Briana Stark

The smell of pancakes wakes me up and gets me to climb out of the bed of the hotel room that mom got for the two of us only. I'm so tired from last night, and even though I say I was fine, mom and Happy took me to the hospital to make sure that I was fine after the blast. The imagine of the dad and Uncle Rhodey fighting in the suits, destroying our house stayed in my head the whole night. I really don't understand what's going on with him. He won't open up to me or mom about it, and it's hurting me. It's hurting all of the people dad cares about.

I walk out of the room and head to the kitchen where I see the tall guy that dad talked to the night the guy broke into the house, shutting down Jarvis and C.A.S.S-Cassidy.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"Do you love your father?"

"Excuse me? Um, why are you asking me this, Fury?"

"Miss Stark, your father is dying." He said.

"What?" I crack out in a whisper.

"Palladium poisoning from the-" Nick Fury began.

"Arc reactor." I finished. "Why didn't he tell me?"

"When you're a father, you'll do anything to protect your children. So, do you love your father?" Nick Fury ask.

"Of course I do." I reply.

"Help me save him then."

A few hours later, we pulled up in front of Randy's Donuts. I climb out of the car with Nick Fury and walk over to the large sign holding a big, fat round donut and right there inside was my father in his Iron Man suit, stuffing his face with his favorite kind of donuts.

"Sir! I'm gonna have to ask you to exit the donut." Nick Fury commanded.

The next thing I knew I'm sitting at a window-sided booth inside of the place. Dad is holding his head with one hand, rubbing his right temple with his metal fingers, Nick Fury sits across from us.

"I told you, I don't wanna join your super-secret boy band," Dad said.

Fury laughs a little before taking a sip of his coffee, "No, no, no. See, I remember, you do everything yourself. How's that working out for you?"

Dad struggles, "It's, it's, it's," He sighs before he looks over his sunglasses, "I'm sorry. I don't wanna get off the wrong foot. Do I look at the patch or the eye? Honestly, I'm a bit hung over."

I wonder why.

Dad continues, "I'm not sure if you're real or if I'm having,"

Fury interrupts and leans closer, "I am very real. I'm the realest person you're ever gonna meet."

Dad scoffs, "Just my luck. Where's the staff here?"

A sudden figure approaches and a very familiar redheaded informs her boss, "We've secured the perimeter, but I don't think we should hold it for too much longer."

Dad sets his coffee cup against the table and stares up at her in shock. I try not to smirk at his reaction. Fury grins as the redheaded cheekily tilts her head to the side.

Dad simply says, "Huh. You're f-fired."

The redheaded sits down next to Fury, "That's not up to you."

"Tony, I want you to meet Agent Romanoff." Fury said.

Dad rubs his eyes in irritation, sighing out. "Hi."

"Once we knew you were ill, Agent Romanoff was tasked to you by me."

"Ah, I suggest you apologize," Dad says.

She doesn't break his gaze.

"You've been very busy. You made your girl CEO, almost got your daughter killed, you're giving away all your stuff. You let your friend fly away with your suit. Now, if I didn't know better." Fury said.

"You don't know better. I didn't give it to him, he took it."

I stare into space at this point. Nick Fury's voice brings me back to it, "What do we want from you? No, uh, uh, uh, what do you want from me!?" Natasha meets my gaze then walks away. "You have become a problem I have to deal with. Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe."

Dad sighs and groans, "Yeah, I get it."

"I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with," Fury said. "Hit him,"

Suddenly the redhead is stabbing my father in the neck and injecting him with something.

"Oh, god, are you gonna steal my kidney and sell it!?" I roll my eyes at my father being overdramatic. "Could you please not do anything awful for five seconds? What did she just do to me?"

"What did we just do for you?"

"It's lithium dioxide," I said softly.

"It's gonna take the edge off. We're trying to get you back to work," Fury tells him.

Dad breathes quietly, "Alright, give me a couple of boxes of that. I'll be right as rain."

"It's not a cure, it just abates the symptoms," Natasha said.

"Doesn't look like it's gonna be an easy fix," Nick says.

"Trust me, I know," Dad says. "I'm good at this stuff. I've been looking for a suitable replacement for palladium. I've tried every combination, every permutation of every known element,"

"Well I'm here to tell you, you haven't tried them all." Fury said.

Fury goes on and on to explain that Grandpa believed that there was more to the arc reactor but only dad could figure it out. Dad's face is hard as he listens to Fury talk about Grandpa. As a kid, it was easy to tell that dad never liked his own father.

Dad's voice brings me out of my staring, "He was cold. He was calculating. He never told me he loved me, he never even told me that he liked me!"

Dad doesn't realize it, but he and Grandpa have one thing in common: they can't say the words I love you. Mom told me that my first words were dada and I love you. Why dad was never able to say it back to me, I don't know? I stopped trying to figure that out after I turned seven.

Dad continues, "So it's a little tough to digest when you're telling me he said the whole future was riding on me and he's passing it down. I don't get that. You're talking about the guy whose happiest day was when he shipped me off to boarding school,"

"That's not true."

"Well, then, clearly you knew my dad better than I did."

"As a matter of fact, I did. He was one of the founding members of SHIELD."

"What?" Dad ask.

Fury stands, "I got a 2:00."

There are large boxes everywhere and Dad looks confused.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. What's this?"

"Okay, you're good, right?"

"No, I'm not good."

"You got this? Right?" Fury continues.

"Got what? I don't even know what I'm supposed to get."

Fury ignores that, "Natasha will remain a floater at Stark with her cover intact,"

I dazed out of the conversation between dad and Fury and meet Natasha's gaze. She motions me over and I go over to her, we stare out the window for a while in silence.

"You worried?" Her voice breaks the silence.

I sigh, "Yeah, I'm worried. What if this doesn't work?"

"Yeah, but, what if it does?" She says. "You know, I can see why your parents, mostly your father, can be overprotective of you. I've been a spy for a while now. But in every mission I went on, I have never met someone so kind and so innocent as you. You're like a niece to me,"

I smile. "Thanks, that means a lot."

She's...actually really, really cool. Don't tell my dad I say that though.

•••

I lay on the floor, looking through papers from the boxes Fury left dad. Most of those things are from Grandpa, and some boxes contain some of Grandpa's belongings too. It was silence as me and dad search through the boxes. My grandfather keeps talking on the projector.

I look up when I hear dad's name. Grandpa is standing in front of the large display of buildings while a small version of dad stands on the opposite side, holding a mini-sized building and contentedly playing with it.

"Anth-Tony," Grandpa scolds. "What are you doing back there? What is that? Put that back! Put it back where you got it from!" I flinch at Grandpa's tone, "Where's your mother? Maria?" He motions his young son away, "Go on. Go, go, go, go."

Dad looks away and looks through the a book. Eventually dad slaps the notebook close and tosses it to the side, before he takes a sip of his drink. I hear Grandpa say dad's name again and look up.

"Tony," Grandpa says. "You're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you. And someday you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than just people's inventions. It represents my life's work. This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world." A brief pause is heard. "What is and always will be my greatest creation is you."

Dad stares at the projection, taken aback by this. Grandpa smiles a little and nods in confidently as the film comes back to an end. I look over at dad and he's still staring at the blank projection screen with a few tears in his eyes, still taken aback by his own father's words. I go over to him and crawl into his lap for a hug, I feel his arms wrap around me and I bury my face into his chest.

"I love you, Daddy," I said softly.

I'm begging, praying, hoping that he'll finally say the words. Say that he loves me.

But the words never come.

Iron Man belongs to Marvel

Briana belongs to me