ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ɪʀᴏɴ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ

The Mother Figure

{Chapter Twenty-Three}

Pepper looked down at a shaking Abby, worry evident on her face. Abby had had panic attacks before, they had become a more common occurrence as of recently but Pepper always struggled to calm her down. She was never able to get the girl to calm her breathing because Abby could feel her worry as if it was coming from her in waves.

In order to calm her down, Pepper wrapped her arms around Abby as tears leaked from the girl's green eyes. Abby jumped when she heard gunshots and looked up to see her father stood with Rhodey's machine gun pointed at him. The drones around them all had their guns aiming at the girl's father causing her heart to drop.

Tony turned around his eyes landing on his frightened daughter as he took off into the air. Rhodey and the drones continued to shoot at him only to miss him and to hit the glass ceiling. Pepper protectively wrapped her arms around Abby shielding her from the glass. The woman grabbed Abby's hand and dragged her away from the chaos.

"He's locked us out of the mainframe." A man spoke to Hammer as Pepper approached, Natasha and Abby, following closely behind.

"Who's locked you out of the mainframe?" Pepper asked as she reached them.

Pepper began to argue with Justin Hammer as Natasha looked down at a still frightened Abby. With a small sigh, Natasha kneeled down placing her hands on the girl's shoulders, and smiled at her.

"Abby, listen to me, you need to breathe," Natasha spoke softly trying to catch the girl's eye but Abby seemed to be looking over her shoulder. Natasha followed her gaze to see nothing and turned back to the girl, "Sweetie, look at me," Abby's gaze slowly moved back to the woman prompting her to speak again, "I know you are scared, but that's not your fear. You need to block it out."

Abby looked at her with wide eyes shaking her head, "I don't know how."

"Just breath. You need to block everyone else out. Right now, they don't matter only you do. Don't let their fear become yours, get rid of it," Natasha watched as Abby closed her eyes taking a deep breath, "You okay?"

Abby took a deep breath feeling as she slowly began to calm down. The fear was still there but it wasn't as present as it had been before. She slowly opened her eyes and nodded shakily at Natasha causing the woman to smile.

Natasha stood up and went to stand beside Pepper as she yelled at Justin Hammer.

"I have this handled!" Hammer told her.

"Have you now?" Pepper retorted.

"Yes, I do. In fact, if your guy hadn't shown up, this wouldn't be happening. So please, now go away. Thank you." Abby and Pepper glared at the man while Natasha simply sighed walking towards him. Grabbing his arm from behind, Natasha slammed Hammer into the table.

"You tell me who's behind this. Who's behind this?" She demanded.

"Ivan. Ivan Vanko." Hammer groaned.