A/N: I should've started posting these yesterday, but better late than never. Here are my entries for this year's Pepperony Week!
Tony Stark had rough hands, calloused hands, hands he'd used to build and to kill.
Hands which had held a new element created to sustain his own life. Hands which had carried a missile into space to save an entire city from annihilation. Hands which had never born anything like the small, wriggling bundle sleeping against his chest.
He'd had to sit down when the doctor put her in his arms. The second his fingers found the cottony pink blankets, his legs gave out. He'd practiced this for months with an animatronic of his own design. Pepper had wanted to buy a doll, but as far as Tony was concerned, those plastic baby faces shot straight past okay and into the uncanny valley. If Tony had to learn how to change diapers, he wasn't doing it with a pair of soulless black eyes staring at him.
Nothing could have prepared him for the reality of holding a baby. His foot long bot weighed roughly ten pounds and felt like cradling a carburetor. His daughter was eight pounds, nine ounces. A big baby, he was told. He believed it. She was one pound lighter than the bot but somehow heavier.
She was softer too, and she moved naturally, her arms flailing as she yawned and fell asleep. She'd come out screaming. She had a voice like her mother's. When Tony brushed her chubby cheek, her skin was smooth like Pepper's, too. Smoother even. He remembered the first time he'd held Pepper, how he'd wished his hands weren't dirty and blood-soaked. Those same thoughts invaded as he held their baby. He shouldn't touch her with these hands. He was sullying her innocence.
He closed his eyes and let her tiny hand wrap around his finger. This kid knew nothing yet of the family she'd been born into. She had no idea what the hands holding her had done, and if she did, she wouldn't care because he'd always be her daddy. That's what Pepper said when she pressed his open palm into her swollen stomach, rolling her eyes if he flinched, glowing when he felt a kick.
"So this is what all the fuss is about," he whispered, bouncing her softly on his leg. "Gotta admit, I like them a lot more than the bot."
"Me too," Pepper said, rocking a blue bundled baby back and forth, kissing his tiny forehead. "Let me know when you're ready to trade off, okay?"