Every family has demons, but none of them seem to scream as loudly as they do in the Stark family.
Tony Stark is known for many things; a father being one of them. Before he was Iron Man, before he was the CEO of Stark Industries, before he was...
because everyone would rather watch you fall just take the fall, you're one of us, the spotlight is on spotlight ─── mutemath
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
stark manor 1998
Tony made the big announcement a few days later as Howard and Grandma stood alongside him. Tony strictly forbade Pepper from letting me watch it on TV though. I was kind of excited to see him on the screen again, but I was left disappointed and I couldn't even ask Jarvis to help me out because of, well, the obvious. Tony stayed close to my side that entire night; it was as if he was afraid that somehow these paparazzi, as I had quickly learnt they were called, would find me.
I slowly began to get healthier. My bruises faded and my skin returned to its usual peachy color. The cuts on my back and belly slowly but surely turned from being bright red to pink. My hands began to forget that long tears once existed in them. The gashes and cuts on my legs went away and Tony began to see how fast I really was.
Sometimes I wondered if he wished back for the days when he had to carry me everywhere and I was never out of his line of sight. Regardless, those days were far behind us. He had to chase me all over the house and his least favorite game soon became hide and seek. There was one particular time when he couldn't find me for four hours and he was so panicked that he called Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy all over to help find me. It turned out I had been hiding under the kitchen sink the entire time as that was a very familiar place to me. Anyway, after this, he told me he was not ever going to play it with me again, although I could still get Grandma or Pepper to play with me.
Howard informed Tony that my ability to run and hide would be good when it came to the media. Tony was not pleased. Howard tended to keep his distance from me and I couldn't quite understand why. I mean, Grandma loved being with me. She would often take me out shopping all day until Tony told her to bring me home. At night, she would tell me a bedtime story before Tony took me upstairs to sleep. She even got Tony to sing along with her when my belly felt sick. I adored her, but I wasn't sure what to make of Howard. I just hadn't spent enough time with him, I guess.
After being at first uncertain of him, I came to soon adore Rhodey just as much as I adored Pepper and Grandma, but I doubted that I could ever adore anyone as much as I adored Tony. But Rhodey sure knew how to make me have fun and I began to realize it the more and more he came to visit with us.
It was about six months after I came to live with Tony that the four of us were sitting at the kitchen table, eating our macaroni and cheese. I was sitting next to Pepper and she was telling me all about the art fair that she had been to. It was absolutely astounding to my little two year old self to think of how people could put all of the colors in different ways and somehow each come up with a different picture. When she saw my fascination with it, she promised that she would show me some pretty pieces soon. After hugging her, I smiled excitedly and continued eating my cheesy macaroni.
