A/N: Once again, I apologies for any spelling and grammatical errors that may be present in this chapter. I'll try to get them fixed as soon as I have a chance. Enjoy the chapter.

Tony poked his head into Ruby's room. She had been going out a lot more over the past week or so, and whenever she came back, she was absolutely exhausted. Right now she was completely passed out on her bed, only half under the covers. He wanted to ask her exactly what it was she had been doing to cause her to be so tired all the time, but he never got the chance. The moment she came home, she was off to bed.

He also had things that he wanted to talk to her about, important things that he wanted to involve her in. But she was off out so much that he was hardly getting a chance to see her. Tony was worried about her and what she was doing, and even though he didn't want to, he was going to have to wake her up.

"Hey, honey?" He called softly, brushing her hair out of her face. "Wake up, sweetheart."

Ruby let out a groan as she rolled over and pulled her pillow over her head. "Go away. I'm trying to sleep." She mumbled, wanting to just get a little more sleep. She was aching all over once more from her training with Natasha, and she just wanted to sleep.

"Ruby, I need to talk to you. You just have to listen to me for a minute, okay? Then you can sleep for the rest of the day." Tony told her, gently tugging at the pillow and removing it from her head. She looked up at him, a scowl on her face at being disturbed. "I'm going to go see Rhodey. There's a few things I want to talk to him about. When I get back, I expect you to be here. You've be off out pretty much all day, every day. I think it's time you spend the day with your old man."

Ruby let out a groan as she closed her eyes again. "I wasn't going planning on going anywhere today. I need a few days to sleep." She told him, ready to drift back off into her own little world of dreams. "Maybe a few weeks."

Tony couldn't help but let out a chuckle. "Okay, honey. I'll see you when I get back. Then, maybe we can do a little bit of work on Maggie-May. What do you say?" Since their return, they had completely neglected her car, and she was always taking one of Tony's when she needed to go out. He didn't mind, because it did have a tracker in it that she probably didn't know about.

"Whatever." She muttered, shoving her face deeper into the other pillow that her head was on. "Go away, I want to sleep."

He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head, before placing the pillow back over her head. "I'll see you in a bit, Ruby." He told her, before leaving her to sleep. He was glad that she wasn't going to be off out today, and that he could finally spend some time with her and make sure that she was okay. He knew something was going on, and he was determined to find out what.

It didn't take Tony long to get to Edwards Air base, where he already knew that Rhodey was going to be. The whole drive there he had been thinking about his daughter, and what she was up to. Apart from the exhaustion, he had noticed that she was coming home with limps and some bruises form on her arms.

Ruby thought that he hadn't noticed, that she had done a good enough job at covering it up with make up, but he had seen it, and he knew it was about time to confront her about it all. But first, he needed to see his best friend and get him on board.

"The future of air combat. Is it manned, or unmanned?" Rhodey said, addressing his cadets. "I'll tell you, in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot's instinct, his insight, that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome, or a pilot's judgement."

Tony took that as his moment to step in. "Colonel? Why not a pilot without the plane?" He asked, causing everyone, including Rhodey to look at him.

"Look who fell out of the sky. Mr Tony Stark." Rhodey said, beaming away at his best friend.

"Speaking of manned or unmanned, you gotta get him to tell you about the time he guessed wrong at spring break. Just remember that, spring break, 1987. That lovely lady you woke up with." Tony said, knowing exactly what he was doing.

"Don't do that." Rhodey warned him.

But Tony just completely ignored him. "What was his name?" Once again, Rhodey protested and told him not to, and once again Tony didn't listen. "Was it Ivan?"

Several of the cadets failed to hold in their laughter. "Don't do that. They'll believe it. Don't do that." Rhodey said, finally getting Tony to stop trying to torment him and show him up in front of his cadets.

"Okay. Pleasure meeting you." Tony said, giving a nod to the cadets.

"Give us a couple minutes, you guys." Rhodey said, dismissing them and giving his best friend his full attention. "I'm surprised."

Tony looked at him in confusion. "Why?"

"I swear, I didn't expect to see you walking around so soon." Rhodey admitted to him.

"I'm doing a little better than walking." He told him, trying to supress the grin that was trying to take over his face. "Rhodey, I'm working on something big. I came to talk to you. I want you to be part of it."

James Rhodes eyes lit up at that little piece of information. "You're about to make a whole lot of people around here real happy, 'cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy."

"This… is not for the military. I'm not… it's different." Tony said, trying to explain to him that it wasn't something for the military that he was working on, but that it was still something he wanted his best friend involved with.

Rhodey just looked at him, not really knowing what to say. "What? You're a humanitarian now or something?" He asked, not having an idea what was going on with his friend. He knew that he had changed, but he was starting to wonder if he was a completely different man now.

"I need you to listen to me…"

"No. What you need is time to get your mind right. I'm serious." Rhodey warned him. "It's nice seeing you, Tony."

Tony knew that he was loosing him, that his best friend was on the side of everyone else. And why wouldn't he be? He was military, he relied on Tony's weapons to defend the country and its people. "Rhodey, something's up with Ruby." He said, stopping the man from walking away from him. "I don't know what's going on with her. She's out all day, and so exhausted when she gets back, she just crashes out."

Rhodey let out a sigh as he turned to face Tony again. "Have you spoken to her about it?" He asked, understanding that he was worried and wasn't entirely sure of what to do.

He just shook his head at him. "I never get the chance. She's out first thing in the morning, and then I don't see her again till she gets home. She says hi and then goes straight off to bed. Rhodey, I'm really worried about her. Ruby say's she is just going to the office, but she comes home with bruises on her arms."

Now Rhodey knew that the conversation had taken a serious turn. "What? She's coming home with bruises?" Tony just nodded at him, a worried look on his face. "So, do you think something is happen to her when so goes to Stark Industries? Something she isn't telling you?"

"I don't know, Rhodey." Tony told him, rubbing his head a little. "I track her to the office, she parks up, but she doesn't go inside." He told her. "I've had JARVIS keep tabs on her, and she has not once entered the building. So what the hell is she doing, Rhodey?"

"You need to talk to her, Tony. Just let her know that you're worried about her, and that you know she hasn't really been going to the office. Be straight up with her, but try not to be too harsh." Rhodey told him, hoping that he could at least do something to help. "I'll give her a call later, see if I can get anything out of her, okay?"

Tony nodded at him. "Sure, yeah. Great, thanks, Rhodey. I'll see you later." He said, before rushing out and getting back in his car. He was going to go home, grabbing some breakfast on the way to make sure that his daughter ate something, and then he was going to sit her down and talk to her. Whatever was going on, he was going to get to the bottom of it.

When he arrived back at the mansion, Pepper was there, sitting in the living room, working. She glanced up at Tony as he walked in. "Good morning, Mr Stark." She said in a tone that informed him that she wasn't in the best of moods.

"Miss Potts. Have you seen Ruby this morning?" He asked, trying to make some form of conversation and ease the tension that was in the air. With everything that had happened, Pepper was the one having to face it all while Tony just stayed home and hid in his workshop.

"JARVIS said she was still asleep when I arrived. I assume that she still is now as well." Pepper replied, not looking up from her work.

Tony took that as his request to shut up and leave her alone. He kept hold of the paper bag with some bagels in and headed to Ruby's room, hoping that she really was still there and sleeping. When he got to her room, he knocked on the door. "Hey, Ruby? Are you up yet?" He called through the door.

He heard her cursing on the other side of the door. "I'm just getting dressed, wait a minute." She shouted back through the door. He stood there and waiting until she came and opened the door for him. "Uh, hi." She ended up saying, looking slightly nervous.

"I brought breakfast." Tony told her, holding up the white paper bag for her to see. "Let's go down to the workshop, you can eat while I fill you in on a few things." He told her. Ruby nodded at him and followed him down the hallway and stairs and into the workshop.

"So, uh, what did you want to fill me in on then?" Ruby asked him, sitting down in her chair at her father's desk and grabbing a bagel out of the bag.

Tony just looked at her, trying to figure out in his head how he was going to find out exactly what she had been up to every day when she was gone. "What's going on, Ruby?" He asked her, causing her to frown at him. "Ruby, I know you drive to stark Industries, but you don't actually go inside. I should know, I've checked. So what the hell is going on?"

Ruby's face fell the moment he said that. She had been getting SWAIN to make it look like she had at least been logging onto her computer at the office, but she guessed her father had gone one step further and checked the CCTV to see if she had actually gone inside of the building. "I… uh, I… the thing is…" She really didn't know what to say to him. She didn't want to tell him the truth, she wasn't ready to say and, and he certainly wasn't ready to hear it.

"Look, I'm not angry at you, I just want you to tell me the truth, honey. I'm worried about you, so I just want you to tell me what's going on." He told her softly, hoping that she would listen to him and give him the answers that he wanted. "Don't think I haven't seen those bruises, either."

Ruby took a deep breath as she looked at him, seeing the concern in his eyes. "I… uh, I haven't exactly been going to the office to do some work." She finally admitted to him. "Someone's been meeting me there, and I've been somewhere else the whole time."

"So, who is this person and what have you been doing this whole time?" Tony asked her, glad that she was actually opening up and telling him what he wanted to know.

"Uh, I've been meeting up with Tasha." She told him, wondering how he was going to react to that. But Tony just looked at her, waiting for her to explain some more. "She… uh, she's been helping me out a bit."

Her father raised an eyebrow at her. "Helping you out, how, exactly?" He questioned. "Keep explaining, young lady."

Ruby let out a long sigh. "Okay, here it is. Everything that's happened has completely sent me off the rails. You know what I did to your car, you know how close I've been coming to loosing it. Tasha helps me, like she did when I was younger. All this anger and aggression I have, she helps me to get it out of my system." She explained to him. "I… I let everything just build up, and then I kind of explode. Tasha is helping me to keep control of it all, otherwise I'll just go off the rails and do something stupid."

Tony rubbed his face with his hand. "Ruby… why couldn't you just be honest and tell me this in the first place?" He asked her. "Did you think that I was going to stop you from going? I've been worried sick, honey. I had no idea where you were going or what the hell you were doing. You were coming home absolutely exhausted, and covered in bruises."

"I'm… I'm sorry, dad." Ruby whispered quietly. She hadn't expected him to be checking up on her as much as he had been, and she didn't think he would have been overly worried about her. "I just… I knew you had a lot going on. I didn't want to bother you."

"Hey, you're my little girl." He said, earning a glare from Ruby. "Okay, maybe not you're not a little kid, but you're still my daughter. It doesn't matter what I've got going on, or what is happening, I will always have time to talk to you, to spend time with you. Okay?" He said, earning a nod from his daughter. "Don't you ever think that because there is stuff going on, that I'm too busy for you, or that you're bothering me. You got that, honey?"

Ruby nodded at him some more. "Yeah, I got it, dad."

"Good, now give me a hug." Tony said, a smile on his face as he opened his arms, inviting his daughter to hug him. Ruby did as she was told, and gave her dad a hug. She had to admit, it did feel nice. "And, uh, one last thing. I want to meet this Tasha friend of yours." He said, causing Ruby to tense a little. "If she is beating the hell out of you, I want to see the damage you have done to her."

"Yeah, I'll let her know." Ruby told him, having absolutely no intention at all in letting him meet Natasha. She knew that if she did, Natasha would most likely force her to tell her father the truth about everything. "Anyway, she's busy for the next few days with work, so I'm all yours."

Tony looked at her and smiled. He really had missed having her around, especially her snarky comments. "Great, so how about we start putting that car of your back together?" Tony asked her. "You're getting a bit too comfortable with taking my car, I don't like it, it's my car."

Ruby knew that he was only joking, and that he really didn't mind her taking his car. But he was right, she did miss driving Maggie-May. "Well, it's about time. My Maggie-May is awesome, your cars are just… eh…" She said, shrugging her shoulders at him.

"Hey!" He said, giving her a hurt look. "I'm not afraid to ground you. I can stop you going out and meeting Tasha and fighting with her. I'm sure Happy would be thrilled to take over." Tony informed her, knowing that it would be easy enough to get her in the boxing ring with Happy. Also, he wanted to see just how good his daughter was. He had never seen her fight before, but something was telling him that she was pretty good at it.

"I don't think Happy would last very long. Tasha is really tough on me, trust me, Happy wouldn't stand a chance." Ruby told him rather confidently.

"Oh, is that so?" He asked his daughter, a plan forming in his head. "Well, how about we test that out. Get you and Happy in the ring together and see what happens. If you can take down Happy, then you can have anything you want."

Ruby couldn't help but smirk at him. "Anything?"

Tony nodded at her. "Anything. But, if Happy wins, then you can be his slave for the day. I think that sounds fair."

"Hang on, I have to be his slave? That's harsh, dad, really harsh." Ruby told him, wondering why on Earth he would even come up with something like that.

He held his hands up in front of him in defence. "Hey, part of his job is to be your slave, so I think it's only fair that you get the chance to be his slave."

Ruby knew that she would be able to take Happy down easily, but her father and Happy didn't know that. Her training was going well, even if she was still getting her backside kicked, but she was making some good progress. "Deal. I kick his backside, I get anything I want. He kicks mine, he gets a slave for the day." She told him, holding her hand out.

Tony reached out and grabbed his daughters hand and shook it. "Great. JARVIS, let Happy know that tomorrow he's going to be having a little fun in the ring with Ruby." He called.

"Hang on, tomorrow? Why tomorrow? You're not really giving him that much notice." Ruby protested, knowing that she was still going to be aching tomorrow. She was meant to be having a few days of rest, to let her body recover, not going and picking fights with her father's bodyguard.

"You got a problem with tomorrow? You got plans that you haven't told me about?" Tony asked her, wondering if she was hiding something and really did have plans for tomorrow.

Ruby shook her head at him. "Nope. Like I said, Tasha is busy working for the next few days, so I got a little break from her intense training." She had actually been sent out on assignment, and Fury had told her to take a few days break since she had been going in every single day without fail.

"Great, so that's settled. Ruby Matthews-Stark vs Happy Hogan. Fight of the century. Hey, maybe I should sell tickets? Get it broadcast all across the globe." Tony said, winding his daughter up a little.

His daughter ended up just glaring at him. "Do that, and it will be Ruby Matthew-Stark vs Tony Stark. And trust me, the end result will not be pretty." She warned him, knowing that if he pushed her she really could do some damage to him, just like she could do some damage to Happy.

"Okay, okay, no spectators. Got it." He told her, having to hold his hands up in defence once more. "So, are we going to get started on that rust bucket of yours or not?"

The next thing he knew, the stress ball that had been sitting on the desk had been thrown at him. "Hey! What was that for?" He cried, rubbing the spot where he had been hit.

"Don't you dare call Maggie-May a rust bucket, you old man." Ruby warned him. "There is not a speck of rust on her, so don't even bother to call her that ever again."

Tony couldn't help but smile, that was his daughter right there, giving him attitude and bantering with him. That was the teenager who had walked in and changed his life completely, but changed it for the better. "Shall we get started then?"

They had been working on Ruby's car for hours, and the only reason they had stopped was because Tony could see she was hungry and getting tired. Now that he knew what she had been up to, he understood the exhaustion and bruises. That didn't mean that he was entirely happy with it all, but he did understand. Everyone had a different coping mechanism, and it would appear that his daughter's was to beat the hell out of something or someone.

"Well, she isn't looking too bad." Tony said, wiping his hands on the rag Ruby had just tossed to him. "You thought any more about the paint job?"

No, she hadn't, Ruby had completely forgotten about that. "Hey, JARVIS? Show me some ideas for Maggie-May." She called, sitting down in front of her father's computer set up.

"Of course, Miss Matthews-Stark." The AI replied, before bringing up several different images for her to look through. Each of them was different, but all of there were silver with a splash of purple thrown in.

"Hmm, four and nine are pretty good." She said, studying the images. "Add fourteen and twenty seven to the short list as well."

"Yes, Miss Matthews-Stark." JARVIS replied, moving the selected images over to a separate screen so she could carry on browsing through the rest.

"Well, you certainly have been busy with those designs." Tony commented, seeing that there was over four hundred different designs for his daughter to look through.

"I had a lot of time, sir." His AI replied. Straight away, Tony knew what he meant. JARVIS had still been creating different designs even while they were gone.

Ruby just sat there, flicking through some more of them and adding a small selection of them to her short list. She would worry about the actually paint job once the car was totally finished. "Didn't someone mention food?" She said, closing the screens all down and turning to look at her father.

All Tony could do was smile at her, happy that she was finally getting her appetite back and wanting to eat more than she had been. "Anything you want."

Before she could answer, SWAIN was calling in her ear. "Miss Matthews, Mr Roberts is calling you." He told her, making her face fall. She hadn't spoken to him since the day she had returned home with her father.

Tony had noticed her sudden change in attitude and looked at her with a concerned look. "Ruby, everything okay?" He asked her softly.

She looked up at him. "It's Liam… SWAIN says he's calling. Uh…" She didn't really know what to do, whether to answer it and speak to him or just ignore it and get SWAIN to tell him she was busy.

"Answer it. I'll be right here." He said, causing her to nod at him.

"Order Chinese. I'll see what Mr Roberts wants. Put him through SWAIN." She said, trying to find the courage she needed to speak to the man who had once been her best friend and almost brother.

"Ruby?" She heard Liam say, rather nervously. He should have been nervous, after the way he had spoken to Ruby the last time they spoke. If he put a foot out of line again, Tony was going to tear him apart, and he knew it.

"Liam." She replied with no emotion.

"Uh, hi. How are you?" He asked her.

"I'm fine. How's Val?" She wasn't going to ask him how he was, that would wait until he had given her an apology. If he gave her one.

"Good, she's good. She's been worried about you, she contacted uh, Miss Potts a few times to make sure you were okay."

"I know, Pepper told me she called. I was never around when she called, either that or I was asleep." Ruby replied, still leaving out all emotion.

There was silence at the end of the phone for a few moments, and Tony was watching with concern. He was ready to jump in if Ruby needed him to, if he felt like Liam was going to blow up at her again. He wasn't impressed with how the guy had acted, and he want impressed with how long he had waited to try and contact her again.

"So… uh, Natasha paid me a visit." Ruby didn't say anything, she was a bit surprised that Tasha had seen him, and she was curious to know why, but she wasn't going to tell him that. "She told me what really happened, Ruby. Why didn't you just tell me any of this? You should have told me."

"You didn't give me a chance, Liam. How could I tell you anything when the moment I speak to you, you just start shouting at me? You just did not give me the chance." Ruby told him, knowing the Natasha would have told him more than just how she had been capture, but also how she had been out before her father and the state she had been in.

"I know, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have acted like that, Ruby, I am really, really sorry." He did sound genuinely sorry, but Ruby wasn't sure she had the energy to forgive him. He had really hurt her wit the way he had been, and it wasn't something that she was going to forget quickly.

"I'm sorry as well, Liam, because right now, I can't forgive you. What you said, it really hurt. After everything that had happened, I needed you there, I needed you there to help me, to support me. But you were blaming it on me, on my dad. I needed my best friend, but you were anything but a friend at the time." Ruby told him honestly. If he had been there, supported her, she might not have gone so close to loosing it. He would have spotted it sooner, and she would be closer to healing.

She heard Liam sigh on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I kind of guessed you were going to say something like that. But just know that I really am sorry. Val has been making my life a living hell, she made sure to let me know how much of an idiot I had been."

Ruby could just imagine the kind of things that Val would have been doing to make his life hell. She would have been taking his car key, conveniently forgetting to go shopping or make dinner. His washing would never be done unless he done it himself. Val knew how to make him suffer.

"I really am sorry, Ruby. And I don't blame you if you never want to talk to me ever again. I just… I just wanted to at least try and sort things out." Ruby knew that it had probably taken a lot for him to actually call. Not just Val badgering at him, but also getting up the nerve to do it. He knew that there was every chance that Ruby was going to ignore his calls, or just shout at him, tell him she hated him and wanted nothing more to do with him.

"Like I said, I can't forgive you just like that." Ruby told him. "But lame apology accepted." She said, seeing her father give her a small smile out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah, it was kind of lame, wasn't it?" Liam said, causing her to chuckle a little. "You know where I am if you need me, Ruby. I know you probably don't, which is okay, but I just thought I'd say it anyway."

"Uh, yeah. Sure. I, um… I got to go. My dad is waiting for me so we can get some dinner. I'll… I'll talk to you again soon." She said, not really knowing what else to say to him. She as glad that he had called, but she knew it was going to take a long time for things to get better between them.

"Okay, yeah, no problem. Uh, tell Tony I said hi…" Liam told her nervously. He was slightly afraid of her father now, and with good reason as well. "Or not, you know, depending on how much he hates me."

"Give Val my love, and tell her I'll trying to call her soon." Ruby said, before saying goodbye to him and having SWAIN end the call. She couldn't help but let out a sigh when it was all over.

Straight away, Tony was in front of her, wrapping his arms around her tightly. "Hey, it's all gonna be fine, honey. He knows he was wrong, and he knows that you can't forget about it just like that." He told her, giving her some assurance. "It's all fine, yeah. At least he finally decided to call and apologise to you, even if it was lame." Ruby couldn't help but chuckle at that last comment.

"Yeah, it was totally lame. Anyway, I'm hungry. I want food, and lots of it." Ruby told him, when he finally let him go.

"All ordered and on it's way. Now, all you have to do, is pick a movie to watch for when it gets here. What do you feel like tonight? A bit of Disney? Action, thriller? Maybe a horror movie?" He asked her, wondering what she was in the mood to watch. He knew that she loved her Disney movies, and he knew that they always seemed to cheer her up.

Ruby shrugged her shoulders at him. "I'm not sure. Something funny. I want to watch something that's going to make us both laugh." She said, feeling in the mood to just laugh until she cried.

She had to admit, it was a small weight off her shoulders having spoken to Liam, and the fact that he knew the truth about what had happened. But it wasn't just that, she was glad that her father knew that she was training with Tasha and that was why she had been acting so off. And Tony was just glad that Ruby had been honest with him and told him the truth. At the end of the day, they both felt some sense of relief.

A/N: Well, what did you all think? I decided that it was time Liam at least tried to apologise for what happened, but it just didn't feel right to forgive him straight away.

Anyways, yet another chapter with lots of Tony and Ruby in it, so I hope you all liked it. Some of the things that happened in this chapter, are actually going to play a part later on.

Now, big thank you to everyone who has favourited/followed the story. It means a lot to know that people read it and enjoy it. I also want to say an absolutely massive thank you to those people who take the time to review. I know there is only a few of you, but your comments are very much appreciated.

Well, I am working away on the next chapter, and it's going to start getting a bit more interesting and intense. I hope you are all ready for it! So, until ned time!

Pippa.