eye contact

"You're fifteen?"

Stark Tower - January 9th, 2016

Seven seconds. Seven long, strenuous, heart-pound-filled seconds was how long it took for Tony Stark to look at his daughter once she had stepped into the room. Brown eyes met brown eyes, Christa standing her ground, head up high though her heart wasn't slowing down, Stark's mouth hanging open in the middle of a face full of pure shock.

"I need Pepper." Stark immediately started walking out of the room, Jackie out before him and Christa waiting to follow behind him. "Jackie, get me Pepper!"

"She is away in Albany right now, sir. Would you like me to call her and request she come here, sir?" responded Jackie, her face lighting up with alarm as the door shut behind Stark, who started walking into the hallway and shutting the door behind him, leaving Christa in there, a faint clicking sound being heard, as though the door had been locked, almost blindly.

"No, I want you to leave her a nice, sweet message on those cookies her cousin baked for me a year ago. Of course I want you to ask her to come here! No, don't ask, tell her... tell her forcefully. That if she doesn't come immediately, I'll take away her... her...." Speaking very, very quickly right now. He stopped in the middle of the hallway suddenly, a few feet from the door, turning around to see Clint leaning against the wall, giving Stark a sort of "look." "What are you doing here? I thought you were retired, on your farm with your cows and sheep and whatever the hell you grow there."

"Mr. Stark--" Jackie interrupted, eyeing the closed door to his office uncertainly.

"How is your wife, anyway? How's Nate? Is it okay if I call him that? Or is that too casual? Jackie, I need Pepper!"

"Mr. Stark--!"

He turned around to Jackie and said with sudden and unexpected softness, "Look, Jackie--have you ever had a teenage kid just waltz right into your house and announce that she's your offspring? 'Cause I haven't, Jackie! And I'm trying not to show it but it's kind of freaking me out!"

Surprised at her semi-boss's sudden and weird openness, Jackie could only splutter, "I--I can't say I know what to tell you, sir--"

"But you would know if you'd had a kid or not!"

"I--I know, sir--"

"Ehem, guys? Yeah, I'm right here too. And yeah it's kinda freaky, but--" Clint tried to interject, starting to come up behind them.

"Why the hell--" Christa came running out in the hall after them, panting "--would you lock me in there?

"I... panicked," Stark admitted.

Christa tapped her ears and gave him a look that said, "Uh, hello? Yeah, I can't hear!"

"She can't hear," Clint explained helpfully.

"Yeah, I can see that, dumbass." Stark took out his phone, typed something in it, and showed it briefly to Christa, eyes fixed on a point a little bit above her shoulder.

How'd you go deaf?

"My house exploded," Christa replied bluntly.

 Nodding very slightly, seemingly unsurprised at the statement, as though he was used to that sort of thing (which he probably was), still avoiding the girl's gaze, Stark turned to Pepper's assistant and said, "Jackie, go get me those hearing enhancer prototypes!"

"But, sir, you told me those weren't ready--"

"They're fine!"

Startled, Jackie quickly ran down the hall and out of sight. A soft "Ow!" could be heard echoing down the hall at the same time the sound of the heels she was wearing turned into a thudding clatter, as if she had stumbled significantly.

There was an awkward silence for the next several seconds (maybe even a few minutes), Stark still not looking Christa fully in the eye, as he hadn't done for the past minute, Clint almost starting to whistle, Christa with arms folded and a determination across her face not unfamiliar but not seen very much the past several days.

"Here, Mr. Stark!" Panting very slightly, Jackie had come back with what looked like hearing aids, except... not. "I'll just... call Ms. Potts, then...." she now muttered, walking over to the side.

"Thanks. Here." He tossed the pieces of metal over to Christa.

"Uh--" She stuck them in her ears, the pieces not looking too complicated, similar enough to the tools she'd tried using in the past few days to fix her hearing for her to be able to figure out exactly how they fit.

And then... music.

Not actual music, of course. Tony Stark wouldn't be playing that in the hallways of his high-tech Stark Tower. And she couldn't hear everything completely clearly of course, but--

Waves. She felt them. She heard them. She could sense that there was something....

"There, that better?" said Stark.

It was like her ears were covered by two large pillows, muffled, and she would probably have to use lipreading to help her on the most part but the noise was there and she had no idea how these things worked when nothing else had but now she could hear something and it was so good, it was so good.  

Christa's eyes were wide at him. "That's... stupidly incredible. But let me ask you something from about two minutes ago--you panicked and locked me in your office?"

Looking over to the side with a big, long sigh, Stark said, "Yep." Turned back to the girl. "I panicked and locked you in my office."

"I didn't realize panicking caused men to spontaneously lock doors on their freshly found daughters."

"Well, you learn something new every day. Blueberry?"

He had pressed a button on the wall, revealing the tiniest of compartments, pulling out a small packet of dried blueberries.

"I hate blueberries" was Christa's response.

Shock. Pure shock.

"Is Pepper coming, Jackie?"

"She's on her way, sir. She'll be here within the hour."

"Isn't Albany, like, three hours away?" Christa questioned.

"He has a private jet," Clint explained to her in a somewhat quiet tone of voice.

Ignoring Christa, Stark said to Jackie, "Thanks. You can go now." He started walking back into his office.

"Hey, what about me?" Christa said loudly.

"And me!" Clint added.

Stark turned back. "What? Oh, yeah, you can go too. Jackie, take them to the door."

"Tony--"

"Not now, Clint, I cannot think right now, I cannot speak right now--all I can do right now is sit in my office and eat my blueberries as I contemplate everything I have done in my life." And with that, the door was shut.

Clint and Christa looked at each other.

"Will you help me?!" she exclaimed. She obviously wouldn't be getting to Stark, no matter what she did. But Clint did know Stark from before....

"Hey, Tony...." Nodding slightly at Christa, Clint rapped his knuckles against the metallic door to his office. "There's somebody out here to see you."

"Not now, Arrowhead!"

Clint cleared his throat. "You know, when normal people find out they have fifteen-year-old daughters they never knew about, I think they usually try and talk to them a little bit before deciding to pretend they don't exist."

A second and a heartbeat later, the door had opened again. And this time, Stark's expression was soft, less of a wall, less of a mask.

"She's fifteen?"

"I'm right here."

He looked at her, and his eyes suddenly met hers full-on.

"You're fifteen?"

"Will be sixteen in November." Christa let her arms fall to her side.

She could see the cogs turning in his brain.

"Rubi."

Christa's heart skipped a beat. "Who's Rubi?"

"Rubi--Rubi Theodos--the woman who...." Stark shook his head quickly, as though trying to avoid treading on thoughts that felt like nails. "Never mind." Then he tilted his head slightly, back in thought. "Around that time--February, I think--she was the only one I ever--"

"Okay, that's enough, I'm gonna interject right here." Clint stepped forward, holding his hands out in a "stop" sort of movement. "There's gotta be some sort of explanation for this.I mean--Christa hacked her way into figuring this whole thing out." An idea seemed to cross his mind. "Hey, Christa, why don't you show him the picture of the hack?"

Christa's eyes were wide with surprise and shock and... maybe even disappointment. "I mean... yeah...." She quickly, slightly clumsily, because she was starting to doubt even herself (which didn't often happen), pulled out her phone, finding the picture of the hack itself in her photo gallery and showing it to Stark.

The man stared at it for about two seconds, and then acted almost as if he hadn't seen it at all.

"Paternity test. That'll solve everything," he said, clapping his hands together. "Except she is not my kid. How can she be my kid? Her mom isn't even the name of the woman who would have... been her mom at the right time. Also, I don't have a kid. I don't have kids! I'm Tony Stark! I don't have time for being a dad! I--"

"My mom's name was Esther Amory. She was born in California and moved to Iowa for college and stayed there to become a physical therapist. And then, more than fifteen years ago, she got pregnant with me. And then she had me. And she has said nothing about my father in all that time except that I was like him. And then she died eight days ago--eight days ago! New Year's Day! And I had to go searching for my dad. I mean, I didn't really, because I kind of got caught up in this bomb that blew up my damn house, and then I got landed in a hospital, whose database I hacked into to discover that my blood had something to do with yours! And the only other name on that list of people I had some sort of 'blood relation to,' because I have absolutely no other relatives in the world, was yours, Anthony Edward Stark, and I think damn well I know what those clues added up to be. So shut the hell up!"

Silence. Dead silence followed Christa's words.

Stark stared at her, at a loss for words--something that never happened.

"Kid--"

"Paternity test. Now." Her eyes held a fierce anger she'd rarely ever felt this deeply before--and she'd felt a lot of anger in her life. "And shut the hell up about not being anyone's dad. Because you just might well be mine."

Silence again.

With a roll of the eyes and a slight puff of anger, Christa pulled out her phone, unlocked it, and pulled up a photo of her mother, which she held up to Stark.    

"This was her. Do you--do you recognize her?" She was surprised to hear her voice crack.

He suddenly grabbed the phone from her hands, brushing her fingers as he did so, and as their fingers touched, she suddenly felt something--saw something.

The face of her mother--so familiar, and yet so different, because she looked younger now, far fewer lines no her face, and many more smiles--different flashes swam through Christa's eyes of memories that were not her own, of her sitting on the beach, face red with a brand new sunburn.... Her mother sitting at a table, mug of coffee in her hands, laughing as she waved a screwdriver above her head.... Her mother sitting at a small, unfamiliar restaurant, nighttime, a look of terror on her face as glass rained down--a blur of motion--her, running away--and with all this a rush of emotions--deep desire--fear--the pain of loss....

It was all gone in a moment, and Christa wasn't quite sure what is was. Those were not her memories... they seemed to be Stark's... and she had experienced them with the most minuscule, briefest of touches--

"Let's go...." Stark was still not looking at her, shoving the phone back into her hands. "Let's get this over with."