To All Those Brave and Lovely

Peter Parker

He wasn't kidding when he said that he would buy her stuff.

Pepper (who might be Tony's girlfriend or might juts be the CEO, but he's in love with her either way) picks her up one morning and takes her out shopping to buy more clothes and shoes and make up than she knows what to do with, and Nora didn't look at a price tag or head over to a clearance rack once the whole day.  She gets to decorate the room any way she wants to, so she buys picture frames and cheap art and more pillows than any girl should really have.  And sometimes, Tony looks over at her like he just got the best idea ever, which is how she got that new phone and new laptop and the stereo system built into the wall, not to mention her own car that she swore to never take out of the garage because it cost more than her old house.  "Do you need anything else?"  Tony asks her over dinner, like he does every night.  Nora wants to tell him that she didn't need any of this, that it was a new thing for her to know for sure that there was food in the fridge and that the lights were going to turn on when she walked in the door.  "You like legos?  I got an intern that likes to build lego sets, we could get you some of those."

He seems completely serious, and Nora has a feeling that she could ask for a pony and there would be a barn in the backyard the very next day.  "I like to read,"  She says, feeling awful for even asking for one more thing.  "Some books would be nice."

"Books."  He nods, like he never would have thought of that.  Nora's pretty sure he would have been more likely to buy her a 3D printer than a bookshelf.  "I can do that."

When she gets home from her shift at the coffee shop (because she still works, despite her new situation), the entire wall outside her room is lined with bookshelves.

"Why aren't you ever not here?"  Tony asks, staring at her.  She's curled up on the couch in his workshop, wrapped in a grease stained blanket and watching him with bleary eyes as he worked.  It's too late or too early, depending how you look at it, and Nora keeps drifting off to sleep.  The only time she can really manage is to fall asleep is when she's on the ground floor.  "You're fifteen.  Shouldn't you be at parties?"

"Sixteen."  Nora corrects him automatically, even though she's pretty sure he's just messing with her, considering he bought her a car.  "And how could I go to a party?  The only thing close to a friend I made was Wanda, and that was only for one night before she got sent back to your secret training compound."

Tony made a noise in the back of his throat.  He doesn't like to talk about the avengers, probably because it's still a new thing to have the team back together, considering some of them just lost their war criminal status thanks to the last world threatening attack.  Wanda had stayed over night, which was just long enough for both of them to figure out that her powers could make it so its like they were in the middle of a One Direction concert despite being in Nora's bedroom.  "You should go to bed, you know.  It's like, four in the morning."

"You're not asleep."  She doesn't know how to tell him that she can't, that everytime she closes her eyes she gets afraid that she's falling, how even looking out the window might set her into a panic attack some days.  Nora doesn't know how to tell him some nights she can still feel the burn on her palm and the cuts on her back and the dirt in her teeth, how she avoids mirrors in the morning just to pretend.  How if she doens't sleep here, with easy access to the noise and the light drawing her back, she likely won't sleep at all, and if she does, it'l be full of metal monsters and burning city's and Spidermans voice ringing in her ears.  

"I'm an adult."  He points a wrench at her.  "I've earned this."

"Don't make me leave,"  She says, because she'd seen him slump over his desk and then jerk awake often enough to know he understands.  "Please, Tony."