I'm alive! My apologies on not starting to get this up sooner. Sorry...
Bella knew about staying up late on projects. Sometimes, she became so excited about one that she would realize suddenly that it was five a.m. and she hadn't gone to bed.
Seventy two hours non-stop, however, was a little extreme.
"Tony, not even the terrorists I used to work for kept me up this long without sleep!" snapped Bella. She jabbed the needle into his arm.
"Ow! You can go to bed any time you want," replied Tony.
"Yes, and leave you in here, alone, sleep deprived and surrounded by tools. And I did go to bed… two days ago. Then I came back yesterday, remember? What are you staying awake on?" She injected another sensor in his arm.
Tony winced. "That the last of them?"
"Tony, I'm worried. You've been acting… oddly since this summer." She knew better than to mention New York.
"Is that the last of them?"
Bella knew she'd get no answer. We are not done with this conversation. "Yes."
Tony walked to the platform in the middle of the workshop. His first several suits, in glass cases, lined the walls. The rest of the Iron Man suits lay hidden underneath the house, ready to be released in case of emergency.
Tony spoke, addressing the camera Dummy held up for him. Pepper had decorated the robot's arm with a dunce cap after it had sprayed her with a fire extinguisher.
"Allow me to present the arrival of your bouncing baby brother," said Tony. "Izzy?"
Bella grimaced the nickname and turned on a of CD of Christmas music.
Tony held out his arm toward the pieces of armor on a table. Nothing happened.
"You sure you got this right?" asked Tony.
"Yes." Working with people who had a zero tolerance level for mistakes tended to make a person very careful about their calculations.
He punched himself in the arm, twice. There was a tiny beeping sound. He held out an arm again.
The repulsor hit his hand, fixing onto it. Another piece hit him, wrapping around his leg.
"Okay, send the rest."
Then they started flying, speeding at high speeds toward Tony, some missing him, some slamming into him, some bouncing off walls and redirecting toward her.
Bella dove under a table, covering her head with her arms.
Something flew past, knocking the table over. Pieces of equipment banged off walls. Glass shattered. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Everything went still for a long moment.
Bella looked around. Tony was in the middle of the platform, in full armor.
She burst into applause. "We did it!"
"You want me to do this to you, too?"
"Not yet." Bella yawned. "You know, Tony, as excited as I am, I think I need to go to bed now. I haven't slept in twenty two hours. Pepper wants me with her when she meets with someone at four. I need some sleep. Badly."
"You do that," said Tony.
Bella headed up to her room. For a few minutes, she sat on the edge of the bed, staring out at the blue water below them.
She'd woken up in this room a year and a half ago, after spending a year in a coma. It seemed much longer than a year and a half.
Her life before that… no, that was in the past. She had set it to rest after New York. Working for terrorists, that was before Tony had gotten her out, before they'd met in that cave in Afghanistan. She could forget it had even happened, if she wanted to. And eventually, she would.
Now, her life revolved around keeping Tony from harming himself while creating his suits. She'd had to call Pepper a few times in order for them to make him go to bed, and if Bella and JARVIS hadn't been there, he probably would forget to eat, or even forget that anything aside from the workshop existed.
She woke up to JARVIS's voice.
"Miss Stark, Miss Potts would like to remind you that she is leaving in ten minutes."
"Thank you, JARVIS."
She cleaned herself up, changed out of her wrinkled clothes, and walked downstairs.
Pepper, wearing a white dress, stood by the front doors, waiting for her.
"Thanks for doing this. Getting Tony to do anything aside from work on his suits nowadays is like getting a camel through the eye of a needle."
"You're welcome, Pepper, I'm happy to do it. What are you going to tell them about why I'm there?"
They had told the media that Bella was Tony's adopted daughter, not related to him by blood. Meaning that announcing she was a genius as well might attract unwanted attention. Showing off her far above average intelligence was not a smart move if a person was trying not to attract the attention of former "employers". Bella preferred the word to the other alternatives, such as "masters" or "owners", though the latter two were probably more accurate.
Pepper climbed into the front of the car. "You'll be learning how things work around Stark Industries."
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Bella was never fond of going to Stark Industries.
She had nothing against the company, or the people there. It was just that the attention she received was unnerving. Bella hated crowds or anywhere where people could see her and she couldn't hide. Still, having Tony's former bodyguard turned Head of Security at Stark Industries, Happy Hogan, walking next to them, did make her feel a little better.
"Hey you! Where's your badge!" he yelled at a security guard in the hall.
"You just have to watch me," said Pepper as they walked to her office. "Watch me and , if you have any comments or questions, bring them up. You probably understand it better than I will. Just try to sound as if you don't know more than he does about it."
"I rather doubt I know more than he does about his own project," said Bella.
"I think it was a joke," said Happy. "Hey, where's your badge!" he yelled to an intern.
Bella couldn't help but notice Happy took his job very seriously. "Happy, employee complaints have gone up three hundred per cent since you started," she said.
"Oh, good."
"I don't think it was a compliment," said Pepper. "This guy we're meeting, I used to work with him."
"Really?" said Bella.
"Yes. Aldrich Killian," she said, pushing open the glass door to her office. "He used to ask me out all the time so it's a little awkward."
"Pepper!" said a man seated in a chair. He stood up, walking across the carpeted floor toward them.
"Aldrich," said Pepper.
"You look great. This is Miss Stark?" he asked, looking at Bella.
"This is Miss Stark," said Pepper. "Bella, this is Aldrich Killian, from AIM, or Advanced Idea Mechanics."
"It's good to meet you, Sir," said Bella, extending a hand.
"Good to meet you as well, Miss Stark." He addressed Pepper. "She's not… your daughter, is she?"
Something about the way he said it gave Bella a funny feeling in her stomach. He wasn't… interested in Pepper. Was he?
"No," said Pepper, gaze going to the diamond ring on her hand for a moment, then returning to Killian. "She's not my daughter, not until the wedding. Now, how about you explain your proposal, Aldrich?"