Part One
Tony Stark was a complicated man. He had layers, not a shallow airhead like so many news organizations had led themselves to believe. Just because someone enjoyed the sweet company of busty, blonde hair woman didn't mean that he was a bad person, it just meant that he was horny that day.
Except he wasn't. Tony never actually had sex with those women, he shuddered just thinking about it. He always led them into his house, stumbling drunkenly for the cameras, and then once he closed the door and secured the blinds, he just stopped. As if at a loss as to what he was to do with himself after that. Usually he paid them off, telling them to lie for him and sent them on their way. Except for her.
"Baby, aren't we supposed to be fucking?" The blonde sauntered over to him, rubbing her hands along his shoulders. He only shook his head, and pushed her away.
"What's wrong? You look so tense- I could help you with that y'know." She winked at him, and he just rolled his eyes, sighing.
"Do you not want me?" He winced and shook his head, bracing for her reaction. Instead of the tears, or the screaming, or the thrown objects, he got a sigh. One so drenched in sadness, a tired heart mirrored within himself. He tilted his head in confusion, his coffee brown eyes swimming in an emotion he hadn't experienced in a while.
Hope.
The girl was silent for a second, biting her lip in agitation, as if she was scared of his reaction. But in reality, who should be scared of a broken man's thoughts?
"Have you ever hidden a part of yourself from the world? Have you ever had to lie to save your life, to save your freedom?" She said this with hesitation, as if she was afraid of his rejection, or his ridicule. He raised an eyebrow at her, answering her question. He was being surprisingly quiet, for a man with the last name Stark. But he wanted to hear what she had to say, not interrupt her by his foolish words that so often good him in trouble.
"I guess you have. Have you ever felt so alone that when you scream it echoes in your thoughts as well?" A silent tear rolled down his cheek, feeling her pain. He grabbed her hand and led her over to the sofa, where they both sat down to wallow in their shared depression.
"Every fucking day." Her head snapped up at the gravelly sound of his voice. His eyes were watery, and his fists were clenched tight. He could feel his walls breaking down with every word this woman spoke. It was like he had found a sister in arms, someone he could finally cry with, and laugh with.
He found a true friend.
"Tony, what do you have to hide? You're so powerful, so rich. Why would you have to hide from yourself to make others happy."
"My father, even though he's ash in the ground, still rules my life to this very day." His dark tone of voice signaled the end of that conversation.
The rest of that night they just sat on that couch and talked, and laughed, and cried together. Even though he had known Obie for most of his life, he still felt closer to this woman who he had just met.
That morning, Pepper walked in to find a fully clothed Tony asleep on the couch next to a fully clothed woman. She shook her head, and blinked her eyes. In her time at Stark Industries, that was probably the weirdest thing she had seen. She woke him up, and just walked out of the room, knowing her presence wasn't needed.
He bleary blinked at the girl next to him, someone he knew he could always call his best friend. She was an exception to the rule.
"Starla? Starla wake up?" He shook her shoulder. She shot up, but then relaxed when she saw Tony next to her.
"What time is it?" She stood up and stretched, feeling the cracking of her bones deep within her.
"It's almost nine, why?" Her eyes widened.
"Shit!" She tried to run out of the door, but Tony stopped her. He wrote down his cell phone number, all of his addresses, and his personal email on a sheet of paper.
"If you need me, call me. I would do anything for you. I know we just met, but I feel like we're siblings." He smiled at her, and hugged her tight, his chest constricting at the thought of letting her go. She walked out of the door, smiling at him. Her eyes flashed yellow for a second, but then changed back. He ignored it, thinking it was a trick of the light. He watched her until she disappeared down the driveway. He looked up at the ceiling.
"JARVIS?"
"Yes, sir?" The English accent echoed through the room, and he smiled.
"Make me some coffee. Please. I have a busy day ahead of me."
For the first time in his life, Tony Stark started the day with a smile on his face.
It had been four months since that night, and Tony still talked to her. She kept him sane, kept him on the straight path. Yes, he still "partied", at least in the public's eyes, but to everyone that knew him, really knew him -Starla, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey- he was a broken alcoholic with an affinity for blowing things up.
It was Christmas, and Tony sat on the same couch they had connected on with a Scotch in his hand. The fireplace cast a warm light in the empty room, causing Tony to feel even lonelier. Pepper and Happy had gone home for the holidays, not to return until after New Year's. Rhodey was in Afghanistan, not scheduled to come home until that summer. Starla hadn't responded to his text messages in a week, and it was starting to worry him. She had always said that she could handle herself, so he hadn't given it much thought.
She's probably with family. He took another sip of the drink, relishing in the burn it gave as it slid down his throat. He sat in a bittersweet silence for a while before JARVIS spoke.
"Sir, there seems to be a visitor on the front porch." Tony scrunched his eyebrows together and looked at the door.
"Are you sure?" He stood up and walked towards the entryway, wondering who could be on his doorstep at 10 o'clock on Christmas.
"All of my sensors affirm this statement, sir." Tony shrugged and opened the door, not at all prepared for the sight in front of him.
"Holy shit." In front of him sat a teary eyed child, her mocha skin covered with dirt and blood. She had a note scrunched in her hand and could only stare up at him with big, round, purple eyes. The only clean part on her body were the lines on her face where the tears were running.
"Are you Tony Stark?" Her soprano like voice coupled with the pleading of her eyes shook him to his very core, and he hollowly nodded.
"Here." She handed him the note, and pulled her hole-ridden jacket closer around her shaky form. He pulled her into the house, making sure no one had seen her.
"JARVIS, code red. Lock down the house, no one goes in, no one goes out." The AI wordlessly complied, bullet proof shutters forming around the house, blocking them in. The girl could only stare in blank sadness, her hollow eyes staring up at the man. He shifted his eyes away awkwardly, and looked at the note. It was the same paper that he had given Starla all those months ago, his current address circled in black permanent marker. On the back was a note.
"Tony," it read, "I'm so sorry to spring this on you, but you promised to do anything for me, so please, take care of her. I know your first thought will be to call CPS, but please, don't. She's beyond special, they wouldn't know what to do with her. Please do this. For me." He chewed on his bottom lip and looked at the broken girl, shifting awkwardly in front of the door.
"What's your name?" His voice startled her, and she ended up jumping back and tripping over herself, falling flat on her behind. He went to help her up, but she shied away from him.
"Candi Jackson, at your service." She sounded prim and proper, well, as prim and proper as you could sound for a girl who had been crying for who knows how long. Her voice still sounded quiet and high pitched, but there was an air of faked confidence, and Tony could only credit the girl for trying. He squatted in front of her.
"What do you like to do?" She stared at him for a long while, and at first he didn't think she would answer.
"Dance. I would sneak into the ballets in the city and copy their moves." She seemed to open up slightly when talked about herself, a topic she knew what to say in.
"What's your favorite type of dancing?"
"I like swing the most. I just never had the right partner." His lips twitched in thought.
"How old are you?"
"Nine." His eyes widened. She seemed so small, so frail. She could easily pass for six, if she tried.
"But you're so small?" He stared at her thin wrists, and barely there thighs. You could see through her clothes that she hadn't been properly fed where she came from, her shoulder blades and collarbone sticking out at sharp angles.
"There were a lot of kids at the home. I had to make sure that the little ones were fed before I was." And then, in that moment, everything changed. Just like Starla had broken through his barriers, so did Candi. He took her in, and took care of her. He began to think of her as his daughter, and in return she affectionately dubbed him "Daddy". They had a peaceful life for four years, no one knowing about her existence, even Pepper.
And then shit happened.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You'll be back for my recital, won't you daddy?" They sat alone in his lab, the only sound being the sound of sparks as he worked in his natural element. Candi sat on the couch he frequently used as a place to sleep, a notebook in her lap and a pencil in her left hand. She was choreographing a dance for her next recital, four months later. She had turned out to be exceptionally good at dance, and had risen to the top of her class soon after he had placed her there.
"Of course, baby. I wouldn't miss it for the world." He held onto that memory for three months, just thinking of those purple eyes and bright smile. Her birthday had passed while he was gone, and he had promised himself to buy her whatever she wanted if he got back. When he got back.
A month after a lengthy battle with a man he had once trusted, and a botched press conference, Tony Stark was strutting into her school's auditorium, disguise in place. A pair of tee shirt and jeans, and dark sunglasses hid his identity, and let him watch his daughter in peace.
She flew through the air with grace and confidence, her emotions pouring through her actions. The last song she performed was an older one, from the 30's. It was swing, and she had paired up with a boy from her dance class to perform it.
She was all smiles and twirling skirts, but all Tony could focus on was the fact that a *boy* had his *hands* on his *baby*. He silently fumed for the rest of the concert, but he smiled at her and hugged her when she came bounding out from the back with her dance clothes in her bag, slung over her shoulder.
"Did you like it, Daddy?" He nodded and kissed her cheeks, loving the sound of her giggle. He had always silently wondered why his daughter seemed so innocent for her age, but he selfishly ignored it and enjoyed how affectionate she was with him.
"Of course baby. You were amazing. I'm so pro-" He was cut off by the hard look on Candi's face when she looked over his shoulder. He turned around to see another girl from the recital behind him. She sneered at his girl and he didn't know how to react. She stepped around him, jabbing a finger in her chest.
"Let me tell you something, Shorty. Just because you got the lead in the dance and got three solos doesn't mean shit. You're still ugly, you're still fat, and you're still useless." He was appalled by what she was saying, but before he could respond his daughter did.
"I couldn't tell, from the way your boyfriend had his hands all over me, Stephanie." She smirked at the girl, spitting out her name. The girl scowled and slapped her, leaving a red mark on her dark skin.
"What are you gonna do, huh? Nothing, that's what. Why? Because you're so busy playing the perfect kid that you can't defend yourself. You didn't do shit when I kicked your ass two months ago, and you won't do anything now."
At that, something in Candi snapped. She slammed her bag on the floor and put her hands up in front of her.
"You know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna kick your ass into the next millennium." The next five minutes was a blur of hair and curses, until Candi ended up on top of Stephanie with her hands around her neck. Tony then pulled her off of the girl, and lugged her to the car, Candi kicking and screaming the entire way about "kicking that bitch's ass".
In the car, Tony stared at her, wondering what to say. She gazed straight ahead, he posture relaxed, as if she was expecting this. And in a way, she had. She had been hiding from him for so long, she should have known it would have blown up in her face.
"I don't know whether to be upset that you've been lying to me about your personality, upset about the fact that you've been getting bullied for quite some time now and didn't tell me, upset that that *thing* was touching you like that during that dance, or proud that you finally stood up for yourself." She stared straight ahead, not responding for awhile. When she did, she quoted Starla all of those years ago.
"Have you ever hidden a part of yourself from the world? Have you ever had to lie to save your life, to save your freedom?" He tightened his fists around the steering wheel.
"Why would you need to hide? I'm your dad. I'm always going to be in your corner."
"I'm not human, dad."
"I still love you." The amount of relief rolling off of her was tangible, and he grabbed her hand with his free one. They rode in silence for a while, before he spoke again.
"...I still don't like that boy touching you like that."
"Dad!"
The universe had only given them five months of peace before danger struck again. This time it was in the form of a revenge driven man who was too smart for his own good, and a government too greedy to see the danger. Both had been defeated, and Tony had tried to keep Candi as unaware as possible. Of course, being his daughter, she found out anyway.
"You're a fucking shit head, you know that?" He had grown used to her mouth by now, just surprised by her appearance in his lab. He had just gotten back from his meeting with Fury, still reeling from the magnitude of the Avengers Initiative.
"I love you too, my lovely daughter."
"Fuck your love! How dare you not tell me you were dying?" She slammed her hands down on the table in front of them, her super strength getting the best of her and breaking it. She stepped over it and crossed her arms over her chest.
"How did you find out?" He reached out to her but she leaned away, just like she did when they first met.
"I hacked SHIELD's files." Even though she wasn't a scientific man like him, she had still picked up a few tricks. She turned out to be an insanely good hacker, but she didn't abuse her power.
"I'm sorry baby." For a second she just stared a him, and then she ran into her dad's arms and cried.
"I'm scared, Daddy. Please don't leave me." Her anger deflated out of her, and all that was left was desperation and sadness. He never truly saw the affects of what his absence had done to her.
"Don't be baby, I'm right here."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning, after a very, very, very long talk, they moved to his tower in New York.
"Are you sure sweetie? You won't miss your friends or anything baby?" Candi responded by laughing hysterically, before stopping abruptly and staring at him.
"No." He shrugged, and moved on, because he had long grown used to her strange behavior. She was strange and quirky, sometimes innocent and sometimes completely evil. She was his non-human daughter and his baby girl. He would do anything for her.
Seeing Candi's face was on par with the look she gave when he said she could call him "Daddy", when she perfected her back handspring, or when he said that he was proud of her after she showed him her super strength. It was a look of pure joy, and it made him feel amazing to see that look on her face.
"Alright, so you get two floors. One for your dance studio, and another as just your floor, okay? We'll talk to the school in the morning." Before he could even finish his sentence, she had already run off screaming "thank you's" and "I love you's" over her shoulder. He smiled, and walked down to the lab, needing to get his manliness back.
The next couple of days were a systematic blur of online furniture stores, paint swatches, meetings with Pepper, dodging meetings with the board, and spending time with his little girl. In New York she truly found herself, she made friends at school almost immediately, and the school she went to was a music and arts centered school, so she blossomed there as well. He bought her a dorm on campus as well, worried that she might need to stay there one day, not wanting to explain her existence to anyone, not trusting them.
It only took three days before she needed it.
Not before, of course, Coulson figured out what others didn't hadn't been able to for four and a half years.
"Sir, Agent Coulson is on the line." JARVIS interrupted their celebration, irritating Tony greatly. He had just set up the arc reactor to power the building, and he and Candi were dancing around together, giggling like fools at the company's success-their success. She was the one who had suggested the idea, actually. He just brought it into fruition.
"Tell him to leave a message." He continued spinning around with his daughter, insanely happy.
"I believe that it's urgent." Tony rolled his eyes and stopped dancing.
"Then tell him to leave it urgently."
"Sir- my codes. They're being over ridden-" Coulson appeared in the door of the elevator, surprising both of them.
"Stark we - oh hello there." In a second's notice Phil transformed from a badass SHIELD agent to a big softie at the sight of Candi. She smiled sweetly at him and stepped forward to shake his hand. "Candi Jackson Stark, at your service." Phil glanced at Tony, but then smiled at Candi.
"Phil Coulson." They shook hands, and then Candi stared at him.
"Are you here to take my daddy away?"
"Well, no-"
"Because I know about the Avenger's Initiative, and that sounds like a really dangerous plan seeing as none of them have even been in the same room together, let alone even talked to each other. One of your teammates was compromised as well, that just adds an entire new layer of fuckery." Coulson raised his eyebrow at the girl, and then looked at Stark.
"What part about 'confidentiality agreement' don't you understand?" Tony just shrugged.
"Oh don't worry. Most of that I hacked from your servers the moment he came back from his meeting with Fury. Every time something massive happens, I know." She took the files from his hands handed them to Tony. He spread them out in the air, and they both stared at them.
"Code X."
"My bag's already packed."
Unbeknownst to Tony, Candi was again hiding something from him. She had more powers than he thought, and they were much more complicated than either one of them could have dreamed. She sat in her dorm with her friends, Kyle and Lanie. Kyle was there on an art scholar ship, his specialty was paint. He could create anything with a brush, but he was also extremely talented at sketching as well.
Lanie was there on a music scholarship, in guitar. Her talent on guitar surpassed all of those before her, and yet she was so humble about it. All three of them sat in the rec room alone, the quiet sounds of strings plucking, pencils scratching, and feet pattering filling the air.
"Guys, do you ever feel...powerful?" They both looked up at her confused.
"What do you mean?" She walked over to Lanie.
"Lanie, for example, when you play guitar, do you feel like there's this pent up energy inside of you? Like, more than just music?" She frowned.
"A little bit, yeah." She then walked over to Kyle.
"And do you feel like that when you sketch or paint." He nodded. She bit her lip.
"Guys, I feel the same way." And in that moment, something happened. Just like with Tony and Starla, they found themselves within each other.
"Should we, I don't know, try to channel it somehow?" Kyle shrugged.
"I'll try it." He quickly sketched a picture of a puppy, and stared at it.
"I feel that power but, what do I do with it?" Candi tried to talk him through it.
"Put your hand on the paper." He did. "Close your eyes and pretend like there's a pipe running from your brain to your fingertips. Channel the energy through there." He did as he wad told, and the girls watched in fascination as a red light slowly moved from his shoulder to his to fingers, before disappearing into the paper. The puppy slowly wriggled to life, and jumped off of the paper onto him. He opened his eyes, and saw the cartoonish dog on his chest and laughed.
"This is amazing!" They continued like that for the rest of the days they were together, discovering each other's powers. When Tony called her back to the Tower, he saw a light in her eyes that he hadn't seen before. Her amethyst eyes shined bright, and her laugh was fuller than before. After loosing Phil, and seeing the man his father had tried to push him to become, she was just what he needed to lift his mood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two months after the Battle of New York, as the news outlets dubbed it, the tower had been rebuilt and Tony and Candi had been living in it comfortably now. Kyle and Lanie lived in the tower now, seeing as they were both orphans. He didn't adopt them, he just became a "foster home". Candi had begged and pleaded, and Tony had caved like always. Now, all three of them lived on the same floor, Lanie and Candi sharing a room and Kyle having his own. They were all so mature for their age, but at the same time so playful and carefree. It made Tony happy to see that she finally had friends.
"Sir, it seems as though the entire team is coming up to your floor in Elevator 3." It was just Candi and Tony on that floor, seeing as Kyle and Lanie were both at the school for something. They were dancing together again, just for the heck of it. At heart, Tony Stark was truly a family man, but only the kids knew. Tony ignored JARVIS' voice, and kept dancing with his daughter. The door pinged open, and Candi, who saw them over his shoulder, stopped dancing. He turned around and smiled at them, almost relieved that he didn't have to lie.
"Hey guys." He awkwardly shifted, not sure what to do in this situation. Luckily, Candi had inherited his suave charm and disarming smile, even though they weren't biologically related, so she took over the situation.
"Candi Jackson Stark, at your service." She stepped in front of the dear Captain himself, and her hand outstretched. He took it gingerly, hesitating to shake it. He saw her as fragile, she could tell, and it stung her.
"Uh, Stark? Why is there a kid in your living room? And why does she have the same last name as you yet look nothing like you?" Hawkeye raised his hand slightly, like a befuddled school boy who wasn't sure if he was asking the right question.
"She's my daughter, that's why." Candi walked over to him and stuck her hand out to him too, her face completely smooth.
"Hi, my name is Candi. I'm 13 years old, and Aquarius, and my turn-ons are long walks on the beach and pissing off my dad." It was silent for a second before they both cracked smiles and Candi giggled slightly.
"Oh yeah," he said, "I like her." He pulled the girl in for a hug and she happily obliged. After a second they let go, and them small girl faced her father.
"So, Dad, can they stay?" Their eyes met, brown on purple, and she smiled at him, the smile she reserved only for him. He felt his resolve break, and he nodded. She squealed and hugged him before running off to her room, something about calling Lanie.
After she left the atmosphere turned awkward, and he shifted side to side.
"So...yeah."