Disarm • Stark

13. Snooping & the Winter Soldier.

Mazzy Stark can't really describe how she felt watching her father in his Iron Man suit as he flew up higher and higher into the sky with a missile in his grasp. Heading straight through a wormhole, not to mention. All Mazzy could do was scream and cry while the police officer behind her held her back from being able to run back into the wreckage and reach someone who had an earpiece. She wanted to scream into one of those earpieces for her dad to stop.

No other time in Mazzy's life did she feel as scared as she did when her dad flew through that wormhole. Or, at least, not that she can remember.

The silence of those few seconds as the wormhole began to squeeze itself back shut with Tony on the other side was deafening. Mazzy tried to scream, but her throat closed up and she could hardly even breathe.

Was her dad dead? Was he lost in space, never to be seen again? Was she an orphan? She couldn't even remember further than a year or two ago; would she even be able to remember him at all, or would he just be an unfamiliar little echo in the back of her mind?

Nope. He was perfectly fine and craving shwarma.

All that panic and fear was for absolutely nothing. Great. Fantastic. Mazzy wanted more than anything to be furious with him and hate his guts for nearly orphaning her, but she was too relieved that he was alive to do anything other than cling to him like a leech. Tony didn't mind, though. He was just as afraid as she was, flying up into that wormhole. And he was also terrified when he saw her standing there in the middle of the fight, no matter how calm he pretended he was.

So, when he found Mazzy with the police and she came barrelling towards him, he caught her gratefully, holding her so tightly that she felt like her bones would break. He kept assuring her that she was fine, and he was fine, and Nat was fine, and Banner was fine, and everyone else was just fine, but she kept on crying, sputtering out words that Tony couldn't understand.

The only sentence he could actually understand out of Mazzy was, "Avengers is a dumb idea!"

He agreed with her and continued on reassuring her that everything was okay. But how could everything be okay when there was a portal in the sky of New York and everything was destroyed?!

In the end, everything did turn out to be okay. All of the wreckage in New York is beginning to be rebuilt, and Tony and Pepper just started working on a new design for Stark Tower. It is unfortunate that, as soon as they got the thing finished, it had to be destroyed, but maybe it's for the better because the new idea is much more useful.

The new design for the tower includes open rooms for any of the Avengers to stay in if they want to. And, per Mazzy's request, includes a bunkbed in her room, despite the fact that she has no one to share the bunkbed with. She just really wants it, apparently, because it is all she asked for when Tony wanted to know how she wants her room to be. Well, she also asked for her very own ice cream freezer, but Tony said no to that.

Time is flying by and now Mazzy is nine, nearly ten. She doesn't feel much older. She is definitely a lot smarter than she used to be, but now she has even more questions. She feels stupid when she can't remember things. She knows, now, that Tony, Pepper, and who knows how many more people, are all hiding something from her. But she can't figure out what. She has plans of doing some more snooping around whenever she gets the chance, but she isn't usually left alone.

If Tony and the other Avengers leave to go take down another Hydra base, bringing themselves one step closer to retrieving the scepter they've been after all this time, Mazzy is always at least left under the supervision of Jarvis.

But there are ways for Mazzy to figure things out even without sneaking around and looking through things she isn't supposed to be looking through.

There are people living in Avengers Tower who aren't so good at keeping secrets. And ever since last summer, Steve Rogers has been keeping a secret. Mazzy can just tell. He and Natasha know something that she doesn't. They sometimes exchange meaningful glances when Mazzy enters a room, and they talk about her when she isn't there.