Update: Thanks for continuing to check in on this one. The rest of the story structure is in place! Please be patient while I flesh it out. Quick backstory: She's his, but not Pepper's. A delightfully complicated little 11- year old surprise for Tony, post IM3. Pepper is an amazing mom. (But we always knew she would be!)

Reviews would help A LOT. I need motivation! Thanks in advance!

Disclaimer: Only the OC is mine. Everything else? You know who owns it.

Tony sighed inwardly, reaching the front doors of his home in the wee hours of the morning. There Em was, as always, camped out on the front steps, waiting. For him. She was a tiny little thing, thank God, so it was easy, as usual, to scoop her up in order to carry her up to bed. It was their little ritual, but it broke his heart every time.

She'd been doing it since she was eleven.

After the clamor and confusion of her surprise arrival had simmered down, Tony's life had gone predictably unpredictable again, and, grudgingly, he had to go on a mission. Emilia did not fare well during his absence. Point of fact, she was a nervous wreck. For her, change was uncomfortable, but fear of impending change was excruciating. It took a while to get to the root of the problem: She didn't know whether Tony would come back. Of course he did return, and when a sleepless, stressed Pepper explained the night she'd had, trying to keep Em calm, Tony brought in a specialist. He advised that since consistency made her more comfortable, they should devise a routine. Em would wait for Tony's return with a "mobile Jarvis" she could consult at any time to find out where he was and when she might expect him. It wasn't always accurate; fighting terrorists was notoriously unpredictable. In spite of this, they'd discovered Em had a spooky knack for knowing when Tony was on his flight home. To Pepper's surprise, Em would persist until she had gotten around security to go out and wait on the veranda for Tony's return, day or night. Sometimes she was awake when he got there during the daytime or early evening; sometimes she had been asleep for hours. Pepper was uncomfortable letting the child doze outside at night, so she tried enlisting Happy to carry her adopted daughter into the house. Em had woken up every time and refused to go to bed until Tony had brought her inside himself. She knew innately when it was her dad bringing her inside, too. Whether it was his familiar scent or the way he balanced her in his arms, when Tony was the one carrying her, she never woke.

She was 13 now, and still clutching her mobile Jarvis while she slept. Someone had covered her up… Likely one of Happy's guys. He nodded to the pair who stood just outside the doors, mumbled a few words of gratitude, then dismissed them for the evening. Looking down, he took a few moments to study her solemn, sleeping face. While awake, she was an awkward, gawky teenager who may or may not take offense to everything that came out of his mouth. He smiled at the memory of breakfast, several days ago, when he'd simply asked her, "Is that the shirt you're wearing today?" And a fit of hysterics had followed. He actually liked the shirt, but she didn't give him the opportunity to say so. She'd just stomped up to her room to change.

Tony shook his head… Girls are weird.

Asleep, it was easier to imagine her as an infant. He would never forgive the now-dead Cara Lloyd who had stolen those baby years from him. He didn't know her weight and length at birth, had no idea when she'd learned to walk. Her first word was a mystery to him. Cara hadn't been nostalgic or sober enough to write any of it down. He had his suspicions that Em's difficulty with his absences was the psychiatric remnant of being left in her crib to cry while her mom was stoned or unconscious. But he couldn't think about that too long… It turned his stomach.

Tony deposited Em in her bed, pulling the ever-present red sneakers from her feet. He knew he'd catch hell if he didn't put them with the line of similarly red shoes she had in her closet. As long as he'd known her, she'd worn red Converse sneakers. Only the size ever changed. Tony Stark's little girl definitely had her share of idiosyncrasies. She shoe thing was cute, the refusal to change her room decor, while mildly irritating to Pepper, was tolerable, but the separation anxiety? That worried him. The Psychiatrist he'd hired told him she would grow out of it; it was a phase many kids went through after losing a parent… Even one as spectacularly neglectful as Cara. It was normal, he'd said.

Normal or not, nothing softened the blow of finding his Emmy, waiting for him at the door like a dog anxiously awaits the return of its owner. Somehow, he had to prove to her she needn't be afraid. It was just a question of figuring out how.