Here ya go guys!

As Always I don't own Marvel.

Read, Review, and Enjoy!

Chapter One

I smiled as I pulled into the loop of my home. I had decided that before coming back to the real world I would make a side stop to the real world that only a certain Stark can achieve.

"Dad?" I called out as I dropped my bags by the front door. "Mom?"

I slipped my shoes off as I wandered into the living room. It was empty but that wasn't something that I was used to. Between the workshop and the small office my dad set up for my mom the living room was normally empty.

"J?" I call out.

"They are at the office, Scarlett," I heard his voice call out.

I sigh and slip my shoes back on and pick up my bag. "Then that's where I'm going," I call.

I love the building that Stark Industries sits in, every time I see it when I walked in, I can't help but look up and see how tall it is; the windows that seemed to stretch into the sky. This was the Stark Castle, my dad used to say when I asked about why it was so tall. And this is mine.

I snuck into the corner office that had been mine since I was sixteen and settled down. Mom had been taking care of the things that are time sensitive, but a stack of paperwork I needed to take care of sat in the middle of my desk. I picked up the first sheet and got started."When I heard that you were actually doing work I thought I needed to come see this for myself," I heard my mom.

I smiled and set down the file I had in my hands. It had been a few hours since I had sat down and while I had made a dent in the stack I still had a least another day's worth.

"Oh, well I figured I should show up every once in a while," I said sliding out from the desk and walked over to my mom and gave her a huge hug.

"Hi Mom," I said as I breathed in her scent.

"Hi, sweetie," she said as we broke from the hug.

"What's up?" I asked as we started to walk to her office.

"Well, your father and I were just finishing some work when we heard the rumor, figured I would go check it out." She explained as we stepped into the office and closed the door.

I felt a smile reach my lips as I saw my dad sitting in one of the oversized comfy chairs he all but made Pepper get for her office. "Uh huh," I said unconvinced.

"Really she went to go see if the rumors are true," my dad backed her up as he stood up and enveloped me in a hug. "Just not the rumors of you being here, more of the-you-went-to-rehab kind."

I huffed as I returned the hug.

"Tony," Pepper scolded while I slipped out of the hug and sat on the edge of the table.

"What?" my dad asked looking at Pepper. "You were."

I noticed the set up of food that had been placed on the table.

"No one noticed me come in," I said seeing that there were three meals on the table. "So why did you order three meals?"

"Jarvis," he replied, "sent a message that you had arrived from wherever you were."

I sighed and flopped onto the couch. "So you thought you could bribe me with food to tell you everything?"

My dad smirked as he flopped on the chair across from me and lifted the lid on my meal. It was a bacon cheeseburger with curly fries; my absolute favorite greasy food. "That is exactly what I plan to do," he said.

I rolled my eyes because I was planning on telling them what had happened anyway. With a few changes here and there, I don't think that dad could handle me hanging out with Steve, and the Barton flock was still a secret. These were my parents and they were actually concerned for me but I wasn't going to snatch up the opportunity for food though.

I had finished and it seemed like my parents took my answers and explanations with stride. My mom had remained in her office while dad and I walked down to the parking lot.

"I'm proud of you," he said as he threw his arm over my shoulder. "Especially since you stopped drinking."

I smiled and looked over at him. I couldn't believe that we were here. A year and a half ago I was begging for any attention or acknowledgement from him and now he was actively claiming me with every call of daughter, bribing me to talk about what's going on with me. I had been through hell and back. I found myself drowning and somehow this affection, this baseline, was my anchor that kept me afloat.

"I tried," I whispered, "so hard but when everything stopped." I trailed off.

Dad squeezed my shoulder and I laid my head on his.

We went back home and I wandered back to my room. I couldn't help but think that this wasn't mine. This belonged to someone else. Granted that someone else was me, but I wasn't the girl who decorated this room. I had changed, I had grown, I had died. I glanced at the few pictures that I had hanging up in the frame of my mirror, my precious memories for all to see. I pulled them off and slipped them into my bag. Everything else I wasn't interested in. My journals that held my thoughts and feelings from years past had no hold on me. I had gotten what I wanted. All of my painting supplies and past drawings had made its way to New York already. I grabbed my bags and closed the door before heading to one of the guest rooms.

I was jet lagged from the trip and was finally starting to be able to fall asleep without having nightmares every night. I jumped on the bed and giggled to myself as I curled up underneath the covers and closed my eyes, ready for a dreamless sleep.

I was walking down the steps when my phone rang. "Hello?" I answered.

"You don't have a badge set up," I heard a voice reply.

I didn't look at the ID before I had answered so I pulled it back and looked. "Happy?" I asked.

"Of course it's me," he said. "You came into the building and you didn't get a badge."

"I think I'm missing something," I said as I turned and walked back up the steps to the living room, the sound of my dad's Christmas music distorting the conversation.

"I'm the new head of security," Happy said.

"Really?" I asked. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks, but I need you to come back down so we can get your badge set up," he replied.

"I need identification?" I asked.

"Yes."

"More than my last name on the side of the building?"

There was silence as Happy tried to figure out what to say next. "Can you please just come up here," he said.

"Okay fine," I replied picking up the keys for the car that my dad had driven us home in. "I'm on my way."

I sped over there, wondering why Happy could want me back at the building. I left the car sitting at the front of the building, a perk I always took advantage of, and slipped into the lobby. I noticed Happy standing next to the guest desk and I veered towards him. "You summoned me," I said with a slight edge to my tone.

Happy gave me a stern look. To anyone looking inside at us, they might think that I was just being my spoiled self, but this was just me teasing Happy, and Happy playing back. He smiled and slid me a stack of papers. I looked at them and started to thumb through them. "You need to fill these out, have Pepper sign them and return them," he said.

"So I can have a name badge for my own building," I deadpanned.

"Yes," Happy said. "And I would start with Pepper's signature before she leaves for the day."

I raised an eyebrow at him with a soft sigh. "Can you tell me where Mom is now?" I asked.

"She's in her office," he replied. "I'll take you."

Something was going on, I could feel it in my gut as I started to follow Happy to Mom's office. "Is something going on?" I asked.

"Nothing, nothing," Happy said. "Just following protocol."

I followed his lead throughout the building as I flipped through the papers. It seemed like a normal personal file. I flipped to halfway through the stack. My eyebrows scrunched as I read over the questions. "Wait a second, 'What is my ideal date'? Happy, these are questions from a dating profile."

"All things that the company needs to know," Happy said as he threw the door open to Pepper's office and shoved me in.

"Happy!" I exclaimed as I stumbled, almost losing my grip on the papers.

I looked up and saw Pepper sitting at one of her chairs with someone else. They were having a meeting.

"Oh my God," I squeaked. "I'm so sorry I'll leave."

I turned around and had my hand on the handle when I heard Pepper laugh.

"It's fine Scarlett, I'd like you to meet Aldrich Killian," she said.

I set the stack of ridiculous papers on the tiny table next to the door and walked over to where this meeting was taking place.

"Aldrich Killian," a suave blond man said with a smirk as he held his hand out.

"Scarlett," I said, leaving my last name out, it didn't need to be retracted his hand from mine and started to perk up a little as he began his presentation.

"Now that I have two exemplary minds to show off too," he said as he stood to look at us. "After years dodging the President's ban on "immoral" biotech research, my think tank now has a little something in the pipeline. It's an idea we like to call EXTREMIS."

I paused at hearing this, dodged was a word I was trained to be on the lookout for. This, whatever this EXTREMIS was, was illegal and morally wrong.

Killian walked over to the lights. "I'm gonna turn your lights down," he said. "Regard the human brain."

The galaxy was projected right above the table. I fell in awe at the beauty of it. I knew this was a ploy to try and soften us women but it was gorgeous. I felt my hand twitch in earnest to try to capture this image, but I knew I was never going to get those colors just right, some beauty just couldn't be captured and that in itself is what made it beautiful.

"Oh, hold on, that's the universe. My bad," Killian said as he clicked a button on his remote and my view was replaced with a hologram of a brain.

"That's amazing," Pepper breathed out.

"Thanks, it's mine," Killian said as he held out his hand for Pepper. She took it and the two of them stood on the table. Killian then turned and held out his hand for me to join.

"No thanks," I declined. My view was gone and now I had to focus on the highly illegal (probably) proposition that Killian was about to explain.

"Wait this is your brain?" Pepper asked.

Killian chuckled. "It's a live feed, here I can prove it. Pinch me."

"What?" Pepper asked.

"I can take it, pinch me," Killian urged.

I rolled my eyes and stood up in a huff and pinched his arm.

"What's that?" Pepper asked as a piece of the brain lit up.

"It's the primary somatosensory cortex," Killian said.

"It's the brain's pain center," I explained to Pepper who was still a little lost. While I had never seen someone who could manage a business and my dad as well as she could, this science was a little out of her depth.

Killian glanced at me, while I hadn't sat back down I was still standing apart from them. "This is what I want to show you," he said as he pressed another button on his remote and the brain zoomed in on a specific center of the brain. "Now EXTREMIS harnesses our bioelectrical potential and it goes here. This is essentially an empty slot and what this tells us is that our mind, our entire DNA, in fact, is destined to be upgraded," he explained, taking turns between glancing at Pepper and at me.

"Upgraded?" I asked. "How do you plan to upgrade everyone when everyone's DNA is coded differently?"

Killian shot me what looked like a pained smile as my phone vibrated in my pocket. The lights came back on and Killian hopped off of the table, turned to help Pepper off and looked at me. "Can't you just imagine if you could hack into the hard drive of any living organism and recode its DNA? We could save lives, cure cancer," he tried to entice me as he gripped my hands. I felt anger rise within me. It was common knowledge for the outside world that I had had cancer. What was not common knowledge was how I was cured. To the Avengers and my family, they knew about Loki. To the rest of the world I was in remission and that is what led me to my rehab stint.

I snapped my hands out of his and walked over to where Pepper stood. "I would love to help come up with a cure for cancer, unfortunately I know how hard that is going to be with how cancer affects everyone's cells because everyone's DNA is wired differently. Which brings me back to my unanswered question," I said.

"It does sound amazing," Pepper said. "But I agree with my daughter, this unfortunately, to my ears, also sounds highly weaponisable. As in, enhanced soldiers, private armies, and Tony is.." she continued.

"Tony, TON-" Killian interrupted her.

That was the final nail in his cement coffin that was my opinion of him. I felt a scowl forming on my face; I did not like this man. I didn't like how he treated the two of us, plus this pitch screamed like a bad decision.

"You know, I invited Tony to join AIM 13 years ago. He turned me down. But now there's a new genius on the throne, and the upcoming heir, who doesn't have to answer to Tony anymore and who has slightly less of an ego," Killian continued his pursuit.

"It's going to be a no," Pepper said her voice firm.

"A double no," I seconded.

Killian looked at the two of us and deflated.

The two of us walked him out of the building and I stood next to the door, waiting for this jackass to leave so I could talk to Pepper.

"I can't say that I'm not disappointed," Killian said. "But then, as my father used to say, 'Failure is the fog through which we glimpse triumph'."

"That's very deep," Pepper said.

I scoffed. "I have no idea what that means," I said.

Killian shot me a glance. "Me either, he was kind of an idiot, my old man," he said with a wink.

I huffed and walked back inside to see Happy staring at us through the window. I took residence next to him and punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow," he said clutching his arm. "What was that for?"

"The next time you want me to play cockblock for my mom; just tell me," I growled before I turned and started to head for the door.

My phone vibrated again and I glanced down at the message and felt a smile at seeing that Steve had found my Christmas gift. He had finally decided to start a list of things people kept telling him to check out and he couldn't figure out how to make a list on his phone so I sent a crazy amount of time trying to find a tiny journal that would fit in his pocket and not fall apart.

I replied with a Merry Christmas and slipped into the car, ready to go home.