A resonating silence rang about the room. All its occupants had felt pain, emotional and physical. They had all lost people, people they had cared about, and it had left its mark on all of them. The pain was so intense it felt like losing a limb. But none of them could ever imagine the pain of losing a child. Tony was now footling about with another little jar of baby food, (banana , this time) spooning it into a small plastic bowl and heating it up one minute at a time. He began to speak again, not making eye contact.

'I met Charlotte shortly after leaving MIT, she was working as a waitress in a fancy bar in uptown New York. It was one night, we were drunk, no biggie. A few weeks later, she disappeared, left her job, left her apartment, left everything. Didn't think too much of it at the time'

Tony, apparently deciding that the food was now warm enough, pulled up a stool in front of Alia's high chair, and spooned the yellow sludge into her mouth, scraping the bits that escaped it, off her chin. The motion was automatic, his eyes were glazed over, and the words just kept on coming. After his baby being such a big secret for so many years, carrying that wallet around with him everywhere he went, it was strangely relieving to tell probably the only people, he could trust it with. Well, apart from Pepper, but he thought she knew anyway. She wasn't stupid. She would've figured it out.

'Then nine months later, in the middle of December, Jarvis comes, in with this bundle of blankets in his arms and a tiny blue face screaming bloody murder-'

'Sorry what?' Steve looks confused, he isn't the only one. Natasha and Clint are wearing identical frowns, Thor looks puzzled and even Bruce is out of the loop.

'I though JARVIS was an . . . A thing that speaks out of the walls' Steve flushes slightly, having gotton the technical term incorrect, but Tony, for once, doesn't seem to mind.

Tony looks up, and a sad smile flits across his features, so fast you could almost miss it before being replaced by a mask of complaisance. 'Not JARVIS the AI' he says softly, spooning yet another gloop off Alia's chin, as she gazed up at him curiously, and made a grab for his hair.

'Jarvis the person. He practically raised since I was born, because God knows Howard and Maria never had the time'

He chances a glance at Steve at this. The good Captain looks crushed, the knowledge that Howard was a less than pleasant father, (understatement of the millennium) was obviously not easy to hear. That wasn't Tony's problem. He had to know sometime, and Steve was just going to have to suck it up and take it.

'He was the one who slapped me upside the head when I completely objected to the idea I could be a father. Charlotte had left a note, explaining who she was. She also mentioned that she had spent the last of her money getting a plane ticket to Mexico to start a new life. She hadn't even bothered to name her kid.'

'And you took her in?' asked Romanov softly, looking at him in a whole new light. She had to ask, she had to make sure that this wasn't a lie, an illusion, a petty trick to fool her into believing in him. It was just so unexpected, something she could have never have anticipated, but then none of them could have, especially not from him.

Tony almost sounded indignant as he whirled around to face her.

'Of course I took her in Romanov! She was my daughter!' he winced, acknowledging the past tense, which felt like a shard of glass lodged in his throat. 'I wasn't about to go and chuck her back out into the snow! Believe it or not, I actually did want to not make as big a screw up of her life as my parents did my own'

Without thinking, his hand flew to his wrist, feeling the scar beneath his long sleeved shirt. He caught the red heads eyes and saw them widen in horror as she caught what the gesture meant.

'Jarvis taught me the basics. What to feed her, when to feed her, getting up pin the middle of the night wasn't that big of a problem, I was normally awake anyway, and she was actually a pretty quiet baby. Dad didn't even notice for six months, not even kidding. It was only when Elfie caught a really bad cold that he did and wouldn't stop crying that he did. . .'

Tony winced. 'Well. . . It wasn't good. He nearly strangled me and was ready to chuck Elfie into the orphanage. I put my foot down, said no. Jarvis backed me up. He didn't like that'

He swallowed, scraping the last of the banana pudding onto the plastic utensil and making quiet aeroplane noises as Alia obediently opened her mouth and clamped it shut around the pink spoon and making happy gurgling noises as she polished the lot. He didn't dare look at his team-mates expressions. He hadn't wanted them to know of his unsavoury childhood, any less than he had wanted them to know about Elfie. But the two stories were linked. One could not be told without the other.

'Let's not go into the details. Dad ended up with a broken nose and Jarvis with a nasty contusion and me with a horrible concussion to say the least. We came back from the ER and the O word was never even mentioned again. I knew I could never count on Dad for help so Jarvis was the only support I had. It's actually kind of weird. Jarvis was more of a father to me than my biological parents, yet when he died in that Car crash with them, not in one single article so much as mentioned his name. I would've fallen apart if it weren't for Elfie. I be together to look after her. When she died, there was nothing holding me back. I spiralled downwards for an entire year, when missing entirely from the public eye. Didn't eat, didn't sleep, I was pretty much Anorexic and the only rest I got was when I passed out. Then I bounced back, moved on, God damn hardest thing I have ever had to do, took on the company and two years later Afghanistan happened.'

Tony finished as he hefted a sleep looking Alia out of her High Chair and onto his shoulder and moving to the huge, comfy chair in the corner of the room that only he was allowed to sit in, gently patting and rubbing her back as she burped softly, her soft head of curls nestled into his neck smelling of Baby milk and Banana. It was so similar to his long dead daughter, Tony nearly burst into tears right then and there.

The team looked on at them fondly. Bruce took off his glasses and polished them on another purple shirt and slid them back on, as if subtly trying to make sure that what he was seeing was indeed what he was seeing and not just some illusion left over by the other guy.

'Tony' Bruce's voice was soft, but sounded like a shout in the near silent room. 'How did-'

He pauses, tongue tied, trying to think of a nicer way to pose the question that he was just itching to know. Tony looked at up from his, his Iron mask back on, nothing showing in either his eyes or his face.

'How did Elfie die?' Bruce asked gently. Tony stared at him blankly for a moment before replying slowly, hesitantly, as if not sure of the answer himself.

'Officially, she died of natural causes when she was one year old. But after Afghanistan I took a look at the pictures I had taken of the room where she died and noticed something I hadn't before. A tiny, embroidered pillow that I had never seen before in my life was lying next to her'

Steve looked on aghast.

'Someone smothered her? A baby?'

'Not someone.' Natasha snarled. Her hair looked brighter than ever, almost real flames in the dim light. 'Obadiah'

Tony nodded slightly. 'The only person who hated me enough to do it. It's too bad I killed him when I did. If I had known, it would have taken a lot longer' His eyes had taken on an uncharacteristically dark tone and his voice was a low and threatening growl that caused the baby no his shoulder to stir and murmur before he quickly shushed her back to slumber land.

'Why Elfie?' asked Clint quietly, swiftly and wisely changing the subject. Tony smiled, an actual, genuine smile that was surprisingly contagious.

'Ironically enough Legolas, at that time I was a big fan of Lord of the Rings, and a bit of a thing for the Elves. But I could never remember her name so I nicknamed her Elfie and it just stuck'

He shrugged the unoccupied shoulder and smiled a bit more. His team smiled with him.

Alia practically became their mascot. Small, adorable and universally loved. She even made Director Fury coo over her, and that should have been virtually impossible. Tony was happier than anyone had ever seen him, although if you didn't know him well, it would be hard to tell. It was the little things, the way the bottles of Alcohol became covered in dust, the way he actually spent time sleeping instead of blasting music in his lab.

The illusion was horribly, and inevitably smashed one sunny day three months later. It was then that what Tony had been doing that first day was revealed. He had been searching for Alia's next of kin. He had found an uncle and had emailed him, but hadn't received a reply. That was because, it turned out, young Brandon had been parading up and down the country looking for his runaway little sister. When he had seen the email on his laptop when he finally returned, he set right out to the Avengers tower, thanked the Team, completely whole heartedly for all they had done and telling her they would be welcome to visit whenever they wanted to, before whisking his niece away, leaving nothing but the smell of banana puree behind.

Tony became a Zombie. It was like he what he had described in the aftermath of his daughter's death. He didn't eat, he didn't sleep, and no-one, not even Bruce could get him out of that lab.

It was an entire week before they managed to get him out. They bunged him onto the sofa and shoved the Fellowship of the Ring into the very same DVD player that had almost met it's end by a slipper, and watched, and comforted, pretending not to notice, in the dim light cast by the Plasma TV, the way Tony's shoulders shook and tears fell down his face as he sobbed.

They see her again. The Avengers plus Nick Fury were usured into a clean, cosy, spacious house where they saw a dark skinned, dark haired little girl playing on a circular mat with a fluffy pink bunny. The most widely loved baby in the universe.

'Hello Princess'