Chapter Text
‘I have a kid.’
‘I, Tony Stark, have a kid.’
‘What the hell am I going to do with a kid?’
This was going through Tony’s head on an infinite loop as he stared at a letter which was impossible to read with how hard his hands were shaking. He had let Pepper use his pent house apartment while on business in London, it wasn’t like he was using it, and she had brought back a hand full of letters addressed to him written on parchment of all things. They even had wax seals for god’s sake. Pepper had dropped them off on her way back out to the main office, she had a meeting about the meeting in London, which was stupid but better her than him.
In his shaking clammy hands was the first letter dated six and a half years ago. His brain was telling him a million and one things all at once. Not one of those things was that it may be a lie or a trick to get money. He could perfectly recall the woman who wrote the letters and those wonderful two weeks he had spent with her.
Lily. She had green eyes like emeralds, gorgeous dark red hair which he had confirmed to match the carpet on multiple occasions ‘just to make sure’, and a smirk that would take your breath away. He had spent more time with her than he had with any other woman for years, before or since… which was just a little bit sad and also beside the point. He could have seen himself falling in love with her, given time. But after their awesome two weeks he had to be back in New York and she hadn’t wanted to leave England so they had parted ways.
The letter said she was pregnant. It was more than just likely it was his. She was going to marry a guy whose description Tony remembered vividly, how he was a bully and an inconsiderate ass. It also said if Tony still wanted her he could have her. That she would leave Douchey McDoucheface, her family, her country. He just had to come get her. Send word. Anything.
Tony felt like crying, or screaming, perhaps laughing at the cruelty of it. How he was avoiding England because it reminded him of the woman that he might have fallen for, only to find that if he had gone back she could have been his. He settled on screaming.
Once he had calmed marginally Tony went on to the next letter in the pile. This one had a picture of the beautiful woman that he never really got over holding a newborn with a tuft of his dark brown hair and a set of bright emerald eyes. This time he let the tears that had been building up fall. There was a child in the world that he had helped make. Blinking his eyes clear he gave the picture another look before reading the letter. His baby’s name is Harry.
That actually wasn’t the most interesting part of the letter. After the introduction of his child, Lily went on to say some pretty strange things. The fact that she had actually married the dick she used to date wasn’t all that strange, though she did make assurances that her promise to leave with him still stood.
No, the strange thing was when she started talking about prophesies, insane dark wizards, going into hiding, and well magic in general. Tony was worried to say the least. At the very end she told him as proof she wasn’t a total fruit cake he should tap the bottom right corner of the picture she had sent while saying “that ridiculous nickname” he had given her. She didn’t actually write the nickname though so it took him a second to figure she meant ‘Tiger Lily’, which wasn’t ridiculous at all thank you very much, but a perfectly apt description.
Feeling like an idiot, Tony held the picture in one hand and tapped the appropriate corner as requested. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it or what he expected to happen, but as he sat there staring at the picture he nearly had a heart attack when it started moving.
Lily would look down and coo at little Harry who would wriggle happily at the attention he was receiving, little grabby hands fisting in dark red hair. Lily laughed without sound and gently extracted her locks and used them to tickle Harry’s nose before the whole thing started over again. It wasn’t like any kind of technology he had ever seen before, he looked it over turning it every which way, even bending it gently but he could not for the life of him figure out how it worked. He had no clue. He was Tony Stark, genius, De Vinci of our time, a leader in all things technology, and he had no idea how this worked!
He laughed. The only thing that came to mind was magic.
‘I’m a man of science, there has to be an explanation.’
Multiple scans showed it to be nothing but a piece of photo paper. After testing it with every instrument he had on hand Tony decided how it worked didn’t matter as much as what was in the picture. With that thought firmly in his mind Jarvis was ordered to get the jet warmed up while Tony tried to figure out where Lily and his little Harry might be after six years. The letters stopped after Harry’s first birthday, which was fair because really after more than a year and a half without a response anyone would give up. Tony wished there were more though, that he knew more about his kid.
‘I have a kid.’