A/N: This is just my paltry attempt to address the 'Tony Stark has a goddaughter and her parents die' cliche plot in a realistic fashion. I hope you enjoy it, and all reviews are loved!

Tony Stark stared down at the scrunched-up baby in his arms, fighting the urge to put it down and back away. She was an ugly little thing, tied up in a pink blanket, dark hair peeking out from beneath the knit cap on her head. Her brown eyes stared at him, unfocused, as Neil and Dawn beamed at the two of them, Dawn's hair stuck to her head with sweat.

"Thanks for coming, Tony," Neil said.

"Not a problem," Tony said automatically, although yes, it was a problem. He had some calibrations to make to the Canaan prototype, but Pepper had insisted that he go to the birth of his college roommate's child.

She'd been impervious to threats and promises of a raise.

He shifted, the baby in his arms pushing herself closer to him.

"She have a name?" he asked, casting about for a chair. Pepper, hovering in the doorway, pushed one at him. He sank into it with a sigh, wincing as the hard plastic- he'd donated twenty-thousand dollars to this hospital, the least they could do is have good chairs!- dug into his back.

"Sarah," Dawn said, squeezing Neil's hand. The two of them gazed sappily at each other. Cherubs and harp music would probably have been appropriate at the moment. "Sarah Elizabeth Roslin."

Could they have chosen a plainer name?

But Tony made a noncommittal noise and looked down at Sarah, who was sleeping now, chubby fists clenched by her face, lower lip sticking out in a pout. He figured most people would call it cute; he didn't feel anything. He'd never been a kid person; never wanted any, never would, but he could pretend to be for a little while, if only to make Pepper happy.

She was the only person that truly had the ability to make his life hell, and she knew it, damn her.

"Anyway," Neil said, his knee bouncing up and down, he and Dawn exchanging more lovelorn gazes, "we were wondering if you would be the godfather?"

Tony froze.

Their eyes were expectant, and he made a noncommittal noise, trying to remember what godfathers did.

They gave you gifts on your birthday; okay, he could do that. A check every year wasn't too bad. They were supposed to raise you if your parents die; well, Neil had a brother, so if Neil and Dawn died in some freak accident, then he was covered.

So just sending a check every year; that was easy, he could get Pepper to do it.

"Sure."

And a week later he found himself standing in a Catholic church, glancing down surreptitiously at the book in his hand as he mumbled the promises to help Sarah grow in Christ, and renounce Satan, and blah blah blah…

Sarah was silent when she was baptized, which surprised Tony; if he got cold water poured on his head without warning, he'd be pitching a fit. And then he watched Neil parade her around the church as applause rang off the stone walls. He tried to smile.

And as soon as the service was over, he scribbled out a check to Sarah- the first of many, no doubt- handed it to Dawn, and escaped to his jet, a brunette named Natasha bringing him a margarita.

Mission accomplished.

Sarah didn't know when she first figured out who her godfather was. She knew that an envelope came every year on her birthday with a check inside (that her parents deposited into the bank the minute it came) and a note wishing her a happy birthday from Tony Stark.

When she was seven, her parents showed her the cover of a magazine with him on it, although they didn't let her look at the article.

Apparently it wasn't appropriate for someone her age.

Tony Stark had sharp eyes, dark hair, and a foreboding look to him. He was also apparently one of the richest men in the world, and very smart. He had a secretary named Pepper Potts- what a name- who was, according to the People magazines her mom read when she thought no one was looking, one of the most beautiful, powerful women in the business world.

She didn't particularly care much about who he was, and never mentioned it to anybody. Most of the time she didn't even think about him, except on the week following her birthday and the times he was on TV.

By the time she was eight, she'd grown skilled at distinguishing Pepper's handwriting from Tony's. The checks were written in Pepper's hand, although the signature was Tony's; the formulaic notes she got every year with the checks were Pepper's, too. Although one time, when she had chickenpox on her ninth birthday, there was another note, scrawled on a scrap of notebook paper:

Some advice: milk this for all it's worth. You only get chickenpox once. – Tony Stark

She grinned when she saw it, and put it in her special box with a piece of quartz she found on vacation, a soccer ball charm her best friend gave her, and her favorite Lego piece.

On bad nights, when she was still crying from being bullied by Eddie at school, by the glow of her nightlight she opened and read it again; Tony Stark, who was famous and rich and could probably blow Eddie up if he wanted, was her godfather, and he wrote her a note. He did- not his secretary, not a computer program.

He did.

Bullies couldn't take that away from her.

Tony slouched in the back of the limo, swirling his bourbon around the glass. It was five in the afternoon in Austin, Texas, and the only place he wanted to be was somewhere else.

"Mr. Stark."

He didn't look up.

"Mr. Stark, you're going to have to get out of the car eventually."

Which was true, but he could at least make a token protest.

"Happy, answer something for me."

Happy glanced at him in the rearview mirror, black sunglasses catching the light. "Yes, sir?"

"Did Pepper tell you not to let me leave?" he said plaintively. "And if she's paying you extra for this, I'll double it- no, even triple it- if you'll just take me away from this..." he waved his hand at the gaily-colored balloons bobbing about on the back fence, "-schmaltz."

"With all due respect, sir, I'm more afraid of Miss Potts than I am of you."

Tony's lip twitched and he set the drink down loudly, exiting the car with probably more force than was strictly necessary.

"Tony!" Neil yelled, waving as he came down the sidewalk, a party hat tilted rakishly over his receding hairline.

Oh, God. 'Someone please tell me I'm not going to have to wear a hat. I will give up alcohol for a week- no, three days if you don't make me wear a hat.'

"Hi," he said, shaking hands. "Where's-" 'What's her name?' "-Sarah?" he finished triumphantly, Neil's brow quirking at Tony's inappropriate enthusiasm.

"She's in the backyard with her friends," Neil said, leading him through the gate, the two of them making small talk as they went. A German Shepherd barked from inside the house, scratching at the glass doors. 'A dog. Great.' There were five kids scattered about the yard, and the remains of an unfortunate piñata littered the ground. The kids ignored him totally, focused on their soccer game.

It was kind of nice to not be recognized.

"Sarah!" Neil called.

The girl dribbling the soccer ball looked up, brown ponytail flopping with the motion, passed the ball through her legs in a maneuver that Tony's brain short-circuited trying to follow, and jogged over.

Sarah was taller than Tony had expected, and skinny, with knobby kneecaps poking out of tattered jeans worn through at the knee, a grass-stained 'Keep Austin Weird' T-shirt hanging off her bird-thin shoulders.

"Sarah, this is Tony Stark," Neil introduced him. Sarah looked at him in silent consideration, unmoving- Tony felt disturbingly like she was judging him- before she shrugged and stuck her hand out.

"Nice to meet you," she said, her sweaty grip surprisingly strong.

"You, too."

"I guess you probably don't want to play soccer," she noted, glancing at his suit.

'Soccer is for Europeans.'

"Uh, no."

"Want some cake?"

It was kind of creepy to have this kid being so solicitous and still; weren't ten-year-olds supposed to be self-centered, hyper brats?

Or did that come later, along with acne and stupid clothing?

"What kind?"

"German chocolate," she said, turning her head in time to see a pudgy boy fire the ball into the net and fall in a red-faced heap. The other kids piled on, screeching with joy, the boy on the bottom yelling as the pile collapsed on top of him.

"Great shot, Bobby," Sarah called, before turning back to him.

Well, if it was chocolate, then that was an entirely different matter.

"Lead me to it!"

Sarah grinned- she had a gap between her front teeth- and darted over to the picnic table, dragging him with her. The presents were already open; good, he'd managed to miss that.

Although all the presents were books- and fairly high-level ones, too.

He certainly hadn't been reading The Abridged Time Machine at ten, although he could have, if he wanted.

He just hadn't wanted to.

She cut him a big slice, shoved the plate into his hands, and rejoined the game. Neil and Dawn ushered him over to a chair, Neil offering him a glass of wine. Tony grabbed it, took a long gulp, and started in on the cake.

"She's pretty good," Tony said after he recovered from the bliss that was chocolate- actually, it was the caffeine in the chocolate that caused the feelings of general goodwill towards man, but it didn't really matter- as Sarah dodged another girl's outstretched arms and scored a goal.

"She wants to be Mia Hamm, although I keep hoping she'll end up a lawyer, since she likes to read so much," Dawn said, smiling at Sarah as her daughter whooped and bounded over to bash her shoulder into a gangly boy's chest. "Thanks for coming, by the way."

The evening wore on, and it was all Tony could do not to look at his watch. Dawn seemed revolted by some of the stories Neil told about their time at MIT, so Tony took great pleasure in describing every detail of the time Neil got so drunk that he fell off the balcony of the Physics building and landed on Professor Brendon's vintage Chevy.

He had to get his amusement somewhere; the kids' game was boring, the piñata had already exploded, so there was no entertainment factor there, and-

Oh, no.

The parents were here.

The whispering started up as soon as they saw him, a beefy, red-faced man striding towards him with a disturbingly friendly smile on his face.

Ugh.

And then it was the usual round of 'Hello, Mr. Stark' and 'I'm so pleased to meet you' and 'I respect your work so much-" and the mothers making eyes at him with every word.

Thank God for the kids, who charged over the minute they saw their parents, wailing about they didn't want to go home.

Children were good for one thing: distractions.

"Do you want to go somewhere else?"

He looked down as Sarah tugged at his sleeve, jerking her head at the house. He inclined his head. Sarah grinned again, bounded to the glass door and pulled it open, harrying the dog into the kitchen and closing it in. He followed her into the living room, books scattered everywhere.

"So, you're my godfather?"

"Yeah; don't tell anyone, though. I have a reputation to uphold."

"My dad says you build bombs," Sarah said, clearing the overstuffed leather armchair with a swing of her arm and pointing her chin at it. He took a seat and sank into it- it was one of those evil armchairs that didn't let you up again once you sat down, and he resigned himself to a long battle with it in the near future.

"That's an oversimplification," he muttered, wishing he had his wine glass. Sarah plopped down on the coffee table, crossing her legs in front of her. "Shouldn't you be saying goodbye to your friends?"

"Nah, I'm just going to see them at school tomorrow," she said. Weird, how direct she was. "So what do you make?"

"Er. You actually want to know?"

He was pretty sure that normal ten-year-olds didn't want to hear about missiles, arc reactors, and transistor technology.

"Yeah; it sounds cool."

"Well, it is pretty cool," he agreed, glancing out the window and hunkering down as the parents milled about, all obviously hoping for a glimpse at him. What the hell- if he was trapped in here until they went away, he could at least talk about something he found interesting.

"The newest unmanned aerial vehicle we have's called the Black Widow- don't ask me who picked the name, because I certainly didn't- and it's a Tier II plus. It's got Hellfire missiles…"

Sarah sat on the coffee table and listened- and even though it was obvious that she only understood every third word he was saying, which was more than he'd expected, she somehow managed to ask good questions- for half an hour.

It was nice to talk to someone who was honestly interested in what he did without having to make a sales pitch, unlike when he was talking to the generals and the CEOs who were only interested in what it did, and not in how he'd managed to build it, or why it did what it did.

He almost found himself regretful when the gawking parents piled into their Hummers and drove into the dim red light of an Austin fall evening and Neil and Dawn came back in, carrying Sarah's gifts.

"Having fun?" Dawn said, an undercurrent of… something in her voice as she looked at the two of them. Neil, oblivious, swooped down on Sarah, planting a kiss on her forehead that made her groan and inch away.

"Yeah," Sarah said, shoving Neil away, "he told me about the Canaan missile and-"

Ohhh, crap.

Dawn did not look happy.

Tony wrenched himself up out of the chair, brushed off his pants, and turned around. "Well, I'd better get going; the company's liable to fall apart without me there, you know."

"Of course," Neil said, smirking, Sarah grabbing a thick book with a dragon on the cover from the stack in his arms.

Presents!

"Here you go." He'd almost managed to forget the check, and rooted around in the inside pocket of his jacket for a moment, fishing out the crumpled envelope. "Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thanks for coming," Sarah said, passing the envelope with the check to Dawn without even glancing at it. Kind of funny, how kids didn't care about money at all.

"Thanks for having me," he said as they shook hands, relieved when Sarah didn't try to go in for a hug but smiled instead, waving as he left.

Then he escaped out the front door and into the limo, where Happy regarded him with amused eyes.

"Have fun, boss?"

"What do you think?" he bit out as he poured himself a White Russian.

Although, he mused, in a strange way, he had liked talking to Sarah.

It was probably because of Austin's weirdness.

Tony sent her another check for her eleventh birthday, enclosed with a note scribbled on an old receipt. The note had an email address, and finished,

Here's my personal email, now that you're old enough to be interesting. Don't bother me too much.

Sarah knew Tony wrote it: only he would be so crass.

But she didn't bother him; she wrote him every two months. They were short emails, a page at most, little updates on her school work, on her family- once in a while she wrote about her dreams for the future.

He never responded; she didn't even know if he read them.

When she was thirteen, she slipped in a sentence about a boy she liked. He was a football player, blond and blue-eyed, with one of those dimples in his chin. She thought he looked like Captain America.

In less than an hour, an email was sitting in her inbox.

You are not dating a jock, even if he does resemble Captain America. Couldn't you get someone in the theater department or something? They have all the best booze.

Sarah sat and stared at the screen for a moment. Had Tony forgotten her age again? But then… it was kind of nice to have someone treat her like an adult.

And it meant that he read them. Even if he didn't respond, even if he didn't care, he read them.

A warm glow flowered in her stomach as she smiled, traced the letters on the screen with her finger, and hit 'save.'

"Oh my God," her mom breathed at dinner one night. Sarah twisted around to see the T.V. and dropped her fork.

Her godfather was on the screen- not that was unusual, he was on television all the time, usually in circumstances that made her parents mutter about appropriateness- but this time he was surrounded by masked men armed with guns, screaming in Arabic.

Terrorists.

Tony looked dazed and bloody, his face swollen, but he was still recognizable. The bottom of her stomach fell into darkness at the fear on his face, and she swallowed hard as yellow words scrolled across the bottom of the screen:

'-kill the arms dealer, Tony Stark-'

"Tony?" she whispered. "Mom-"

"Sarah," her mom said after looking at her dad- Sarah hated those looks, those glances that said 'we know something you don't'-

"Go to bed, honey, okay?"

She dragged herself upstairs and yanked her pajamas on, curling up underneath the covers.

Sarah clutched her stuffed, worn bunny to her chest- she couldn't muster the energy to be ashamed at being thirteen years old and needing a stuffed bunny- and let a few tears burn their way down her cheeks, sobs stifled in her throat.

She heard the bedroom door open, felt her dad sit on the bed beside her, didn't open her eyes.

"They're going to get him back, okay? Don't worry," he said, and she could hear the tired attempt at comfort in his voice, "he's gotten out of worse scrapes than this before."

'They didn't have guns before.'

Her father put a hand on her shoulder, hesitated like he wanted to say something more, and then took the plunge.

"And if something bad happens-"

'Nothing's going to happen.'

He trailed off.

She said nothing.

Her dad sighed, and she felt his weight leave the bed, the door closing behind him.

Then voices in the hallway.

"She's pretty broken up. Wouldn't even talk to me."

"I don't understand why," her mom said. "I mean, she's only met the man three times, and two of those times she was too young to remember. Not that he's a bad man, or a bad godfather-"

"He's not a bad man, but he's not the best godfather," her father agreed. "He hasn't been as involved as I would've hoped."

Sarah bit her lip and snuggled down into her soccer-ball-print covers.

Yeah, he only came to her tenth birthday party, and sent her a check every year, and most of the time he didn't even write the checks, and when he answered her emails, which was hardly ever, they were short answers-

But he was hers.

It took a long time for her to go to sleep, and when she did, she dreamed of the fear in his eyes.

Her parents died. It was a plane crash- a simple, stupid thing that could happen to anybody.

The next week was a stormy blur of grief, broken by the arrival of Pepper Potts, Tony's secretary, the day before the funeral. She didn't really know why Pepper was here, but Pepper was something different, someone who didn't look at her with shock and horror in her eyes, someone who simply knelt and gave her a hug and let her snuffle into her expensive blouse.

The next morning, as she walked into the church, she wished Tony was there. She had only met him once but she remembered him as having a ready smirk, reeking of superiority, but he could talk for hours about his latest project, and he talked to her like an adult. She had liked listening to him talk, wished he was here so he could babble about Hellfire missiles and she could pretend that she was somewhere, anywhere, other than there in St. Mary's Cathedral at her parent's funeral.

But he wasn't, and Pepper was all she had. Pepper stood next to her, tall and porcelain and beautiful like the picture of Joan of Arc in the stained glass. Colored beams of light swirled through the air, thick with incense, as the priest and the acolytes processed to the front, past the white coffins that contained all that was good in the world.

Sarah grabbed Pepper's hand, squeezed, and Pepper held her tight as Sarah clenched her eyes shut and sang "Amazing Grace" through a clogged throat.

Then they got in a limousine, the chauffeur apparently known to Pepper. She called him "Happy."

Sarah wanted to kick him for having that stupid name when there was nothing- nothingnothingnothing ever again- to be happy about.

"Have you heard anything?" she blurted as soon as the chauffeur closed the door behind them. "About Tony, I mean?"

Pepper stilled for a moment, startled, then sat down across from her, her black dress blending 

into the leather as she tried to smile, shrugged, the expression watery.

"No; the military's identified the group that captured him, but they have no idea where they're located." She leaned forward, took Sarah's hands- Pepper's hands were smooth and white and smelled like lavender, and Sarah wanted to jerk away, to not dirty Pepper's hands with her snot- and whispered,

"It means a lot that you asked."

Sarah stared into her brown eyes for a while and saw grief that could maybe match her own.

She opened the minifridge and got a bottle of water, tugging her skirt down. It was too short, and it itched, and her eyes hurt- and her parents were dead- and she twisted the cap off and glowered out the back of the window at the hearse and the police on motorcycles, escorting her parents to their grave.

Pepper tapped away on her Blackberry for a few minutes while Sarah swished the water around in her mouth, the leather of the seat she was resting her head on sticking to her chin. The sound was comforting- it made her think that maybe she could turn around and see her mom there, pencil tucked behind one ear as she worked on a case.

But it was just Pepper, who she'd only met two times, once when she was a baby.

She twisted around. "Could I see that?"

Pepper handed it over, no questions asked, and Sarah pulled her legs up, logged into her email account, and laboriously typed out a message to Tony, who would never see it.

It was short:

I miss you.

They arrived at the graveyard, and she wished Tony were here to dig his elbow into her side and talk to her like an adult; to not hug her or offer comfort; to be his crude annoying self and make it so she wouldn't cry. She wrapped her arms around herself as she tromped toward the pavilion where the other mourners were gathered, and Pepper followed, offering a hand.

Sarah didn't take it as she came to a stop by the edge of the grave, and she stared down into the hole.

She could deal.

"-and there was this transistor, right? It was a piece of crap; I don't know how it got past quality control, but it did- I went down there and threatened them with becoming test subjects for the new medical products wing- so-"

And because she was thirteen and surrounded by adults dressed in black and imagining Tony Stark's voice in her ear, she didn't cry as the coffins disappeared into blackness.

Tony belched, tasting the McDonald's cheeseburger again, and flopped down on his couch. Pepper followed, took her usual seat across the coffee table.

"So, what've I missed? Besides the election for a new president of the board and Britney Spears' latest travesty, of course."

Pepper ran her fingers through her hair, messing up her bun- he wished she'd do that more often, it was cute- and flipped through her clipboard, launching into a spiel on the new missile launchers, nuclear reactor casings, et cetera. Tony tuned out, concentrating instead on how great it was to have a full belly and a laboratory waiting for him downstairs, Pepper's voice a soothing background hum.

Until something dragged him straight out of his floating and back into the real world.

"Wait, what?"

Pepper rolled her eyes. "You weren't listening at all, were you?"

"Yes- no- okay, I didn't quite get all of it, but what was that last bit?"

"Neil and Dawn Roslin died in a plane crash three weeks after you were kidnapped."

'That's what I thought you said. Damn.'

Then he blinked, bolted back upright. "What about the kid?"

"You mean Sarah?"

He winced. It really didn't make him look very concerned when he forgot her name.

"Yeah. What happened to her? Is she okay? She has relatives, right?"

Not that he didn't feel bad- he did, she was a good kid, shy and kind of awkward, but she didn't mind that he never called and she had some fairly humorous descriptions of life- but he didn't have the time or energy or desire to have a kid living in his house.

But God, losing both your parents at once; he lost his parents when he was twenty, and although he'd been an adult then, it still remained the worst moment of his life.

He couldn't imagine the pain Sarah was in.

Pepper nodded. "She's okay. There weren't any relatives willing or able to take her, so she's 

now a ward of the state. You're paying for her to attend a boarding school in Massachusetts- Welton Academy, it's very prestigious. She's settled in, although we haven't figured out what to do about summers, yet. I think she's going to choose a camp to go to for the summer, and you can pay."

"She's at school? Good. Thanks for setting that up, by the way."

"She was devastated by the loss," Pepper said, twirling a pen in her fingers. "I attended the funeral in your stead." She bit her lip, stared at her clipboard. "You know the first thing she asked me?"

Tony propped himself up on his working arm. "What?"

Pepper's eyes were steady. "'Have you heard anything about Tony?' That was all she wanted to know."

Oh, damn.

He was a horrible godfather; why did she care?

Why did she care, when he was an alcoholic, loner engineer who only liked five people in the world besides himself, and never answered her emails and sent her a check once a year?

That night, he checked his email. There were two from Sarah.

I miss you, dated the day of her parents' funeral.

He bit the inside of his lip.

And one from a few hours ago; she must have seen the news of his homecoming on CNN or something.

I'm glad you're back.

He tapped his fingers on the desk for a long moment before he typed out,

If you ever need to talk, I'm here.

Tony sat and stared at the message for a few seconds, remembering how awful those first few months of grief had been, how the alcohol had become his best friend and had stayed ever since.

And before he could talk himself out of it, he hit 'send.'

Sarah didn't hear that Tony was Iron Man until after the fact; her Chemistry teacher came rushing up to her during her passing period with a newspaper, shoved it into her hands, and left, already babbling on his cellphone about 'vigilantism' and 'this is not what the Founding Fathers meant when they said we had the right to bear arms.'

She hid away in the bathroom, read the article, then pulled out her Blackberry.

A message from Tony was already waiting in her inbox.

I guess the cat's out of the bag.

She stuffed the paper under her arm and typed,

Well, if there's going to be someone running around in a really awesome suit being a vigilante, I guess I'd prefer it to be you.

The Blackberry 'binged.'

Your grudging confidence warms the cold, dark recesses of my heart.

And nothing more about the matter was said.

"Hi," Pepper said as Sarah stumbled out of the limousine, blinded by the Malibu sunlight. Pepper's stilettos clicked on the pavement as she took three steps forward and enfolded Sarah in a hug. It was warm and comforting and smelled like lavender, and for a moment Sarah had to blink tears away.

"How was your flight?" Pepper asked as they separated, smiling. Happy grabbed her bag and hauled it inside, leaving Sarah blinking after him. Really, she could do it herself.

And wow.

Sure, she'd known Tony was loaded- he'd have to be to send her ten thousand dollars every year and pay for Welton- but that was only intellectually. It was an entirely different thing to have the proof of his wealth just sitting in front of her like a bright white spaceship perched on the cliff. 'Jesus.'

"Huh," she muttered, before she whipped around, remembering that Pepper asked a question. "Oh! It was good; I worked on my summer reading."

"What book?"

"'The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,'" Sarah said, grimacing. Pepper laughed, ushered her up the steps.

"I'm assuming you don't like it?"

"That'd be a safe bet," Sarah said as the door swished open and they stepped into a white foyer. A fountain tinkled beside the staircase, and the ocean shone steel-blue through the huge windows. It was a lot nicer than her double at Welton, although she did have one of the best rooms.

There were advantages to having Tony Stark as a godfather.

"Are you hungry? I ordered you a Hawaiian pizza, your favorite." Pepper pulled her into the kitchen- all black granite and steel- then stopped, blinking at the empty island. "Or not." She frowned, went over to a computer on the wall, and said,

"Jarvis, did Tony take the pizza?"

The computer talked.

"Yes, he did, Miss Potts."

The house was talking. More than that, the house was amused. Sarah plopped down at the kitchen table and stared as Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering, "The man's got billions of dollars, he didn't need to steal food."

Sarah figured this must be a common occurrence.

Pepper talked to the house- Jarvis- again, "Could you tell him that Sarah's here?"

"Right away, Miss Potts."

Pepper turned away from the computer and took a seat at the table across from her, sighing. "He's in the lab. Should be up soon, unless he's too busy."

"I don't mind," Sarah said, glancing around. Her parents had had a nice kitchen, but nothing like this. Nothing like Viking stoves and walk-in refrigerators and three wine racks.

"So how were your classes?" Pepper asked, pulling out her Blackberry. "I hope you don't mind if I answer a few emails; I'm very good at multitasking," she winked.

Sarah grinned. "You probably have to be."

"You have no idea."

They passed a pleasant half-hour talking about Welton while Pepper tapped away, her thumbs flying in beige blurs; Sarah didn't know Pepper well, but she had always thought fondly of the woman who stood beside her on the worst day of her life and didn't care about tears and snot when she took Sarah's hands.

"Just so you know, don't expect to see Tony much this week," Pepper said, glancing up from her 

phone. "He's busy down in the lab, and he's really not used to having company or being around teenagers. He does care-"

"I know he does," Sarah assured her, not sure if she was lying or not. She didn't want to be a burden, and she certainly didn't want to annoy Tony, when he was paying for her education and was letting her stay in his house.

She had asked if she could come for a week before summer camp; the house in Austin was still in her name, but she hadn't wanted to go home, because it wasn't her home anymore.

It was just a receptacle for memories that could only hurt.

"So if he's distant, just remember that he really is trying," Pepper finished.

Footsteps clattered outside the kitchen, and Tony peered in, carrying a pizza box. He was wearing a white wifebeater and holey jeans: Sarah tried not to stare, but it was so bizarre to see him dressed so casually when she'd only ever seen him in Armani suits.

Oh. The arc reactor- she only knew what little he had told her; just that it kept him alive and that models didn't find it sexy- glimmered blue-white from beneath the cloth. It was kind of cool; she wanted to poke it, but stared at his face instead.

"Hi, Sarah-" she waved lamely at him, "-Miss Potts, Fury just sent me an email. They're sending me some modifications for the suit that I approved; did you cancel the meeting with the head of R&D, by the way?"

"Yes." Pepper's eyes sharpened, her jaw firming. "Is that the pizza?"

"Huh?" Tony glanced down at the box as if he'd forgotten that he was carrying it. "Oh. Yeah. There's a slice left, if you want it?" He gestured in Sarah's direction, and she took it from him. He grinned, scratched at his beard. "Welcome, by the way. I don't know which room you've got; probably the one by mine."

"Thanks for the pizza," Sarah said around her mouthful of cheese and pineapple.

"I didn't know Miss Potts ordered it." Tony shrugged. "But hey, Hawaiian pizza? You have good taste."

"Thanks." A warm glow of happiness suffused through her stomach at his praise. Tony came further into the kitchen and leaned his elbows on the island, his gaze sharp and dark. He smelled of smoke.

"So…" he said. The two of them stared silently at each other for a long minute, searching for something to talk about. Pepper was being completely unhelpful and completely silent, staring at Tony with something vaguely resembling a smirk on her face.

"So," she echoed. Tony rolled his eyes.

"You want to see your room?"

"Sure," she said, finishing off the pizza and following him down a hallway.

"There you go; remote's in the bedside drawer." Tony was fidgety, shifting from foot to foot. He really was unused to having company. "And I've got some stuff to do in the lab, so…"

He escaped down into the basement, leaving Sarah staring after him, bemused.

"Well, it'll give me time to catch up on my reading," she muttered, turning to grab her backpack and sack out on the bed.

It was definitely going to be a boring week.

Sitting on the couch was like sitting on a cloud; her butt sank so far in that she couldn't have gotten up even if she wanted to.

But thankfully, she didn't want to.

It was just her and Tony slouching on the couch and watching some inane celebrity show on MTV, her burrito sitting half-eaten on her stomach, his drink on his knee as he stared with half-open eyes at the television. They were both in sweatpants and T-shirts, although his T-shirt had several unidentifiable stains spattered across it.

"You know, I did her once," he mentioned, pointing with his fork at one of the women in the background of a film clip. Sarah blinked, tilting her head as she inspected the woman on the screen. She was busty and blonde and leggy, and was doing something to a stripper pole that should probably have been outlawed in forty states.

Although it was kind of funny that she was fourteen years old and sitting with her godfather, one of the richest men in the world and an actual superhero, and watching a blonde chick practically fornicate for the cameras.

"Really?" she said, for lack of anything else to say.

"Oh, yeah. It was great," he gestured with his drink and practically spilled it.

"That's… nice."

Tony blinked, then suddenly seemed to realize that he was talking to a fourteen-year-old, and shut his mouth, staring ahead fixedly.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them as Sarah pushed her falling-apart burrito around her plate.

Goddamnit.

Then it was a new show, this one featuring a wizened black rapper with gold teeth who was apparently trying to choose one of twelve women to be his wife. It was vulgar and absolutely asinine, and the funniest thing in the world was listening to Tony trying to control his disdain.

By the time two of the girls started clawing at each other's hair, Tony muttered,

"Even I wouldn't go for any of them."

Then one of them pooped onscreen. Sarah turned in time to see a piece of burrito fall from Tony's open mouth.

"Whatever happened to actual television?" she muttered, stabbing at her wounded burrito.

Tony shook himself. "You don't like these kinds of shows?"

"Uh, not really, no. I think they're stupid."

"Oh. I thought this kind of stuff-" he gestured vaguely at the television, "-is what teenagers like nowadays. You know, Britney Spears and reality television…" he trailed off, staring.

He looked very confused. Sarah was just as confused as he was.

"I dunno. I only watch the Discovery Channel."

Tony blinked, put down the glass of… some sort of alcohol he'd been nursing all night, and flipped the channel. "You like Mythbusters?"

She grinned, scooted upright just in time to see Buster the crash test dummy fall off a crane into a harbor and explode into his component pieces. "I love Mythbusters! The ones with the explosions were the best, though; it's really boring when they're testing psychic stuff, like the pyramid power episode."

Tony scoffed, smirking, before he set his drink aside.

"Did you see the one where they blew up a cement truck?"

"Yeah, I was kind of disappointed."

They watched Mythbusters together, Tony expressing his love of Jamie's walrus-stache at every opportunity, and cheered at the explosions, booed at the commercial breaks.

It was fun, Sarah realized, to listen to him dissect every bit of science in the show. He was manic when he talked, gesturing, his voice rising and falling.

Then the show ended, the theme song plonking out of the speakers, and Sarah yawned, rubbing at her eyes, the jetlag settling on her shoulders like a heavy stone.

"Going to bed?"

"Yeah; I've got some reading to do in Miss Jane Pittman."

"English, ick." He turned the television off and shoved himself upright, leaving the plates on the table. "I only took two English classes in college- because analyzing literature's such bull; you could say anything you want and have it be right."

"Hey, don't make fun of my chosen profession," Sarah muttered as she worked herself to a standing position, the couch only giving up its grip when she ripped herself free, catching herself on the table and glancing at Tony.

He was silent, staring at her for a long second, as if in serious thought.

"Um, my room's just down the hall, so you know, if you need something or, I don't know, your laptop explodes, you can come in. Just… knock first, but I'm usually not there. I sleep in the lab a lot. And I've keyed Jarvis to let you into the lab for the week, and-"

He was trying.

He cared.

Sarah smiled, darted forward, and gave him a hug, her cheek smushed up against the arc reactor. She could feel it, silent and cold, against her skin. Tony was warm, but skinny, his ribs poking against the shirt, and she could feel scars beneath her fingers.

He stiffened at the first contact, then reached up, gingerly enfolding her in his arms, his chin resting on top of her head. He smelled of smoke and engine oil.

And the peace lasted only a second, and was gone. She pulled away, straightened her shirt, and cleared her throat.

"Thanks, Tony. I'll see you in the morning."

"See you," he echoed as she headed to her room, already hearing him clattering down the stairs to his lab.

They had something.

And even if the relationship between her and her godfather was only based on mutual love of high explosives, that was enough.

Pepper went into the living room, pausing at the sight of Tony and Sarah.

Tony was sprawled out on the couch with a tablet PC, drafting a new modification to his repulsors, and he was muttering imprecations and formulas as he worked, ignoring the uncorked bottle of wine on the coffee table.

Sarah was sprawled out on the floor on her back, her feet resting on the armchair, with a notebook and several binders of notes scattered around her, the end of her pen in her mouth as she read her book.

Pepper hid a smile at the little pencils embroidered on Sarah's socks.

"Hi, Pepper," Sarah said, staring at her upside-down, giving an anemic wave. Tony glanced up long enough to make a muffled noise of greeting before returning to his schematic.

"Have you two had dinner yet?"

"Sarah made some Tex-Mex; she called it…"

"Frijoles charros," Sarah said, rolling over onto her front.

"Yeah-" Tony was distracted by something his tablet did, "Oh for fuck's sake-"

Pepper twitched, glancing at Sarah, who underlined something in her book, scribbling an annotation in the margins.

Well, she had been here three days already; she was probably used to Tony's manner of speaking by now.

"There's some left in the kitchen, if you want it?" Sarah pushed herself up off the ground and padded into the kitchen, ladling the beans into a bowl as Pepper followed, ignoring Tony's groan of frustration.

"Are you doing okay?" Pepper asked as she took a bite; Tony's house wasn't exactly equipped to amuse teenagers, and since Tony was hiding away in his lab, then she couldn't imagine that Sarah was having much fun at all. Sarah had settled in well, though: she was unobtrusive, didn't go into the lab, and left Tony alone during the day, preferring to hole up in her room with her summer homework.

"I'm fine," Sarah waved away her concerns, putting the pot in the sink.

"We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail last night, and Batman Begins the night before that." She glanced at Pepper, grinning. "Did you know that Tony can quote the entire Black Knight scene by heart?"

"No, but I'm not surprised," Pepper said, joining Sarah and Tony in the living room and settling in the armchair with her laptop.

The TV hummed in the background as Pepper answered emails, Tony fiddled with his parts, and Sarah scribbled outlines in her notebook, the moon rising over the Pacific, the lights of the other houses sparkling like fallen stars.

It was… peaceful.

Pepper stayed after-hours the next three nights, the three of them spending time together- in the kitchen as Tony made scrambled eggs with ham and cheese, one of the few dishes he could make; in the living room with Sarah snuggled into the end of the couch, curled around the popcorn bowl as she and Tony watched The Meaning of Life while Pepper stared at them over the top of her newspaper- and she thought that honestly…

Sarah's presence had been good for Tony; her boss was, in reality, a very lonely person. Sarah gave him somebody to talk to that didn't know everything about him already, someone who wasn't associated with business, someone who wasn't interested in him only because he was rich, or famous, or Iron Man; someone who sang the songs from Monty Python along with him.

Then the week was over and Sarah was gone, on her way to summer camp.

And if Tony snapped at her more often the day after Sarah left, Pepper didn't mention it.

At her high school graduation, she watched him schmooze effortlessly, shaking hands, smiling, cracking jokes.

"Let's get out of here," he muttered as he passed by, grabbing her hand.

"Sorry," she said, "I know you don't like being asked for money."

"Whatever." They ducked into his limousine, and he dived for the scotch, the wedding ring on 

his finger- he and Pepper had finally married- flashing in the light.

"Thanks for coming."

"Not a problem."

They drove to the outskirts of campus, Sarah teasing him about the threads of silver she could see at his temples- tokens of a life bedeviled by pain and alcohol and stress- while he insulted her choice to major in English.

"If you'd just majored in nuclear engineering, I could've used you at SI. But no, you had to go for the liberal arts."

"Better than looking like Reed Richards."

"Hey! I am much more useful and well-liked than that walking posterboy for Asperger's. Did you know that he gave the Human Torch a glass of water distilled from his urine and made him drink it without telling him what it was?"

Happy said nothing, but she could hear muffled snorts coming from the front.

The limousine stopped at the old metal gate and Sarah sighed, turning and reaching out for a hug.

"Thanks," she whispered into his ear, feeling the arc reactor press against her chest once more, smelling his cologne, his arms warm and strong around her, "for everything."

Tony blinked hard as she pulled back, and Sarah pretended she didn't see, playing with a thread on her polyester-covered miter board.

"I'm… sorry I wasn't there more often," he said.

Sarah shrugged, smiled, and told the truth.

"You were there when I needed you."

A/N: All reviews are cherished!