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𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐑 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎 was not an early riser by any means.

So when her brother jumped on her bed and woke her up, she had been irritable. Especially after having slept late the previous night.

In Alexander's defense he was just filled with too much energy. Currently the twins didn't attend a school in New York. It was likely that they were gonna be homeschooled instead of going to normal school. It was all up to Tony.

"Come on Val!! Hurry up!" Alexander urged his sister who was in her wardrobe. Last night, they both had been told that they were permanently going to live with their Dad.

With Athena nowhere in the picture.

That didn't sit right with Valerie. Even if the woman was not their biological mother, the three had created a strong bond. One that resembled a real bond between a mother and her children.

Athena was the one who had taken care of Valerie and Alexander for the past 8 years. That's a really long time. Valerie figured she would find a way to contact her.

She couldn't just forget about her.

Before she could dwell upon the thought any longer, Alexander shouted again, "Val—I'm bored!" he whined. The kids were gonna check out the labs that Ms. Potts had mentioned before.

"Okay! Okay! I'm done!" Valerie came out of her wardrobe wearing white track pants and a spaghetti strap black top, her hair left open. Alexander quickly grabbed his sister's hand and took her to his room.

Valerie had seen it last night; Alexander's room. She knew he loved it.

The twins sat down on Alexander's bed as the boy fished out his laptop from his bag.

"Ok so, it's a rough schematic of this net-shooter. It's a prototype but I wanna try making it now that we're in the Stark tower with the Tony Stark aka our  dad; he might be able to help us," Valerie gave a subtle glare to her brother at that as he paused and then continued.

"Ju-Just tell me, how is it?" The boy asked Valerie who looked at the laptop screen.

Alexander was really good at planning stuff, Valerie had to admit that.

"It looks promising. I can help you build it," Alexander was about to say something when Valerie added, "—but, we're gonna try it for ourselves first, if we can't do it, then and only then will we call Mr. Stark."

Alexander just rolled his eyes at his sister. In his opinion Valerie was being stubborn and unreasonable. He just didn't understand how she wasn't happy to see their real father?

He was over the moon to learn about Tony.

"Why do you have to be so salty about him, Val? He is our dad after all." Alexander wanted to know what was going on in sister's mind.

"Alex. Do you even realize that we are probably never gonna get to see mom again? That is the cost of having Tony Stark as our father.  And I'd rather have Athena; the person who raised us like her own children than Tony Stark, the person who I didn't even know was our father up until yesterday!"

That got him thinking. Valerie was right in some way but Tony had reasons for doing what he did. Reasonable reasons.

"Val....I get where your coming from, I really do. I love mom just as much as you do. But, dad had to do what he did to keep us safe. I don't think that must've been easy for him to do; stay away from his children." Alex tried to make his sister understand.

"—the man has already suffered a lot, Val, watching us grow up from a distance, not being able to hear us call him 'dad'," He studied his sister's unreadable face and continued, "don't you think, that that's enough punishment? I'm—I'm not telling you to accept him right away, because I know that is hard for you to do. But just tell me that you're gonna at least give him a chance."

Valerie took in her brother's words. He was right. She knew that. She understood that. She also knew that she was being unreasonable and unfair to Tony, but she couldn't help it. She was just angry at him—no, she was angry at the change brought in her life.

To assure Alexander and to put him to ease, the girl nodded, her reluctance evident. But the nod from his sister brought a bright smile on Alex's face.

"Now let's go to that lab! I can't wait!" Alexander quickly scrambled off his bed and dragged Valerie along with him, out the door.

They located the mentioned lab pretty quick. It was easy to find since it was near their rooms and the door was literally labelled as 'Lab 3'.

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Unbeknownst to the kids, Tony had been watching them the whole time. He'd even heard the whole conversation in Alex's room. He was really happy that they both were giving him a chance. Albeit he knew that he shouldn't be spying on his kids, it was a habit now. 

But what he really wanted to see was if Alexander and Valerie were really as good as Athena described them to be; with technology and all that.

"JARVIS, give the kids all the access they need to operate in Lab 3." Tony ordered the AI.

"Yes Sir. You got it." JARVIS responded.

━━

Alexander was in awe. The lab was everything he'd ever wanted his workplace to be.

Valerie was also stoked to work in the elite lab. It had all the equipment they'd ever dreamt of having and working with.

Alex started by placing his laptop on a white table in the middle of the room.

Now, the kids had known all about the AI that Tony used in the Stark Tower. JARVIS. I mean the man and his ingenious AI were always all over the news.

"Should I try calling out to JARVIS, Val?" Alex asked.

"Go ahead. I mean what could go wrong? We're his offsprings after all, that's gotta mean something right?" Val encouraged her brother.

"Seriously, offsprings?" Alex rolled his eyes while Val just shrugged nonchalantly.

Mustering up some courage Alex spoke, "JARVIS?"

It was silent for barely a second when, "How can I help you, Alexander?" The AI's voice sounded out, surprising the children.

"Omg! It actually responded to you!" Val exclaimed, not being able to contain her excitement.

Alex also cheered before getting back to topic, "JARVIS connect my laptop to your system."

"And analyze 'Net-shooting Device Prototype'. Also JARVIS, can you please name the project better than Mr. I-can't-name-my-projects-for-shit here did??" Valerie gave out the next order.

"Hey! I'm right here, you know!" Alex said, offended.

"The data has been uploaded to my system, sir."

"You could rename the file as 'NSDP'. A short acronym. Would you like to see a holographic schematic of the file, Miss Valerie?" JARVIS asked.

"Yes, please, pull it up." Valerie spontaneously agreed, wanting to see a holographic schematic of Alex's NSDP.

"Woah!" Valerie and Alexander exclaimed after seeing the holographic schematic.

The whole hologram was blue, it had all the information that Alexander had stored in his laptop and the sketch was also the exact same. The kids were fascinated.

—

Elsewhere Tony had a smile on his face, watching his children, through the screen of his computer. They both were just 10 year old kids, working their way around the advanced technology in the Stark tower, with no guidance.

Tony even took a look at Alex's project. He had to admit it was pretty brilliant for a 10 year old to come up with. He was considering helping his children with it.

But the man had to get up and get to working on some minor adjustments to his new suit. He shut down his computer, a smile still on his face, and left to go to the room his suit was kept in.

—

"I don't know, Alex! We could just do it in Mr. Stark's office! That's plenty of space for a test run!"

Alexander showed his offended and annoyed reaction to his sister who gave him a challenging one back.

"Okay first—that's a terrible idea. And second—that's a terrible idea! We should just ask Dad about some spacious place to test run NSDP."

Valerie rolled her eyes at her brother's suggestion.

"Why do you have to bring him in? You know we could ask Ms. Potts. She'd be more than glad to help."

"Well, I want to spend some bonding time with dad."

The honesty in Alexander's voice caught his sister off guard due to which she wasn't able to hear what he muttered next.

"And hopefully force you to spend some with him too,"

Alexander really wanted his dad and Valerie to get along.

Valerie was one of the most important people in his life. And Tony was one of the most wanted adults in his life being his father.

But he also knew that Valerie wouldn't be able to accept their dad as quick as he did.

That was where they were stuck.

"Ugh—Fine. Whatever. Let's go check his office to see if he's there."

Val gave in as Alex threw some puppy eyes her way.

—

His office turned out to be empty.

Now the duo was strolling around, trying to catch a glimpse of someone familiar.

"Wait."

Valerie abruptly stopped walking as Alexander who was a few steps ahead of her stopped as well and turned around.

"We're so stupid, Alex." Valerie breathed out.

"Uh...what makes you say that?"

"Man, we could've just asked JARVIS about Mr. Stark's whereabouts! Come on let's go to the labs!"

Valerie sprinted ahead as her brother ran behind her.

"Val—wait! Ugh why are you so fast?!" Alex whined as his clearly athletic sister ran ahead.

Yeah, between the two of them, Val was definitely the one who had pretty much all the athletic abilities that Alex didn't.

She was the 'jock with a brain,' according to Alex.

—

JARVIS had informed the two that their father was in his personal lab where all his suits were stored. He even gave them the directions.

"How many sub-levels does this building actually have?"

Alex asked.

"How many types of flowers do you think there are?"

Valerie shot back as her brother shrugged.

"I don't know."

"Exactly."

"You're good."

"I know."

The conversation came to an end as the elevator stopped and the doors opened to show

"Woah, that's a lot of stuff lying around here." Valerie's exclamation alerted Tony of the presence of his children he was graced with.

"Dad, are these all your suits from Mark I to Mark VI?" Alex asked excitement evident in his voice. Even Valerie was glancing around in awe, watching all the suits kept in glass coffin-like rectangular boxes. 

"Yeah bud. You guys wanna see what I'm working on right now?" Tony saw this as an opportunity to get his kids closer to him, especially Valerie.  

"Yeah!"

"I guess I could stick around and watch an army of metal men being forged..."

Obviously Alexander showed his enthusiasm without any filter while Valerie masked hers behind nonchalance and boredom. But the statement made Tony chuckle a bit, she'd definitely inherited his sick sense of humor and sarcasm.

The next hour was spent with Tony explaining what he was doing, telling them all about his new suit, Mark VII while working on it. The kids occasionally gave some suggestions and opinions to him which he more than happily applied in his suit. He was impressed but not surprised, they were his kids after all.

"Hey, what did you both come down here for in the first place?"

Valerie was the one who surprisingly answered. She had....incredible fun working with Tony, so much so that it might have reduced the amount of reluctance she held in giving him a chance to prove himself a good father.

"We....wanted to ask you if you knew some good place that we could test our 'NSDP' project in? And...possibly ask you...to...h-help us with it...?" Alexander was so happy, seeing his sister trying to meet their father halfway in forming a relationship.

Tony was shocked that Valerie was the one asking for his help and not Alex. He was happy as well. Ecstatic even.

"Definitely! I'm free the whole day, so I can help you!" Tony made a mental note to tell JARVIS to inform Pepper that all his meetings for the day were cancelled. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for him. A chance to stop his relation with his Valerie becoming a replica of the one he had with his dad.

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𝟎𝟕-𝟎𝟕-𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏

𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦, 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥!