"Well, that was interesting," Tony sighed, a small smirk on his face as he closed his eyes and leaned against the side of the elevator.
"Indeed," was his only response and Tony couldn't help the light chuckle from escaping.
A man of many words, his companion was not.
The elevator stopped shortly thereafter, a broad smile cracking Thor's stony visage as he knelt and came face to face with his little girl after the doors had slid silently open.
"What are you doing up, little one?" he asked, his voice infinitely gentler as he regarded Penny. He wasn't surprised to see dried tear tracks on her cheeks and her wide eyes silently pleading with him.
Tony had opened his eyes and watched the interaction with equal measures of fondness and concern. He adored having these two in the Tower, loved watching their warm interactions and how fatherly the big Asgardian had become. After seeing nothing but the battle-ready and violent side of the god, it was always reassuring that there lay something deeper, something that not many were privileged enough to see.
But Thor had let his guard down, here, let himself become comfortable with the place and its inhabitants. Tony liked to think he was a large part of that.
He was brought back to the moment when the little girl in question looked plaintively up at the large man and raised her tiny arms in a blatant hold-me gesture if Tony had ever seen one.
Not one to deny her anything, Thor swept her up in his massive arms. She immediately snuggled into him and laid her head on his shoulder, her face turned towards Tony. Her hands had instantly implanted themselves in Thor's soft cotton shirt – ones he had specifically asked Tony to procure for him, knowing the girl liked to cling to his warmth and the soft fabrics – and she detached one long enough to wave sedately at her father's companion.
"Well hey there, Sleeping Beauty," Tony returned, offering the girl a fond smile as the two men fully disembarked the elevator.
Thor stopped in front of the fridge and looked through its contents. While he did so, Tony gently wiped away the tear tracks on Penny's face and brushed a hand through her soft hair.
"No more tears, yeah?" he murmured, happy when the girl nodded her head slightly, which still rested on Thor's impressive shoulder.
Penny was an easy girl to please and they soon had her outfitted with a small bowl of dry cereal and a Frozen-themed water bottle full of orange juice. Without pulp, of course, because that just seemed to make her inordinately upset. Who knew what went through a two-year-old's mind?
And if she stuck close to Thor whenever he moved more than a few feet away from her, neither adult said a word.
Tony wasn't going to question it, that was for sure.
When the duo had first arrived, Tony had been shocked to see Thor wielding not a hammer, but a baby girl. She couldn't have been more than a year old, at most. Her tiny little body was bundled close to Thor, and he had her secured protectively against his body by a piece of cloth not unlike those Tony had seen many mothers wearing to strap their small infants to their bodies so they could have both hands free. But Thor's hands were anything but free; he had one hand rubbing soothing circles on the girl's back and the other securely under her rump. As if she would simply fall from her very secure wrapping and disappear.
"Stark," Thor had said, inclining his head slightly in greeting.
He seemed subdued, almost, sedate even. "What happened, big man?" Tony asked. It was obvious something awful had occurred. The god's hair was shorn close, his hammer was missing, and he had a new companion – if that was what he was going to call her. Tony glanced at the small form. Yeah, companion would do. For now.
Thor glanced down at the girl, his eyes momentarily softening as he took her in. "This is Penny. My daughter." He looked back up at Tony, his blue eyes glittering dangerously. "She's all I have left in this world. Asgard has been destroyed, my people decimated. I have nowhere else to go."
"You'll stay with me," Tony had said, surprising himself with the firmness of his statement. But as soon as he'd said the words, he'd known it was the right decision. His world, too, had been decimated.
Maybe, just maybe, he and Thor could rebuild their worlds together.
With, of course, little Penny.
It had taken a while, but Thor had finally revealed Penny's origins. It turned out she was, in fact, his. Jane Foster had given birth to her little over a year and a half previous to Thor's arrival. She hadn't seen fit to inform him that he had sired a daughter – a fact that Tony found particularly appalling, but he wasn't one to speak ill of the dead, so he kept his thoughts on that matter to himself – and had raised her with the help of Eric Selvig and Darcy Lewis. Jane had received the news of her impending death barely three months before it happened, and had made arrangements for her daughter to be taken care of.
She'd had no way of contacting Thor, apparently, and it had been left to her to decide the fate of their child. She had become close with the Parkers, Mary and Richard, and she'd consulted a lawyer about naming them guardians after she passed. The paperwork had all gone through just weeks prior to Jane's death, and so Penny had moved into the Parker residence.
Tony had known the Parkers. Known them to be good people, decent scientists, and they seemed to have been, in their short tenure, acceptable parents. Their car had been T-boned one rainy night, with Penny in the backseat. Miraculously, the child had been unscathed, but her second set of parents had died at the scene.
And so, Penelope Sophia Foster-Parker had become a ward of the state. There, she'd been kept for barely a month before Thor had arrived on the scene. Surprisingly enough, he'd gone through all the right channels – thank you, SHIELD and Fury – and gotten sole custody of his daughter, seeing as he was her only living blood relative.
It did, however, surprise Tony that all of this had happened right under his nose without it hitting the papers, or him otherwise hearing word of it. He figured he could chalk that up to Fury's involvement and call it a day.
With nowhere else to go, and no one else to turn to, Thor had seen fit to seek out Tony. And they had begun rebuilding their lives in the wake of the Rogues and the destruction of Thor's home.
It didn't seem a fair comparison, but the two men had grown closer and all the stronger for it.
And Tony had gained another family. Of a sort.
Little Penny was a blast to have around, once she'd warmed up to him.
She clung to Thor like he was going to disappear if he was out of her sight for more than a second, but the more she'd been around him and gotten used to yet another new home, she'd seemed to relax.
New people terrified her, and he'd never heard her speak a word, but she seemed happy at the Tower. For being two years old – they'd celebrated her birthday, but kept it lowkey and simple, for her sake – she was a very reserved kid. She didn't need a lot of attention, she just needed one of the two men in her sightline at all times. It wasn't a big issue, and not one either man could fault her for, seeing as every adult she's known in her short life had left her in one way or another, so one of them was always close by.
It had warmed Tony's heart the day that Penny had been left alone with him and hadn't seemed to mind. She clung to him at first, staring at the doorway Thor had disappeared through, but she'd been content to simply be close to Tony.
Of course, the second she'd heard her father's footsteps, she was off like a shot and colliding solidly with the god's legs, her small arms wrapping securely around them, her little face painted with relief.
It wasn't a roaring success, but it was progress. They counted it as a win.
She would sometimes come searching for Tony and simply sit close to him, much to the billionaire's amusement. He'd often talk to her, explain what he was doing, and she seemed to be listening, so he kept doing it. It was like having a silent sounding board for his ideas and thoughts. He told her things he's never told anyone else, and her undivided attention and unobtrusive presence somehow made him feel lighter.
Thor's transformation had been much the same. He'd taken to fatherhood much better than Tony had expected. Granted, the god had seen some wear since the last time they'd seen him. And none of it seemed to have been very good.
Apparently, Thor had found Bruce, which once more left Tony shell-shocked. He got that whole story and was sorry he couldn't have seen the fight between the powerful pair. It did, however, make Tony sad that Bruce hadn't seen fit to stay with their godly friend. Though, hearing about the unfortunate business on Asgard, Tony was sort of glad Bruce had missed that bit. No doubt he would have been helpful against Thor's evil bitch of a sister, but Tony had a soft spot for his Science Bro and didn't want him to come to any undue harm.
To hear that Bruce was still with Valkyrie didn't really surprise him. The Big Guy had become quick friends with the female warrior, and no matter how out of it the human side of Bruce had been, they were, on some level, connected. If the Hulk liked someone, it was only reasonable to assume that Bruce would, too.
Thor assured Tony that Valkyrie would keep Bruce safe, and that the end destination had been Earth, so they'd see the pair of adventurers at some point.
That bit of news was welcome for Tony, and he anticipated his friend's arrival, no matter when it was.
In turn for Thor revealing his experiences, Tony explained why the Avengers were broken up and how everything had gone down. Thor had, unequivocally, told Tony that he would have fought next to him, as a friend should. To Tony's continued surprise, Thor's own father had set rules in place with much the same intention as the Accords. They were never written down or any such thing, they were simply rules that Thor – and any warrior worth his due – had grown up learning, and once they'd reached a certain age, were honor-bound to follow. Odin had made sure that anything happening under his rule was just and fair, and Thor hadn't really seen the point until he, himself, had realized their purpose: they were to guide and protect not only those doing the fighting, but those they were fighting for.
After explaining this, Thor had been repulsed by the actions of Steve, aka Captain America – their so-called leader. To the god's thinking, they both could have acted differently, but the result would likely have been the same. Tony and Steve may have been friends, but they were bound together by a past that neither of them could seem to surpass. To bring in Bucky and that whole mess was just fuel to the fire, in Thor's opinion.
He'd had enough petty squabbles with his own brother to know when a line had been crossed, and Steve had done just that. He had betrayed a brother in favor of another. Betrayed one confidence in favor of another.
It was a lose-lose scenario, but it could have played out very differently if only the right words had been spoken.
But they were both beyond that.
Until it became clear that the Rogues were not. They wanted a meet and greet with Tony and any and all who were in charge of the Accords. Tony declined that honor, thank you very much. He had enough to deal with, without all the Avengers' nonsense sucking him back in.
A gravely wounded teammate was rehabbing a damaged spine.
A traumatized god and his daughter were slowly realizing what it meant to live again.
A certain red-haired woman wouldn't pee on him if he were on fire.
And he, himself, had so much history there, he just didn't want to revisit it.
Doing it for Thor, explaining why Earth's Mightiest Heroes had imploded and gone to shit, was one thing. Opening up all those wounds just for the sake of the Accords was a whole other can of worms he would never open again.
Tony did, however, put in a few words on how the Accords should be amended and who should be running the whole show, should the powers that be expect him to adhere to them.
It didn't hurt that he had a powerful god with enormous power at his back that no one wanted to see angered. His amendments were made and Ross was given the boot.
It was a satisfying day for one Tony Stark.
Not so satisfying were the Rogues' demands. They wanted a cordial sit-down with their former teammates, to do what they should have done all along and actually talk. Rogers' request had been granted and Tony had none to gently been told – ordered – to make that sit-down happen.
Well, looks like I just blew that, Tony thought, sighing heavily as he sat next to Penny at the breakfast bar.
They'd set her up in a high chair at first, but she'd hated it with a passion only a toddler could sufficiently possess, and they'd quickly gotten rid of it. She now sat propped up in a booster seat to sit in between Tony and Thor. It just made everyone happier, and breakfast a hell of a lot smoother.
"What are you going to do with them?" Thor asked, sliding a sideways glance at his companion before focusing on his own bowl of cereal.
"I want to give them the finger and tell them I never want to see their sorry as-butts again," Tony asserted, glancing at Penny when he almost slipped up, but she obviously wasn't paying any attention to the two adults, her entire focus on the shaped cereal before her. Thor had thought the unicorn cereal was hilarious when he'd seen it in the store, and he'd declared they had to have it.
That was months ago, and Penny was just as entranced today as she had been the first time she'd seen the magical cereal.
"You have every right to do so, but I imagine the Secretary would be mighty displeased," Thor replied, his tone neutral yet somehow deeply understanding of the other man's frustration.
Tony huffed a laugh at his friend's meaning, nodding even as he did so. "I know, I know. It would be bad, but it would definitely be satisfying." He paused for a moment, considering, before he spoke again, "Baby Girl?"
"Yes, Boss?" FRIDAY responded, ever-present and ready at her creator's call.
"Inform the Rogues that breakfast is being ordered, and when it arrives to help themselves. I'll be with them again after they've eaten," Tony ordered, turning to Thor and quirking an inquisitive brow before glancing down at the girl between them, and back at the god.
Thor obviously caught his meaning. "We," he corrected immediately.
"Yes, Boss. Thor," FRIDAY confirmed.
A beat of silence.
"The Rogues have voiced their displeasure at the delay, but they agreed nonetheless. It would seem Rogers is eager to speak with you, Boss, though all they have talked about at length is the appearance of Thor and Young Penny," FRIDAY responded.
Tony merely grunted, not really caring about the Rogues' interest in Thor and Penny. They could speak for themselves. Well, Thor would.
Penny was still silent.
And playing with her cereal.
Tony grinned down at her and turned back to his own breakfast, which also turned out to be unicorns. Only his had the added benefit of milk.
What could he say? They were sugary and magically delicious.