Chapter Text
Tony had once believed his son to be a daughter. When he had brought home the infant, swaddled in a pink blanket, not at all prepared to be facing the challenges of single-fatherhood. It was both harder and easier than he had feared. Tony was never really alone. He always had Pepper to help him, even though she was with Happy now. And he had enough money to hire anyone he needed to take care of his child, though he never did. He was determined to be a better father than his own was. And that meant caring for his child personally as much as possible.
Caitlin Stark took to engineering in much the same way that the young Tony Stark had. She was brilliant even as a child and was far ahead of her peers in science and math by the time she started school, which Tony feared would prevent her from socializing properly and making friends. Fortunately, he was wrong, but unfortunately, his child still had trouble adjusting to the social sphere of school.
Multiple times during the first few weeks of kindergarten, Tony received calls from Caitlin’s elementary school saying that she had gotten in trouble or argued with the teacher.
When Tony sat her down to discuss it, she said, “the teacher said I was a girl!” Anger and frustration in every word.
And that had Tony shocked into momentary silence. “You are a girl, honey.”
“No, I’m not! I’m a boy, and I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m a girl. It’s silly!”
“Okay, honey. I’ll have a talk with your teacher. Why don’t you go play with your Legos?”
She huffed, clearly unhappy, but went to play with the aforementioned toys.
***
The phone calls didn’t stop. They continued to come regularly for the next year. Caitlin insisted again and again that she was not a girl. Tony gave up arguing with her, but didn’t really know what to do. She was a child. This was probably just a phase.
It all came to a head when Tony found Caitlin surrounded by piles of hair which she had sloppily chopped off with safety scissors. She had tears running down her face and looked angry and distraught.
“The boys won’t let me play with them because they say I’m a girl. And all the girls think I’m weird because I don’t wear dresses and they think I’m a girl even though I keep telling them that I’m a boy. And I asked them why they think I’m a girl, and they said it was my hair. So I thought that if I got rid of my hair, they would see that I’m actually a boy. But I don’t understand, because Isaiah has long hair and nobody thinks he’s a girl.”
She ended her rant with an angry sob, and Tony pulled her into his lap, wrapping her in a tight embrace. When she had calmed down, he wiped away her snot and tears and sent her to clean herself up a bit while he cleaned up the hair on the floor and called his usual hairdresser.
When Caitlin reappeared from the bathroom, eyes still red, but face no longer covered in tear-tracks, he said, “Grab your jacket and shoes. We’re going to get this haircut fixed up properly.”
She looked suspicious and said, “You won’t make it look like girl hair again, will you?”
He knelt down in front of her so that their eyes were on level and said, “No. I promise you can have your hair cut however you like. Okay?”
She nodded and hugged him. And he swooped her up in his arms and carried her to the car like that.
***
Once Tony got Caitlin tucked into bed that night, happy with her new haircut, he began searching things online, trying to figure out what was going on with Caitlin and what in the world he was supposed to do.
“my daughter says she is a boy”
There were so many blog and forum posts to sift through that Tony hardly knew where to start. And after reading through dozens of posts, he left just as confused as he had started. No one seemed to agree about anything, some insisting it is just a phase, some saying it’s a sign that the child is transgender. Some people urge parents to accept whatever their kids do, some urge parents to do the opposite and enforce the fact that his daughter is a girl. The worst comments were the ones implying that the child in question might be ‘homosexual’ and therefore doomed to hell. To be honest, he thought those people in the last two categories weren’t very good parents; even if it was just a phase, he wasn’t about to start forcing Caitlin to be anything she didn’t want to be.
He figured that he was in for a long conversation with Caitlin tomorrow about why she said she was a boy and what that means going forward.
***
“Good morning, honey,” Tony said as Caitlin entered the kitchen.
“Morning, Daddy,” she replied. “Will you fix me some eggs? Please.” The last word sounded like it had been tacked on only as an afterthought.
But Tony didn’t care, and he replied, “Of course, sweetheart,” and moved to the fridge to retrieve the eggs. “Fried or scrambled?”
“Scrambled. Duh.”
Tony just smiled and continued cooking.
Once they had both finished their eggs and the plates had been put in the dishwasher, Tony said, “I think we need to talk,” before Caitlin could disappear. She slid down in her seat a bit, as if trying to make herself smaller.
“I promise you are not in trouble. I just want to make sure that I’m doing what’s best for you, and I need you to talk to me to make that happen, okay?”
She nodded but still didn’t look very happy about the situation.
“So, you know how you were confused that everyone thinks you’re a girl because you had long hair even though Isaiah has long hair and everyone knows he’s a boy?”
She nodded again.
“Well, when babies are born, doctors look at their private parts to see what kind they have. There are two different kinds of parts: male parts and female parts. People with male parts are labeled as boys, and people with female parts are labeled as girls. You have female parts, so when you were born, the doctor said you were a girl. I assume Isaiah has male parts, which is why everyone calls him a boy. But sometimes the doctors are wrong. Sometimes people with male parts are actually girls or people with female parts are actually boys. And a lot of people don’t understand that and don’t like it. They think that people are just confused or lying, and so they say really hurtful things. But they’re wrong. It’s absolutely okay for people to realise that whatever the doctor said about their parts when they were born doesn’t match what they know in their heads.”
After a long silence Caitlin spoke, “So, people think I’m a girl because of my private parts? But they’ve never seen my privates!”
“I know. It’s a little more than just that, but that is the main reason. Since the doctor said you were a girl when you were born, we gave you a girl name and dressed you in girl clothes, and all of your official papers say you’re a girl.”
“But I’m not. And if there are other people who aren’t whatever the doctor says, then why do the doctors keep saying what people are anyways?” Caitlin said, confused.
“Because it makes them feel better if they can stick a label on people. But that doesn’t make them right. No matter what the rest of the world thinks, the only person who can know who you are is you,” Tony said, tapping her gently on the nose as he said the last word. Caitlin smiled a little, and Tony continued, “So, how would you like to go shopping today and get you some boy clothes to match your boy haircut?”
“Yes!” Caitlin squealed.
“Hmm… I guess you need a boy name too…” he continued, more to himself than to Caitlin, “how about Scott? Montgomery? No. Obviously not Spock. Bones… Leonard?”
Caitlin interrupted then, “I like that last one. Lenn-erd,” he sounded out.
“Hmm? Leonard? You like Leonard?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Okay. It seems a little long for a kid. Maybe Len? Leo?”
“That one! Leo! I wanna be called Leo.”
“Okay, Leo. How about we go get dressed properly, and we can head to the store?”
“Okay!” Leo responded, starting to turn away but hesitating briefly to turn back and say, “I love you Daddy.”
“I love you too. So much,” Tony replied, kneeling down to hug his son.