Thank you SilverHeart09 for beating.
Super stressed out with school, and stressed out I haven't had time to post.
Thank you for the reviews, I love reading them.
Tony was feeling under the weather when he had pulled Maria into his room and attempted to make her settle down with him. Maria on the other hand didn't seem to care her daddy was sick, but had assumed it was some sort of strange play time and proceeded to entertain herself.
After playing under the covers and playing with the palms of his hands, she had started to entertain herself by brushing Tony`s hair, moustache, and arm. He was glad that the brush she was using was extremely soft, and had next to no effect on him, because Maria was not always careful when it came to pampering other people. But the feeling of her running the small white brush through his mustache was comforting, and he became more relaxed.
Before he knew it he had passed out into a deep slumber unaware that his daughter wasn't going to be following him.
Bored of her new activity, Maria pulled her brush away from her daddy`s face and curiously watched him sleep. People had told her she looked like her father, and even if Tony denied it they were right. They shared the same dark hair, blue eyes, and nose.
Maria loved her Daddy very much. He was tall so he could reach the cookie jar hidden in the kitchen, strong so he could hold her whenever she wanted, and smart so he could fix her ears. Maria liked being able to hear because she was unaware that some of her toys had made sounds. She now could also hear when Mommy was coming because her shoes made strange noises. She had attempted to recreate the noise but had failed since she couldn't get a hold of her Mommies' shoes.
But the thing she loved about her Daddy the most was he never hurt her, he never got mad at her, and he was definitely never, ever scary. He had never called her names she didn't understand or forgot to feed her. Even if she had discovered her father was a horrible cook, she still liked it when he cooked spaghetti because he would throw the noodles against the walls to see if they would stick.
He loved to see her laugh and would attempt just about anything to hear her giggle. Sometimes he would pin her to the floor pressing his face to her tummy and blowing. She would scream and giggle trying to get away from him. But he would just laugh at her and blow on her tummy again.
Her father let out a deep sigh and curiously she laid out a hand on his bearded face and pulled away when he inhaled deeply. For a moment she watched as her father's chest rised and fell, the glowing night light shone dimly through his shirt. Again curious about her father Maria placed her hand on the glowing night light and pulled away when she felt the familiar strange hum of the reactor. The device was indeed scary to her, the first time she had seen it she thought it was a monster coming to hurt her. To swallow her up and leave her in his dark cold tummy.
Maria had become bored with her father; if he was going to sleep then she would find someone else to play with. She crawled to the end of the bed, swinging her body around allowing her feet to dangle off the edge of the bed for a second and dropped. Her padded bum hitting the floor safely. With a sigh she pushed herself off the ground shoving her fingers in her mouth in the process. Her blue eyes scanned the room, stopping on a large pair of glass double doors that were slightly ajar.
She had never been in the small room behind the doors, Daddy had always kept the doors tightly closed, and when she had tried to pry the door open from the crack on the bottom he would grab her and place her elsewhere. This game became frustrating to Maria so she would give up quickly playing with whatever he had handed her.
Today she would finally see what was behind the doors. She excitedly made her way across the room her small fingers slithering between the open crack and pulled the door open in a swift careless manner. The door swung open and harshly slammed into the wall, a small crack splitting up the glass. Tony rolled over in his sleep unaware of the potential danger Maria was in.
A few lights flickered on above Maria's head lighting up the small room. Her eyes widened in excitement when she realized the walls were stocked with hundreds of shirts, pants, and shoes. A small undistinguished word past her lips as she quietly headed over to a rack and pulled harshly on a white shirt neatly pressed on a rack.
It took a few seconds for the light fabric to give way, the one sleeve ripping at the seams. Maria fell to the ground the shirt tightly clutched in her hands, she ignored the pain on her bottom and studied the thin shirt she had tore off the hanger.
Tony had never had such a vivid dream in his life. The dream was even more vivid then the one he had the first night he spent in the hospital with Maria. He had dreamt that a small petite woman with curly brown ringlets was sitting across from him holding a small familiar black haired child. At first he didn't understand what was going on but he heart had stopped when he realized that his daughter was in danger. Her frightened eyes scanned the room wildly looking for safety, looking for him.
"Give her back to me!" he shouted his words coming out mumbled and disoriented. He ignored the burning pain erupting from his throat as he becoming angry and tried to grab for the frightened child but failed when his body refused to respond to his demands.
He watched helplessly as a dark shadow appeared behind the curly brunette and Maria, gently placing his hand on the woman's shoulder. The woman holding Maria suddenly looked unsure and reached up to grab her daughter around the throat gripping her soft flesh tightly in her hands. Maria started to struggle and Tony shot up in his bed looking around in a panic.
When he had realized he was only dreaming he leaned back into his covers and ran a tired hand over his swollen sinuous. Everything hurt, and his stomach was still churning, not only from the dream he was having but the reality that he was a very sick man.
Tony ran his hand through his messy hair, his fingers getting caught in the dark locks of hair. It was normal for him to have disturbing dreams; he did after all still dream of the nights he spent in Afghanistan. But the idea of Maria in physical pain inflicted upon her so violently deeply disturbed him and created dreams in his mind more horrible then any physical pain that could be inflicted on him.
But she had him now, he shouldn't be thinking about those things. He had to think about how much better her life was now. How many things he could provide for her that even a normal parent couldn't.
He could pay for her to go to any school in the entire world she wanted to go to. Hell he could even buy the damn school if she wanted it. He could build anything she needed with his bare hands, making them better than anything on the market. He could do anything with the amount of money he had, but what he couldn't do was save his daughter the horrors she would go through when she realized her mother in fact did not love her or the nightmares of abuse and god knows what. He couldn't save her from her past, something he wanted to do so badly.
"Da-da!" Maria suddenly yelled slamming the closet door open, scaring any thoughts about his daughter's past out of him. He could hear the window crack and a few pieces of class plunk onto the floor. Maria's little eyes watched the broken pieces of glass roll out onto the floor and stared confused. While Tony could see at least ten things wrong with the situation, one of them including the dangers of Maria's little feet being cut on the sharp glass.
Without thinking Tony jumped from the bed grabbing Maria who was tangled in one of his thin shirts. He barely had time to registrar the condition of his closet when he let out a sudden yelp and cursed when one of the sharp pieces of glass cut his own foot. He lifted up his leg a bit, reaching his hand down to pull out the small shard from the inside of his foot pulling tightly and hissing from pain.
"Da-da, Da-da!" Maria cried when she had realized the pain her father was in, great gobs of tears running down her face. Tony felt his heart swell, as he pressed his lips to her small temple comforting her.
"It's all right baby girl, Daddy is okay!" He murmured in between his soft loving kisses, his foot still in pain.