Hey guys and gals. I only have this chapter finished so far, and there's not gonna be many chapters, but I just wanna know what everybody thinks of it. It was an idea that wouldn't leave me alone.

It is a Matt Murdock/OFC story, where my OFC is Tony's younger sister. The name will change by the next chapter, probably, so don't get alarmed or tell me I've made a mistake. There is a method to my madness, and it will be explained. She's was born in February 1987, and for Matt, I'm just using Charlie Cox's birth date, with is December 1982. I also don't know how much time is spent at college to become a Solicitor/Lawyer, so I'm putting it at 3 years, then interning somewhere else.

Anyway, I won't ramble too much. I wanna see if I can make anymore headway on the next couple chapters. This is an AU, so there won't be any Superheroes, no Battle of New York, Thor and Loki won't be from Asgard, and Steve and Bucky aren't from the 40's.

Please R&R/comment if you want.

Face claim is Phoebe Tonkin. To find the image I used and another image for the next chapter, go to my tumblr. - ToxikCherrys16

Picture used is Flaming Star Nebula.

T.C

WARNING! This does contain child abuse. Howard is not a kind man, and for this story to work, he had to be alive. He's very controlling of my OFC. If you find anything else that needs a warning, please let me know.

~oOo~

Chapter 1

And So It Began

Running down the busy streets of New York in the middle of the day was never a good idea because of all the people, but when you're a Stark and trying to escape from the body guards your father assigned for protection, that's the only smirk idea that comes to mind. And that's exactly the thing that Annabelle Stark had decided to do.

Annabelle, or Belle as she liked to be called, was the youngest child and only daughter of Howard and Maria Stark. A lot of people called her a miracle child, being born almost sixteen years after Tony, but she wasn't like her brother or parents. Yes, she had the dark hair and eyes that all the Stark's were known for, but she liked the simple things. She hated going to fancy parties and restaurants, and having to wear designer clothes which she was expected of her. She'd much rather go to a fast food place and wear old, baggy clothes, eating ice cream in front of the TV.

But what she hated more then any of those things, was the fact that she was never given the choice of what she was allowed to do. Howard was strict, and had nearly all of her life planned out, from the clothes she was allowed to wear, to the college she went to, and what her future career would be. All she wanted to do, was make her own decisions, which is why she'd lost her body guards while they were buying coffee, and currently running through the packed streets of her hometown.

Everything was going amazingly well, even though Belle knew that they were chasing after her, when she collided with somebody a lot taller then herself when she'd been looking over her shoulder, and the two of them ended up sprawled on the pavement. And without even thinking about it, Annabelle scrambled to her feet; almost dragging the man she'd knocked over into the alley next to them, crouched down behind a dumpster, and put her hand over his mouth.

They stayed like that for a couple of minutes before they heard the heavy footsteps of the two body guards that had been tasked with her protection, but they both continued down the busy streets. Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief when their footsteps blended back in with the rest of the crowd, and took her hand away from the mans mouth.

"Sorry." Annabelle said, standing up and brushing off her jeans, "I… I really don't know what made me do that. I guess that I couldn't run the risk of them asking if you'd seen me, and you telling them."

"I don't really see much of anything." The man told her, and that's when the young Stark really looked at the man she had dragged into the alley. He looked young, only a couple years older then herself, and he had some dark red lens glasses on, and was carrying a white cane with a red end.

'Oh shit!' Was the first thing that popped into her head, 'I basically just kidnapped a blind man in the middle of the New York. I wasn't meaning to. How do I explain that? Why does my brother get Happy, and I get Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum…' And it wasn't until he started laughing , that she realized that she'd said all of that out loud.

"It's alright. I realized that you meant no harm when you didn't do anything to me. I just figured that you were running from somebody, or trying to hide." He picked himself up off the floor and brushed off the dirt, just like I did, "No harm, no foul. Matt Murdock."

"Annabelle. Just Annabelle." She extended her hand for him to shake, only to mentally kick herself when she remembered that he couldn't see it as she bought her arm back down to her side. He also didn't ask about her last name, which relieved her, because people looked at her differently when they found out she was related to the 'Merchants of Death.'

Matt chuckled slightly as he sensed what she'd done, but he couldn't just no say anything about it. He liked the sound of her voice. "You just went to shake my hand, didn't you?"

"Yeah." She replied, nodding her head, "And I just nodded as well. That will take a lot of getting used to." And even though Matt couldn't see her smiling, he could feel the tension and anxiety starting to go away as she started to relax, "What do you say we leave this alley and grab a coffee? Consider it an apology for semi-kidnapping you."

"Alright, but I have to pick up one of my school books. I have to special order books, so I always get my books later than all the other students, but my roommate, Foggy, reads it to me till my copies come."

They started a leisurely walk in the opposite direction to where her bodyguards had gone. Annabelle found that she really liked Matt's company. He was funny, sweet, kind, and so different from the people that her father made her hang out with.

He talked about how he'd met his best friend Foggy, how he was a Law student at Columbia, his father – who'd been a boxer – and how he was raised by the church after his dad had died. She, in turn, told him about being a Law student at Harvard, but that she'd rather be studying Mechanical Engineering or Art, her controlling father, how her mother had died of cancer just before the Christmas of 1991, when Annabelle was almost five years old.

By the time they reached the bookshop and collected Matt's order, they were laughing at the story of when a drunk Foggy walked into the wrong room, and then pretended he was blind when he saw the almost naked roommates. Annabelle's laugh wasn't forced like it was with the people she was made to go out with. It was natural and carefree.

The jokes and stories continued all the way to Central Park for our coffee and sat on one of the benches. Matt rested his cane next to him, while Annabelle crossed her legs. The last couple of hours had been the best of her life. She hadn't needed to worry about how she acted, or pretend to be anybody she wasn't. It was nice to be a normal person for once.

But, like all good things, it had to come to an end. Annabelle had to get back to the mansion and face the music about her disappearance. Howard would put even more security on her, restrict what she was allowed to do even more then she already was, but just for a few hours of normalcy, it was worth it.

"Can I have your number?" Matt asked, just as she stood up, and she smiled.

~oOo~

For the next couple months, they texted quite frequently and talked a couple times a week on the burner phone she'd bought before they parted ways, and met up every time she came back to New York – being careful to slip her bodyguards. Matt made her happy, he didn't pry into anything she wasn't comfortable with sharing, and she loved him.

She got butterflies in her stomach when they talked, her heart beat faster when she was with him, she couldn't stop smiling when thinking about him, and he was the first person she wanted to tell when something amazing happened. She even bought a brail printer so that she could send him letters.

In fact, ever since she'd started seeing Matt, people had started to notice that she seemed happier. Howard thought that it was something to do with the job that he had lined up for her, but Annabelle knew better. Matt was hers, and she wasn't going to tell anybody about him. Not yet, possibly not ever. She knew what would happen if it ever came out that she was friends with somebody her father didn't approve of. And if he found out that she wanted to date him… Well, she didn't even want to think about that.

To be extra sure that nobody would recognize her – she was pretty well known after all – she wore disguises. Wigs of different colours, clothes that were baggy, glasses. Matt thought it strange at first, but now he found it a little funny. Told her she might have a promising career in espionage.

They had their first kiss four months after they'd first met, and started dating soon after. Matt understood why she couldn't announce to her family that she was in a relationship, but he told Foggy and his surrogate family. He didn't give her name, just that he had started dating somebody.

When they were together, they never did anything more then kiss, cuddle, and hold hands. Neither of them were ready for anything else, and they weren't going to pressure each other either. They weren't ready for that step, and they both knew it. For the moment, they were just happy to spend time with each other.

After the next term started, things became a little hectic. Annabelle had just started her final year, and Matt and Foggy still had another year after this one They didn't meet up as much, but they still talked, and on more than one occasion, Matt stopped Annabelle from having a complete mental breakdown when her score dropped lower then what she was told she had to get.

Soon after she started seeing Matt, she decided to take precautions, just incase anything happened. Under her bed, she kept a shoebox with money in it, in her wardrobe was a duffle bag filled with her style of clothes, not the ones Howard had people buy for her, and she was ready to run at a moments notice. She couldn't take too much at one time, otherwise it might seem suspicious, which she didn't want. The last thing she needed was her father finding out about this.

"Sometimes I wish that I could just disappear." She was laid on her bed, talking to Matt on the phone, "Trying to please everyone is hard. My brother can be on the front pages, drunk and embarrassing the family, but if I so much as order a muffin, or buy a chocolate bar, it's taken off of me."

Annabelle had dropped little bits to do with her family, and Matt had a pretty good guess as to who her family was, but he wasn't going to say anything. When she was ready to tell him, she would, but until then, he wasn't going to ask questions or even tell her who he thought they were.

"Well, you can always come live with me and Foggy."

"I might take you up on that offer." She laughed, looking over at the time, "I'm coming home at the weekend. I took my final exam a couple days ago, so the school said there was no point in being in my dorm when I didn't have any lessons, so I'm going to be in New York till graduation."

"Which means we have to be more careful, I'm guessing."

She nodded to herself. "Yeah. Everybody is trying to win Howard's favour, so they always keep their eyes and ears open for anything that could get them a promotion or a raise."

"Well, at the end of the school year, we'll go away somewhere. Something for our anniversary, cause we'll have been together over a year by then. How does that sound?"

"Amazing." She was smiling at the ceiling, just picturing the two of them somewhere where they didn't have to worry about her family and security, and spending the weekend having fun, "I can't wait till we can do that."

They kept talking until Annabelle fell asleep. Matt smiled when he realized that she had, but he stayed on the line a little longer, just listening to her soft breathing on the other end. It was relaxing for him to hear, because she was always worrying and stressed. To hear her so peaceful, was one of the best things he could have asked for.

~oOo~

It didn't take long after coming back home for Howard to be his usual self. He organized a party for her graduating early, but never asked if there was anybody she wanted to invite. Everybody who came worked at Stark Industries, was a business partner, or somebody who Howard had picked to be a potential suitor. All Annabelle wanted to do, was scream, as she listened to one of the 'chosen' talk about his expensive car and how much he earned in a month. He must have been closer to forty, even though she had only turned nineteen only a couple months before.

And she was being forced to talk to all of them, while pictures were taken to put in the tabloid magazines about potential boyfriends. She hated being paraded around like an object instead of a person. It was like she was a stripper or an animal, and people were just paying money to stare at her.

The more she spent being bored with these people, the more she kept thinking about how much more fun she'd be having with Matt; watching movies with audio description, reading to him, or just being with him. But no matter how bored she was, she had to look like she was enjoying herself. Pretend that she was interested in what was being said.

When she got the first chance, she slipped out of the room. The only people even close to her age, was her brother, Tony, and his best friend, Rhodey, and they were nearly sixteen years older then her. Nobody was into the things she liked, she wasn't old enough to drink, and she just felt like she was a piece of meat.

Annabelle went and sat on her bed. She thought about sitting on the roof, but at least she could lock herself in here. The tears were already rolling down her face by the time she sat down on her bed.

"Are you alright, Miss. Stark?" The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, but Annabelle knew that it was J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony's AI who had been installed in both the New York tower and the mansion in Malibu, "You seem to be in distress. Should I call somebody?"

"I'm fine, J." She sniffed, wiping her wet eyes. J.A.R.V.I.S. had always been kind to her, and she considered him her only friend until she met Matt, "I'm just tired and overwhelmed."

"I feel like that is not the truth, Miss. Stark, which means you don't want anybody to know what the real problem is." The AI seemed to when somebody was hiding somebody, but Annabelle guessed that after spending so much time with Tony, he knew how to detect it, "You know I am here if you need to talk."

"You're too smart, J." She smiled slightly as she started getting ready for bed, "But I know you're here for me. This is just something I have to do on my own. Don't want you getting in trouble."

"Alright, Miss. Stark, but you do realize that I can't get in trouble?"

She laughed as she got into bed, and J.A.R.V.I.S. turned the room lights down; with some of them off entirely. Annabelle didn't like sleeping in the dark, so the AI always set the lights to a blue colour, and played her favourite movies, even when she fell asleep.

"Night, J."

"Goodnight, Miss. Stark." There was silence for a little while as Annabelle got comfortable, "Forgive me for saying this, Miss. Stark, but you don't seem happy, and I do not understand why."

"I feel like I'm in a cage. I have everything I could ever ask for, but at the same time, I have nothing. How can I be happy when I'm drowning?"

J.A.R.V.I.S. didn't say anything as he thought about the question he had been asked, and what she had said. "I'm afraid I do not have an answer for you, Miss. Stark, but I believe you are talking about being a bird in a gilded cage."

"That I am, J."

~oOo~

For the next few weeks, every time she saw a magazine, it always had a picture of her and somebody from the party. They literally had nothing better to talk about, but it probably had something to do with somebody who'd been there. She wanted to burn all of them.

Howard hadn't been happy that she'd left early, saying that she'd embarrassed him, but she thought that Tony had done that all by himself – when he'd turned up already drunk, smuggled in a couple of models, and almost shagged them over the bar. She almost scoffed at the double standards.

Luckily, J.A.R.V.I.S. hadn't said anything to anybody else about their conversation, probably because he knew she'd get into even more trouble for saying it, even if it was just to the AI. Unluckily though, she was finding it harder and harder to sneak away. With her face plastered over nearly every magazine, even wearing a disguise, somebody was going to recognize her. She still tried though. Matt was everything to her, and nothing was going to stop her from seeing him.

At night, J.A.R.V.I.S. helped her create a new identity, with a birth certificate, bank account, schooling records and everything else she'd need if she had to make a quick get away. He was ready to transfer all the money from her Trust Fund into her new identity at a moments notice, and they even had a code word that would make delete all the new information on her.

But things started to unravel pretty quickly. Nobody had found out about her and J.A.R.V.I.S.'s late night hacking, but it had been somebody's lucky shot in the park. A couple had been taking pictures of each other, and they just happened to see her and Matt holding hands and kissing by the fountain. The couple didn't know who she was, just thought that they made a cute couple, so they took a few pictures of the two of them. And that's where their problems really hit the fan.

Somebody who worked at Stark Industries happened to come across the pictures on social media. He wouldn't have thought twice about the photos had he not been working for the company for nearly fifteen years. There was something about the female that he recognized, so he decided to run her face through their system, and it came up with one name, with a eighty present match to one Annabelle Stark. He went straight to Howard with the pictures.

And Howard was not impressed with what he saw. Things started falling into place for the older Stark. Why his daughter had been sneaking off, why nobody could find her, why she'd been coming home more during her final year. Howard was furious with what she'd been doing.

In fact, as soon as Annabelle got in from her date with Matt, her father grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the house to his office. His grip was tight enough to bruise her wrist, but he didn't let go, even when she tried to pull away. For a man who was almost ninety, he certainly had a strong grip.

"You're hurting me. Let go."

Her father didn't let go though. He kept his tight grip on her arm, and almost shoved her into one of the chairs at his desk. Then he picked up the pictures he'd been given earlier, and spread them out on the desk in front of her. "Care to explain this? Or is this just a complete coincidence?"

She looked over the photos, and tears filled her eyes. They were from a date last week, and she'd taken off her wig because it was starting to itch. Matt's cane had been folded up and put in his pocket to stop it from being left. He'd been revising all week, so they'd decided to have a little impromptu date in the park.

"There's nothing to say. You've obviously seen the pictures, and they speak for themselves." She was trying to seem a lot more confident then she felt. Inside, she was freaking out, but she wasn't going to let her father see that.

"So you're not even going to deny them?" He slammed his fist down on the desk, "He's only with you for the money."

"He doesn't even know my last name. And we've been together for over a year."

You could almost see the steam coming from Howard's ears as he heard this, and took it all in. He even started to change colour in anger. "I forbid you to see this boy anymore. Next time you see him, you'll break up with him, and tell him you have found love with somebody else."

Annabelle stared defiantly up at her father. "No."

The sound of his hand slapping her face seemed to echo round the room. It also left an angry red handprint on her cheek, and would probably leave a bruise in the coming days, just as a reminder of what her father was like.

"You'll do as I say, or you can leave, and never come back." He was glaring at her now, "You'll never be able to use the name Stark again, or get any of the privileges that you get here."

She stood up and glared right back at her father. "I'd rather die, then spend another minute in this house. Five minutes, and I'll be out of your hair, and I hope I'll never see you. I might just turn up to your funeral to laugh at your rotting corpse, and tell you 'I won,' because I'll have a better life then you could ever give me."

As she left his office, she slammed the door behind her; making her way right to her former bedroom. She wanted to write a letter to Tony, explaining why she wasn't going to be around anymore. While they weren't close, he was still her brother, and she still cared for him.

"Transfer the money, J." She was rubbing her cheek lightly as the stinging lingered, "You know where to send everything. Put a rush on it."

"Right away, Miss. Stark." The AI knew that this was it, and that things had come to a head, "Am I to assume that this is the last time that I will talk to you?"

"Yes, J. This will probably be it for us." Annabelle was wiping the tears from her eyes as she wrote the final goodbye to her brother, "I'm gonna miss you, but no matter what, you have always been my friend. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

"It had been an honour knowing you, Miss. Stark."

When she finished her letter, she placed it on her bed; knowing that it would be found eventually, and she just hoped that it would find its way to her brother. She then grabbed the bags that she'd had packed for months, and made her way to the door.

"You too, J." She wiped her eyes again, "Jericho."

"Will that be all, Miss. Stark?"

Annabelle took a deep breath. "That will be all, J.A.R.V.I.S."