No one is telling Lee anything. Only four hours into her stay at Stark Tower and she has hardly gotten a scrap of information. A room key and a personalized entry code, yes. But information? The only information she's gotten has been pieced together from things she has heard other people say about her. Tony keeps her at arms' length, and Lee feels the strain of even that distance. So, she does the only sensible thing she can think to do. She spies on one of the greatest Intelligence and Defense agencies in the known world with a bug-sized listening device she tacked on the doorframe of one of Stark Tower's many conference rooms. She's sitting on a bench in a random hallway, just in range of the transmitter, with headphones in. On the outside, she looks like a punk kid in an MIT sweatshirt, listening to music with her hood pulled down low. But, in reality, she's getting some pretty clear audio of a meeting of The Avengers. She bites her nails when the subject of conversation eventually turns to her. She thinks she might be sick.
"It's a threat we can't ignore," she hears Director Fury say.
Tony has his feet up on the table and his arms folded over his chest, she would bet her life on it. There is something dangerous and dark looming on the horizon, but the Avengers haven't mentioned it in this briefing in any great amount of detail.
"Well, I'm sure as shit not going to get involved," Tony drawls.
Clint Barton pipes up, unable to control himself. No one is really aware of the deal Tony struck with S.H.I.E.L.D in the aftermath of his suit destruction, so his presence and apparent lack of interest is dragging rifts within the group of extraordinary characters.
"Why are you even here then?"
Tony's answer is immediate.
"To make sure you don't screw it up."
The room erupts and Lee taps her foot on the ground, anxiety running through her veins instead of blood. She counts the voices. Tony. Clint. Natasha. Steve. Fury. Where is Bruce Banner...?
"And what about your kid?" Romanov asks, in her singularly disinterested and yet scathing way.
The muscles in Lee's stomach contracts and she holds her breath. The chaos of the room she's listening in on is shattered, and only silence remains. Everyone is at a loss for what to say or do. Everyone is waiting for permission to feel something. Tony falters, but only for the briefest of moments before launching into nonchalance. The room sighs, apparently grateful that he didn't simply storm out of the room in a fit of rage like some livid Prima Donna.
"The kid is here to catch Peter Parker. That's all," he says, dismissively.
She does not miss how he calls her 'the kid' instead of 'my kid,' but at some point, Lee had to make a decision to stop feeling sorry for herself because of her father, so she feels very little at the realization. Instead, she looks at it clinically, methodically, and manages to breeze past it with only the lightest of scars left behind. Steve Rogers is about to say something that she is certain will set her blood ablaze when all of the sudden her headphones are tugged from her ears by hands that aren't hers. Her heart stops and she looks up. Caught. She's been caught.
But when she looks up, she sees Bruce Banner with a knowing glint in his eye, and she can't tell if she's suddenly relieved or a thousand times more terrified.
"Listening at keyholes?" He asks, his smile genuine.
Lee will look back on it later and think that smile almost looks like something that could appear in a real family. The uncle catches the niece doing something he knows the father would not approve of, and yet he keeps the secret. It feels like something that would happen at family Christmas. Something Lee never had, so she's not entirely sure she even carries perspective on.
"Oh, I-" She begins, stammering wildly as she tries to recover.
Bruce turns sheepish and hands the headphones back to the young woman sitting on the bench.
"Sorry. I sneak up on people."
She doesn't want him to feel bad. Being the Hulk, she reasons that he has more than enough people in this world who take absolute pleasure in making him miserable. That is the last thing she wants from him.
"No. It's fine. I'm just... jumpy. Getting kind of nervous," she smiles weakly.
She's tired and she's not sure where her defenses went, but when she looks at Bruce Banner, she feels like she doesn't need them anyway. He's a good man. Bruce nods at her conspiratorially.
"You're meeting him tomorrow, aren't you?"
Does everyone in this building know her own life but her?
"Something like that," she mutters.
Bruce sits beside her.
"You'll be great."
They sit in silence for a long while, neither knowing exactly what to say. Bruce knows her story. He might have been the only person in the world who could get a story like that out of Tony Stark, but now he doesn't know how to reconcile the image of a horrible, gold digging child that Tony presented and the woman who is so desperate to hear her father's voice that she tried to spy on the impenetrable fortress that is S.H.I.E.L.D's briefing room. Lee doesn't speak for a while because she isn't sure if her words are worthy. This is Bruce Banner, after all. He's a genius, and she's just a stupid kid playing pretend with some superheroes.
"Bruce?"
She finally pipes up after the stiff silence, and he responds with a quiet and gentle voice that reminds her of Ferdinand the Bull and the gentleness of giants.
"Yeah?" He prompts.
Breathe in. Breathe out. She lowers her head and fiddles anxiously with the strings of headphones, wrapping them around her fingers and unraveling them in complicated, dizzying patterns that vaguely remind Bruce of DNA strands.
"Thanks."
He smiles and shrugs.
"No problem. And the lab is always open if you want to come explore. I hear you're pretty good at that sort of stuff."
Who told him that? She shrugs and tries to brush off the compliment. It isn't one that she's interested in taking. At least not from the mental powerhouse that is Bruce Banner.
"I'm alright."
She's more than alright and Bruce knows it. He's seen her designs and the things she's built and that was the moment that he knew that she wasn't some pretender trying to get in close with Tony and his money. Oh, no. He's seen the work that she's done and he knows that there is no one on earth but a child of Tony Stark's who could create marvels like she has.
"The government hires 'just alright' people to work for them now?" He asks, standing with a half-faced grin.
Lee's wit is razor-sharp and quicker than air. Another Tony Stark trait that Bruce can't help but know links them together.
"They hired Tony, didn't they?" She quips.
Bruce shakes his head and chuckles to himself before beginning the walk back to his apartment.
"Good luck tomorrow," he offers.
She knows that she's going to need it. The butterflies settle into her stomach once more, and she gulps heavily as she looks down to the other side of the bench where the file bearing the name Peter Parker sits. Everything she needs to know is in there, they said. With a deep breath, she picks it up and begins studying. It's going to be a long night.
It's late when Tony hears a knock on his apartment door. Pepper is asleep and he rolls his eyes when he looks through the peephole. He throws the door open with a flourish and doesn't even welcome her before turning to walk back to his couch.
"Make it quick," he nearly barks.
She doesn't respond to him at first. Instead, she just walks into his living room, fidgeting and fiddling with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. When Tony sits, he allows himself a moment to survey her. Lee is nervous, and it shows. Her eyes have bags under them and she can't sit still and she stammers, even as she tries to layer her question with a thin insult.
"Uh-I was just wondering, because you're sometimes kind of a human-" She begins.
Tony rolls his eyes. His kid should be able to do better than that.
"That one hurt," he slides in.
But she is not deterred. She looks at him with the wide, scared eyes of a child unsure.
"Do you have any advice?"
It's vulnerable and raw and she wishes there was anyone else in the world that she could contact, but Tony is the only one awake and the only one who would give her the unadulterated truth. She wants none of that "just be yourself" bullshit. She wants strategies and plans of attack and faults and weaknesses and defenses and strengths that she can utilize as if getting someone to fall in love with her were some kind of math problem and so easy to solve that a few words from her father might make it mean something.
"What d'you mean?" He asks.
He wishes upon wishes that this weren't happening. He doesn't want to begin seeing her as though she's actually a piece of his life, actually a human beyond her practical uses of getting him out of dodge with the Avengers, and this odd, uncalled for moment of reaching out is in direct violation of everything he ever wanted to happen between the two of them. Lee still does not sit. She wants this to be over every bit as much as he does. She knows everything there is to know about Peter from his file. How he eats his sandwiches and what he likes on his pizza and his SAT score and everything there is to know about him except how to get him to like her. It's maddening.
"Well, I'm meeting Peter tomorrow, and I am just wondering if you had any advice on how to get him to like me? I just don't really see a lot of people. My age, that is," she says.
She doesn't. All her life has been spent in between the pages of textbooks and in the basement of various houses, trying to make the thing that would get her some recognition. But, unfortunately, she never got what she wanted and now has nothing to show for it but a head full of knowledge and a heart wrapped up so tightly in formulas and theorums that she can't even pretend she knows how to let it function the way its meant to.
"Ask Pepper. And do everything Agent Romanov tells you. You've got a briefing with her tomorrow afternoon."
That's all she's going to get. Plain and simple. Lee, knowing when she's been defeated, nods her head once and begins to leave. She should have known that she wouldn't get a real answer out of him. He doesn't care enough. He doesn't care at all, really.
"And kid?"
She's at the door when she hears his voice once more.
"Yeah?" She responds.
Weight hangs between them, swinging back and forth like a pendulum that could take them out at any moment. She holds her breath.
"Be careful."
If she had anyone else's blood but Tony Stark's running through her veins, she might have internally tucked that moment away as a victory for the love she always wanted to receive from her father. But she knows better. She is many things, but stupid is no longer one of them.
"Why? If I don't come home, that's one less problem for you," she snaps.
That comment stings and Tony isn't sure why. Like a thin rubber band popping, it snaps and resounds in his skin, startling and painful all at once.
"Just look after yourself," he says, hoping for the last word.
But he doesn't get it. Lee opens the door and starts her journey outward, taking only enough time to say with a smug smirk,
"Don't look now, Tony, but we almost had a father-daughter moment there."
I KNOW. I know I am the worst! But now the story is written five chapters in advance (I have six chapters queued up and ready to go!), so if you're still reading, please let me know in a review if I should continue. I still love this story and I am hoping to finish it! I just want to know if you all want me to finish it! Love you all for reading and waiting out this story with me! Can't wait to hear from you all!