerging to down nearly an entire bottle of whiskey. A day later, he left for one of his arctic expeditions and was gone for far more than his customary month. Kathryn was inconsolable for days, so sure that she had driven him away, and that he would never come back. Maria tried to comfort her, but her daughter was having none of it. If only Kathryn was more like other girls her age, thought Maria, not for the first time.
“Maybe it’s best you stay away from Daddy’s projects, dearest.” Maria said gently, one night at bedtime, almost two months after Howard left, stroking her auburn hair. Her daughter had grown into an almost a splitting image of Maria herself, except for the stubborn Stark brow and deep wide brown eyes framed with Howard’s thick lashes. Kathryn sobbed softly into her lap in answer. Howard came home the next week, dark rings around his eyes, looking every inch his age. When Kathryn ran to him, he scooped her up and pressed soft kisses to her hair while she sobbed into his shoulder. “Daddy,” she cried, “I promise I’ll never fix your stuffs again! Please don’t go away anymore!” Howard soothed her gently until she calmed down and in a few months, it was as if nothing at all had happened. Maria was happy to note that Kathryn spent less time tinkering with her father and far more time in the library studying. She was far advanced for her age, but both Maria and Howard refused to hear of her skipping any grades, so Kathryn had taken to devouring books from the library when she came home from school.
Just as Maria’s life seemed settled, Fate dealt another surprise hand. Six years to the day after their daughter was born, in the dark hours of the night, Howard and Maria welcomed Anthony Edward Stark into the world. He was almost purple when he emerged, the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck, and Maria had a few moments of sheer panic that this long wished for son would be damaged somehow. The doctors assured them that Tony would be perfectly healthy and normal, but the fear that Kathryn would be her only genius child never truly left her for those first few years.
Kathryn was almost immediately smitten with her baby brother, insisting that she help with feedings, diapers, bath-time, playtime, and bedtime. She wheedled Howard into telling them both stories about his friend, Captain America, undeterred when he protested that Tony wasn’t old enough to understand them. Maria worried when Kathryn showed renewed interest in Howard’s tinkering and far to much interest in heroes and war than was healthy for a girl, but her daughter looked up at her innocently and said, “Mama, how else will I teach Tony? Daddy won’t have time to teach him everything! I’ll have to tell him all the stories!” so she let it go. After all, Maria was sure, she would grow out of it eventually. Tony would go to MIT like his father, and Kathryn would go to Julliard, like she had, and with any luck, be more of a success than she had been all those years ago.
~*~
Kathryn could still feel the sharp bitter disappointment that had accompanied the realization of just what it meant to inherit her father’s genius. She had been, by all accounts, a nightmare child, too bright, curious, and loud, getting underfoot and causing mayhem. School had been a wonderful hopeful dream. She had been expecting to learn, to be challenged, but a few minutes into her first day of school brought reality crashing down. Most kids her age barely knew their letters, let alone numbers and math. Looking down at the crayons and coloring pages full of animals meant to teach her things she already knew, she fought back tears. For the first time in her life she was terrified that she would always be so far ahead of the world that no one would be able to keep up, that she would always be alone.
Much later, Jarvis had found her in the solar, crying, and bribed the whole thing out of her with cookies and milk. Her parents had refused to let her skip any grades and only hired tutors when pressed to do so by the school counselor to “encourage academic development.” But from that day forward, she had come home to fresh baked cookies and milk, (tea for Jarvis), and half and hour where she was free to be her own age and have someone to talk to about school and what she was learning from her tutors.
It was only logical that she went to him when her parents thought to tell her about the new baby. Jarvis had answered her questions with aplomb, and told her stories about his own older sister who had been a nurse in the War and once patched up Bucky Barnes himself. He spent those months before Tony was born telling her stories about his family, and she took them as lessons in what older sisters did, how families worked. Jarvis assured her that her baby brother would be just as smart as she was, so at least there would be someone to build things with, someone who wouldn’t get upset and leave like Daddy did.
Once Tony was born and she looked into his sweet little red face, felt his tiny fingers curl around hers with surprising strength, she couldn’t even find the heart to be upset at him for forcing her to share her birthday. She would have to be content with the fact that she would always be older than him. She watched her mother and the nurse carefully those first few weeks, and copied everything they did, teaching herself how to take care of Tony on her own. She used all of her stubbornness to spend more time with her baby brother, getting extra stories and a shared bedtime, and refusing to move out of the nursery, instead sleeping curled up in blankets next to Tony’s crib until her parents threatened to fire her tutors unless she slept in her own bed. Once Tony was old enough for a real bed, their parents and the nurse soon gave up on trying to make them sleep in separate rooms once they realized that they would only sleep soundly when curled up together.
Kathryn shared her favorite toys, games, music and books with baby Tony, patiently waiting until he was old enough to appreciate them. She remembered how lonely it had been during the daytime before school, so she took it upon herself to play with her new baby brother. At first, he did little more than stare and wriggle, but in time, he laughed, tugging at her fingers when he caught them, even shrieked with delight at the sight of her. Encouraged, she kept at it, and one day when playing with blocks and puzzles, Tony said loudly, “Kitty!” She turned from building a block castle to look at him, and the spit covered puzzle piece in his chubby fist. “Yes, Tony, very good! See?” She gently pried the piece from his hand and pushed it into place in the cartoon kitten face. “It is a Kitty Cat. Can you say Kitty Cat?” “Kitty.” He said again, looking at her face seriously. “Kittykittykittykittykitty. Kitty?” he scooted closer until his damp sticky hands batted at her face and her heart clenched. He was saying her name. She pulled him up in a hug and pressed kisses on his face. He giggled and squirmed as she kissed his nose. “Love you forever, Tony.” “Luv oo too, Kitty,” he said making a kissing noise next to her cheek. She grabbed him up to tickle him until his puzzle was forgotten. From that day forward, he never called her anything else, and no one else ever called her that. By the time Tony was five, they were sneaking into Howard’s workshop and tinkering with scrap parts and old projects he left lying around together. She warned Tony about the other kids and school, had taught him how to treat them, told him that most of the people in the world were not going to be able to keep up with them, but that was okay, because they would always have each other.
At the end of the school day, they would come home to cookies and milk with Jarvis, and then they could really learn. At bedtime every night, they would curl up together with a book, or a Captain America comic, or the schematics they were sketching for a real robot that could help in the workshop, and they would read together until they fell asleep secure in the knowledge that whatever happened, together they were unstoppable, like Cap and Bucky.
~*~
Tony’s earliest clearest memories were his fondest ones. He remembered being curled up in bed in the New York house, watching Kitty read to him from, “The Hobbit.” She did all the voices, some silly, some deep and throaty, and she stopped at every song so they could sing it together. They spent hours pouring over the maps, tracking the company’s progress as they read. Just as many nights were spent re-reading well-worn Captain America comics and tracking the Howling Commandos across a giant map of Europe. He still had those old books, moved them with him from house to house, to MIT, everywhere he stayed for more than a week or two. Every year, on his birthday, the day he shared with his sister, the last, the only girl he had ever really loved with all his heart, he disappeared for an hour or two to retrace those old maps. He brushed his fingertips over the fading pencil tracks he and Kitty had drawn all those years ago, and let himself wallow in memories of her.
Tony couldn’t remember a time before he could read and write, but he could see traces of Kitty’s handwriting in his own untidy scrawl. The spikes and curls were so similar, he found it hard sometimes to put pen to paper. Even seeing his own signature, wondering what Kitty’s would have looked like, still bore a painful sting. It drove Pepper crazy, how he refused to sign his paperwork, but he never could find it in him to explain why. That would mean explaining Kitty to Pepper, and after Jarvis’ death, no one who truly knew his older sister was left alive. Having to explain the person he had loved so deeply to someone else galled him. He could no more explain Kitty than he could explain his genius, it just was a part of him, rooted so deep it was impossible to tell where he ended, and she began.
She was in everything he touched, Dummy’s source code, JARVIS’ mother-henning and snark, the Maria Stark Foundation, even his Iron Man blueprints. He had built Dummy, Butterfingers and You to help in the workshop, but in reality they were to help ease the ache of working in there alone. He had spent those first few years after Kitty’s death missing her like a severed limb, especially when he tinkered and the bots gave him something to talk to, they kept him together when he should have fallen apart. Tony joked that JARVIS’ code had been written on a three-day bender, but no one knew that it was the three days surrounding their birthday that year. The result, Tony felt, was someone to keep him together in the face of all the days without her. Deep in the encoded archives that no one but Tony and JARVIS had access to, lay the only family photo he ever transferred to digital format. A five-year-old Tony was curled around an eleven-year-old Kathryn like a tiny octopus, Kitty’s nose was buried in his hair, his face squished into her shoulder, hands fisted into her pajama shirt, the two of them cocooned in the duvet, with a dog-eared comic book lying open inches from her half curled hand. The blueprints for his arc reactors were encoded into the file, layered under the most advanced encryption known to man. Proof indeed that Tony Stark had a heart and that it had been broken perhaps beyond repair.
Most people assumed that his inherited Stark Charm was the reason for his years of parting and womanizing. Since he had lost Kitty, the only person to ever love him completely and unconditionally, ever other relationship paled in comparison. And after all, how hard was it to bring a blind-drunk woman home every few weeks and let her sleep it off under JARVIS’ watchful gaze while Tony spent an uninterrupted night working on whatever projects held his attention at the moment? It was amazing what that could do for a man’s reputation.