Chapter 10
Tony
Going to the lab had probably been a bad idea. But with Annabeth out of the city for the day, he needed a distraction. AC/DC was blasting as loud as FRIDAY would allow him to play it; the attention grabbing music was the only thing keeping him together at the moment. His hands shook as he tried to reattach the repulsor to his suit. He knew he should have slept last night, but he’d been too anxious about Annabeth being out of his reach all day today.
It was fine. He just needed another coffee and he’d be good as new.
Besides, Peter was with her, and that kid could lift a bus. She’d be fine.
The wrench slipped out of his hand and he could feel his mind spiraling. His lungs felt like they were shrinking in on themselves. He was on the verge of hyperventilating by the time he got himself to a seated position on the floor. Laying back so he could feel the chill of the flooring along his spine, he could practically feel the tension in his body melt away. FRIDAY walked him through the breathing exercises that he’d programmed Jarvis to help him with after the battle of New York. He hadn’t needed them in a while, but he was really glad now that he’d remembered to put that in her protocols.
Staring at the ceiling, he realized there was a lot he didn’t know about Annabeth. She fought insanely well, had tons of scars, and hated being away from Percy. That was about all he knew about her life.
Sure, he knew that she liked blue colored food because of some inside joke with Percy, or how much of a hassle she thought her curly hair was, as well as a lot of other little things, but he didn’t know about her life. She always managed to change the subject when it came up. The one time she had slipped up and mentioned her mom, his brain had short circuited and he didn't process the implications of what she had said until after she had left.
He didn't even know who her mom was, so how did she? She’d been left in the doorway of his Malibu mansion with no note or clue as to who she was. His security cameras hadn't even picked anything up.
So how did she know her mom?
The elevator dinged, interrupting his train of thought. From his vantage point on the floor, he could see Peter and Annabeth walking over to him. Annabeth looked like she’d been crying a little, but Peter looked like he was practically vibrating with excitement. She rolled her eyes a little as Peter skipped over and peered down on him.
“Mr. Stark, what are you doing on the floor? If you want to take a nap, the rug in the living room is much more comfortable.”
“First of all, why were you sleeping on the rug? You have your own room,” he said, exasperated. Peter, however, only shrugged.
“Floor’s comfier sometimes.”
“Ok, I’m going to ignore that because you make no sense. I was on the floor because my back was cramping from hunching over to work on my suit. Damn, I’m getting old.”
Peter stuck out his hand to help him up, and he gladly took it. Once he was vertical again, he let himself really look at Annabeth. She didn't look like she was hurt at all, and the remnants of tear tracks on her face were likely just from saying goodbye to her boyfriend.
She was ok. She came back. She wasn’t hurt.
Taking a deep breath, he migrated back to his workstation. He was doing his best to make small talk with the two teenagers about their little field trip, but neither of them gave up any hints as to what the camp was actually like. Peter seemed like he could barely refrain from talking about it, but a few sharp looks from Annabeth kept him quiet. Maybe he could weasel some answers out of him later when Annabeth wasn’t around.
Eventually, they settled down, and he asked if they would want to work on the Iron Man suit with him. Peter, of course, enthusiastically nodded and quickly rolled a chair over for himself. Annabeth was more hesitant, but she too nodded after a moment and went to go get a chair for herself as well. She never spent much time in the lab, and when she did, she only worked on little projects that she chose. He was trying to be chill about it, but his heart soared at having his daughter by his side, learning from him.
The next week flew by, and while he was feeling more at peace than he had in a long time from spending so much time with Annabeth, he could see the strain that Percy’s absence was putting on her. There were bags under her eyes at all times, and when she did sleep, she was plagued by nightmares.
He wanted nothing more than to be able to help and comfort her, but every time he tried to ask her about them she deflected the question and changed the topic.
It hurt that she didn't trust him enough to tell him, but she had clearly been through some shit that she didn't want to talk about, so he let it be.
She’d tell him when she was ready.
Annabeth
Spending time with Tony was more enjoyable than she thought it would be. He was insanely smart and his lab was super tripped out. She liked architecture more than engineering, but she could still keep up with him and Peter. A few days ago he had shown them the inner workings of an arc reactor before telling them to try and replicate it. She’d figured most of it out, but the core was tripping her up and she could tell Peter was struggling with it as well.
Maybe it was time for a break. Getting up, she stretched and headed over to the elevator. She would have invited Peter, but he had his headphones in and looked to be in the zone. Tony and Pepper were in a meeting for at least the next two hours, so she was expecting the penthouse to be empty.
Alone time was not in the cards for her today though. When the doors opened, all she could do was sigh as she spotted Athena sitting at the breakfast bar.
“Hey Mom,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you, Annabeth. Where’s your annoying other half?”
“He’s on a quest to find a new camper,” she responded with an eye roll, “What do you want?”
“What, I can’t visit my favorite daughter?”
“Hmm, how about the fact that I found out you lied to me about my parentage and allowed me to grow up with the Chases, who hated and kidnapped me, and never once even attempted to tell me that he wasn’t my father,” she spat. “So no, I don’t think you get to just pop in to visit me after all that. Especially when most of your visits just end with you needing me to do something for you.”
“... What are you talking about? Dr. Chase is your father”
“No, he’s not. I’m Tony Stark's kidnapped daughter. We did a DNA and a fingerprint test.”
Athena's face scrunched in confusion.
“That doesn't make sense. But I can’t–I can’t remember. I never thought much of my lack of memories of meeting Dr. Chase, but now that you say that, the fuzziness of my memory seems off. My memory is near perfect, I shouldn’t have gaps like this. Annabeth, trust me, I wouldn't have lied to you about something like this. I was unaware that Dr. Chase wasn’t your father. Something–more likely someone–is messing with my memory.”
She pursed her lips, contemplating the implications of what her mother had just told her. If Athena truly didn't know, and someone had tampered with her memory, there was another player at work here. Someone really hadn’t wanted Tony to have her, and that someone was clearly dangerous if they could tamper with an Olympian’s memory. The other possibility was that Athena was lying, but she didn't think that was the case.
“Ok, I believe you.”
Athena smiled warmly, waving her over to sit next to her.
“Now, what have you been working on recently? Have you designed anything cool?”
“I haven't really been doing much architecture stuff because Tony’s more into engineering so he’s teaching me more of that type of stuff. He showed us how his arc reactor worked the other day and now he wants us to try and build our own.”
“Us?”
“Oh! Peter is his protege slash mentee that is also really smart and works in the lab too. I actually go to school with him and we were friends even before we found out I was Tony’s daughter. He’s pretty cool, and his girlfriend MJ is great too.”
“I’m glad you’ve made friends outside of camp, and that Tony is being good to you. I’m sorry for what you had to go through, Annabeth. I promise you I will figure out who messed with my memory and took you from your father. I must go now, but know that I love you,” her mom said, getting up to press a kiss to her forehead before disappearing.
She sighed and got up to grab the snack that she’d originally come up here for. Opening the fridge, she spied a yogurt and grabbed it. She’d barely grabbed a spoon out of the drawer before her lovely alone time was disturbed once again, this time by her father.
“Annabeth–oh thank God– are you ok? What happened?”
“What are you talking about, I’m fine. Nothing happened, I just came up for a snack.”
“The audio and video from this area glitched out for a couple minutes and something was interfering with FRIDAYS protocol to inform me. I thought you were being attacked.”
“I’m ok, nothing happened. Just a false alarm,” she assured him. It felt weird for her to lie to him like this, but it wasn’t like she was just going to tell him her goddess mother dropped by for a visit. Besides, he was already breathing heavily and had a slightly crazed look in his eye. There was no need to freak him out even more by saying someone had gotten past his security.
“Alrighty then, do you want to show me what you’ve gotten on your arc reactor so far?”
“Don’t you have a meeting to get back to,” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, but I already ran out of it so I really don’t want to go back. Well, I didn’t want to go in the first place, so I guess this was the perfect excuse to get out of it,” he snickered.
Okay then, she thought, guess we’re going back to the lab. She hoped he wasn’t disappointed in what she had so far. When she had started caring about what he thought of her work, she wasn't sure, but it scared her a little to think about the fact that she wanted him to be proud of her.
Peter looked up when they entered the lab, smiling.
“Pepper’s going to be sooooo mad at you for skipping out on another important meeting.”
“Shut it, mentee, and enjoy my presence,” Tony said jokingly.
All three of them burst out laughing at his tone, and Tony made his way over to her station, picking up her partially completed arc reactor.
The seconds seemed to drag on forever as she waited for his judgment.
“You did really well with this! I can see you got a little tripped up on the core, but that's the hardest part by far, so I kind of expected you guys to get a little stumped on it. Good job,” he finished, holding up his hand for a high five.
Smiling, she sat down at her station as he went over to check Peter’s work and let out a long breath.
She was glad Tony was her father.