AN – Here's what happened. I PROMISED myself that I would get another chapter done in Spare Moments before I put another one up here. I started it first, and I need to finish it. I'm almost 6 weeks behind in it. But this one just flows so much easier, even though I have no idea where I'm going. All of this you read today was straight impulse.
I start school on Wednesday, and golf season begins next Wednesday. I really really plan on getting this full throttle ahead into some action soon enough. I need this filler chapter to start my jumping…

Chapter 10
This is All I Can Take

The diagnostician was boring and overly winded. The only remotely interesting thing was watching Emily play with the lego blocks. She built a house pretty quickly with rooms, decorations, and even made people to go in them. Pepper and I were in one, and her room didn't have a wall. The doctor was talking to Pepper, and I was trying to play with my daughter. The older man griped at me that I was playing with her – that this was supposed to be a test of her intelligence and abilities. Not me showing her how to do things.

I wasn't trying to show her anything. I just wanted her to not seem so alone. Not that she seemed to mind playing alone, but…you get what I mean.

We were gone within an hour and Emily seemed worn out. She was asleep and drooling on my grey Italian suit before the car was put into drive.

"So…what exactly did that guy say? He had the worst accent…" I was busy pushing a few of her curls out of her face while Pepper was punching numbers on her blackberry like she was trying to play the world's fastest whack-a-mole. People needed her attention. Who's surprised – it was probably all fires myself and the fruit of my loins threw gasoline on. For years the press had waited for an illegitimate child to come out of the woodwork, and they finally had their wish. I felt like I should do something about it – but I knew she would tell me to amuse myself otherwise. I guess I just didn't need to do press conferences anymore. Not after the last two.

"It was Russian, Tony. At least he could talk to her normally." She mumbled as she was too busy picking through emails, responding to few and deleting many. I could see from my spot beside her what they were. Some were in-house corporate stuff, others were press e-mails forwarded from Natasha with people begging for statements about the press conference. She seemed to be deleting those.

"What did he say, then? I was too busy-"

"Not paying attention, Mr. Stark? Oh yes, because you do that so well!" That stopped her. She was too busy staring right at me to be pushing buttons anymore. I knew she could do the job, but something was pounding in her brain first. I could see the wheels turning at rapid speed inside. She was holding everything in.

"This guy was telling you if you're daughter can go to school or not, and you were too busy thinking about something else! How can you say you're raising a child when all you want is the good part and not the bad? You want to play with her and protect her, but you don't look past that. Do you not know what the press will do to her, Tony? We're already short on privacy, now you and I are raising a child? You aren't even mature enough to take care of yourself, much less a 5 year old! What did you expect? That I would do it or Natalie would do it? No. You signed those papers. You clean the messes, you take her to the doctor, you be the parent! I'm here for support when necessary, not to make sure that the kids are playing well together!"

So that was a lot to digest at once.

"So tell me how you really feel."

Okay, so I couldn't think of anything else to say to that. Why not throw fire right on top of it?

"You asked me to move it when it happened. I knew you would. I expected you would. You wanted me to move in and take care of her with you. It's more like babysit the two of you. When she dropped that wrench on her foot – didn't you expect that 5 year old plus heavy object means injury? She's not you, Tony. She doesn't play with tools all day and when she drops things on her foot she just stares at it and hopes it'll be better in a little while." She had to stop to take a breath. I had to stop to take a breath. Emily was fussing on my shoulder, but overall still asleep even though Pepper was venting so close to both of us. I guess it had been a long time coming, otherwise her face wouldn't have been that shade of red I only saw when she was utterly incensed.

Was I bothered? Yes. I thought I had shown I was mature enough for this to her and everyone else, but I guess not. Had I not done a good job as of late? I hadn't said to the press that she was my child, I just said what her name was. I couldn't help it if she was a hard-headed as me.

Now that I was thinking about it, she had way too many of my traits for it to be healthy.

Pepper backed off a little and calmed down enough to breathe in a regular pattern. I was still staring at her through my sunglasses and waiting for the next outburst.

"I've gotten better-" I couldn't stand the awkward silence.

"Yes, you've gotten better, but it's not enough."

Another silence. Maybe talking about something else would make this a little easier. It was a long way home.

"What did he say?" I asked quietly. Pepper wasted no time reaching into her leather case and handing me a stack of paper she fished from inside.

The front was the usual name, age, date, height stuff. On the bottom and the back were comments and observations. I speed-read it, picking up certain words as I went along.

"High creativity, problem-solving, comfortable independence… hard-headed streak?"

"I think she get's that from her father." She was already back to her blackberry. I guess it was soothing to type emails as fast as lightning for her.

"It could say 'textbook narcissism'."

"Wait until she's 13."

"I look forward to it." Back to the paper, looking for anything else of merit. Most of it was commenting on her speech style and her small amount of English. But there was something else that bothered me.

"Not ready for kindergarden?" the words were like vomit and just as disgusting to taste.

"He said she has severe attachment issues. We knew that the first day she came to us. She cried for hours because she'd never been away from her grandmother. If we hadn't played to her curiosity and found something else for her to think about, she could have cried for days."

"She could go to kindergarden! If they keep her interested she wouldn't cry the whole time. Can we get another guy to look at her? I mean this is bull-"

"We have a doctor's appointment with a children's psych next week. She will come to the house, though. It's best to see children in their normal environment." She still wasn't looking at me. God the woman could multitask. I always forgot how good she was at that, and it made me remember easier times when I used to comment about her legs and she'd just not pay attention to it. Times where we kept our feelings to ourselves.

"So if that doctor says she's ready-"

"We'll talk about it, Tony."

I realized then that the tone she was taking with me was one of a mother trying to calm a hyper kid that wanted something. I guess I really hadn't grown up enough to be a complete parent.

But why would I grow up completely when we seemed to be doing just fine? She still came home with me, and she still slept in my bed. Sure, we hadn't had sex for days, but it's hard to do anything fun when you have a 5 year old that could come in the room at any moment in the night. It wasn't like we had a babysitter on speed dial. The only person qualified was busy being dragged around by Fuhrer Fury and unavailable. Rhodey was as uncomfortable as you could get around kids. It wasn't that he didn't like them; he just didn't know what to do with them.

I looked over the paper one last time for anything I had missed. He commented about her belief that everything was hers, and that she could have problems with other children in the classroom. There was some comment about needing to socialize her with other children to help foster good communication skills, and that she was very particular about everything and everyone.

One of the last things was she had talked about wanting to know where her mother was. Not Pepper, her mother that gave birth to her and raised her from infancy. As far as I had been around her, she hadn't asked me about her. Wouldn't make sense to ask your father about that? But she never poised the question as far as I knew. Jarvis always translated for me in my ear.

After some quiet time and my thoughts centered on listening to the little girl's breath on my ear, Happy pulled down the border between himself and us. I guess we had been sitting there long enough to make it back to the house.

"Hey, uh…there's a few people waiting for you."

Both Pepper and I looked out the hole we had to the windshield and saw a mass of reporters, cameras and video cameras standing at the gate to the compound. I'm sure they were looking for a glimpse of Emily and myself to say that we were indeed father and daughter. They weren't going to get one, though. That was something else we had to deal with once we got inside.

"What happened in there?" Happy asked as he maneuvered around the people as they banged themselves up against the darkened glass to sneak a peek inside.

"Well, uh-"

"Tony showed the world Emily." Pepper said it so blunt and cold. How pissed was she that I didn't keep her down in the podium for a minute. Or had just given her back to Natasha? What did she want me to do? Another fight we would have later.

"Oh. Make sense then." He turned just enough to get ourselves in the gate so they could snap shut quickly. We would probably drag a few stragglers, but they would be shown out accordingly.

"Take us into the garage." What could this woman not do? Bark orders, type, probably balance my check book all at the same time.

God I love her.

When I reached out to touch her, though, she moved back from my touch. My heart sank. I felt like breaking in two. She didn't want me to touch her. Did it have to do with our current quarrel over Em? Was she unhappy about something else too? Or was it just everything on top of everything on top of everything?

"Pepper-"

"Not now, Tony. I'm trying to put out another fire you created and don't seem too worried about, all while you're whining that you can't get your way. Not interested."

Happy did as instructed, and we all clamored out in the garage to a waiting Dummy and my comforting smell of grease and metal parts. Pepper was too busy with other things to stay for a moment, and immediately walked out of the shop and up the stairs to the living room. Okay, if that's what she needs, then that's what she needs. I sent Happy home for the day and wandered over to the elevator with a gleeful Dummy in tow. He had some kind of infactuation with little miss Stark, and I never understood why, but it was cute to see him follow her around. I guess he just wanted to help.

The elevator zoomed up to the top floor and opened to the hallway of bedrooms. I walked into her own and laid her down into her bed while Dummy pulled the blankets up over her. She didn't seem bothered at all by the shift from hard, warm shoulder to cold sheets, thankfully. With a small kiss, Dummy and I wandered out of the purple paradise and he shut the door behind us.

"Go back downstairs. You can play with her when she wakes up." I was too busy trying to get my cufflinks off as he nodded and rolled off to the elevator to go back and do his chores.

Back into my bedroom I went to dress down and get this tie off of me. Everything came crashing down at once. The press knew, Pepper was pissed, and Emily was being denied schooling. Such a great day. How could this get-

"A call from Mr. Fury for you, sir."

Why did I open my big damn mouth.

"Fine, whatever, patch."

"Mr. Stark, I see you're doing well in your new parenting role. Maybe we should call you Iron Daddy."

"Can it Fury, what do you want." I finally got that damn tie undone and I was halfway down my buttons by now.

"Unless you're too busy watching Dora and kissing boo-boos, I need someone to clean up some things in Syria, and quick. You can get there the fastest."

I did NOT want to be taking a mission right now. I had no right to leave an angry Pepper and a sleeping Emily here alone. Had Pepper ever been left alone with her? How do I say 'oh, yeah, baby, I have to go to work, will you watch the kid you think I shouldn't have? Thanks, love you.'

"Time's wasting, Tony. More and more lives are at stake."

"Fine, give me a few minutes. Jarvis." I yelled for the cut off and yanked the rest of my clothing off. God, what a dick that man could be. Nothing like a little guilt trip to make a man do something you want him to, Jesus Christ.

I pulled on one of my extra suit liners and walked the two steps down the hall to peek in at Emily. She was curled up and drooling a little on her little pillow. Her curly black hair was everywhere. How could I leave her? I didn't know when I would be coming back.

I knew this day would come, but I didn't know how soon it would be.

The harder part was downstairs, probably sitting on the couch-

I shut the door to her bedroom and asked.

"Jarvis, where's Pepper?"

"In her old office, sir."

Go tell her, or cowards way…

"Jarvis, tell her I've been called away on a very important mission by Fury. Or, wait-"

"If I may, sir, you should tell her yourself."

Why was my computer telling me what to do again?

I begrudgingly wandered over to the other side of the house and stuck my head in the door to her old office. It hadn't changed since she used it sometimes, like now, to do things she needed to do but didn't want to go back in.

"Uh, hi, honey, uhm, I gotta…"

"What, Tony." She didn't even look up from her laptop screen. Her eyes were furrowed and she looked ready to break something. Sounds normal. Nothing like a PR nightmare to make Pepper break equipment.

"Fury called, and I gotta go." Might as well rip the bandaid quick.

That changed her demeanor some. She did look up at me and took in my black suit covering everything but my head. Something about me taking a mission always triggered the frightened side of her, and I could always see it in her eyes.

"Will you…watch Emily? I'll be back - sometime, I'll call."

"Okay, just…be careful, please?" She was begging me almost. I saw the tears that wanted to form. I wanted to hold her and tell her I would be okay, but I wasn't sure if she even wanted that now. I gave her my little grin before walking off and down the stairs to my robots in waiting.

A few minutes later, when I was up in the air, I got a phone call from the house.

"Tony, I'm sorry…I love you, we'll talk when you get back."

"Love you too, Pepper…see you when I get home."

At least I wouldn't be going home to an angry Pepper.