A/N: I know, it's been a long time since I last updated. Once again my motivation flew out of the window and I had trouble hunting it down.

Ruby had been working non-stop with her father on rebuilding the suit, and making it so much better than before. They had the best materials in the entire world, and a much better environment to work in. She had been helping him rather a lot, and Fury had been leaving her alone.

Natasha had called her a few times, just to make sure she was all right. It would appear that she had flipped out at Fury for letting the press print some of those things about Ruby. She had seen it, and she had also seen the statement that her father had left for the media.

They had made some pretty good progress with the suit, and Ruby was doing her best to put all the worries she had to one side. Everything had calmed down for her a little, and her father had been smart enough not to wake her up by scaring the hell out of her again.

"I'm telling you, it's not going to work properly. There is no point in testing it till we are absolutely sure it is going to work safely." Ruby told her father for the hundredth time.

Only he wasn't listening to her, and he was fixing a section of the arm from the suit to his arm. "Up two. All right, set that." He said, letting JARVIS attach it properly. "Ruby, what have we got to lose by giving it a try?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Uh, well, you could blow the place up, that's a pretty big risk if you ask me. And do I even have to mention what happened when you first tried out the boot thrusters? That hurt, right?" Ruby just had to remind him of the first little test he started doing while she was getting some sleep.

"Come on, Ruby, where's your sense of adventure gone?" Her father asked, before noticing the way that she was looking through the glass doors. He noticed why she had been looking in that direction when Pepper came through the door, carrying a package with two mugs sitting on top.

"I've been buzzing you. Did you hear the intercom?" Pepper asked the man, walking over towards him. She looked over at Ruby, who simply shook her head.

Tony wasn't really paying much attention to what his assistant was saying, in fact, her thought she had been talking to Ruby. "Yeah, everything's… what?"

Pepper rolled her eyes a little as she placed the box down on the desk near where Ruby was sitting. "Obadiah's upstairs."

"Great!" Tony said, with fake enthusiasm.

"What would you like me to tell him?" Pepper asked him, before giving Ruby a more concerned look. Something didn't seem right to her, she didn't like the way that Ruby was being so quiet.

"Great, we'll be right up." He replied, finally having the arm attached properly and getting himself ready to test it out.

The woman hadn't failed to notice the contraption on his arm. "Okay. I thought you said you were done making weapons." Once again, she couldn't help but glace over at Ruby and worry about why she wasn't saying anything. She looked tired, not as tired as she had been, but still tired.

"It… this is a flight stabiliser. It's completely harmless." He told her, before activating it, sending a bolt of energy from the palm of his hand, and also shooting him backwards.

Ruby put her head in her hands. "JARVIS…"

"Your calculations were correct, Miss Matthews-Stark." The AI informed her.

"I said it wasn't safe, but did you want to listen to me? No, of course not. You're Tony bloody Stark, you listen to no one but yourself!" Ruby shouted at him, before storming out of the room and up the stairs.

Tony just pulled himself up off the ground as he watched his daughter leaving. "I didn't expect that." He admitted, before letting out a sigh. She had been warning him constantly against testing things until they were certain it was safe, but he just kept on jumping in and testing things and then finding out the problems.

Pepper simple shook her head at him, before heading up the stairs and joining Ruby and Obadiah in the living room. She saw Ruby already sitting on the couch, an open pizza box in front of her. "Everything all right, Ruby?" She asked. Ruby looked like she wanted to murder the slice of pizza that was in her hand.

The young Stark nodded her head and looked up at the woman. "Yeah, fine. Just… tired, you know." Ruby rubbed her head a little, feeling a rather nasty headache coming on. She had been doing nothing but working with her father, and although she was getting sleep, she needed more. She hadn't exactly been feeling all that great recently, but SWAIN and JARVIS had kept it quiet for her. The last thing she wanted was her father and Pepper on her back because she wasn't feeling all that great.

"Are you sure that's all it is, Ruby?" Pepper asked her, going and sitting down next to her. "I know you've been working a lot with Tony, and I know what he is like when he's working. Just because he doesn't sleep, doesn't mean you have to be up at all hours as well."

Ruby let out a sigh as she put her slice of pizza back in the box. "I'm okay, Pepper, honestly. Just wish he'd listen to me sometimes. I told him, I told him that it wasn't going to work."

"You know what he's like, Ruby. He'll only listen to himself at times. He still hasn't worked out that you are just as good, if not better, than him." Pepper told her, gently resting a hand on her arm, giving her a soft smile.

Pepper always knew how to cheer Ruby up a little, especially if Tony had dome something to upset her or annoy her. "Yeah, I guess. Doesn't stop him from being an idiot." Ruby eventually said, turning her attention back to her pizza.

It wasn't too much later that her father finally decided to make an appearance. He had removed all evidence of what he was getting up to down in the workshop and was ready to find out what Obadiah had to tell him. "How'd it go?" He asked, before noticing the pizza boxes. "It went that bad, huh?"

"Just because I brought pizza back from New York, doesn't mean it went bad." Obadiah said, playing the piano and giving Ruby a wink. He had brought the pizza back for her, not because of how the meetings went, but because he knew that Ruby loved her pizza.

Tony sat down on the couch next to Ruby, opening the other pizza box that was there on the table. "Sure doesn't." He said, before opening it. "Oh, boy."

"It would have gone better if you were there." Obadiah said, finishing on the piano and picking up his glass of scotch.

"You told us to lay low." Tony protested, starting on the pizza. "That's what we've been going. We lay low, and you take care of all…"

"Hey, come on." Obadiah said, stopping him in his tracks as he walked over to where Tony was sitting with his daughter. "In public. The press. This was a board of directors meeting."

It wasn't just Tony that seemed shocked at that piece of information, as Ruby frowned as well. "This was a board of directors meeting?" Tony asked, clearly not impressed that he had been kept out of the loop.

Obadiah sat down on the other side of Tony, looking at both the Starks. "The board is claiming you have post traumatic stress. They're filing an injunction." The man's words struck a chord with both Tony and his daughter.

"A what?"

"They want to lock you out." Ruby certainly wasn't happy with that, and straight away she had her phone in her hand and was typing away to SWAIN. Something wasn't right with that, something just didn't sit right with her hearing that.

"Why, 'cause the stocks dipped forty points? We knew that was gonna happen." Tony protested, trying to defending himself.

But Pepper jumped in, making it a little worse. "Fifty six and a half."

"Told you." Ruby mumbled, knowing that it was going to be way more than what her father had anticipated.

Tony turned and looked past his daughter and at Pepper. "It doesn't matter. We own the controlling interesting in the company."

Obadiah let out a sigh, noticing that Ruby was now concentrating on her phone. "Tony, the board has rights, too. They're making the case that you and your new direction isn't in the company's best interest."

"I'm being responsible, that's a new direction… for me… for the company." Tony retorted, getting more and more worked up. "I mean, me… on the company's behalf, being responsible for the way that…" He had had enough and quickly stood up. "This is great!"

"And what about me?" Ruby said suddenly, causing the three adults in the room to look at her. "I can understand the injunction against my dad, but what about me?"

A smirk worked its way onto Tony's face. He knew his daughter was smart, and he knew that she wasn't just going to let the company run along without them. "Yeah, Ruby has rights as well. She owns part of the company. Are they filing an injunction against her as well?"

There was a stone cold look on Obadiah's face now, and Ruby really didn't like it. She had asked a fair and simple question as far as she was concerned. "Ruby's control in the company is limited. Tony, when you set it all up, you put in the clause that she couldn't take full access until the age of twenty one, or unless…" He shifted uncomfortably a little. "Unless something was to happen to you."

"So what rights do I have?" Ruby demanded. She wasn't going to drop that that easily. Sure, she knew that her father had put in a few clauses when he had made her part of the company, but that was to protect her mainly. "Look, I know you all think I'm just a kid, but I know a lot more about this company than any of you realise. I knew the stocks were going to drop by almost fifty seven points, I knew that people were going to be more than just a little pissed off."

"Ruby! Language!" Tony cried, knowing that she was starting to get a little too wound up.

"They can lock Tony out, but they can't lock me out. They can't even try to put an injunction against me, so you can tell the board that the weapons manufacturing is staying shut down." It was clear to see that she was angry. "I may not have as many rights as my dad, but I damn well know that I can kick every single idiot off that board if I wanted it."

With that, Ruby got up from where she was sitting and once again stormed off. Straight away Tony was walking away from Obadiah, ready to go after his daughter and calm her down. "I'll be in the shop." He announced, taking the pizza box with him.

"Hey, hey! Hey, Tony, listen. I'm trying to turn this thing around, but you gotta give me something. Something to pitch them." Obadiah said, before pointing to the device in Tony's chest. "Let me have the engineers analyse that. You know, draw up some specs."

Without hesitation, Tony shook his head at him. "No. No, absolutely not."

"It'll give me a bone to throw the boys in New York!" Obadiah protested, trying to get something from the man.

But Tony was not going to be swayed. "This one stays with me. That's it, Obie. Forget it." He said, going to walk away, the pizza box in his hand.

"All right, well, this stays with me then." Obadiah said, taking the pizza from Tony and holding onto it. "Go on, here, you can have a piece. Take two, give one to Ruby."

Tony took more than two, he grabbed three. "Thank you." He said, before heading down the stairs behind the glass wall that had water running down it.

"You mind if I come down there and see what you're doing?"

"Good night, Obie." Tony called back, wanting to go and speak with his daughter. She was acting too oddly for his liking. He knew that something was wrong, but he hadn't been able to get it out of her yet.

When he got down there, he noticed her sitting at her desk, her eyes firmly fixed to screen of her computer system. There was nothing actually on the screen, but she was staring at it as if it would spontaneously combust if she looked away.

"So, what was that all about?" He finally asked her after a few minutes of silence.

Her eyes didn't move from the blank screen as she answered him. "What was what all about?"

"Uh, that little performance in front of Obie. Come on, what's going on?" Tony wasn't going to let it drop, because he knew that she had acted like that for a reason. Unlike him, she doesn't tend to act irrationally or on the spur of the moment, she likes to think things through properly.

"How much do you trust the people on the board?" That wasn't exactly the kind of answer he was expecting to get from her. "Because they have made it pretty clear that they don't trust you."

He rested himself against her desk, offering her a slice of the pizza, which she quickly declined. "So, is that what this is all about? Ruby, it's fine. Obie will sort it all out, we have nothing to worry about. Like you said, they're pissed with me for shutting down the weapons, right now they are trying to figure out what they are going to do. They think the company is in trouble, but we know it's not. You got nothing to worry about."

"Hmm, yeah, well, I still don't like it." She told him, before rubbing her head again. The pressure was starting to build even more behind her eyes, and it was starting to make her feel sick now as well. "If they don't trust us, then we shouldn't trust them." She concluded.

Although Tony knew she had a slightly valid point, considering she thought it was someone within the company who was dealing their weapons to terrorists, he wasn't going to be so quick to jump in and blame them. "Ruby, just give it some time to cool down. Obie will deal with it, everything will be fine."

"Yeah, whatever." She mumbled, suddenly feeling her head spinning.

Now Tony could see that there was something more going on, and the odd way that she was acting wasn't just because of what had just happened. "JARVIS, how's Ruby's blood sugar levels? When was she last tested?" He called out to his AI, watching his daughter sit with her head in her hands.

"Most recent data received eight minutes ago, levels are good, sir." JARVIS replied, the screen on Ruby's desk now showing a hoard of information about her blood sugar levels.

Knowing that it was nothing to do with her needing sugar made him a little more worried. "Hey, Ruby, be honest with me, how you feeling?" He asked her, hoping that she would actually tell him and not just brush him off like she had been doing with everyone else.

Ruby slowly lifted her head up. Her eyes were closed and her face was clammy. "I just got a bit of a headache, that's all."

Tony didn't believe her, he could clearly see the beads of sweat on her forehead. "Uh huh, yeah, sure." He said, before placing his hand on her forehead. "Damn it, Ruby, you're burning up." He told his daughter, quickly pulling his hand away.

"Yeah, probably because of the headache."

"JARVIS, spill. What's going on?" Tony knew that his daughter wasn't going to tell him the truth about how ill she was feeling, and he knew he was going to have to get all the information from someone else.

"Miss Matthews-Stark has been running a fever since early yesterday morning. Since then she has also complained of headaches, nausea, dizziness and fatigue." JARVIS told him immediately.

Tony couldn't help but let out a sigh. "Ruby, honey, we talked about this. If something is wrong, then you tell me. Did you really think I wasn't going to notice this?" He asked her softly, hating the fact that she had tried to hid it from him.

"Well, I was hoping that you'd be too busy with the suit to notice. That's why I told JARVIS to keep it quiet, but he's a traitor." Ruby wasn't pleased that he had found out, that JARVIS had told him without hesitation. "It's nothing. I probably just caught a bug or something. I'll be fine."

He felt like banging his head on the desk at her response. "Not good enough. You're going to bed, right now, young lady." He told her, waiting to see if she was actually going to bother to move. Something was telling him that she wasn't and that he was going to have to force her, and end up carrying her.

"Yeah, yeah, in a minute. And could you not talk so loud? My head hurts enough as it is, thanks." Ruby really didn't feel like moving, she felt that the moment she opened her eyes she was going to throw up.

She hated being sick. Before her mother had died, every time she had been sick, she had been there, barely even leaving her side. When she had been younger, she had caught chicken pox and felt so ill that she was positive she was going to die. But her mother never left her side the whole time she was stuck in bed. With her mother no longer there, she didn't want to be sick, and if she was, she didn't want to admit it.

Unfortunately for her, there were two AI's that were willing to go against her ordered if they thought it was for the best. Now that her father knew, he wasn't going to just let her carry on. "Your minutes up. Time for bed." Her father told her, slowly tugging her out of the chair.

He was about to pick her up, when she pulled away from him slightly. "I can walk, you know. There's nothing wrong with my legs." She told him in protest, holding onto the edge of the desk to steady herself. Her balance was completely off, the spinning was worse and she was even more confident that she was going to be sick everywhere now.

Tony just let out a sigh. "Stubborn as your mother, you know that, right?" He told her, getting her arm and wrapping it around himself so that she was leaning on him for support and not the desk.

They ended up using the elevator from the workshop and up to her bedroom. Mainly because Ruby was barely able to stand, let alone get up the stairs, but also because Tony didn't know if Obie was still there or not. He didn't want anyone else to see Ruby in such a state. He trusted Pepper, he knew she would do what she could to help, but he didn't want Obie to think something was wrong and think he was doing a bad job at being a father.

When they reached her room, Tony was ready to put her straight to bed and then call the doctor out to come check on her, but Ruby wasn't ready for her bed just yet. "Dad… I'm gonna be sick…" She whispered to him, her hand quickly flying up to her mouth and covering it.

He half carried, half dragged his daughter to the bathroom, and watched as she dropped to the floor, her head over the toilet bowl. The sounds of his daughter retching made him want to retch as well, but he pulled it together, and kneeled on the floor behind her, gently pulling her hair away from her face.

It certainly wasn't how he had seen the evening going, but he was too concerned with his daughter to worry about anything else now. The injunction and the suit had both completely left his mind. "Come on, you're okay, honey." He told her quietly as he gently rubbed her back while she retched some more. It was taking a lot for him not to throw up as well.

After what seemed like hours, Ruby finally stopped depositing the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl and leaned back. "Sorry, dad." She muttered, closing her eyes and wishing the world would stop spinning.

"Hey, it's okay, you got nothing to be sorry for, honey." He told her, passing her some tissue so she could wipe her face. "You're sick, you can't help it."

"Yeah, but I should have told you. Sorry." Her head was still pounding, but now that her stomach was empty, she didn't feel as sick. "Don't tell Liam. If you tell Liam he'll want to come here and I don't want him here."

Tony couldn't help but chuckle a little at what she had said. She still wasn't able to forgive her best friend for what had happened, even though he called every day to try and talk to her. "I'll call my doctor out to come check on you."

Ruby shook her head a little, causing her to let out a groan. "No, JARVIS, get SWAIN to call doctor Peterson. If I have to see a stupid doctor it might as well be her."

"Who is doctor Peterson? And what's wrong with my doc?"

"Peterson has been my doctor since I was a kid, she won't mind having to come over here to see me, she'll make a holiday of it." At least that was what Ruby hoped. Doctor Peterson wasn't a normal doctor, it was actually her favourite doctor from SHIELD. And it was true that she had looked after her since she was a young child, and that only made Ruby trust her more. She wanted someone she could trust, in a time where she knew there were too many people who couldn't be trusted hanging around.

Tony thought about it for a moment, before realising that it probably would be a good idea for her regular doctor to come check on her, then he could do a bit of snooping as well. With the doctor there, he could find out what other illnesses Ruby had suffered as a child. He actually wanted to know her full medical history. "Sure, we'll give her a call. Now, time for bed." He said, lifting her up and helping her stumble over to her bed.

He helped her to get settled, taking her trainers off for her but letting her go to bed fully dressed. Tony was pretty sure she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, but he wasn't ready to leave her alone just yet. He went back into the bathroom, flushing away the evidence, before grabbing a cloth and soaking it with cold water.

It was a few minutes later when Pepper came up and gently knocked on the door. "Tony, is everything all right?" She asked him quietly, having spotted Ruby's light on and the door open slightly. Pepper knew that she always shut her door, she would never leave it open, even just a little, so she knew Tony must have been in there.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, fine." Tony replied, the damp cloth pressed against his daughter's forehead to try and calm the fever. "Uh, Ruby has a fever." It was clear to see that he was distracted.

"Did you want me to call the doctor?"

Tony shook his head at her. "No, it's okay. SWAIN is going to get her doctor to come out. Hopefully."

"Doctor Peterson has been notified and will be here in the morning, sir." JARVIS called to him quietly.

Pepper could see the worried look on Tony's face still. It was the same look he got whenever Ruby was acting off, when he thought that something was wrong but just didn't know what. "I'm sure she'll be fine, Tony. She's probably just worn herself out, that's all. The pair of you have been constantly down in that workshop, doing… I don't even want to know what. Ruby is probably just exhausted."

"I keep screwing this up, Pep." Tony told her, letting out a sigh. "It's just one thing after another. I mean, I didn't notice when she had appendicitis, and she could have died. I almost got her blown up by terrorists. She was being bad mouthed by the press and I didn't even notice. Seriously, what kind of father am I?"

"Tony, you're doing the best you can. She knew she wasn't well, but she was hiding it from you, it was not your fault, and you know that. The other things… they were out of your control. I know, and Ruby knows, that you didn't plan any of it, that you would have stopped it if you could. She knows that you would have made sure it never happened if you had that power." Pepper couldn't believe how much her boss kept doubting himself. As far as far as she was concerned, he was doing a great job with his daughter.

She had seen a massive change in him, and that was only because of Ruby. He was more thoughtful and considerate than he had been before, it was like he was a totally different man at times. He hadn't gotten into trouble, she hadn't had to escort any random women out of the house, and he hadn't been going into work hung over or still drunk.

"Then why is she still keeping things from me?" Tony asked her, his eyes not leaving his daughter's face. "JARVIS said she started running a fever yesterday morning, and she made sure to keep it from me. She was throwing up before she went to sleep, and I hoped I wouldn't notice."

"Look at it from her perspective, Tony. When she was little and sick, she had her mom there, but her mom is gone now. This isn't just new to you, it's new to her as well." The woman knew that there were still some things that Ruby was struggling with. Although she had settled well into the mansion and life with her father, there was still a lot of progress that needed to be made. "This is unchartered territory. She doesn't know how you're going to act if she tells you she's not feeling well. She most likely had a routine with her mom, most kids do."

"I just want her to be able to tell me when something's wrong, We already talked about it, and I thought we were past all of this." He told her, letting out a sigh.

Pepper could see that he was stressed, and worried. "Just go easy on her, Tony. Let her get some rest, and why don't you get some yourself as well? I'll see you both in the morning." After that, she left the pair of them alone.

Tony hadn't even thought of going to bed himself, it hadn't even crossed his mind. He planned on staying by his daughters side while she was sick. She had a fever, and he didn't want it to get any worse. He also wanted to be there in case she woke up during the night and felt like she was going to throw up some more. There was no way that he was going to leave Ruby's side.

A/N Apologies if there were any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors present in the chapter, and also how lot it has taken to get this chapter written and posted.

My motivation as been here there and everywhere recently, seriously, it's been to more places than I have! I'm trying my hardest but sometimes it's difficult to keep up with something that you know people aren't that into. A fair amount of people want me to make it Tony/Pepper, and I will not be doing that.

If you were one of those people, and are now going to stop reading this story because of that, then I'm sorry. The whole focus is on Tony and Ruby, that was what I started, and that is what I'm going to carry on with.

Also, note on a few reviews. I currently have no plans of pairing Ruby with anyone. If I ever did do that, it would be a loooong way down the line. I hope that isn't going to turn you away as well.

I want to say a big thank you to those of you who take the time to review, your reviews help to keep me going through the hard times.

I'm going to stop ranting now, and hopefully I will catch you all again soon!

Pippa.