Today is the sequel to yesterday's prompt. The third and final part will be up tomorrow!

Forced to watch

Tony Stark didn't really consider himself as someone that was good with children. After becoming Iron Man, he'd spent plenty of time around children, oddly enough. Mostly because, as it turned out, children loved superheroes. So he'd signed lots of children's drawings of himself in the armor, and he'd flown over a few birthday parties, waving to children eating cake or jumping in those inflatable house things that kids jumped in for fun. He'd done countless Make-A-Wish visits, feeling the weight of guilt the entire time that these children were using their wish on meeting him before they died…that they didn't want to go to Disney World or something instead. (Often times, he did give the parents enough money to take them to Disney World too, but that was beside the point.)

He'd done plenty of children's hospital visits and he'd talked to school groups touring his Tower and he'd even visited schools to talk to teengers a few times. But he didn't spend very much time with kids in general, so he wasn't sure what instinct had made him sit on the floor of the teenage girl's cell when she'd crawled up the wall the moment she'd spotted him, eyes wide with fear and what looked like dread. But she'd seemed to calm some when he'd talked to her outside the suit, and when she'd crawled down with an arm that had obviously been broken, she'd let him scan her with his watch, barely saying a word the whole time.

The moment the drugs had put her under, he'd joined the others upstairs in the Avengers common floor where some of them lived or just stayed for stretches of time when they were in New York. "Any information on her?"

"Nope. The records were destroyed if there ever were any," Natasha had told him, taking a long drink from a cup of coffee, dark circles under her eyes. They'd all been running on a couple of hours a night since they'd been tasked with finding and taking down the top level Hydra scientist who, according to Nick Fury, was suspected of kidnapping and experimenting on children. But when they'd finally found the building and had broken in, they'd found only three soldiers guarding the front doors, and the rest of the place had been abandoned.

Except for Penny.

To no one's surprise, more than one 'Penny' had gone missing in the last 13 or so years, so it was almost impossible to narrow it down, but that seemed to be all the information she had on herself…at least, from what she'd been willing to tell them.

"We can get a room ready for her off the Medbay," Steve had told them, sounding as though his mind was made up. "Natasha can interrogate her…see what she knows."

"No way," Tony had broken in, shaking his head.

"Tony, she's obviously a spy," Steve had told him, incredulous. "You think Hydra left one superpowered teenager behind to be found by us on accident? They want her to get intel on us. Hell, maybe she's supposed to kill us."

"She's a child."

"I'm not saying we should hurt her," Steve had snapped, obviously offended. "We can work on deprogramming…find her a home. We'll make sure she's comfortable."

"She can stay on my floor. I'll get her a room. Have Friday keep an eye on her." He'd turned to Natasha. "What do you think?"

"I think she's a spy. But I also think she's a reluctant one. I don't think she wants to do whatever it is she's supposed to." She'd shrugged. "Watch her. Closely. Maybe she's young enough that she can be turned. We have no idea how long she's been there. According to Friday, her arm was healing quickly…it might have only been broken a few days ago."

So, with Natasha's blessing (and who better to know about turning a spy) Tony had decided to treat the girl like just another child staying in his home. Not that he'd ever had a child stay in his home…still, he showed her around and made sure she had food. He gave her free reign of his library of books and instructed Friday to let her watch anything she wanted that was age appropriate. And when she woke from nightmares, he tried to comfort her.

And when she sobbed on the floor of his lab, telling him over and over that she didn't want to do something, his mind was made up. She might have been a spy…hell, he was pretty sure she was. But she sure as hell didn't want to be, and he wouldn't hold it against her. She was a child who'd obviously had horrible things done to her. So now, he would protect her. And he would prove to the others that she truly did not want to be a spy for Hydra.

So he left her alone in his lab.

Friday was watching at all times, of course. And there were layers upon layers of security on every single device in his lab. Pulling out his phone once he reached the Avengers floor, he brought up the live feed of his lab. He watched the still-crying girl stand and move over to his computer, fingers hovering over the keyboard for a long time. Heart aching for the child who'd been made into something she so obviously didn't want to be, he watched as she fought herself. And then, after what the timer on the corner of the screen told him was two full minutes, she pulled her hands back and took a jerky step backwards, then another, shaking her head and clenching her hands into fists.

And he felt something like pride as she sat on the sofa once more, dropping her head into her hands. She was scared…scared of the man that had done this to her and scared of the consequences…of the punishment she seemed to expect any moment now. But he wouldn't allow whoever that man was to hurt her. He would find out who this asshole was and he'd put a stop to him.

Tony poured her a glass of ice water and sent the footage he'd just captured to Natasha. The spy wanted to question Penny some more, but he'd held her off for the last week or so. Penny was still so hesitant around all of them. So quiet. She had spent the majority of her time in her room, alone, and he hadn't wanted to overwhelm her. But something had been done to her…something to make her forget her past. She'd seemed baffled by the fact that she knew what a cellphone was, and she'd dropped to the floor clutching her head after telling him that he used to make weapons, not knowing how she'd known that. Something had been given to her to make her forget, and he wanted to know exactly what that man had done to her so they could start the process of undoing it. What if this kid had a family somewhere waiting for her? What if someone was waiting on news of their little girl? Or what if they'd already had a funeral for her?

He sat beside her on the sofa, handing her the glass of water and resting a hand on her back. "Hey…how's your head?"

"It hurts," she whispered, taking the cup with a shaking hand and taking a long drink. They had pain medicine that worked on her, but only insofar as it would put her to sleep, and he doubted she wanted that. "I don't know how I knew that," she told him, voice still so soft, so he lowered his own to match.

"I think that someone gave you something or…or did something to you to make you forget who you were before Hydra took you."

She cocked her eyes, eyes narrowed in confusion. "Hydra are bad guys," she recited, blinking fast and then staring down at the floor. "I don't know who they are…I just…"

"That's okay. We're going to figure out what they did, okay? We'll try to fix it."

"I don't remember anything before Father," she admitted, the words taking him aback. Father?

"Your father?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"No. Not my father. Just…Father. That's what he was called."

"Okay…creepy," he muttered, but didn't ask her any more questions…not just yet. The kid already looked overwhelmed. Instead, he gave her a tour of the lab, then, not sure what else to do, led her over to the car he'd been working on for years. "I'm rebuilding the engine," he told her, tapping on the half-finished engine he'd been half-heartedly playing around with. "Want to help?"

She did. As they worked, him explaining everything he was doing and her listening with rapt attention, she started to relax. The crease in her forehead disappeared, and he had a feeling that her headache was gone too, which told him it only happened when she tried to remember things from her past. But more than that…Penny knew how to build an engine. Well…maybe not in practice. But the second he started to describe the overall process, she nodded. Then, as if reciting from a bulleted list in a textbook, she started to list the steps. And he couldn't help his grin.

"Kid, now you're speaking my language."

They were both covered in grease three hours later, but Penny was smiling, engrossed in her work, and he chuckled to himself at the state of their clothes. "Alright, kiddo, how about we get cleaned up and get some lunch?"

From then on, the two of them spent hours in the lab, her consistently impressing him with how much she seemed to know without knowing that she knew it, and him apparently impressing her with his own knowledge. She seemed to come out of her shell over the next few days, even talking a little with the others about the work they were doing in the lab and the car they were fixing. Pepper liked her, and although it seemed harder for her to relax around his girlfriend, he knew she was making an effort.

But then she got sick.

It started slow. He got the alert from Friday that Natasha had taken her to the Medbay and left a meeting to hurry down, stopping when he spotted Natasha standing by the door, arms crossed, face pinched in worry.

"What happened?"

"I was talking to her in the kitchen…I had been looking at missing persons cases, and was wondering if she recognized any of the last names. She got a headache. She fell…hit her head."

"That happened in my lab once too…what could be causing that?"

"Really intense conditioning? Some kind of implant? A slow release drug? Hell, I don't know. Magic? Maybe she had a deadline."

"Magic?"

"I keep hearing things about a sanctum. A neurosurgeon…" She waved a hand. "Doesn't matter. The point is, if she has a deadline and doesn't meet it…"

"Okay, how do we rule out an implant?"

"Can Friday scan that deep?"

"I'll work on it."

He did, and at first, she seemed okay. He told her to try not to think about her past…that they would take care of all that. That she should just focus on working in the lab and healing from the minor concussion she'd gotten when she'd hit her head. But then, one day in the lab a couple of days later, she jumped back from the car, hand cupped under her nose, and when he looked over, her palm was covered in bright red splotches.

"Woah…hey," he murmured, grabbing a towel and handing it to her. "You okay?"

"Yeah…I…I just…"

He gripped her shoulders when she swayed. "You're okay," he told her, as if just saying it could make it so, then led her over to the couch. "Sit for a second. I'll get you some water."

When he got back with the water, the towel was soaked in her blood and she was struggling to keep her eyes open. So he took her to the Medbay where the doctors struggled to figure out what was causing this. He had Friday scan her head and then the rest of her and he had the doctors test her blood, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"Magic it is…" he muttered the next day when the results all came back normal. He hated the idea…didn't even really believe in it. But if you eliminated the impossible…of course, it could still be a drug they couldn't detect or an implant they couldn't find. That was the worst part. He had no idea how to fix this.

They let her out of the Medbay that afternoon, and she seemed fine. Back to normal. But that night she woke up screaming, and when he dropped to his knees at the side of her bed, he realized it wasn't from nightmares. She was clutching her head, sobbing and rocking back and forth, her pillow stained a bright, horrible red, her nose streaming blood.

"You're okay…Penny…look at me. I know…I know it hurts. It's okay. Let's get you to the Medbay, okay?" With some difficulty, he managed to pull her into his arms, carrying her as quickly as he could to the elevator while Pepper watched in horror from the doorway of their bedroom.

She stopped screaming once they were in the elevator, taking gasping breaths instead as she hid her face in his shoulder. "He's punishing me," she sobbed. "He…he knows…he's punishing me!"

That didn't seem possible! But he couldn't assure her that she was wrong…he had no idea if this man she called 'Father' somehow had the ability to hurt her like this from afar. "Do you have any idea where he is?"

"No. I'm sorry," she whispered into his neck, and he rubbed a hand up and down her back as they stepped into the Medbay.

"It's okay. Has he ever done anything like this before?"

"He punished me all the time."

"Like this? Without touching you? He made you sick?"

"I…I don't think so. I don't remember. I was so sick at first. That's the first thing I remember. I was so sick…"

He eased her down onto the same bed she'd been in when she'd first arrived, pulling the blankets over her and grabbing a washcloth that he ran under water before trying to clean up her face. The bleeding was slowing, but she still trembled from pain, eyes slamming shut as footsteps approached.

It was then, as he was forced to watch her suffer, that he started to come up with the plan. And he knew it wasn't a great plan, but it was a plan…and he knew he would need to ask for forgiveness instead of permission when it came to this one. But, he told himself, not just yet. He would wait. Maybe she would get better. Maybe it would wear off. Maybe she would be okay.

Except he knew better. He knew that his hopes were unrealistic…that this man wouldn't just let his spy go without consequences. A full week passed with Penny in the Medbay, her nosebleeds more and more frequent, her face losing its color as she seemed to wither away. He stayed with her every day for hours, telling her stories and then, when stories of his past seemed to trigger memories and worse nosebleeds, he switched to telling her about the Iron Man armor, and about the car they'd worked on together.

When the doctors started giving each other uneasy looks, their lips pursed, their eyes pitying when they met his, he knew that it was time. He wasn't going to watch this girl die. Not when he could do something about it. So, almost a month after Penny came to the Tower, he sat down at her bedside, heart breaking a little when she opened her eyes and tried to smile at him. She always smiled when she saw him. And after she'd started to relax, she'd seemed so happy…so starved of affection but so desperate to get it. Every time he patted her shoulder or wrapped an arm around her, she seemed to glow.

He wasn't going to let some Hydra asshole take that away.

"Hey, kiddo. I need to ask you something."

"Okay."

"Did you have a deadline?"

"What?"

He smiled sadly, reaching out and resting a hand on hers. "To give him information on us." She stiffened and he hurried to go on, hating the terror in her eyes. "Hey, it's okay. We aren't mad. We knew from the start, honey. It's okay."

"I didn't…"

"I know." He nodded, squeezing her hand and wondering when it had started to feel so easy to comfort her. When she had stopped feeling like 'a kid' and started feeling like 'his kid.' "It's not your fault, Pen. I was just wondering if he told you how long you had."

She dropped her eyes, jaw clenching tight. Then, "He didn't say, but I'm taking too long."

"Okay…any idea how long you were supposed to take?"

She shook her head but less than a month was the obvious answer.

"Do you know how he's making you sick?"

She shook her head again, tears running down her cheeks.

"What exactly were you supposed to do?"

Penny hesitated for a long time, refusing to look at him. "It's okay," he tried again to assure her. "I promise. Whatever he told you to do, it wasn't your fault."

"I was supposed to send him everything I could about the Avengers. And…" she refused to meet his eyes, tears still falling as she spoke in a voice barely loud enough to hear. "And…kill you."

"All of us? By yourself?" he asked, trying to make his voice light.

"No. Just you."

He sighed, smiling a little. "I'm honored. I must be important." She didn't take the bait and he wiped her tears away with his thumbs, then brushed her hair back. "It's going to be okay. We'll find him, and we'll stop him."

"He'll kill me," she told him softly, stating it like an undeniable fact. "He won't care if I die. He's angry."

"So we'll work fast. He was being forced to watch her suffer and if there was something he could do to stop it, he would. Even if it meant going rogue. So he grabbed the tablet and put it in her hands, then pulled out the flash drive from his pocket. She stared at both, a horrible comprehension dawning on her. "It's okay. I compiled everything…it's thousands of folders. Most of them are nothing…stuff Hydra has to already know. There are a few things about me in there, but I double checked everything…it's not going to give them much of an advantage, but it'll give him plenty to look through. There are plans of the Tower too…he'll probably like that."

"No…"

"I promise you, it's okay. Nothing in here is going to hurt us. I'm just trying to buy you some time so we can find him."

She stared at him, wide-eyed and so afraid, and he hated it.

"Here," he murmured, placing the tablet in her hands, and plugging the flash drive into the side. "Go ahead and send it. I'll do everything I can to find him as fast as I can."

He would need to explain what he'd done to the team. Maybe apologize. Maybe just try to explain himself. Surely they had to understand that they couldn't just let her die like this! They would work together and they would find this man and then, he thought as she hesitantly started to type, they would end this.