Tony Stark was tired of his daughter’s mom's bullshit.
When he found a 5-year-old on his front porch with a heavy British accent and a folder in her hand that said that she was his daughter, he didn’t believe it. Even though the exams in the folder could be fake, there wasn’t any way to deny it, the girl looked just like him, but in a female way.
It was weird at the beginning; Penny was borderline depressed over her mother basically abandoning her, and she was smart, so she knew the reason her mother stopped loving her, as the toddler put it. Tony found the story months later, and he couldn’t believe it. What mother hates their child for being something they can’t control? He knew many mutant children were abandoned, but still.
With time, they grew close. Penny was just as smart as he was and even smarter than he was at her age. The girl was a little genius. He couldn’t understand how Mary could leave her. Then it happened…
When Mary came, by the time Penny was 11, he realized something. These 6 years he had taken care of his daughter, Mary saw him as nothing more than a babysitter. That’s when he told her that he wouldn’t renounce custody of Penny, and that he would fight if he had to. She didn’t take it kindly, but that was her problem. No judge would grant her custody, Tony had video evidence of Penny being left at his house without even knocking, but Mary didn’t give up, so the battle began.
On the first hearing she tried to use his past addiction and his absence during the first five years of Penny’s life. His lawyer then gave proof of him being sober since the moment he knew about Penny and said that he couldn’t be present in Penny’s life when the mother didn’t even bother to tell him. Just like that, every argument Mary gave was destroyed by Tony’s lawyers. In the end the judge favoured Tony's side. Tony could go back to his daughter, and he allowed Mary to visit. He was happy.
That wouldn’t last long.
Mary Fitzpatrick had to admit that all this was out of spite. She knew no sane judge would give her custody of Penny and, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t want it. Mary hated her daughter’s father and she wanted to see him suffer.
At the beginning she hoped to make an easy win, considering Tony’s past, but her past was even darker. After her second loss, she decided to call for help. If she played wisely, she would have what she wanted.
There was no way Director Fury would give her the resources to make Tony Stark mad. He could say anything he wanted, but SHIELD still needed Stark’s help, both in the hero stuff and the technology. Her plan was simple, Fury knew she had a daughter she left for work but didn’t know about the father. With that she just had to ask for the money to bribe the judge and do it before Fury found out that the man he is helping defeat in court is Tony Stark. The only way it could fail is if he decided to look deep into it, but besides that everything was all right.
“Listen Director, I had to leave my daughter for SHIELD and now the father doesn’t want to let me see her.” The lie came out easy. If she felt guilty or not, that's another subject.
“All I’m asking is for you to help me get my daughter back. I left quickly and they see it as neglect. The judge won’t let me get custody of her, not without a bonus.” She finished and looked at Fury, waiting for an answer.
In the end he agreed, ordered a few agents to do the job and dismissed her.
Everything was going well.
Everything was going not well.
Tony knew the moment he stepped in that something was wrong. For starters, the smug grin on Mary’s face. Then he saw something, the little nod from the judge to Mary. In that moment he knew Mary had bribed the judge.
“She did it.” He thought, as the judge made the verdict. She had won, he had one week to say goodbye to his little girl, his little spider. Visitation would be allowed only if Mary wanted, and he could see she wouldn’t have the same consideration he had. He barely felt when the judge dismissed them. He did feel Rhodey’s arms, making stand up. He saw how Rhodey tried to hold the tears, trying to be strong with Pepper and Happy for him. That didn’t matter, he was destroyed. Mary was beside him talking.
“What a little money can do is amazing, isn’t it Stark? Fury was more than happy to help when I explained the situation to him.” Her audacity made Tony’s blood boil. How dare she? And Fury? Had he been a part of this? It didn’t matter, he was going to make everyone pay.
Pepper, Rhodey and Happy guide him to the car. Already inside, the car didn’t move. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen.
For Tony, being relatedly alone was enough to break. It was slow, his eyes began to fill with tears, he started trembling, and finally sobs started to come out of his mouth. He tried to hold them, but gave up, the pain was too much. Tears wouldn’t stop falling from his eyes. Never in his life had he felt this vulnerable. Pepper tried to hold him, tried to show her support.
“God, my little girl, she took away my little girl.” He looked at Rhodey.
“She gave money to the judge, that bastard let himself be bought. And Fury knew, the fucking pirate knew, he gave her the money.” Everyone was watching him, just as devastated as Tony.
“He is gonna pay for it.”
That was right, but for now, he was going to spend his last days with Penny.
When her papa, aunt, and uncles arrived at the tower, she knew her mother had won.
Firstly, her papa had been crying a lot, it was obvious. Second, he had hugged her like there was no tomorrow, which there probably wasn’t.
“She won, didn’t she?” There was no need for him to answer that, but he nodded anyway.
“Everything will be all right, bambina. I will fix this.” She didn’t question it, she trusted him.
Her last week at the Tower was spent doing everything with her papa. The only time they separated was when they went to the bathroom. She slept in his room because she had nightmares. It was just like when she was little, when he would let her crawl into his bed after a bad dream. For moments she would allow herself to think that nothing was wrong, that she would stay with her papa forever. She knew her father was sad too, so they were sad together.
When the moment of her departure came, she wasn’t ready. She knew her mother wouldn’t allow her to contact her father, and he knew that too, apparently. Tony gave her a new phone that she was supposed to hide from her mother, he told her to call whenever she needed. At first, she thought her father was a little paranoid. Her mother wasn’t going to destroy her phone, was she? The answer to that question was yes, because she did, in front of her father, to deliver a message. She said her last goodbyes to her father, Aunt Pepper, Uncles Happy and Rhodey before leaving with her mother directly to the airport. Her father was going to fix this, he promised, and her papa never broke a promise.
If she saw tears falling out of her papa's eyes, she didn´t point it out, her own were falling after all.
Tony felt that it was impossible to concentrate in the next Avengers meeting. Fury was talking and talking, but all he could think about was how he couldn’t see his daughter anymore because of eyepatch. He exploded when he started talking about Stark Technology and SHIELD.
“I’m gonna have to stop you there, eye patch, because Stark Industries will not be doing any agreements with SHIELD anymore.” Tony sounded unconcerned for all the others, but for Rhodey, who was sitting at his side, he sounded like the mad papa bear he was.
“Stark, what are you talking about? You can’t just decide that.” Obviously, it had to be Cap who talked. Tony didn’t really blame him. For everyone who didn’t know the whole story, which was just Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, his lawyer and Tony himself, this decision sounded like a tantrum on Tony’s part, but it wasn’t. Tony had every right to be mad.
“Oh, but I can, Rogers, this is my company, after all. I decide with whom I make deals and if we don’t continue those deals.” Because of course it was his decision, that he sometimes just didn’t care was another thing.
“Calm down, Steve, Pepper will clear this out.” Okay, that hurt a little, but was understandable. Pepper did manage the company, and their relationship, but she agreed with him. She is just as ready to punish Fury as he is. He told them that, without the punishing part.
Fury stopped everyone from commenting.
“Can we know what prompted this decision, Stark?” He was calm, but Tony knew he was mad. Stark Tech was especially important for SHIELD business.
“Does the name Mary Fitzpatrick make any bell ring, Fury?” And of course, the bell rang, the realization immediate. So was Natasha’s, who looked at him shocked. Obviously, she was, no one on the team knew about Penny. She probably knew of Fury’s favor towards Mary.
“Stark…” Tony had never seen Fury so nervous, he screwed up, and he knew it. He would lose an important investor.
“No, listen to me, Stark Industries will no longer have a contract with SHIELD, Stark Industries will not make any deals with SHIELD. The only thing I will talk about with any of you morons, is about Avengers’ business and count yourselves lucky I did not decide to make it worse.” Tony looked at Fury with all the hate he had for the man.
“You know what you did, and if you think that I will ever forget it or that this “tantrum” will pass you are completely wrong. Don’t try to do anything to fix this, there’s nothing you can do,” he then whispered to Fury, making it impossible for the others to hear. “Don’t fire her.” And with that he left the conference room.
The next years were bearable. With the secret phone Penny was able to communicate with her father whenever her mother wasn’t around, which was most of the time. She wouldn’t lie, sometimes it was nice to not have your parents restricting you to things like curfews and other things, but it was lonely. She missed her life in New York, even if London was familiar and, at least to her, a better place to live compared to NY, she wanted her father back. It had only been 4 years, she was 16 now, yet of those 16 years she had only spent 7 with her dad, to her that seemed unfair.
She rarely saw her mother, as Mary insisted she called her, and when she saw her, all she heard were complaints. How she ruined her life, how she should have terminated the pregnancy and many other hurtful comments towards Penny. One of those times, Penny was in a mood. It had been 6 months since she came to London, and she simply wasn’t having a good day, and Mary was making it worse. So, when Mary began her hateful speech, Penny snapped.
“If you hated me so much, why couldn’t you leave me with dad? Why couldn’t you let us live our lives? We were so happy before you appeared. Honestly, Pepper was a much better mom than you ever were.”
Yes, that probably wasn’t her best moment or her best idea. Normally, she could take it, but it was a bad day. What she didn’t expect was for Mary to look at her, raise her hand and slap her so hard that she fell on the floor. Never in her life had she been hit. Her father had never used physical methods as punishment when she was little. It was weird when he scolded her, and when he did, he couldn’t go for long before he felt bad. Pepper then proceeded to scold him for being so soft with her.
She felt betrayed. She wanted to go back in time, be at the Tower or at the Malibu Mansion. She wanted to be able to go to her dad’s room where she could sleep if she was afraid. Her dad was always there for her and until then it had not really sunk in how far he was and how he really was gone.
She ran from her house. Later she would wonder why Mary didn’t follow, after all it was dark outside, but she realized she simply didn’t care. She stopped running when she reached the park that was 10 blocks away from her house. There were 2 parks that were closer, but she didn’t want her mother to find her, not that she tried, so she probably ran 10 blocks for nothing. Even considering that, the running was therapeutic. She just stood there for a moment debating between the grass and the swings, before heading for the swings. It was all alone, not even addicts were in sight.
After she had calmed down a little, she took out her phone. It wasn’t the one her mother bought her 6 months ago, the one that was constantly checked in order to avoid any communication with someone from New York or that could contact her father. No, that was the phone her dad had given her, when she was packing. It felt like a century ago, another life. A life where she was happy, a loved niece, but mostly, a loved daughter. Today wasn't a call day, and even if it were, she couldn’t call him at this hour.
Part of her was telling her it was ridiculous; in NY it was even earlier than in London and her father barely got any hours of sleep. With her gone, he probably never slept. Her Aunt and Uncles probably tried to make him, but the reality was that only Penny managed to make him sleep. Maybe he was sleeping, and she didn’t want to interrupt the little sleep he could get, but he did tell her to call him whenever she needed.
And she needed him now.
She called, it rang one time and he answered. They talk a lot. They also cried a lot. It was hard, even if she hasn’t spent most of her life with him, but with her mother, being apart was heart-breaking. They needed each other; they were each other's stake.
It was nice talking to someone that really understands her. For Penny, school was boring, and her dad got that, he got her.
And so, they talked.
Without them noticing in London it was 2:00 am, and they needed to hang up. They said their goodbyes and hung up. Penny hid the phone on her and began walking the 10 blocks home in silence. She was feeling better, but she knew nothing would be alright until she was with her dad, wherever the place was.
When she got home, it was dark, she heard the light snoring coming from her mother’s room, and she felt sad. It was around 10:00 that they fought, and she didn’t even worry a little. For a moment she considered just running, but she knew that would only cause problems for her dad, so she put on her pajamas and went to sleep.
Like that moment, there were many. Penny’s relationship with her mother was nothing but awful. They hated each other, deeply. Penny just couldn’t bring herself to forgive that woman and Mary couldn’t forgive Penny for being born. Yes, it didn’t make sense, but the day something that Mary did made sense, was the day Penny hated her dad, so never.
Right now, there was a battle going on in the living room. After years of separation and fighting, the judge had finally given full custody to Tony. Naturally, that made Mary go mad. The problem was that when Mary got made with Tony, Penny was the one affected. Thankfully, Penny was immune to her mom’s tactics. Mary had gone from shouting and cursing her to crying and weeping about how much she was going to miss her. After telling her to cut it out she ran to the same park from 4 years ago. It hadn’t changed, but now it was full of kids playing with their parents.
For a moment Penny felt bitter, she never got to enjoy the last years of her childhood, she was a teenager now. She quickly pushed away those thoughts; she was going back, and she needed to call her dad.
As always, the phone rang one time and he answered it.
“I can assume that Mary already told you.” The cheerful voice of her father came from the other side of the line.
“Between screaming and crying, yes, she told me. You know how dramatic she gets.” Her response was as cheerful as his, it was a happy day after all.
“I can’t believe she told you. I wanted to tell you.” Her response was a laugh, her father could also be dramatic at times. “But that doesn’t matter, what does is that you are going to live with me, and you won’t have to see her ever again.”
“That is a relief.” And it was, if Mary wanted Penny to love her, she could begin respecting her. “How are we gonna do this?”
Her father was going to fly from NY to London to pick her up next Friday with Rhodey, Pepper and Happy. From there they would stay for a week before heading back to NY. In her father’s words, “this family needs some vacations”. She couldn’t agree more with him.
Friday couldn’t come fast enough.
Tony had almost lost hope about this day coming. He couldn’t find enough evidence concerning Mary’s bribe, (that wasn’t illegally obtained) and the fight was hard. Apparently, Mary could sue him all she wanted, 3 times total, but he couldn’t manage for the case to go to court. With Penny in England, the matter was from two countries, three if you counted Italy. Mary has British and Italian citizenships, while he had American and Italian citizenships, Penny got all of them. Now it was all a disaster, but he managed to do it. After years, Tony managed to get the case reopened and from then it was pretty straight forward. Mary didn’t have Fury’s support anymore, so a bribe, which was the only way she could win, was out of the question.
Thinking back now, it was all worth it. Nothing could go wrong.
If it wasn’t for nosy Rogers and his nosy group.
He honestly thought that the Avengers were going to disappear. The “Civil War”, as the media calls it, was disastrous. The Rogues were on the loose for months until Tony managed to get them pardoned. That he helped them didn’t mean he liked them. For starters since his fight with Fury nothing was the same. He and Steve got into a shouting match. Most of the team support Cap, except Natasha. She was the only one that knew why he broke ties with Fury, being honest he didn’t tell her, but she was smart. Maybe Fury told her more deeply, but he didn’t care.
Back to the nosy Avengers, right now they were trying to get Tony to go to a group bounding or something.
“I already told you, Rogers, I have things to do.” And he did, his flight was supposed to depart in 30 minutes.
“You really think that we buy that, Tony? It is always the same. You make excuses that don’t really exist.” Okay, that was true. Tony always found an excuse to avoid going, but this time was real.
They argued for 15 more minutes, and Tony wasn’t having it. He needed to go now.
“I am supposed to be on my plane in 10, Rogers. If you want to do your precious team bonding, we can do it in the plane, but I recommend you pack for a week in less than 5 minutes because I am not sending you back until I do what I must do.” To be fair, Tony thought that he would back down and let him go, so when dear Cap agreed and ordered everyone to pack and meet them in 5, he was surprised.
Put it on Rogers to ruin his incredibly happy day.
So, there he was, with Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey, as planned, and as not planned, with Rogers, Wilson, Romanoff, Barton, Barnes, and Bruce, who was literally dragged here by the others.
“Where are we going?” Tony answered with the truth, he was already tired only thinking that he will have to endure a 7-hour flight with them. “And what are you going to do in London?” That was none of his business and Tony told him that.
They spend the rest of the flight in silence.
Steve could understand why Tony wouldn’t trust them. He just wanted to fix that, so when Tony offered to take them with him, he quickly packed his stuff. Now he was regretting it. Maybe he should leave Tony and let him come to them. Anyways, they were already in London, driving to Lord knows where. Pepper, Rhodey, Tony and Happy seem to know where they are going.
Happy, who for once wasn’t driving, probably because he found it hard to drive from the other side, seemed nervous. The others did too, just not as much as Happy, that normally was stoic, which made Steve wonder what they were doing.
They arrived at a nice neighbourhood. There were children playing on the streets and in the park. When they finally stopped, they did it in front of a two-story house. Compared with the others this one seems almost forgotten. It wasn’t ugly, but it lacked the feeling of a home. For a moment he wondered if it was Tony’s, and he barely came, as it seemed abandoned. Steve was going to ask when he saw the moving boxes in front of the house. In big, almost unnecessarily, black letters, the word 'FITZPATRICK' was written.
“Fitzpatrick?” It sounded familiar, but he could remember when he had heard it.
Recognition flashed through Natasha’s face, as if she knew something, which she probably did. She turned her face so she could see Tony.
“Really? Her? Why do you want to see her, Tony?” She knew something. Steve was going to ask when Tony interrupted him.
“I don’t want to see her. I will just pick someone up.” Someone? Who was so important that Tony came all the way to London in order to pick them up?
“No way.” Natasha apparently knew who that someone was. Again, before Steve could ask what the hell was going on, someone interrupted him.
“Come on, Tones, you waited enough.” That was Rhodey. Steve couldn’t be more confused. What had Tony waited for? Who were they picking up? Who was Fitzpatrick? Bruce had an idea.
“Fitzpatrick? Like in Mary Fitzpatrick? Wasn’t Fitzpatrick someone you mentioned that time you fought with Fury?” Now it was coming back to Steve.
Tony didn’t answer any of the questions. He looked at Pepper and she gave him a smile and an encouraging push. Apparently, that was enough to do whatever he wanted to do because he climbed down from the car with Happy, Rhodey and Pepper behind. They didn’t ask the others to stay so they also exited the car.
Before Tony could knock, a teenager came out. She seemed around 15 and had a strange look on her face. Steve thought that it could be because they were the Avengers, but she had barely looked at them, just Tony. She looked familiar, and Steve was hating how he found everything, yet he never knew what it was. He was confused, and he wasn’t the only one.
Then it happened.
“Papa.” The girl murmured, as if she couldn’t believe it. Before Steve could process the word that came out of her mouth, the girl had thrown herself to Tony’s arms. He hugged her, hard, like he was expecting her to turn into dust. Both of them were crying. After a moment they separated, she then turned to Pepper, Rhodey and Happy. She hugged all of them, and they also let some tears fall.
The others were shocked, because that girl just called Tony “papa”, and they have never seen their teammate crying that much. The only one that seemed to be no surprised was Natasha, as always.
Before they asked themselves, Tony answered all their doubts. “Guys, this is my daughter, her name is Penny.” he was smiling, but then he looked at them seriously. “If any of you do anything to her, I will personally kill you.”
No one laughed, it didn’t seem like a joke.
Then they heard a snore. They turned to a door and there was a woman. She seemed bitter, and disgusted.
“Fitzpatrick.” Tony acknowledged her. “I would say that it is a pleasure to see you, but it really isn’t.” The girl, Penny, laughed. Now that Steve knew that truth, he noticed how similar she was to Tony. Apparently, they also had the same sense of humor.
Who Steve thought was Mary, ignored him, looking, and talking to Penny. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your mother, Penelope?” She had an accent and to Steve she seemed like a bitch.
Penny didn’t seem comfortable with her. Steve wondered if the fact that Penny seemed to love her father so much, but apparently lived with her, was the reason for the obvious fracture in their relationship.
Regardless of that, Penny walked to her, just as Happy began carrying the many bags to the car.
Penny’s voice was cold when she said, “You were the worst mother I could have asked for.” Mary didn’t take that kindly; it was obvious by her body language.
“And you are an ungrateful brat.” Tony took a step when the comment was spoken, but Penny stopped him.
“Whatever makes you sleep at night, Mary.” So, it was Mary. “I wish you had let us live peacefully. I just want to know why you did it.” To Steve, it seemed that Penny had many things to say, even if he didn’t know the whole story. “You didn’t want me, why did you have to fight for me?”
Mary didn’t answer. While the two women look at each other, Tony moves closer to them.
“Mary asked SHIELD for a loan to bribe a judge,” Oh, boy, Steve knew where this was going. “The judge,” Tony continued. “Of the custody battle. Fury didn’t know the custody was against me when she asked for it, but I was so mad. I didn’t realize until it was too late for me to give him something.” Tony the custody was against me laughed, ironically. “I would have given him everything I had if I could make it possible for me to take back these 4 years.”
Steve now understood everything, why Tony fought with Fury, why Natasha knew, why even Pepper supported him. He could see the 3 three of them loved Penny.
Penny came back, a little sad, but she smiled when she looked at her father.
“Are you ready, Bambina?” Steve had never seen Tony this happy. “I know you said you would give me a tour, but the jet lag is killing us.” She snorted.
“You are getting old.” She said teasingly.
Tony acted offended. In the end all of them got in the car, Penny never leaving her father’s side, in the direction of the hotel.
And with his daughter in his arms, Tony couldn’t think of anything else he needed.