behind blue eyes [bucky barnes]

four

"Listen to her howlin' roar."

Song: Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins

. . . . .

"There's my girl! Come on in - I have torn this suit all to pieces and I need you to help me find the pinky. I can't find it and well, Iron Man isn't Iron Man without a right pinky! I guess then I would just be iron deficient and that wouldn't work at all-"

"Dad," Maria yelled over the music blasting in the garage. She pointed just to the left of him, catching his attention to the pinky lying on the ground. "If you would open your eyes and take a breath then you might not lose something right in front of you. When was the last time you slept?"

Tony Stark just grinned and grabbed the pinky. Why he was messing around with the Mark 15 suit was beyond her. She could tell just by looking at him that he was in another manic episode - being fuelled by coffee and some idea that was stuck in his mind. If she had a dollar for every time she had seen him in such a state then Maria would be richer than he was.

"Get over here, squirt," ushered the man, opening his arms. Maria didn't hesitate to weave through the mess of the garage and into his arms. She could feel the grim seeping off of him and onto her, but she didn't mind. Maria loved her father - quirks and all. And the smell of grease and coffee that radiated off of him always reminded her of home.

In that moment, Maria had to work to keep tears from falling. She wasn't normally so emotional but, when holding onto her father nowadays, the girl couldn't help but be. There was a time when Maria thought she would never get to do it again - see him, hug him, just have his presence. So now that she got that opportunity she wasn't going to let it go to waste.

Before Pepper came along, during the first eight years of Maria's life, it was just her and Tony. They were thick as thieves, even after the man found his soulmate. Tony taught the girl how to rebuild a car by the time she was 10. She knew every single rock song from the 70s and 80s once she reached 12. But there was so much competition between them as well. Maria was always pushed to be better than her father. It was her biggest desire - to prove that she was just as amazing a person as she saw him as. That was why she pushed herself to graduate from MIT a whole year before he did - with two PhDs instead of one. She paved her own way through the world, just as he did, when she decided to become a SHIELD special operations agent. It was from Tony Stark that Maria learned how to charm her way through a crowd, how to stand up for herself, and how to use sarcasm as a method of self defense.

Things didn't change when he became Iron Man. If anything Tony became even more of a hero in his daughter's eyes. When she walked in on him building the suit in which she had designed when she was only five years old, Maria knew that he wasn't just her hero - he was everyone else's too.

"I still need your help," whispered Tony to Maria, causing her to pull away from him. "I need help with diagnosing this Ferrari. I figured I'd see if my best mechanic wanted to take a crack at it."