AN – I want all of you to know that I'm doing something I've never done in this chapter. I can only hope it goes well. I'm always willing to listen to constructive criticism as well as praise. Both work. I just enjoy getting those emails for reviews at work. It makes my sad, boring day. =)

Chapter 6
I'm a lover, I'm a sinner

She was picking up more English, and getting into more things.

Her curiosity knew no bounds – not that any of us were surprised. Hell, she's my kid, she's going to be getting into things, ripping them apart, trying to put them back together.

Sure, I didn't appreciate when it was the toaster one morning, but at least I knew how to put it back together when she didn't.

Natasha was around less and less. I asked her to start leaving and resuming work for the company after two weeks. Especially after the night that Emily crawled into bed with me, I was certain that she would be comfortable without her there at all times. She was comfortable with me, and I was there all the time.

The small little area in my workshop where I had the kitchen, couch and TV became her area when Natasha was gone. She could watch TV, she could play, and all within 50 feet of me. Sometimes she even wanted to know what I was doing, so I would show her – be it soldering, programming, rewiring, or even just hammering out some kink in one of the car engines.

There was one thing that Pepper mentioned at one of our dinners – which she was now starting to cook whenever she had the time. She kept harping on how proper nutrition was necessary for helping the poor girl gain weight – which she was – and it was a reason for her to come home earlier. Whatever made her stay around longer made me happy, even if it was making me help her cook dinner.

Anyway, that one thing – that the other person who needed to be in her life didn't even know she existed.

"Tony, you need to tell him. He's going to find out sooner or later. He'll be unhappy if he finds out from some tabloid before you tell him!"

"Fine, call him up and tell him to come over for dinner tomorrow. We'll order pizza, get some beer, whatever. Act like we're having a guys night."

"No, you call him Tony."

"Fine. Fine, I'll call him after dinner."

The tension in the room was broken by a fork covered in peas being shoved in my face and a long string of words I didn't recognize.

"Jarvis-"

"She wants to know what they are called, sir."

"Peas, Emily. Peas." Okay, sure I hated them myself, but I was trying to eat them to at least be a 'good role model' as Pepper said I should be.

"Peas!" Afterwards, a few more Russian words were spat out before she continued to eat them one at a time off the end of her fork. Like a typical 5 year old.

I didn't even have to ask before Jarvis chimed in.

"She commented that she likes them."

"Thank you for your wonderful skills, Captain Obvious." I stabbed a few more of the tiny green pearls on my own fork and stared at them for a moment. Why did becoming a parent have to come with so many changes to so many things?

"You're welcome, sir."

"That wasn't a compliment." I set down my fork of skewered English sweets and reached out to my dripping water glass. If only it was smaller, less ice, a brown tangy liquid…but being a parent as well as a super hero had forced a number of hands to lock me away from my favorite pastime for a while now. I felt like I was in withdrawal.

"Tony, stop fighting with the computer program."

"He started it." I was already drawing things in the condensation on the glass.

"You, Mr. Stark, are not fit to raise a child when you are one yourself." She was busy cutting up her meat, and wasn't even looking at me to insult me. Oh, the power this woman felt she had over me – it always set something off in my head that made me want to challenge it…

"Does that mean we both get to call you Mommy? Because I'm willing to incorporate that-"

"Tony!"

"What? She doesn't understand words like incorporate!"

"We shouldn't be talking about our…lives in front of your child."

"Our child. You signed the paperwork too, Mommy."

"Mama?" She said with a mouthful of peas, interjecting her opinion on our conversation. She seemed most intrigued to listen to us argue even if she didn't seem to know what it was about.

"Thank you, Emily, you made my point."

Why did she stay with me again? Oh, right, because she's loved me for years and only recently did we both just come out and say it.

Didn't mean I wasn't still an ass sometimes.

I did a double take, though, to find the little dark and curly one reaching over with her fork and stealing my not-really-touched peas. That was fine. She needed them more than I did.

To make her life a little easier, I picked her up from her chair at the bar and sat her down in my lap so she could steal peas without stretching too far and possibly cracking her head with a fall. She seemed pleased to become so much closer to them and started shoveling them in.

"I didn't expect all of this." I said quietly, just watching the girl in my lap chew happily on something I was never a fan of.

"What did you expect, Tony. That this would all be easy like a house cat? Feed it three times a day and it will take care of itself?"

"No, that's…not what I mean." I couldn't put it into words if I tried. She had been in my life for three weeks, I didn't understand the majority of what she said-

And only with one other person did I care so much.

And that woman was sitting across the island in my kitchen from me.

I looked up after a few seconds of tracing the curls on the back of her head to see Pepper's smile so happy at warm towards the two of us. She knew what I meant. She had to, she's a girl – they have motherly instincts just like guy's have the need to keep their daughters away from any men until they're 30.

Which was going to happen. I have the best deterrent to boyfriends, and he's made of metal.

"I'll call him." I said quietly. In one smooth move I had a 5 year old on my hip and I stood up, replacing her in my seat so I could call the only other person in this world that cared if I suddenly had a child.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I knew something was up from the minute he called me. First of all, he never called me to see if I could come over. Normally our phone calls involved Tony telling me I was going to do this at this time and bring beer. This time it was more like I want you to, can you.

Something was definitely wrong. I could only imagine what terrible things he had gotten himself into that I hadn't heard yet if he was 'begging' me to come have a guy night.

The door was open when I walked up, and I received my usual greeting from Jarvis. Alright, nothing's wrong that I can see. Nothing looks all that different. Smells a little weird in here. It wasn't the same plastic, metal and antiseptic smell. There was something else mixed. I knew we were having pizza, so there was no way in hell it was a cooked dinner.

I found him lounging in some worn out, I'm sure expensive European, jeans and his normal wife beater with a cutout for his chest piece. He was already throwing down beers and seemed to be watching the Dodgers game.

What the hell? Since when did Tony Stark care about baseball?

"Hey platypus." He threw a beer at me and thank god I had played baseball myself at one point in my life. I sat myself down a good ways away from him on the couch and leaned back.

We kept quiet and just stared at the TV screen for a while, sipping beers as tension seemed to grow. He seemed off, just like I expected.

"What are you hiding?"

"Who said I'm hiding anything?"

"Tony, you called me over here, you're sitting there QUIET. Something is wrong, and I can't figure out what it is. Where's Pepper? She'll tell me."

"She's upstairs. What, can I not have a nice quiet time watching the game with my friend?"

"Alright, whatever. When you decide to tell me, you just let me know."

I wanted so badly to ask Pepper, but if she hadn't told me yet, would she even if I asked? I shrugged it off for a moment.

"Where's dinner?"

"The delivery man is scheduled to arrive in 13 minutes, Mr. Rhodes."

"Thank you, Jarvis. Do you know what's wrong with him?"

"Jarvis, if you say anything, you can tell the forecast every morning on the Weather Channel. I hear they're interested in AI technology to do meteorology."

The AI was silent. Good god, he was hiding something.

"And that's not suspicious at all, having to threaten your own computer to keep quiet."

"No, he just likes to talk. Probably a loose code line somewhere."

In the middle of his sentence, I saw Pepper come down the stairs. She looked normal for a later evening as of recent happenings. She had on a tank top, pajama pants – but out of the corner of my eye I saw something else. Something dark. She didn't wear black at night, and her shirt was a lavender color.

She darted into the kitchen and didn't say a word to the two of us. I wanted to corral her into telling me what was up, or what did he destroy that I had to clean up again. I wanted a straight answer, and that was something I wasn't getting.

After a few more minutes of silence, the AI returned to announce the delivery guy had shown up. Pepper, as to be expected, picked up the pizza from the front door and took it into the kitchen. I moved to get up and help her, but Tony reached out and grabbed my arm.

"Rhodey, I…"

Then something came out of the kitchen. Something small and dark-headed. I couldn't register it at first, but once she stopped moving and Tony picked her up into his lap, my mind clicked on what it was.

"Tony, is that…"

"Emily, remember what I asked you to do?"

The girl was beautiful. Dark hair, light blue eyes – she did look a little small, but when I looked at her face, certain features stood out.

Oh god, it happened.

"Uncle Rhodey!" The little girl went from Tony's lap to having her arms around my neck and holding tight. I hadn't expected this kind of welcome, but…I returned her hug softly.

"Rhodey, meet Emily."

"Your kid."

"My daughter."

"How old?"

"5."

"She has an accent."

"Russian."

"Much English?"

"No." The little girl detached slowly from my neck and sat in my lap. At that moment, Pepper walked in and set the two pizzas on coffee table before sitting on the other side of Tony.

"How long has she been here?"

"Three weeks as of tomorrow." Pepper chimed in as she opened the box. With the scent of pizza, the girl immediately jumped off my lap and wandered over to the cardboard box of hot food. Pepper handed her a small paper plate and put a piece of the supreme pizza on it. I was surprised she was even eating it, but impressed in the same way. Even Tony picked off some of the stuff.

"Who…"

"You know that Russian model that died recently? Ilya lyu-whatever?"

"Yeah, I heard about it. She starved herself to death, right?"

"Yeah. Well, she had a kid and kept it secret to keep her modeling career. Not that it happened that way." He was, for some reason or another, pounding down that beer in his hand. Was he drinking thinking about her previous life? Or what?

"So you got her. No other family, or?"

"Only other person was grandma, and she's dying of cancer in some piss-hole town in Russia."

"…someone elected to give Tony Stark a kid."

"Oh, ha ha sour patch." Our conversation wasn't bothering the two girls behind the man, and the little one was more interested in pizza than anything.

We both reached out for our pizza and beer since there wasn't much else to say. He had a kid. I wasn't surprised, and I'm sure neither was Pepper. What was surprising is that someone decided that he would be a better fitting parent than…say, adopting out. It wasn't like they didn't know about how he conducted himself. And now that he was playing Iron Man…

"If something happens…you know." Tony said quietly, setting down his empty beer bottle and staring off at what was probably nothing. He tried to look like he was looking at the TV, but he wasn't really watching.

That was his way of telling me that he wanted me to be a part of her life just like he and Pepper were. He had her call me Uncle Rhodey – it would make sense that I would be the only other person that he cared about being in her life.

We threw down the pizza within 20 minutes, and it wasn't long after that that the little girl was asleep in Pepper's lap.

"Tony…"

"Shh. Take her up. I'll clean up." Tony seemed like such a different person…now that he had a kid. He kissed both of them before Pepper waved a small goodbye to me and took the girl upstairs. Tony spent the time afterwards picking up empty bottles and throwing out the pizza box in the kitchen. I couldn't help myself – I followed him and actually watched him do it.

"Who are you and what did you do with that guy that used to get fall down drunk and bring home 2 girls a night?"

He didn't say anything at first. He was more interested in putting away dishes that were laying out in the sink from probably lunch.

"You have to grow up…when you have a kid." He mumbled. He didn't seem particularly happy about what he said, but that didn't stop him. I felt like hugging him. His time in the desert had make him change his thoughts on his life – but a child had forced his growing up to go faster than it already had been.

"I'm gonna go home. Have an early morning tomorrow."

"Yeah. Goodnight, platypus." He waved a plate at me and sighed as I walked out of the kitchen towards the front door. He didn't seem to be enjoying family life

But it was a complete change.