There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Captain Marvel reference in this one!

September, 1994

"Hey, Tony?" Rhodey cautiously entered the L.A. penthouse, peering around. He'd buzzed the door and after a moment it had just clicked open on its own - Tony had mentioned he was experimenting with home automation.

Rhodey's eyebrows climbed his forehead as he paced further into the house. This was nothing like the traditional, warm mansion in Manhattan; this place was all open plan rooms with sleek lines and plate glass. It had clearly been decorated professionally, since Rhodey knew that Tony would never take the trouble to pick out all these tasteful cream rugs and pot plants and the minimalist art on the walls.

"Tony?" he called again, pulling at the sleeve of his Air Force uniform.

"He's in here!" called Maggie's voice.

Rhodey followed the sound of her voice into what was clearly the main space of the penthouse - a split level living area, with one whole wall made entirely out of glass and looking out over the glittering skyline of Los Angeles. Maggie sat on a leather couch by the window, rolling a silicone sleeve up over her right leg. A strange-looking prosthetic with a metal curve in it sat beside her on the couch.

"Hi, Maggie," Rhodey greeted. "Do you want a hand with that?"

Maggie kept surprising him with how much taller she got every time he saw her. He supposed that now she was up and walking around it was all the more noticeable - she'd grown her dark hair long, and the only noticeable signs of her injuries (other than the missing part of her leg) was a pale scar over her eyebrow, so faint that you hardly noticed it unless you knew to look for it. Though Maggie was still pretty quiet after the car crash, Rhodey recognized more of the talkative ball of curiosity he'd known before Howard and Maria died.

Maggie looked up. "I've got it," she said as she began pulling a special sock over the sleeve. She jerked her head. "He's upstairs."

Rhodey nodded his thanks and climbed the split-level stairs to find Tony sitting behind the penthouse bar, with a laptop and a tumbler of whiskey set before him. He wore a proper suit, which Rhodey hadn't seen him do before unless he'd been forced.

"Nice place," Rhodey said by way of greeting, heading to the liquor cabinet to help himself to Tony's whiskey.

"Don't get attached," Tony replied. "This is temporary until we get construction done on the mansion."

"Is this the monstrosity that you're shutting down half of Malibu to build?"

"That's the one." Tony spun his laptop around. "See?"

Rhodey finished pouring his glass and leaned over to look at the plans on Tony's screen: architecture wasn't his thing, but he could see that Tony had planned a multi-story, sprawling house full of glass and metal, with what looked like an enormous workshop in the garage. And a pool. It looked like Tony was planning to build it practically on a cliff-face. Rhodey had to admit, it looked cool.

He smiled. "And this place is going to house, what, two hundred people?"

"More like two," Tony grinned. "Though it's got plenty of room for guests."

Rhodey laughed. "I see how it is, you've built yourself a party house."

"Oh come on, the place is going to be mostly kid friendly, for obvious reasons," Tony said with a significant glance down at where Maggie sat on the couch. "I'm not dead, though." He waggled his eyebrows at Rhodey.

Rhodey couldn't help but smile. Tony had grown up a lot since the crash, but even an outside observer could see that Tony could not be kept from a good party: once Maggie was healthy he'd started hitting up the New York club scene again, and Rhodey knew that California would likely just make him worse.

Rhodey circled the counter and sat down beside his friend. "Tony, I… I know this move has been good for both of you, but…" he dropped his voice. "Are you sure about becoming her legal guardian?" The paperwork had been finalized this year. Tony stiffened in his seat. "I know she's your sister and you love her, but this is a big responsibility." He glanced down at Maggie again, who was now fitting the strange prosthetic to her leg, huffing under her breath.

Tony shrugged. "It's not like I'm her parent. And she's still got Obie, and we've got a whole team of nannies who look after her when I'm not around."

Rhodey sighed. "Kids need parents, Tony. And you've got a full plate what with being CEO, and, y'know, you. This whole arrangement seems…"

"What, like the way I grew up? An absent parent figure and a bunch of nannies?" Tony challenged, keeping his voice low so it wouldn't carry. His lighthearted mood had utterly dropped, which would have been alarming if Rhodey hadn't seen this happen before. "Well tough shit Rhodey, her parents are dead."

Rhodey sighed again, and reached out to grip Tony's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Tony. I didn't mean it like that."

Tony clenched his jaw for a moment, then looked down to make a few adjustments to his mansion plan. "Well, you're worried about her. You and the whole world, it seems like." He swallowed. "They've all written her off, y'know. Like she's dead too."

Rhodey looked over at Maggie again, Tony following his gaze, and they both watched as Maggie took in a breath and got to her feet. She tested her weight on the new recurve prosthetic, and then took steady, measured steps across the room.

Rhodey smiled despite himself. "Oh, I'm not writing her off just yet."

Maggie liked California. She missed New York sometimes when the bright, colorful climate of L.A. and its bright, colorful people felt overwhelming. But mostly, California felt new. Exciting.

It was easier to avoid thoughts about before in a new place. She wondered if that was why Tony had them move.

She liked the penthouse, though she was very aware of just how lucky she was to live in such nice places. Tony asked for her input on the mansion plans from time to time, but he was clearly having fun designing the big, gaudy house he'd always wanted, so she left him to it. She just made sure he built it with easy inclines and no sudden ledges, to make things easier on her leg.

The other good thing about the move was that she was now well enough to go back to school. Tony enrolled her in an all-girls private school with a strong STEM focus, and only let the school bump her up two grades after they saw her entry test scores. Trust me, he'd told Maggie. You don't need to rush.

The night before she was supposed to start school, Tony knocked on her bedroom door and opened it to find her lying in bed, sans-prosthetic, reading a book. He cocked his head to read the cover.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People," he read aloud, his mouth quirking. "What're you reading that for, cyborg?"

Maggie looked up. "Because I don't know how to make friends."

Tony leaned against the doorframe and eyed his sister for a few moments. She'd said it so matter of factly, and he supposed it was true - he didn't really remember her having any friends over for playdates before, and she'd hardly been around any other kids since she lost her leg. She hung out with him, Obie, and Rhodey, and the other adults in their circle. Tony had had similar problems growing up - he was always too far ahead of the other kids his age, pushed too hard by his father. Come to think of it, he couldn't think of more than a handful of people who could be considered close friends of anyone in the Stark family.

Tony rubbed the back of his neck. "You… you're worried about school tomorrow?"

A furrow appeared on Maggie's brow. "Sometimes I feel like I don't know how to be a person."

Tony let out a low laugh. "You and me both, kid." He jerked his chin at her book. "Let me know if you read anything useful in there, okay?"

"Okay," she smiled, then looked back at the pages. "It says… you should be nicer to the people you work with."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "You've been talking to Obie." She shrugged innocently and he rolled his eyes. "That's it, no more reading for you. It's probably your bedtime - go to sleep."

This made Maggie smile, but she obliged by closing her book and flopping back on her mattress, her covers tangled around her waist. "Good night, Tony."

Tony hesitated for a moment. He always found bedtimes awkward, like it was the time he should be acting like her parent. Most days the nannies put her to bed.

Maggie wriggled around, finding the most comfortable spot on her pillow. Before he could second guess himself Tony strode forward, pulled her covers up to her shoulders, and then patted the edges down.

He retreated back to the doorway, and turned to see Maggie peering at him from under her tousle of tangled hair, something contemplative in her gaze.

"Lights out?" he asked.

She nodded.

Tony flicked the switch and his sister's room fell into darkness. His hand landed on the door handle. "Night, Maggie. Love you."

He pulled the door shut, but not before he heard a soft "Love you," in reply.

With the closed door behind him, Tony let out a breath. I should say that more often. He knew how it felt to go your childhood waiting to hear it, only to be disappointed.

He shook himself and headed to his workspace to put the finishing touches on their home.

Maggie's first day of school felt a lot like the time she'd tried on her first prosthetic, which had been a little too small for her: like squeezing herself into a space that didn't quite fit.

To the school's credit, they had done their best to accommodate her: she had an academic supervisor who gave her tasks to 'suit her skill level' so she could still study in a group of children more or less her own age. But it meant that she mostly learned alone. She didn't contribute much in group work or class discussions because whenever she did, the tone in the room seemed to shift: not envy, or irritation, but just a palpable sense that Maggie's thoughts were different.

Still, her preparation to make friends had some success. She made a point to ask the kids around her about their lives and to show interest. She found shared interests (which mostly included books and movies, since this was all she'd been able to do during her many months as an invalid), maintained eye contact, and smiled. She remembered everyone's names, and made an effort not to flaunt her intelligence or family background.

Most kids still thought she was weird, but she managed to gather a small collection of girls she would play with in the playground. She stopped short of inviting them to her house, though. The first time she received an invitation to have a sleepover at someone else's house, Tony looked at her as if she were an alien newly arrived to the planet.

June, 1995

Construction finished on the Stark Mansion on Point Dume, and Tony and Maggie moved in with Dum-E (he lived in the new, shiny workshop). Maggie had been more focused on school while the place was getting built, but she loved their new home. It was way too big, sure, and anything Tony built was always slightly on the wrong side of too much, but Maggie spent three days just running around the mansion, finding all the rooms and balconies, and staring out at the 360 degree views.

Tony threw a massive party their first weekend in the house, but he'd designed the house so social functions could be kept to one half, and the residential area on the other. Maggie hardly heard the party, though it was later described as one of the most famous social events in Malibu.

As promised, the mansion had a single, beautiful pool. Maggie had a special waterproof prosthetic for swimming, and sometimes she'd spend hours practicing her strokes or floating with her arms propped on the side of the pool, watching the sun glitter on the Pacific.

She loved sitting on the roof and watching the sun go down, and jumping from the rocks on the point into the ocean.

For all the wealth and glamor, however, she still caught the bus to school. Tony had wanted to get her a personal driver, but lots of other girls at school caught the bus, and she had a pager with a panic button if she ever needed it. She liked the bus better: she got more opportunities to make friends, and she got to see more of the city.

Once when she was walking from the bus stop to school, down the road with the shopping complex, she saw a blonde woman in weird green and black armor outside a phone box talking to two men in dark suits. Los Angeles is so weird. She hurried past, glancing back when it occurred to her that the armor had looked cool, but the woman was already gone.

The older she got, the more Maggie forgot how it felt to have two legs. The feeling of the metal plates she could feel under her skin on her back, the smooth scarring below her right leg, it all felt… like her. When Tony called her cyborg or bionic girl it just made her smile, because she felt like her implants and her prosthetic leg made her more, not less.

Each year she was resized for a prosthetic, and every few months Tony came up with some new design or feature he wanted her to try out. He trialled ankle joints and neural connectivity and 3D printing and different kinds of polymers, and Maggie gave her honest feedback after a week or so of walking around on each new design. They kept each prosthetic in a special case in the garage, a slowly-lengthening line of lower legs.

Maggie felt completely confident in her movement, but she noticed that she still had a slight unevenness to her gait - most people never noticed it, but she worked hard to smoothen it out.

As a natural consequence of Tony's new obsession, Stark Industries began to market medical technology, specifically prosthetics and spinal implants. Obie loved this, he said it was "good press," for the weapons manufacturing company. Maggie just felt glad that her and Tony's mad experiment was helping other people.

She noticed that sometimes people looked at her leg funny, and even Tony sometimes got uncomfortable, as if he felt guilty for it all. So Maggie took to her circumstances in the Stark way: with a sense of humor. Once, she took out all her old legs and made a trail of them through the mansion for Tony to see when he got home, leading to her bedroom, where the covers were pulled up and two flesh-colored right legs stuck out from the bottom of the duvet. Once or twice when Tony said something really awful, she'd take her leg off and hit him with it.

One evening when she was ten, Tony was standing by one of the wall-to-wall windows, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand as he stared sightlessly out at the sunset, when he heard a loud smash.

"Aw, I really put my foot in it this time," came Maggie's voice.

Tony let out a sigh and turned to walk into the living room. "What terrible joke have you set up now, Maggot?" He strode down the steps and into the room to see the glass coffee table smashed to smithereens, with Maggie's latest prosthetic leg (a sleek black frame with internal wiring to measure walking distance) lying in the middle of it.

Maggie leaned against the couch beside the pile of smashed glass, her cheeks flushed.

Tony stared. "You… smashed the coffee table for a punchline?"

She shifted guiltily, keeping perfect balance even on one leg. "No, uh… the table was an accident. The punchline was… secondary. I'm sorry?"

Tony huffed and strode over to extract her leg. He checked it over for damage. "We can afford the coffee table, Margarine, but I'm worried about you hurting yourself. What happened?"

"Just tripped."

He looked up and met her eyes. "How is everything going with the physio?" She still had a weekly appointment.

Maggie rolled her eyes. "It's fine, Tony, I've been walking on a prosthetic for years now. But…" she crossed her arms over her chest. "I guess I'm not always perfect."

"I could've told you that," he joked, but then circled the smashed coffee table to wrap an arm around her shoulders. She was taller than his waist, now. "Come on, Destructo-bot. Let's get you some ice cream."

One winter day the next year, Tony came up from the workshop to find Maggie wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, her back to the room. Her latest prosthetic, a carbon fibre model, was propped against the side of the couch.

"Sleeping on the job, Terminator?"

Maggie looked over her shoulder to peer at him, and winced.

Tony stilled. "Mags? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her face was pale and drawn, and he noticed three hot water bottles propped around her on the couch.

"Doesn't look like nothing. You sick?" For a moment he was torn between going closer to check on her, and avoiding germs. He opted for going closer and setting his hand on her forehead. "I'm gonna be honest, Magma, I have no idea how hot a human forehead is supposed to be."

She smacked his hand away and rolled over to face him. "I'm not sick. It's just… colder than usual. Hurts."

"Hurts?"

Maggie gestured over her shoulder. "My scars hurt."

"Oh." Tony sat by her feet (foot), thinking furiously. "I can look into the latest research on scar tissue, we'll-"

"I don't want to look up more surgeries, Tony," she sighed, suddenly seeming a lot older than eleven. "This happens sometimes. The doctors think the flare ups are because I'm growing faster. Just… could you get me another heat pack? I'll be okay soon."

Tony obeyed. He rushed to the kitchen, found Maggie's stash of heat packs, and then burned the first one because he was too distracted. He paid more attention the second time around.

"So this happens often?" he asked Maggie when he returned with the warm bag of wheat. He'd never noticed. How could I not notice?

Maggie shrugged, and winced as she set the heat pack against her lower back. "Sometimes it's not even the cold, sometimes they just… hurt. And my leg…" she peeled up the bottom of her blanket to peer at her disarticulated limb. She'd taken off her shrinking sock, leaving just the bare flesh. Tony eyed the round end of her limb below her knee. It had healed well, leaving a pale, pearly scar.

Maggie rubbed the end of her leg. "Sometimes it hurts, too. Sometimes it hurts where I don't even have a real leg anymore, like my old leg is back and haunting me." At the alarmed look in Tony's eye, Maggie waved a hand. "I looked it up and talked about it with my physio ages ago, it's called phantom limb pain. I know what to do for it. And the scars will get better, I've got this medicinal oil stuff for them, and apparently once I'm done growing they'll settle."

Tony sat beside Maggie, stunned. He didn't know any of this, she had just dealt with it. He'd always known she was self-sufficient, but… "You can tell me this stuff, you know," he murmured.

She eyed him. "I'm telling you now."

He nodded. "I know, but… you don't have to look after yourself all the time. I can help."

"I know you can."

Tony sighed and rubbed his forehead. He didn't know what he was trying to say. "I… I'm sorry, Mags. I wish I could make it…" make it go away. "Make it better."

Maggie smiled at him. "You got me a heat pack. You are making it better."

And that eased his guilt a little bit. But he was the CEO of an international tech company and the owner of a lot of money and properties. He felt like he should be able to do more to help his sister. He just didn't know how.

That same winter, Tony sat Maggie down in the kitchen to give her The Talk. He tried to hide his discomfort, but he couldn't help but fidget with a piece of ornamental fruit as he began:

"Maggie, I think it's time we talked about… the changes your body are going to go through, in the next few years-"

"Oh, puberty?" she questioned, looking up from her cereal.

Tony's teeth clicked together when he shut his mouth. "Uh. Yes."

"I know all about it already," she said without a hint of embarrassment. "They gave us a lesson at school, and then I got curious so I looked it all up."

"You looked… all… what up?"

"Puberty, and babies, and periods, and sex" - Tony flinched, but Maggie didn't hesitate - "and hormones and all that. They had some good books in the library, and the internet answered all my other questions."

Tony let out a long breath and gripped the counter to support himself. "And are you… are you okay?" He looked into her young, calm face.

Maggie cocked her head. "I'm fine. Why not? Oh - don't worry about my health, Dr Khatri said she would refer me to a gynaecologist when I need one, and she said that I shouldn't have any growing complications with my spinal implants or the prosthetic."

"That's… good, really, I just meant, this can be a lot to learn about, especially by yourself," Tony said, trying to rally himself. "Do you have any... questions?"

Maggie stuck out her bottom lip, thinking. "Usually I just research my questions. Um… do we have any history of sexual health problems in our family?"

Tony tried not to go white. "No, I think we're all fine."

"Good," she nodded. "Then no, that's it."

Tony nodded, drew in a steadying breath, then circled the kitchen island to drop a kiss on the crown of Maggie's head. "You did good, kid."

Then he strode down to his workshop to fix himself a strong drink.

As soon as she got back to school, Maggie was an active kid. She loved PE class, but for two crucial reasons she was never accepted onto any teams. One, because of her medical history: no coach wanted to take the risk of her injuring herself further in a team sport. Two, because she was a Stark. Apparently it was considered either an unfair advantage or an unnecessary disadvantage.

Maggie accepted this in her stride. Until they rejected her for the gymnastics team.

She wasn't sure why it was that particular rejection that struck a chord with her, but finally she found Tony in his workshop and asked him to let her get a private gymnastics teacher.

"A what?" he asked, looking up from the engine of his latest vintage car.

"A private teacher. I want to learn gymnastics."

"Why?"

Maggie shrugged, and made sure not to shuffle her feet. "I want to try a sport. And I can't get on any teams. This is one I can do by myself."

Tony's brow pinched together at that, and a moment later he shrugged. "Sure. I mean, yes. I'll, um…"

"I've already found a teacher on the internet that sounds good. You just have to contact her for me."

The corner of Tony's mouth tugged up. "Give me the phone number."

So Maggie began her solo gymnastics training. And she'd picked her teacher well: they started off with stretching, rolling on the floor, and 'learning to jump'. Her teacher, Ms Sato, didn't seem to mind that Maggie didn't have all the body parts she was born with. Together they found a way for Maggie to incorporate her various prosthetic legs into her balance and her movement. Soon she felt just as steady on her prosthetic as she did on her other leg.

Then things got harder. They started on the balance beam (which Maggie fell off of more than she stayed on), learned cartwheels, rings, trampolining and tumbling.

The more she learned, the more Maggie realized why she'd been drawn to this in the first place: gymnastics was about understanding and controlling her body, understanding everything it could be capable of. For a girl who'd had very little control over her body for a long time, this felt like stealing back a bit of power. For the first time, she designed a prosthetic leg completely on her own: a non-slip, flexible limb that could handle the hard impacts on the gym floor.

Tony bought an olympic-grade trampoline for the house, after the fifth time he found Maggie jumping on his patent leather couch.

Maggie got strong: at the end of a year she was able to pull herself completely up on the rings and flip around. She started to stay on the balance beam more than she fell off of it. And on the trampoline she flew ever higher, higher, no longer scared by what would happen when her feet hit the ground again.

"You know," said Ms Sato one day after Maggie successfully mastered a double front somersault with a twist on the trampoline, "we could get you started doing this competitively, if you wanted."

Maggie, eleven and about to start high school, brushed her hair back from her face. "Seriously?" she was under no illusions that she was the smoothest gymnast - she wobbled and slipped and landed wrong (especially on her prosthetic) all the time.

Ms Sato nodded contemplatively. "Junior levels, of course. Your own age range. You would place, I'm sure of it." The corner of her mouth tugged up in a rare smile. "The judges would love you, of course."

Maggie sat down, scratching at the sock on her right leg, and thought about it. She tried to imagine it: comparing her skills to those of other children, waiting with butterflies in her stomach for her turn to perform in front of the judges. Maybe having her name read out at the end, a prize for her skills.

Ms Sato was watching her face. "You don't want to, do you?"

Maggie looked up guiltily. "I don't. Sorry."

Ms Sato smiled again. "That's okay, I don't do this for the medals you know. Neither do you, it seems."

Maggie shrugged one shoulder. "I just… I don't think I'm doing this for other people."

Ms Sato squeezed her shoulder. "And that, Maggie, is what makes you a gymnast."

A week after she turned twelve, in the summer break before Maggie started at her new high school, Tony found her outside on the trampoline again.

Maggie didn't notice him at first. She'd started off easy, just jumping as high as she could go, her arms loose and her ponytail flipping in the air. Tony had built the trampoline near the pool, overlooking the Pacific. The higher she jumped, the easier it was to pretend that she was soaring through the air, the wind rushing past her ears and her limbs weightless, flying. Then she started practicing some of her tricks: wrapping her arms tight to her chest and flipping in tight spins, curling into a ball and rolling head over heels. The wind whistled over her cleanly-angled prosthetic.

Her skin prickled with the thrill of it. She loved orienting herself in midair even if she was upside down and spinning, understanding where her body was and how she could move in just the right way to land perfectly.

When she began to slow, she heard a voice from behind her.

"You've gotten good."

She turned, still bouncing, to see Tony leaning against one of the foam blocks around the trampoline, orange sunglasses shielding his eyes. He hadn't been home last night (she'd been supervised by the nanny, of course), and she could tell from his rumpled clothes and hair that he'd been out partying somewhere. It made her smile - she liked Tony's brand of fun, carefree and larger than life.

"Thanks," she said breathlessly.

Tony cocked his head. "Why do you like all this stuff?"

Maggie stopped bouncing, her feet coming to rest on the wire surface: one flesh, one rubber. "Because... " because it makes me feel alive. She swallowed. Because you don't understand - no one understands - the anger coiled up so tightly inside me like barbed wire, and this is a way of loosening it. "Because if I can land on my feet after doing a triple flip in midair, then… everything else is easy." She stepped cleanly from the trampoline onto solid ground again, and then lifted her flesh leg to show how she could balance on her prosthetic without a wobble. "See?"

Tony eyed her for a few long moments, unreadable behind his sunglasses. Finally, he murmured: "Yeah. I see." He cocked his head. "Did I ever mention that you're the best person I've ever met?"

Maggie's face broke open in a grin. "No. I can't return the compliment, either."

Tony launched forward to unbalance her, and Maggie set off running with a shriek.

After her second week of high school, Maggie slammed the front door behind her and stormed past Tony where he sat on the couch, snoozing through a conference call.

He jerked upright and watched her toss her school bag by the door. "Hey, how was school?" he asked, fumbling to mute himself on the call. "You had the, um, the thing…" he squeezed his eyes shut. "Swim practice?"

"I didn't make the team," Maggie bit out. She stormed down the hallway and a minute later he heard the slam of her door.

Tony frowned. "She's not a teenager yet. Did I start this young?" he wondered aloud.

There was a polite cough over his headset. "Mr Stark, sorry if we're interrupting anything…"

Right. Tony touched his headset. "Mind your business, Laurie."

Maggie fell face-first onto her bed and screamed into her pillow. When her voice went hoarse she rolled off her bed and wandered around her room: opening drawers, slamming them, moving stuff around, feeling aimless and angry.

Finally, when she could find nothing else to mess with, she strode into her bathroom, glared at herself in the mirror for a few moments, then turned and pulled up the back of her shirt.

She hadn't thought much about the scars until today. Her back was a minefield of them: clean, pale fissures up the line of her spine and down across her hips, smaller pockmarks of scars from shattered glass in the car crash and the spidery sprawl left behind by a contact burn . Her skin was a map of scars that stretched and warped as she grew. The knobs of metal were visible under her skin, as well.

Maggie hadn't cared until today. It wasn't like she regularly looked at her back. But today she'd walked out in her one piece swimming suit to the school pool, more excited about maybe being finally able to join a team than nervous about showing her scars. She should have known.

Gross, what the hell is on your back?

Maggie's mouth turned down and she let her shirt fall over the scars. She'd already had enough jokes from the highschoolers already: she was too young, too small (even though she was tall for her age), too sheltered.

Maggie had held her chin high as the three girls on the swim team pointed at her scars and made horrified faces, until she'd finally run back to the changing rooms. She hadn't even stepped foot in the pool.

She turned and faced herself in the mirror. For a moment the girls' words washed over her and pressed her down. The words felt like claws dragging over her back, tearing her open.

But then a frown crossed her face. I don't even know those girls' names.

She thought about it. And the more she thought about it, she began to wonder why she'd bothered to turn around and leave.

The next day, Maggie arrived at school in short shorts and a tank top, showing off the edges of her stretched white scars.

She got dress coded by a teacher almost immediately, but it was worth it. The wide eyes and stunned silence of her classmates had been enough for her to know she'd made her point.

(When the school called Tony, he laughed and hung up on them).

Maggie didn't dress quite like that after that day, but she certainly stopped bothering to hide her scars. She got a few stares from time to time, but she'd decided to learn a little from Tony and not give two shits about what other people thought of her. Over time, the people who mattered most seemed to forget about her scars entirely.

November, 1998

Happy Hogan's first day on the job was… strange.

Everyone had been warning him about working for Tony Stark since he signed on: apparently no bodyguard had stuck with him for longer than six months. Even the Head of Security for Stark Industries, who'd hired him, had given him a warning: hope you've got thick skin and a skill for finding runaway billionaires.

Happy was pretty sure he had both, but he supposed it was the sort of thing one learned on the job.

After picking up his badge from HR, he strode through the bustling, gleaming hive of the Stark Industries headquarters. The complex itself took up nearly eight city blocks, but he'd prepared in advance by reading over the complex floor plans. It took him a few minutes to get from HR to the executive offices, eyeing the sleek white walls and feature windows along the way. This place was a big change from the homely gyms and sticky boxing rings he was used to. But he supposed that was the life of a boxer: it was a job with a time limit. And Happy's time had come. The fact he hadn't thought about what would come next was his own fault.

Happy reached up to rub an old scar, and in the same moment spotted a frazzled-looking blonde woman at the other end of the corridor. She had an earbud in one ear and a clipboard in her hands, talking rapidly to someone on the phone. "No, I can't reschedule you for this week. I understand your last meeting was cancelled but I'm afraid I can't-"

Happy hurried over and stepped in front of her to get her attention. "You're Mr Stark's PA, right? Sorry to interrupt, but could you let me know where to find him?"

The woman shot him a look as if he was crazy, laughed under her breath, and then sidestepped him to keep walking.

Happy tugged the sleeves of his newly-bought suit. Hm.

He headed to the undercover parking lot where only the execs were allowed to park, hoping to figure out the driving situation. But he'd only been in the lot for about two minutes, eying the range of dark Audis, when the far door slammed open. Happy glanced up, reaching for his weapon, only to spot the man himself.

Mr Stark looked just like he did in the pictures: young, styled hair, in a fine suit, with a beard groomed into sharp lines. Maybe ten years younger than Happy. Mr Stark speed-walked down the parking lot, glancing over his shoulder, and a moment later the door swung open behind him.

"Mr Stark!" called the same flustered blonde PA from before. "You need to look over these forms from legal before you go-"

Mr Stark sped up his pace, still glancing over his shoulder, only to bounce off Happy. He glanced up, a furrow between his brows.

"I'm your driver, Mr Stark," Happy said by way of introduction.

The young man's frown vanished. "Oh, good. Get me out of here."

Happy obliged, grabbing the key HR had provided him with and clicking it. A nondescript dark car three spaces down chirped, and he and Mr Stark both hurried toward it.

As Mr Stark climbed into the back seat Happy gunned the engine, checked his mirrors - safety first - and then peeled out of the parking lot. He watched the PA glare at him through the rear-view mirror.

As they hit the main road outside the complex, Mr Stark tugged off his tie and then peered at Happy. "I don't remember your name."

"You never got it, sir. First day on the job."

"Oh." Moments later, Stark peered closer. "No, I remember now. You're the… the boxer, right?"

Happy nodded briskly. "I'll be your personal chauffeur and bodyguard."

"Name?"

"Happy, sir. Happy Hogan."

Mr Stark shot him a bemused look. "Yeah, I can see that." He slumped back into his chair, sighing, and then reached for a compartment in the middle seat that Happy hadn't realized was there, pulling out a whiskey carafe and a tumbler. Happy eyed him once through the mirror as he poured himself a glass.

He'd thought they were going to drive in silence the rest of the way, but when Mr Stark had finished his whiskey, he looked up again.

"Hey, Happy. I feel a sudden urge for pizza."

Happy pulled into the next Pizza Hut he saw. He wasn't sure if it was a test or what, but he didn't much care. Mr Stark ordered three pizzas, and then handed one wordlessly to Happy as they started driving again. Happy twitched his eyebrow at Mr Stark, then placed the pizza in the passenger seat.

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the Stark mansion - which Happy had been told the location of earlier - and when Happy pulled down the winding driveway to the front of the house, Mr Stark slid out the door with his pizzas. Happy shut off the engine and followed.

"Now," Mr Stark called over his shoulder, "my assistant probably told you what she thinks my schedule is." Happy didn't bother to correct him. "But I'm not going to that meeting this evening, I'm watching a movie here, and then after her highness goes to bed I'm thinking… hit the casino, maybe even catch a flight to Vegas if I'm feeling lucky." He looked over his shoulder to eye Happy's face, as if waiting for him to react. "Hm. Or maybe I'll go drag racing."

"You'd probably want a different car if you're planning on drag racing," Happy said evenly, glancing back at the dark executive car they'd arrived in.

Mr Stark's eyebrows rose, and his eyes glinted. "Remind me to show you the hotrods I've got in the garage." He balanced the pizzas on one hand and opened his glass front door with the other. The door wasn't even locked. Happy didn't follow right away. Instead he pushed back his sleeves and went to scope out the exterior of the building, noting all the exits and potential entrances. He'd been given the blueprints, but a building was always different in person.

Happy was only really supposed to be on hand for Stark's transport, and protection at public appearances and that sort of thing, but he figured he'd be a poor bodyguard if he didn't ensure the man was safe in his own home.

When he'd walked around as much of the building as he could (half of it hung off the cliff face) Happy went back to the front door and stepped inside. The interior was clean and sleek like the Stark Industries building, but the place definitely looked lived in. Stark had kicked his shoes off by the door, and there was a tartan scarf draped over a box lamp in the corner of the foyer. Happy made his way through to the living area, relying on his memory of the blueprints.

Mr Stark wasn't in the living area, but it wasn't empty.

A young girl with a bright purple prosthetic leg sat on a low couch by a massive window overlooking the ocean, eating a slice of pizza.

Ms Stark. She wasn't in the news as much as her brother, but Happy still knew her face. He was startled by the normality of the scene though: her schoolbag sagged open by her feet, with a textbook on the brink of falling out of it. She wore a school uniform, and had cheese on her chin.

Ms Stark looked up, spotted Happy at the other end of the room, and put down her pizza. As if she didn't want to eat it in front of him.

"Hey," she said, nodding at him. "Tony said you were here spying on us. He called you Happy."

"I'm just here for reconnaissance," Happy corrected her.

"That's something spies do," she told him. "Is your name even really Happy?"

"I - no," he admitted. "It's Harold."

Ms Stark made a face, then frowned at him. "Are you a soldier? All the other ones were."

"No." He glanced around. "Could you tell me where Mr Stark went? I'm supposed to debrief him before I leave to monitor the street."

"I think he's hiding from you," Ms Stark told him. "Don't take it personally, he doesn't like having a minder."

Happy shrugged. "I'll find him." He turned to go.

"Try the workshop first." Happy glanced over his shoulder at Ms Stark, who was still eyeing him closely. "And hey, the trick with Tony isn't keeping him out of trouble. It's keeping him in just enough trouble that he doesn't get bored, but not so much he gets hurt. Y'know?"

Happy smiled at that. For a twelve year old, Ms Stark sure had her brother's number. "I understand. Thank you, Ms Stark."

He left the room, heading for the workshop, and wondered if she knew that he'd been hired to protect her too.

When Happy reached the six-month anniversary of the day he'd signed on at Stark Industries, no one bothered to congratulate him. They still all thought he'd quit any day now. And sure, he had his days when he wanted to throw his employee badge at Mr Stark and take off driving into the sunset, but mostly… he felt, for the first time since he'd been in a boxing ring, that he was where he was meant to be.

He'd forged goodwill, if not friendship, with both of the siblings in their own way. Tony would never admit it, but Happy could tell he was glad he'd found someone who wouldn't suck up to him or take any of his shit, but also wouldn't mother him. Maggie, on the other hand, seemed to relate much better to adults than children and seemed happy to have another sensible adult around to talk to.

Tony required a lot more protection than Maggie, since he was the face of Stark Industries. But a few weeks into being hired, once Happy got used to running around after Tony, he found himself driving Maggie to school when she missed the bus.

"You know how to defend yourself?" he'd asked out of nowhere.

Maggie had looked up at him and shrugged. "I've got a panic button."

"No, that's no good." He'd eyed her in the rear view mirror. "When you get back this afternoon, meet me in the gym. I'll teach you how to box."

He'd been expecting a groan, or for her to roll her eyes. He wasn't quite sure how to feel when her eyes gleamed.

And sure enough Maggie took to boxing with great enthusiasm, even if her skills were lacking at first. Once a week, no matter how busy the SI schedule was, Happy made sure to take Maggie through some drills in the mansion gym. He taught her to keep her hands up and her head down, how to control her breathing, how to turn her whole body into a punch and where to hit an opponent bigger than her. Because Maggie might be tall for her age, but Happy couldn't help but feel worried that the heir to a controversial, multi-billion dollar company was a little girl with a prosthetic leg. He figured Tony had the same concerns, since Tony never tried to interrupt their training sessions.

Maggie was an eager learner, though, silent and watchful. She was too young to hit anything very hard, but the building blocks were there. Happy felt sure that in a few years she'd be more or less able to handle herself in a fight. She had the guts for a fight, that was certain. Sometimes, when she was hitting the bag, Happy thought he saw shadows in her eyes that belonged to a much older, much angrier person. But she never turned those shadows on him.

Occasionally she and Happy watched footage of his old fights, and Happy encouraged her to point out his mistakes. She might not have much in the way of punching power, but she could read a fighter better than most boxers Happy had gone up against. Slight balance shifts, a dropped guard, an exhaled breath; she spotted it all.

(Later, when they became better friends, Happy and Maggie would take to watching period dramas together.)

In a way, Happy felt more protective of Tony. Because he wasn't sure what it was - maybe her traumatic past - but something had made Maggie more cautious and reserved. She kept people at a distance. She kept secrets, and she didn't seem to enjoy being around lots of people she didn't know well. She was suspicious in a way Tony had never learned to be. Happy sensed that about her early on, and directed more focused supervision to Tony.

At six months Happy Hogan had not quite figured it out yet, but he was to be the Stark family's protector for the rest of his life.

I'm spruiking the playlist for this story again! Check out 'emmagnetised ff' on YouTube. Hope you're all well :)

Reviews

Guest: I hope they're able to release Black Widow soon!

DBZFAN45: Things are definitely going to heat up when Iron Man starts - maybe even beforehand ;) I'm so glad you're enjoying it!

Guest: Thank you! It's good to get some sweetness in amongst all the angst.

MyCelestialFury: I like the occasional pleasant surprise! Tony and Maggie are so fun to write, and thank you for being so kind about how I've written Maggie - I'm a little concerned that she might seem a bit overpowered/a Mary Sue so I need to keep an eye on that.