Claire is still having something of a crisis... No wonder after working so long with Tony Stark! ;)

No copyright infringement is intended.

TapTap

Claire was still clinging to the two super soldiers, trying to calm down, when Tony walked out into the common room of the tower, having left Bruce to it down in the other scientist's laboratory.

Walking into that scene, the genius, scientist, engineer (and a few other, in this context less than relevant nicknames) stopped with a frown and then stepped forward with a new purpose, demanding with all the protectiveness and caring of a great father. "What happened?!"

"This is for you, I believe." Unsympathetic, Bucky handed the un-understanding owner of Stark Industries the folder with the takeover. Looking down at it briefly, Tony frowned, and looked back up again, even less understanding. Which was not entirely, as it happens, usual for Tony Stark. Even if a few people might perhaps think so.

"I was handed it by one of Pepper's secretaries," Claire took pity on her puzzled "fairy godfather". As this did not make his face clear with understanding, she gave a tiny smile and continued, perhaps unhelpfully. "I was handed my own quarterly report at the same time."

"Well, while I have all sympathy - those things are awful - this does seem a bit..." Tony's voice petered out in question, very unlike him.

"It is a shock when it happens, isn't it?" It wasn't anybody at the table responding, and Tony spunn around to face the familiar voice. Pepper was smiling softly, her eyes trailed on Claire. "I was hired as Tony's PA - now I run the entire company as its CEO. I get it. It is always a shock to realise that the things you thought were true... have just changed." Pepper sent a wry - but appreciative and endlessly fond - glance in the direction of Natasha, who had silently "appeared" by the wall a few yards from her girlfriend. Tony muttered something about how Pepper had spent far too much time with Natasha lately and now they'd both scare him half to death with their creeping around.

"I hadn't realised just who... or what, maybe, I had become," Claire admitted, ignoring Tony and talking to Pepper now. "I'm wearing a pyjama I don't know how much it costs, not even reflecting on how it might very well be more than my student loans. Frivolous, maybe - I still have those loans to pay off, after all."

"Well, that can hardly be the case for long," everyone moved their attention to Tony, who in the usual order wasn't subtle. He shrugged the looks off and only met the puzzled eyes of Claire. "You do realise that you have invented several things with me in the workshop, right? Ideas of yours we have developed together, or drawings of original designs of yours you've given up on and left out for me."

"Well yes, because you're interested even if I cannot make it work. That's fine." Claire shrugged. "And if we develop something together we share credit, right? And you get to use the ideas. Stark Industries exclusive rights. You've told me this."

"Yes," Tony agreed, "but the ideas are yours, Claire."

"Stark Industries do get the exclusive right to use them," Pepper butted in, very softly. "Only fair as they are developed by our employee and our owner, in our workshops, but you are not one of our hired developers, Claire. We do not own your ideas - and there are still patents to file."

"Right," Claire frowned, unsure where Pepper was going with that.

"Jarvis?" Tony cut into the conversation, "what are the financials like on Claire's own and our shared pathents? Her cut?"

"The royalties are right now at 2.1 million dollars, Sir," Jarvis responded crisply.

Claire frowned, completely blindsided. "What?"

"We will pay this out at the end of the calender year if that suits you, Miss Thomas," Pepper replied, seemingly trying not to smile. Claire stood entirely still for a whole 20 seconds.

Then she abruptly turned around and went to get some of Pepper's ice cream, because now she needed some, too.