Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Hope y'all are well. I had a rough week this week, but I'm excited for y'all to read this chapter. :)
Chapter title comes from Cry Your Heart Out by Adele.
As always, I also hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~the black and gold 'verse~
~black and gold~
~chapter 10: cry your heart out~
After school let out on the 6th of June and Dick received his diploma (by mail, although Bruce and Tony made sure to get a picture of him in his cap and gown since they'd already ordered them with the diploma and all of his siblings), that same day Happy drove them all, Alfred, Rebecca, and Alfie (they weren't just going to leave their cat behind, she was a member of the family now) included, to the Stark-Waynes' private airport. Pepper and Rhodey were waiting for them there along with their daughter Riri, because there was no way that Tony was going anywhere without his best friends and he'd been able to wink-wink and nudge the military into letting Rhodey have three months of leave. It was amazing what power he had even though he was remaining adamant in his desire to not make weapons anymore.
Well. No weapons besides the suit. As although he was also adamant in not putting it on again until after the baby was born in order to protect himself and the baby, once they got the arc reactor out of his chest and thus the neutron bombardment...just because Obadiah was gone, he was beginning to realize that didn't mean his work with the suit was over. Not by a long shot.
Hence why he'd also decided to leave Anahita's bangle at home on his nightstand instead of bringing it with them, even though he'd really wanted to bring it with them. He'd needed to make sure that it was in a safe place – or as safe as laying out in the open could be, although he figured that Bruce would probably hide it away before he left Gotham.
But, anyways.
"Can you really not come with us?" Lili asked her father for the umpteenth time. Harley and her other younger siblings, even Edward and Gemma, looked inclined to agree with her. "Even Alfred's coming with us. You're going to be all alone at home."
"I'll be fine," Bruce promised her, chuckling and pressing a kiss into her hair. "Don't worry about me. And be good for your omi, alright? That includes you, Jason."
Jason had been most displeased to find out they were going to Malibu – not because of the "vacation" itself, he and Dick seemed to both understand how necessary it was, but from the fact it meant he wouldn't be able to be Robin for the next three months. He kicked a foot against the tarmac. "Yeah, I know."
"And you too, Dick."
Dick grinned as he held a hand on his belly, but it was a strained sort of grin. "What, you think I'll be getting into trouble?"
"I didn't say that."
They hadn't been able to get Dick to reveal any more information about Zatanna: where she lived, what her actual name was, and etcetera – not that they had checked the databases that they had access to or simply even Google, because while Bruce and Tony really wanted to, they didn't want to alienate their son, either. He was still just as determined as he had been before in Zatanna not being a part of their daughter's life for whatever reason, as although Tony was willing to take Dick at his word about not wanting to "ruin" her life, he sometimes couldn't help but wonder if that was really all it was. Not even finding out that Tony was pregnant himself had changed matters in that regard. It was his decision, and he was sticking to it.
On the plus side, finding out that Tony was pregnant again had seemed to make the eighteen-year-old omega a little bit more relieved. He wasn't going through this alone in more ways than one. After he'd apologized to Tony about implying that he had cheated on Bruce in Afghanistan – which Tony had accepted without problem, because although the assumption had hurt, he more than understood how Dick had come to it – his eldest son had grinned down at him and said, "I guess this makes us bump buddies too now, doesn't it?"
"I wouldn't want to be bump buddies with anyone else besides you and Pepper," Tony had agreed.
There was no discussion of him and Bruce technically becoming grandparents at the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-six, respectively. Dick was their adoptive son and saw them as his parents, but he didn't need to call them by their parental titles. Tony was fairly sure that the same would be true for his daughter. But even if it wasn't, who the hell cared? Their family was complicated, more complicated than most. But that didn't mean it was bad.
After he said goodbye to the kids, Alfred, and Rebecca, Bruce said goodbye to him. Alfred, Rebecca, Rhodey, and Pepper shuffled all the kids onto the plane so that they could have their private moment. "Your doctor's appointment's on Monday at 2:00," Bruce reminded him, since his husband had made the appointment for him instead of Tony doing it himself. "I'm not leaving Gotham until Wednesday, so you'll be able to call me. After that...it may become dicey. I'll try to check in at least once a week until I get this mess sorted out."
Tony smiled weakly. "I know. This is the second time you've told me."
"I know," Bruce parroted back. He sighed. "I love you, Omega. Please, stay safe. You and the kids both."
"We will," he promised. "Love you too, Alpha."
. . .
. . .
(He couldn't help but wonder, though, as he walked up the steps to plane after giving his alpha a goodbye kiss, if this was yet another promise he was going to wind up breaking, too.)
Although his childhood plan of building that bizarre house in Malibu had never panned out, he and Bruce had bought a property there after they'd gotten married, one with a private beach because they'd figured at the time it would be perfect when/if they had kids someday. The property was much smaller than the property that the Glass House rested on, only a couple of acres, but the house they'd built had the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms, along with another lab, which was where his suit was going to go just in case (though he knew he was going to soon reach the point where he wouldn't fit into it anymore – and that was another thing he and Bruce should've done: break the news to their younger kids about his pregnancy together. But it'd completely slipped their minds, dammit. Maybe he wouldn't be showing too much by the time that Bruce was done with whatever it was he was doing...).
He was digressing again. Anyways, they'd vacationed here a few times over the years: the summer of 2004 and the spring breaks of 2005 and 2006. Each time was only for a couple of weeks because of the night jobs of Bruce and Dick, but still.
Yet, you probably wouldn't have guessed that from the way the younger kids acted.
"This place is huge!" Harley exclaimed as he ran down the hall of the foyer – which, to be fair, was much larger than the simple entrance hallway of the Glass House. "It's even bigger than I remember!"
"It's not that much bigger than home," Lili protested. "It just has different dimensions to the rooms!"
"Fiorella, mimmo, please don't fight," requested Tony, tired from the jet lag and simply being pregnant. He felt like there were huge bags under his eyes.
They got settled in that night, all but one of the bedrooms being taken – that was only because Peter and Bea were rooming together, as Happy was staying with them. Because Tony knew, even with giving Taryn the summer off (paid), between his work and his pregnancy and Dick's pregnancy and their doctors' appointments and everything else, they were going to need a temp nanny this summer, potentially live-in. He'd told Pepper to get on it on the flight here, to which she'd agreed.
The weekend was a relaxing and lazy one. On Saturday afternoon, he and Rebecca took the kids sans the really little ones down to the private beach while Alfred watched over them and Rhodey and Pepper went out on a date. Unlike the swimming pool, this was a more comfortable experience around water for Tony, since he was able to sit a way's back from the shore on a lounge chair, dressed in a swim shirt to hide the arc reactor and trunks, and enjoy the view of Rebecca playing with most of the children. Dick was laying on the other lounge chair beneath their large umbrella, feeling too tired to get in the water, and Bea was snuggled up in her omither's lap, not too interested in getting in the water, but wearing floaties on her arms nevertheless and very thoroughly sunscreened.
Tony smiled as he watched Jason, the only omega out of the three wearing a bikini top because Dick was wearing a maternity swim shirt, chase Harley and Peter down the stretch of the beach as Lili bobbed in the ocean. "I can practically feel the vitamin D being soaked up in my pores," he said as he stretched out. But you didn't need to worry: he had sunscreen on, too. Nobody in his family was going to get skin cancer if they could help it, though his Italian genes helped him from getting burnt too bad. "It was a good idea to come here."
"It is calm," Dick agreed. "Beats having to stay at home all the time because of 'mono.' 'Least I'll be able to come down here."
"Just make sure if you come down in the evening, you put on bug repellant," Tony reminded him. "Mosquito bites can become a lot more dangerous now that you're pregnant."
Dick groaned, letting his head fall back with overdramatic fashion. "I know, Tony. You don't need to remind me."
"I'm your omither; it's what I do," Tony disagreed, causing Bea to giggle.
Lili abruptly seemed like she'd had enough of the water, because she got out of the ocean and came walking back up to them. Tony quickly got one of the towels he'd brought for the kids ready for her, unfolding it and holding it out for her to take. "Hey, princess," he said, a touch worried. "Are you alright?"
Much to his guilt, he didn't feel like he'd gotten to spend a lot of time with Lili or Harley over the past month. He'd been so busy, and they'd had school, and there were only so many hours in the day...excuses, excuses. He didn't think they felt the same way, because he knew his two eldest biological kids would tell him if they did, but he still felt bad about it.
"I'm okay, Omi," Lili said. She took the towel from him to wrap around herself before she moved to sit down at the end of his lounge chair. Tony didn't mind at all shifting around a little so she could sit comfortably; Bea wasn't the happiest about it, but the four-year-old for once knew better than to complain, at least verbally. "I just wanted a break from the water and Jason's playing with Harley and Peter."
"Yeah, I can see that," Tony remarked dryly, eyeing the three with caution. He wished that they'd be a little more careful, although Rebecca was right there. He had a feeling one of them was going to fall flat on their face, and he also had a feeling he knew which one in particular that would be. But, he pushed those feelings aside for now, looking back at his eldest daughter.
She was growing up on him, he realized with a pang to the chest. She hadn't presented yet, wouldn't for at least another couple of years, but like with Jason and Barbara, it was coming closer and closer. Her features were slowly becoming sharper, making her look more like Bruce than Tony thought he'd ever noticed before.
He didn't want her to grow up, he thought sadly. Well, he wanted her to experience the world and live in and thrive in it. He wanted her to be happy in everything and anything that she set out to do. But he also wished that he could have the ability to bottle up this time with her, when she was smart and tall and confident but before she hit the teenage years and she probably wouldn't be that interested in cuddling with him anymore.
"Bea, let's make some more room for your sister," he advised to his other daughter with them right now. Bea gave a wordless whine, but all he did was nuzzle her with his forehead as he scooted her over to the right half of his lap, keeping the left open. "You wanna come up here closer, Lil?"
He could tell that his eldest daughter wanted to, but she briefly held herself back. "Are you sure? I don't want to get you wet." He and Bruce had told the the rest of the kids before they'd left Gotham about the arc reactor, what it did in very basic terms so as not to explain the full gravity of it, and etcetera. There was just no point in hiding it from them when he'd have it in his chest for so long.
"I'll be fine," Tony said. He patted his lap. "Come up, up."
Assured by his words, Lili crawled up the lounge chair and rested in his lap. Bea made a face, which made him laugh. "I don't want wet!"
"Carina, we're at the beach. That's what the beach is all about. That's what you beach for," Tony told her. Then he sighed and squeezed his two daughters a bit, his arms wrapped around them, making them both giggle and squawk. "Ah, I've got two of the world's best daughters here with me, yes I do."
Dick snickered himself while Lili, still giggling, hid her face in Tony's shirt. "Omi."
Tony pecked a kiss on her hair. "Are you glad that we came back here, princess?"
Moving her head away from his torso to look up at him, she nodded. "Uh, huh. I miss Dad, though."
He smiled, patting her back. "That's okay. I miss him, too. But, he should be calling us tonight! Or I'll call him myself; I don't know, we'll see."
Monday morning, the day of his doctor's appointment, he woke up to an empty other side of the bed. Having already woken up like this Saturday and yesterday, Sunday, he was mostly used to it, but he wouldn't lie and say that it didn't bother him a little. Especially right now because...he was horny.
He and Bruce hadn't had sex since he'd gotten back from Afghanistan. Understandable, considering the circumstances. But even one month was longer than the most amount of time that they'd went without having sex before Afghanistan; including the two months that he'd spent being held captive, three? That was literally unheard of for them. They were like rabbits; he'd be the first one to admit to that, as if their six biological children weren't enough proof.
But, his husband wasn't here right now, he was back in Gotham, and Tony wasn't in the mood for masturbation – because the morning sickness was beginning to hit, and on top of being horny he was nauseous. So he went to the bathroom to get a shower, wound up having to exit the shower while in the middle of it in order to puke because of his aforementioned nausea, then finished his shower and brushed his teeth before briefly checking in on Jason (he'd entered pre-heat for his second heat yesterday and started it outright last night, but unlike Dick, had been and continued to be adamant about not wanting any help beyond what was necessary this time, no doubt because of his age), getting Edward and Gemma up and ready, and heading downstairs with the twins propped on his hips.
At twelve-thirty, after a light lunch, Happy took him to the doctor's office because he had to get there at least forty-five minutes early so he could fill out paperwork. Before he left, Pepper handed him his StarkPad – a prototype – with the explanation, "I think I found a nanny that would mesh well with you and the kids for the summer."
He stared at her in surprise as he accepted the device. "Already?"
She smirked at him. "What, do you doubt my abilities?"
"No, Ms. Potts. Never, Ms. Potts," he said with faux-exuberance, which made her laugh. "I was just thinking it might wind up taking a few days, that's all."
He looked at the file of the woman on the way to the doctor's office. Her name was Natalie Rushman; she had a BA from the University of SoCal in Early Childhood Education, and was fluent in French, Italian, Russian, and...
"Latin. Who the hell speaks Latin?" he muttered to himself.
"What was that, boss?" Happy asked, looking at him through the rearview mirror.
Tony looked up at him. "Oh, nothing. Just looking at this nanny's file that Pepper sent me. Claims she's fluent in Latin."
Let it never be said that, just because he'd been a wrestler in his past life before Howard had hired him, Happy Hogan wasn't smart. "Isn't Latin a dead language?"
"Yep," Tony said, popping the "p." "I had to learn Latin in school before I graduated. We read it and wrote in it and spoke in it aloud, but that was only for reading. We didn't speak it conversationally."
He was tempted to write her off just because of that, but looking at her file...he didn't know for sure what it was, but there was something interesting about her. Maybe it was the fact on top of all of that, she had defense training, which meant that she could protect his kids if she needed to and most other nannies wouldn't have that. Or maybe it was something else; again, he didn't know.
At the doctor's office, once he'd completed the paperwork they'd wanted him to fill out to the best of his abilities, Tony was quickly whisked away first to one of their lab rooms, where they took eight (don't worry, they weren't all the same size) of his blood before he was taken to a physical examination room. He was instructed by the nurse supervising him to put on the hospital gown on the exam chair, which made him grumble after the nurse left, but he did as he'd been told. The air in the room felt cold against his skin, causing goosebumps to develop on his arms and legs. He shivered as he sat on the exam table, waiting for the doctor to arrive.
She did about seven or so minutes later, announcing her presence with a knock at the door before opening it. Like his obstetrician/gynecologist, Dr. Maxwell, she was a theta woman, though older, around sixty-three. "Hello, Dr. Stark," she said as she entered the room. "My name is Dr. Leslie Thompkins." She held out her hand for him to shake, something which he most appreciated.
"It's nice to meet you."
"That's not something I'm often told," she said with a wicked grin. And just like that, similar with Dr. Maxwell back when he'd been pregnant with Lili, he decided that he liked her already. "I'm usually the one people call when things go wrong. I spent 25 years as a doctor for the military for just that reason before I got this practice set up five years ago. How is your husband, by the way? I haven't seen him in a long time."
The non-sequitur caught him off guard a little, but he adjusted to it quickly. He'd known before coming here that Dr. Thompkins had been a friend of Martha Wayne's before Bruce's parents had been killed; they'd been best friends in college, even. If it hadn't been for the fact that the theta woman had already been in her well-established military doctor career when the Waynes had died, she actually probably would've helped Alfred raise Bruce, too. "He's fine. He's back in Gotham still because of business, otherwise he would be here, too."
She smiled. "I'm sure. Is he still just as reckless as he was when he was eighteen?"
Tony let out a surprised laugh. "More so, probably."
"That figures. He inherited that streak from his mother." Dr. Thompkins looked down at the clipboard she was holding in her left arm, and Tony felt his heart drop when he saw her expression do the same, albeit barely. "But, back to my original point. I dealt with a lot in my time as a military doctor, a fair amount of it classified for reasons beyond just HIPAA. In what I am able to reveal, I can tell you that I have dealt with Chronic Radiation Syndrome, which is what can happen when the body is exposed to small amounts of radiation like what is caused by neutron bombardment over time. But dealing with the radiation that is being caused by something in the body in this way is new for me."
Tony did not like how that sounded at all. "Are you...are you saying that you have no idea how to treat me?"
Dr. Thompkins looked back up from the clipboard. She gave him another smile. "No, I'm not saying that. I'm going to need some more tests, mainly a bone marrow biopsy, to get a full understanding of what I'm looking at, but your blood test results that have come back so far indicate positive results." Before he could let out a sigh of relief, "Of course, I must inform you by 'positive,' I mean that we are looking at CRS potentially developing within 1-5 years of exposure stopping. The early symptoms of CRS are an impaired sense of touch and smell as well as interruption of functions like sleep, bowel function, bladder activity, and problems with concentrating. Later symptoms can include muscle and skin atrophy and the developing of eye cataracts. Cancers like leukemia could develop before the start of CRS symptoms, so within 1-5 years, or afterwards at any time."
That news was...not good.
Oh God, it was awful.
One to five years before he could develop Chronic Radiation Syndrome. So basically, provided he didn't get cancer, he might only have one to five good years with his family left. Sure, from how she was talking, CRS in of itself wasn't fatal, but if he got it, those following years wouldn't be good. It sounded like he would probably have to have a caretaker if things got bad enough. His younger kids, Edward and Gemma and the baby inside him, probably wouldn't have much memory of what he was like before all of that in that case, of what he was like now, at all...
Desperately, his mind latched onto what he viewed as the key part of her phrasing, the word that offered the most optimism: "'Potentially?'"
"Yes," Dr. Thompkins said. "This is the good news: although you have had the arc reactor in your chest for roughly three months – " because he wasn't sure of when exactly he'd had the arc reactor put in his chest, he'd only been able to give her an estimate of the duration of time " – there seems to be something in your blood that is protecting both you and your fetus from the negative effects of the neutron bombardment. It's not perfect, because as I said, CRS could still potentially develop, but the blood test results are more positive than what I was expecting."
Now he did breathe a sigh of relief, an arm wrapping around his torso. He knew things that she didn't, and they basically amounted to: his baby's half-Djinn DNA was protecting him, because Anahita had told him that radiation did not affect the Djinn in the same way it did humans, even before the virus had given them their powers and long lives along with the designations that it had given to humans. The baby had been and still was keeping him safe all this time when he'd been and still was trying to do the same.
Oh, little one, Omi's so proud of you, he thought. You shouldn't have to be protecting me from radiation sickness or patching me up, and yet you are. Yes, technically it's not you, it's just your DNA, but...
"So the radiation isn't going to harm the fetus?" Tony asked out loud, just keeping up the pretense of asking for clarification – but also fishing to see if she'd seen anything unusual in the baby's DNA through his blood that he needed to know about. He needed to know if she knew his baby was half-alien.
Dr. Thompkins' lips pursed. "I can tell you that based off of the blood tests, it does not appear that way, but I won't be able to say for sure without an amniotic fluid test. But I would like to hold off on that for as long as we can, hopefully up until at least the fifteenth week of pregnancy, so as not to risk complications or miscarriage..."
"Yes, I agree," he said eagerly.
"Good. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to get a closer look at the arc reactor so I can have a better understanding of what I'm dealing with..."
Although nobody outside his close circle had seen the arc reactor before, the press didn't even know about it, he shrugged off the top of the hospital gown, letting it pool around his waist. She inspected it, though admitting that the arc reactor itself was obviously not to her expertise, and made sure that the skin and muscle around it had mostly healed. "I'm not sure if I like this discoloration," she noted about the dark veins around the arc reactor, though their color only extended for a few centimeters. "We'll need to keep an eye on it."
Besides a general physical examination, most of the rest of the appointment was about the initial treatment. She was prescribing him a drug that was similar to a chelating agent used in a chelation therapy. But rather than him being given a weekly injection from anywhere between thirty minutes to several hours, this drug had to be consumed orally. "I recommend putting it into a smoothie or some other sort of drink that could mask it," she suggested. "I've been told it could taste...let's just say, 'much better.' You should also get a calcium supplement or eat calcium-rich foods on top of your prenatal vitamins to make sure that your calcium levels don't get too low, as that is a side effect of this drug."
She additionally gave him a specialized device meant to test his blood toxicity levels of palladium, since depending on how much palladium was in his blood, that could give him a rough idea of how much radiation was also in his blood from the neutron bombardment. All he had to do was prick one of his fingers to get the result, much like a handheld monitor for blood sugar levels. "If you have higher than 40% toxicity, I want you to call my office and get in here as soon as possible," she instructed. "If it becomes higher than 80%, I want you to find the nearest hospital and go there."
He tested his blood in the exam room just to see what level it was at. It came back with 42%, which made him swallow. Damn. "Seems like I got in here at a good time."
"The medicine will help bring that back down," Dr. Thompkins responded. Nevertheless, she was also eyeing the results nervously. "But you shouldn't be doing anything to bring that level back up."
Translation: true to Bruce's word, he really needed to not get back into the suit until after the baby was born.
When his appointment was over and she left the room, he changed back into his regular clothes and made his way to the front desk to get his next appointment scheduled for the 20th, two days after the bone marrow biopsy that they also scheduled for him. Tony left the office with his prescription slip for his medicine and his blood toxicity monitor in his satchel, his hands shaking from all the revelations he'd just experienced.
"Boss, please tell me – " Happy said at the sight of him. That said it all for how he must've looked.
"I'm fine, Hap. Don't worry. Not dead yet or dying anytime soon," Tony quipped, getting into the back of the car. He added, "Take us back to the Beach House, please." Then he rolled up the partition for the car, even though he knew that the alpha probably had a dozen questions that he wanted to ask.
Tony gave himself five minutes to cry out everything that he was feeling from the aftermath of the doctor's appointment, setting a timer on his phone and everything. It was only after that and he'd wiped his ruined makeup off of his face with a tissue that he called his husband.
Bruce picked up on the first ring. "Tony?"
"Hi, Bruce."
His husband got straight to the point. "How did the appointment with Leslie go?"
"Well...my blood test results were better than she was expecting, so there's that. Pretty sure it's because of the baby. I got a prescription to counteract the palladium in my body, and hopefully some of the neutron bombardment...and I got a monitor to measure the palladium toxicity levels of my blood..."
Bruce was able to metaphorically see right through him, although all he said was, again, "Tony."
The omega sighed, putting a hand to his forehead and rubbing at the skin there, massaging the wrinkles that he could practically feel developing – not that developing wrinkles was bad in of itself, that was what came with aging, but the stress that was potentially causing those wrinkles to develop prematurely was. "I told you that the baby's not going to be affected by the radiation because of their other biological parent, right?" It was a rhetorical question, because he had, and Bruce knew that it was, because he didn't answer him. "But the longterm prognosis for me is potentially...not looking so good."
He explained to Bruce what Dr. Thompkins had told him about Chronic Radiation Syndrome, and his current blood toxicity levels. Bruce was silent throughout all of it, listening. Tony could only imagine how he was actually reacting on the other side of the phone.
"...Maybe I should put this off," Bruce said when he was finished.
"What? No. Whatever it is you need to do, it sounds important."
"It's not as important as you."
"I'm fine for now," Tony returned. "I have the beginnings of a treatment plan. I'm not going to make the effects of the neutron bombardment any worse. I'm fine. The kids are fine. We're all fine. I don't want you regretting not getting this problem of yours dealt with sooner again when you're already regretting it as it is. Please, take care of it so you can come back to me at the end of the summer, if not before, with the weight of the world off your shoulders. Please, Bruce."
Bruce was silent.
But, in the end, when the silence was over, he agreed. "Alright, Omega. But I miss you."
"I miss you too, Alpha."
Word Count: 5,276
Next Chapter Title: thunderstruck
