pepper potts, tony stark's life saver

"Tony? Jackie said you needed me, that someone came to see you and you didn't know how to handle it."

Stark Tower - January 9th, 2016

The sound of shoes on metal echoed faintly throughout the room as Stark, Christa, Clint, and Jackie began walking down the hall, the one known as Iron Man in the lead. He didn't look at any of them, simply walking straight ahead, and on his face was a mix of expressions that nobody could see: Terror, anxiety, confusion, and perhaps a little regret.

He wasn't the only one feeling that way.

Christa's life had been a whirlwind from the start. Her mother raising her by herself; several moves, always to a different state, but then back, finally, to the place Christa had been born and her mother had said she had started her life off in. But it was a normal whirlwind. Something lots of people could deal with or relate to, and it meant that her life was average. And despite the fact that she didn't have a dad, or even a father figure, up until now, that was okay. She had friends--people she often had to leave, but they were friends all the same. Right now she had Angus. Sure, from a few years up until New Year's Day her mom had been sick, and that wasn't exactly a party, but at least she had been there.

She had had her mother, and she was happy.

But then her mother had died.

And then Christa had landed herself with the Bartons, and that had been good! Better than she would admit to herself.

And maybe if that was where she would be for the rest of her life, that would be okay.

But then her dad had to turn out to be a jerk.

"Hey, you okay?"

Christa turned to look up at Clint, whose eyes were following her with a concerned look on his face.

She paused for a moment before saying quite bluntly, "Why didn't you tell me my dad was such a dick?"

Clint took a moment to respond, shrugging his hands up before saying, "I don't know. I guess I thought it might make you biased. Plus, you've seen him on t.v.--you know how much he likes the spotlight. And...." At this, he leaned in towards the girl a little bit and said in a quieter voice, "To be honest, I thought he would be even more of a dick."

"Hey, I heard that," came the voice of Stark from up ahead, turning his head around slightly, but not enough to look anyone behind him straight in the face. "And by the way, if you're saying I have a big head... I am Iron Man."

A trio of eye rolls could be viewed being borne behind him.

And so the group walked, Stark seeming to know where he was going, but then he suddenly stopped and turned around on his heel, finger pointed absently and an expression of contemplation and worry on his face.

"Jackie, we do have a room with the supplies for a paternity test, correct?"

The rest of the group stopped with him, and Jackie's eyes grew wide with surprise and what might have been slight anxiety. "Um... I don't know, sir. Let me check the floor gui--"

Stark shook his head, interrupting her, saying, "No, no, no, we have them. We should. We have everything...." He looked down off at the floor as though worried his special tower didn't have everything like he boasted. Suddenly, he looked up, turning around and staring Jackie right in the face. "Where's Pepper? I thought she was supposed to be here right now."

Jackie still looked uncertain how to respond. "She said she would be--"

"I'm right here." The click-clack of Pepper's heals could be heard on the smooth metal floor of the tower as the doors to an elevator right in front of them opened and the woman herself stepped out, strawberry-blonde hair pulled back in a bun shining brightly in the light of the sun coming in through the glass walls that looked out on the city of New York below. An expression of confusion and also that of a mother hen preparing to cluck disapprovingly at her misbehaving chicks were on her face, and her hands moved to her hips as she stopped in front of Stark. "Tony? Jackie said you needed me, that someone came to see you and you didn't know how to handle it." Her eyes fell on Christa, and the girl could see the cogs going in the woman's brain. "Tony--"

"Pepper! Thank gosh!" Stark started walking over to Pepper and instantly embraced her, holding onto her like a lost puppy as she hesitantly hugged him back, a look of surprise evident on her face.

"Tony, what--"

"Oh, yes, you haven't been told the problem, I see--" Stark started to say, but was interrupted by Christa.

"Hey, you're the problem, douchebag," she said, crossing her arms.

"Language!" Stark bellowed at the girl, and everyone stared at him, shocked. Nobody looked as shocked as he did, though. "Oh, dear gosh, I'm turning into Cap." He shook his head and turned back to Pepper. "You see, this girl just came up to my office and--" an expression of disbelieving amusement came across his face, fake smile crossing his lips and arms lifting up in incredulous disbelief "--and told me she thinks I'm her dad?" He gave a laugh, as though expecting Pepper to think Christa was as crazy as he did. "I mean--ha--what?"

Pepper blinked a couple of times, looking back and forth between the two and seemingly trying to figure out what to say but finding it quite difficult. "I--well--" she spluttered.

Clint raised a hand. "I, for the record, think that he is her dad."

Everyone looked at him with various expressions all along the lines of saying, "Really? Right now?"

His other hand joined the first and this time they were raised in a defensive sort of gesture. "Just... putting that out there."

Everyone turned back to look at Pepper.

"Tony, I--" She still didn't seem to know what to say. So she turned to Christa. "You think you're his daughter."

Christa nodded. "Hell right, but I don't know if he's convinced." Sarcasm dripped from her voice like melted ice cream from a cone.

Pepper considered her for a moment. "What's your name?"

"Christa. Christa Amory."

"And why do you think Tony is your father?"

Christa rolled her eyes. Then she pulled up the picture of the hack on her phone again and showed it to Pepper.

"Hacked my way through a hospital database to find this." She now pointed at the two names on the screen. "That's my mother. That's Mister Dick Dad right here. Coincidence? I think not."

Pepper stared at the screen before several moments before looking back at Christa. "You hacked into a hospital database?"

"Tech skills like father, like daughter," Clint mumbled nearby.

"Yes, I did." Christa raised her eyebrows at Pepper. "Got a problem with that?"

Pepper's gaze turned chiding. "You've certainly got some attitude."

Christa rolled her eyes. "Who are you, now? My mother?"

Pepper and Stark exchanged looks. Christa's expression turned to one of horror. "Oh, no, you're dating, aren't you?"

The two exchanged looks again before Stark said, "It's...."

"...complicated," Pepper finished.

Christa raised her eyebrows at them. "Ooookay." She turned to Stark. "Are we gonna take the paternity test or not?"

"Paternity test?" Pepper asked.

"Yes," Stark responded to her quickly, then said, "And yes, kid, I agree to that. Jackie! Did you check the floor guy or whatever?"

"No, but I can do that right now. And, sir, it was floor guide, not guy."

"Tony, we don't have the tools for a paternity test here," Pepper said to the man before he could respond.

His eyes darted to her quickly and suspiciously. "We what?"

"I said, we don't--"

"No, I heard what you said, just the fact that we don't have that baffles me." Stark started walking around in circles as he spoke. Then he stopped, turning back to Pepper, and said, "Stark Tower is supposed to have everything."

"You designed the Avengers Facility has 'everything,' Tony, not Stark Tower." She put up air quotes as she said the second-to-last word.

"Oooh, that's right, of course! Why wouldn't the original famous building I, Tony Stark, am in charge of, have all the technological advancements a person could think of!" He said it in an obviously falsely baffled way, arms gesturing wildly as he did so.

"Tony--" Pepper

"Don't 'Tony' me, Pepper, I'm trying to think!" He grabbed his head in his hands, facing downwards, perhaps in an attempt to rid himself of distractions.

There was a several-second pause, everyone wondering why he wasn't going with the obvious.

"Dud--" Christa started to say.

"Ba-bup," Stark interrupted, holding out a finger to quiet her.

"Ton--" Clint said.

"Sha-shush," Stark said, an even quicker butt-in than before.

"To--" said Pepper.

"Mist--" Jackie said at the same time.

"Shut up!" Tony whirled around. "I'm trying to think!"

Clearly, everything that had happened thus far had taken a tole on the supposed genius's mental abilities.

"STARK!" Christa suddenly shrieked. "We can just go to the Avengers Facility!"

The man's expression froze, his finger hovering in the air and mouth hanging open as though about to say something but Christa had interrupted whatever it was going to be.

A moment later--

"Fine." He started walking in the direction of the elevator Pepper had just come from without another word.

| | |

So Stark led the way to the place his private jet had landed with Pepper inside it. He didn't let anyone say a word while they went, shushing them whenever they tried to speak, and despite their many attempts to push, he was so annoying that they just stopped.

At the door to the jet, Christa was the last one in. Jackie was behind them, and as Christa stepped inside, she said softly to the girl, "Good luck."

Christa looked into the eyes of the woman, and somehow found a slight sense of calm flooding through her as she did so.

"Why can't you come with us?" she found herself asking. She was surprised. She didn't think she'd get this attached to Pepper's assistant so quickly.

Jackie gave a small, slightly sad smile. "I've got a job and two kids to take care of." She paused, head to the side and gaze in another direction for a brief moment. Then she turned back to Christa. "Actually, my cousin is about your age. You two might make good friends. I'll have to introduce you two sometime."

"Christa! We're about to take off!" shouted the voice of Clint from further inside the vehicle.

Christa and Jackie both turned to look inside before back to each other.

"Maybe," Christa said. "But right now, I have to figure out how to make my supposed dad a bit less of a jerk."

Suddenly, Jackie wrapped the girl in a hug. Christa's eyes widened in surprise. She hugged her back very loosely and tentatively.

"CHRISTA!"

Christa closed her eyes for a moment at Clint's words. Then she opened her eyes again, Jackie having pulled away now.

"Good luck," the woman said again.

Christa gave a small smile, a slightly uncommon thing for the girl. "Thanks, Jackie. I'm gonna need it."

And she stepped inside the vehicle.

| | |

Half an hour and a third of a jet ride later, Clint, Christa, Pepper, and Stark were sitting in the private jet, and silence was the most prominent sound in the room. Everyone was mulling things over in their own way or form. Clint had messaged his wife to let her know he might be staying away longer than anticipated twenty minutes ago, Christa had already given up on being able to text Angus due to something known as airplane mode, and Pepper and Stark had already taken up a brief conversation about who knew what enough distance away from Clint and Christa so that they couldn't hear them, so nothing much was happening.

Christa sighed and stared out the window. And she realized that she was bored.

Wow. She didn't think that could happen nowadays.

What the anomaly.

She leaned her head against the window, staring out at the clouds hovering in the sky beyond the glass. The sun was so bright, and the sky so blue, and the cities below her seemed so gray and busy and normal and she wondered how normality could even be accomplished right now.

And, as she glanced over at the man, and for a split second thought he might be looking her way too before asserting his gaze on another window, for what felt like the millionth time over the last day and a half, she wondered....

How could Tony Stark be my dad?

| | |

The room smelled like death.

Water dripped from the broken pipes, and the metallic floor rusted away at the places where it fell. A warehouse or factory, the darkness much more prominent than the light, the sound of the dripping the only thing that permeated the room.

Until she entered, that is.

A dark figure, face hidden within the shadows, an the sound of shoes on floor.

"I see you escaped." The voice was soft, but in a way that a cloth about to smother a person in their sleep was.

Panting now. Running steps out of a hiding spot.

A rough voice. "You saw right, m'lady. Those bars can't hold this body." A pause as breath was caught. "I did what you asked. Blew up the house."

Another pause, as the shadowy face of the woman raised a slight eyebrow at the man, whose rat-like face stared back at her with pride but also tenseness. A gloved hand raised up to his face, as though about to caress it.

"You did, didn't you?"

The man gave a grin, relief spread across his face. "I did indeed, Madame."

The woman contemplated him for a moment, expression thoughtful.

And then it turned sour.

"But you didn't do everything that I wanted, did you?"

The man's face went pale, an odd contrast to the darkness around him. "N-no, Madame, I guess n-not--"

"And because of that--"

The woman ripped one of her gloves off of her hand and touched her palm to his face.

"You'll never be able to disappoint me again."

The man fell to his knees as the screams that came from him intensified into something almost as terrifying as a fall into an abyss of black.