Maria Carbonell and Martha Kane Part 1
“I understand, she will be safe with me” Bruce exchanged a few more words before hanging up with a sigh, “Alfred, prepare four guest-rooms”
“Will it be for more or less than a week, sir?”
“Just a couple of days to properly heal, after that she will need protection from the entire world and there is only one place where that is possible”
~*~
The tired and pale looking woman that got out from the black car wasn’t the grinning and tanned young girl that Alfred remembered; life shaped her in horrible ways, betrayal torn her heart apart too many times and it seems that Master Bruce would no longer stand for it. Good.
“Ms. Anastasia” Alfred counted it as a win that she still reacted with a comical grimace at her full first name even if it was waned and barely a twist of the lips.
“Hi, Alfred” she didn’t even try to force a smile out and Alfred had to suppress his own scowl at the defeated picture she made.
“I take it that Dr. Banner and Mr. Parker will be arriving shortly?”
“Yeah…he…Bruce is taking the jet from Tokyo, Donnie is with him and Peter will just talk to his teachers before coming” nodding, the butler took the bags while Mr. Hogan carried a sleeping Royce Keener inside, her long blonde hair a mess and Harley Keener following tiredly behind.
~*~
“Toni will be safe there” that was the chant that Pepper was almost breathing for and all Rhodey could do was nod and try to get her to loosen up the grip she had on her StarkPad.
Ever since Carol managed to get a squad out to Siberia and retrieved a severely debilitated Toni Stark, Pepper’s hands didn’t stop shaking, so much to do and so many heads to roll, she almost snarled at the state her friend was in.
But Toni was Toni and before she was even fully healed, she finished Rhodey’s prosthetics, managed to push the first amends on the Accords and finished the last batch of projects from SI board, it wasn’t until the woman collapsed not only from exhaustion but also because of the absurd quantity of energy and nutrients that the Extremis was draining from her in order to heal her body that Pepper decided that enough was enough, Rhodey had a lot on his plate with physical therapy that left him heaving four times a week and still dealing with his situation in the Air Force since he was relatively back on his feet, Carol was working tirelessly on the Accords and still working for the Air Force, her new rank of Colonel barely gave her enough free time to sleep and eat. Who else was left?
Vision was still working on his own set of issues after what happened in the Compound and the airport and Peter was 16 fucking years old who almost lost the last family he had left.
But Tony had other family left, didn’t she? Maria Stark nee Carbonell had a cousin through her mother, Martha Wayne nee Kane and she also had a child, Bruce Wayne. Pepper managed to get the full story out of Rhodey.
Bruce Wayne and Toni were pretty close; he was almost five years older but by the time Toni skipped enough grades to get into MIT, Bruce was also accepted into Princeton. Maria Stark brought Toni to spend a week every other vacation in Wayne Manor even after Wayne’s parents died and they spent college years alternating between Princeton and Boston. They had a huge fight that not even Rhodey knew what it was about and they never spoke again, then Bruce went missing for years after graduating, no word from him until he showed up out of nowhere back on Gotham at 25 years old, they still had each other backs. Pepper knew that Toni bought many WE shares when Earl made the company public, one of her very first acts as SI’s CEO then Wayne bought them back from her.
Pepper also knew that Wayne and his influence was one of the very few things that allowed Rhodey to keep looking for Toni in Afghanistan and then he also bought a lot of SI shares when they dropped to hell level after Toni’s impromptu decision to stop manufacturing weapons so Toni could buy them back later that same year.
But that one big fight was 15 years ago, before Pepper met Tony but she was desperate enough to call him with Rhodey completely unsure about the whole thing behind her.
Yes, Bruce Wayne didn’t have a very good fame but to be fair, Toni didn’t either and if there was one thing that the media loved was to have someone to hate and Rhodey said that he trusted this guy even if his answer as to ‘why’ was a little iffy.
Whatever it was, Wayne was nothing but serious and solemn and…strangely well informed of the whole situation, Pepper frowned a little now that her heart wasn’t racing and her ears weren’t ringing.
After getting the blandest ‘ok’ Toni ever gave her for the plans Pepper laid out, her fists still shook at that, Pepper shipped her off with Happy, Harley and Royce. Pepper would give some excuse to Peter’s teachers and he would be off too, Dr. Banner was on his way back to the states with little Donnie and they would also go to Gotham, she shuddered, right, Gotham, the criminally insane infested city, thankfully Wayne said that they wouldn’t stay there for long, just enough for him to wrap things up with his own CEO. Rhodey have known and protected Toni long before Pepper was in the picture and if the Colonel has yet to say anything against what she was doing then Pepper knew that at least Toni will be with people that would look out for her.
~*~
Bruce Wayne stopped just shy of knocking at the door, Harley and Royce were already in their respective rooms, both passed out since it was almost 2 am when they got here but he knew that his cousin was still awake, years of experience with Toni, especially in college years taught him that, so he was shocked to the point of gawking that the 31 year old was in deep slumber, still in her grey matching suit and black stilettos, her hair still full of clips and twisted in a bun.
He paused at the door for a second before going in and taking off her shoes and carefully doing the same with the many hairclips holding her long threads in place and looked at Toni in person for the first time in a decade and a half. So much had changed. Not only their lives but they, Bruce Wayne and Toni Stark changed too much from the people they were before Batman and Iron Woman.
Toni would probably say that his personality didn’t change much and she would be right but now he had other reasons for his reticence, in that aspect, Toni changed a lot more. She was a lot more reserved now, kept her cards a lot closer to her chest, too many knives still sticking out of her back, her wounds still bleeding and yet she was still fighting, still trying to gain the approval of people so infinitely unworthy of her, perhaps not anymore right now. She was the prime example of ‘the more things change the more they remain the same’ maybe this whole nightmare is what she needed to get a little of the weigh off her shoulders.
He shook his head, only Toni to make him sound optimistic.
For now she needed a safe place, Bruce would wait until her godson gets here and her husband, he almost snorted, of course the infuriating girl would marry someone with the same name as him, not that he was narcissistic to the point of thinking that this was even a reason but he couldn’t help the thought that Toni probably took some amusement out of it.
He looked at her again. She was thinner, most of her muscle mass was gone, her cheekbones a little more pronounced, her tanned skin gone, shadows so dark under her eyes that looked more like the result of a punch than too many sleepless nights.
Bruce closed his eyes and still could remember the happier times before all those deaths, long before either of them tried to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves. After that night when he was 10…it hurt to even look at Aunt Maria, they didn’t look much alike, his mom and Aunt Maria, the same kindness reflected in differently light colored eyes and straight blonde hair and elegant way of carrying themselves, not much more than that but enough to make his heart twist painful every time he stared at her and then… she was also gone and Bruce wasn’t even in US to be there for Toni and he doubt that she ever fully forgave him for that, he didn’t. She was already raging mad that he just up and left without saying a word to her…or even Alfred for that matter.
All he could do now was try harder and be better and comfort himself with the thought that if she was so averse to the idea, Toni would never have come to Gotham and to Wayne Manor even if a little voice inside his head singsong that she wasn’t exactly in a state of mind to care much for where she was.