AN – I'm sooo soo sorry. I've been writing this for a while (I usually start the next chapter the minute I post the old one) and I've been having a HELL of a time at my job, school is soon to start, and I have cleaning to do for my parental yearly visit. So much work, such an insane amount of time…

Chapter 9
What do you want from me?

"Tony, you get out and leave Emily with Happy. She'll be fine. Tell him to run to the back of the building. I'll pick her up."

I had people banging their microphones on the windows of my Bentley. Number one, my goddamn car. Don't be doing that shit to my car. Two…I didn't want to leave her. I wanted to take her with me. But I had no choice. Really, I had no SMART choice. So, being..semi-intelligent on some things, I did as told. I handed the 5 year old over to Happy and dashed out of the car.

Microphones were immediately shoved in my face, bright flashing lights everywhere around me. I was so happy I had worn my designer sunglasses. But as the Bentley drove away, there was a sinking feeling in my chest. There was no way that she wasn't upset for me leaving her, but I had to tread forward.

Questions were screamed at me about where I had been for a month, what Iron Man had been doing, and if I was training with some secret guy that had been training a lot of celebrities. I knew better than to really say anything. If they wanted things out of me, like why I hadn't been active in the world scene for 4 weeks, they had to make an appointment.

"Mr. Stark, have you been in Brazil learning Jiu-Jitsu?"

"What kind of razor do you use, Mr. Stark?"

"Tony, will you be at the charity event for wounded soldiers of Iraq later this month?"

"No, but I'm interested – my own, I have specific hair needs – and yes, more than likely. Everything else, you'll just have to wait!" I pushed my way through the mob and finally into the building. But, instead of going upstairs to the office, I ran to the back of the building. There was a back door that the staff used. That had to be where Pepper was going to get her.

I passed a number of people who said hi to me. People whose names I didn't remember. Chicks I remember banging their first month here. No names, just faces. All I could think about was my poor daughter and making sure she was happy.

I got to the door after tripping a secretary and almost falling in a trash can the janitor was pushing only to find Pepper walking in the door holding a sniffling Emily on her hip.

"She's fine, she's fine. Aren't you little one?" She cooed to the little girl who was more interested in hiding her face in the CEO's pale neck than talking. That's fine. She's somewhere she's never been. She can be frightened if she wants, I thought.

Pepper and I got into an elevator together, her standing right in front of me and leaning back against my chest softly. Emily wasn't the only tired one here. I snaked one of my arms around her waist as she leaned on me and kissed along her cheek, whispering in her open ear.

"Hard day, dear?"

"You wouldn't know, now would you?"

"Come on Pepper, I've been taking care of a 5 year old."

"Still doesn't come close to running a company AND setting up a press conference!"

"Nothing ever does." I sighed. I gave her that. She had this ability I never did. Wasn't that why I hired her in the first place?

"Who's going to take care of Emily while we're talking?" I said quietly. She looked half asleep. It would be easier to do this if she slept through most of it. I reached my open hand up to run my fingers softly along the edge of the tired little girl's face and through her well kept curls.

"Natalie is open to keep her in my office for a few minutes." She cooed softly as the little girl reset herself on her shoulder and whined a little as she reached her hand out to grab mine. I guessed that meant she wanted me, so Pepper and I exchanged the 35 pound body from her shoulder to my hip. She was quick to hide her face in my neck, so I leaned my chin on her forehead and pulled Pepper over against me on my other side. This was all I needed in my cozy little world, but I knew better than to think I would be left alone to my pleasures.

The doors opened and Pepper was quickly walking away from me. I jumped and sped up to catch to behind her, passing secretaries and assistants. You would've thought I was carrying an RPG or some sort of automatic weapon with the way those women were staring at me. Apparently the idea of me having a child was akin to a man walking in with a gun.

Once we were over at Pepper's office and she was opening the door, one of the more idiotic secretaries wandered over in her loud shoes and with her loud voice.

"Good morning Mr. Stark! And who is this new employee?" She giggled. Why did I hire 22 year-olds for so long? They never grew up. And I was only finding this out AFTER they'd been here for years.

"This is Emily…miss, uh…" And I never remembered them. I think I slept with this one. But maybe her hair was different…and her mouth. Probably a really really drunk lay. I resigned myself to that.

"McKenzie Arnold, sir. She's super cute! Awh, don't be shy…" Alright, this chick is annoying as fuck. Happily, Pepper was quick to call me into her office, so I dashed inside and shut the door right on the 25-year-old's face.

Inside were a few toys, a blanket on the marble floor, and a waiting Natasha ready to take the poor girl. She was quick to coo at her in her mother tongue, which made the girl stir and sit up a little for when I passed her over. The two talked for a few minutes, probably because they hadn't seen each other in days, and that freed me up to get some work done.

"Okay, so...Iron Man. Yeah. Let's do this." Pepper was quick to start reassembling my wrinkled clothing from holding a child, and checked my tie before giving him a soft kiss. It was a rare occurrence I got any kind of affection in a work-place setting. I couldn't do anything but grin.

"Now, this is more about where you've been and what we've been doing to keep the world at peace while you've been…" She seemed to have something click in her mind, so she turned away from me and pulled some cue cards from her desk and put them in my jacket pocket.

"You should actually read them this time. For once, if you don't, it's not just your life you're ruining. It's hers." That didn't sound like the normal grumbling Pepper I was used to over the years. It was mothering Pepper. She was worried for the safety of our child, and knowing me and press conferences, I was prone to just blurt out that I have a kid and that's why I haven't been around. Instead of destroying terrorist organizations and finding massive stores of my weapons in the wrong hands, I'd been teaching English and cleaning up 5-year-old's messes.

"What about the company as a whole?" I asked as she took off my sunglasses and put them in my front pocket with the cue cards.

"We're making medical breakthroughs in prosthesis, cancer treatment and we're testing new drugs to treat lupus. That's the best things to talk about if we're talking about Iron Man. If someone is going to gallivant around in a metal suit killing people, might as well show how we're also helping better lives."

"I don't kill innocent people-" she made it sound like I was killing everything in sight, which I did not appreciate. I knew she hated me going out and doing my super hero thing, but she made it sound like I was spraying bullets into a crowd and hoping the bad guys were somewhere inside.

"I know you don't, but you understand what I mean."

"Where was I this month…" I said in more of a thought out loud way. I dug out the cue cards and stared at the little blue boxes of paper with 'my notes' written on them.

"You can't be serious Pep-"

"I didn't write them Tony, and you know that. That's their job-"

"Fury wrote this, seriously? I spent two weeks in Russia and two weeks here under rest orders?"

"You were training. Natalie went with us to translate, which explains why she was gone too."

"And explains why I know more Russian now than I ever expected to…fine, whatever."

"Alright, we need to leave. Downstairs, come on." She shooed me out of the office, and her behind. Right before the door closed, a wail rang out.

Much to Pepper's dislike, I was quick to turn right around and found a curly dark head whining and running toward me. She must have wanted down from Natasha to chase after us.

"Em, it's okay, I won't be gone long…"

That didn't keep her from clinging to me as I squatted down to her level. She had a hold on my jacket and shirt, and didn't seem interested in letting go. Her lip was protruding and her eyes were a soft, wet red. She was begging me not to go in her horribly cute child way.

"Tony, we need to go."

Within a few seconds of thought, I picked my daughter back up and started walking out of the room. Thankfully, Natasha followed me out and Pepper, looking quite unhappy, continued on in front.

"We'll just take her down with us, and Natasha can keep her down in one of the hidden offices until we're done. Is that better Emily?" She was too busy hiding her face in my neck to care what I said. I understood. She was in a weird place and didn't want to be left alone. Maybe, since she had just been dumped by her mother's family, she had abandonment problems.

Back into the elevator we went and all the way down to the first floor. There was a press room there, and next to it was an office that had been emptied because of the conference. With much whining and a few tears, I left Emily with Natasha and walked around into the bright sunshiny room full of people.

After some more picking and a ghosted kiss so I wouldn't have lipstick on me, Pepper and I walked up towards the podium. She was comfortably behind me, just as Rhodey had been that day long ago.

"Good morning. Let's see if I can get through another one of these." A general chatter of laughs rippled through the crowd of flashing lights, and I pulled out my cards to lay on the podium.

"Several of the world's leaders have been calling to my attention my leave of absence from the world's stage. Some have said that Iron Man has left us. This is not true. Even super heroes need some time to rekindle-"

"Even though many have died due to your needs." God I hate her. WHY did someone let her in here? Hadn't Vanity Fair fired her yet? Damn she's a bitch, and bad in bed at that.

"I understand that people are asking super-human things of a mere human man who does need time to rest so that he can be at peak conditions for performing duties, Miss Everhart." I knew Pepper wanted to go wring her neck as much as I did, but there were too many people in here for us to start waging a war.

"For those of you who would like an explanation as to my absence, I was-"

Another wail. But this one was louder. And in the room. To the right of me was a screaming crying black curly head running straight for me.

Oh. Shit.

The only choice I had at the moment, seeing as flashbulbs were going off everywhere, was to squat down and wrap her up in my arms to quell her bawling. She really must have abandonment problem huh.

Pepper griped at me to stay down behind the podium with her as she sobbed and cried into my jacket. Natasha was not far behind and ran over in her heels to kneel down with me.

"What happened?" I whispered angrily at the dark redhead. She looked as unhappy at me as I was at her.

"She kicked and screamed as soon as you left! Did you know she can open doors?"

"I thought she was too short to reach the handles…"

"She can jump, Mr. Stark!"

Pepper was leaning over me to talk into the microphone and explain my absence, but too many people were shouting questions at her about the little girl I was now hiding.

"Who is the little girl, Miss Potts?"

"Why was she screaming? Are she and Tony related?"

Even if we did try to cover it up, she looked too much like me, and she had come screaming crying to me. This would be all over the news within 30 minutes and more than likely the story would be that I had a child that I was hiding. Why hide?

I stood up, still cradling the sniffling 5 year old to my chest. My nice blue dress shirt was soaking wet, and I was being filmed, but that was part of the fun of parenthood. Not looking your best because your child decided to 'add to your wardrobe'. At least that's what every woman would tell you. My mother didn't care for me wiping my slobber on her as a child…

"Uh, hi, yeah. This is…uh, Emily."

I thought Pepper was going to rip out my spine from behind me. Flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Reporters were screaming questions at me. The one thing I did notice was Pepper smacking me and pushing me on to get out of the way. She was about to have some massive cleanup, and I wasn't going to be of any help standing there. I tucked Emily more under my jacket, as much to keep her from view as make her calmer. I don't know, it made sense at the time.

Natasha dragged me and the now scared and hiding Emily out of the room and up the elevator. The first thing she did once the doors were closed was hit me across the head.

"What the hell was that for!"

"The only worse thing you could have done was state her full name and say her mother is a dead model you had a one night stand with! Do you not realize what this is going to do to her, to you, to Pepper?"

I didn't expect her to say anything of value, much less try to remind me that opening my mouth was probably detrimental to my daughter's life. If I hadn't been stopped, I was going to say she was my daughter. But it wasn't the best idea to let that out just yet, or at least at a press conference like that.

We went back up to Pepper's office and locked the door behind us. Emily was interested to see where we were, and wanted down so she could plop on the blanket and play with her toys. Well, at least that hadn't scarred her horribly.

Whatever Pepper was about to do to me was going to scar me, though.

I sat myself at her desk and turned to stare out the large windows at the top of the building. I could see the town skyline in the morning sunlight, and it did nothing for me really. I gave up this chair for a number of reasons, and one of them burst through the door a few minutes later.

"What were you thinking? Why didn't you just run out with her?"

"What did you expect me to do!"

"Something other than stand up and show her to the press!"

"I at least hid her somewhat-"

"But they still have pictures-"

"Both of you!" Natasha broke the squabbling. Thankfully. If that kept going, she would probably have made some sort of crack at my previous life style and how I shouldn't have a kid in the first place.

"You have an appointment across town in an hour." She reminded Pepper as a good assistant should. I should give her a bonus check later for this. The fallout was going to be muuuch less later than now, and I was happy to have that.

"Yes, thank you…we should grab something on the way out." She sounded a little flustered, but she immediately pulled it back into professional Pepper that I knew for so long. I was quickly up and out of the chair only to be met by little hands holding themselves up to grab towards me.

"How do you know we're talking about you, huh?" I asked Emily quietly. She was too enthralled to poke at the metal device hidden well under the navy blue I was wearing, even if it was a little wet from her tears earlier. It still made a little ping under all the cloth, though, and it seemed to amuse her.

"I don't know how long we're going to be in there. We probably should get her lunch." Pepper clicked in front of me, walking in the elevator and pushing the button to go down again.

"Yeah…where can we get drive through pasta?" I commented as I followed Pepper out of the office and stood comfortably next to her as we stood in the metal box designed to take us back to the ground.

"Pasta?" She piped up, clearly happier with the word she did understand quite well.

"Yes, little miss Stark, pasta."

When we walked out the back door, Happy was standing there with the car, already ready and waiting to take us to some horribly expensive diagnostician.