girl ― saved by captain america

[twenty six] team meeting

[Steve]

Parenting alongside Tony Stark is proving to be much more difficult than I had originally anticipated.

I mean, sure. When he revealed that he wanted to sign on as Willa's second guardian, I was immediately skeptical. Of course I was. But the way he treated her with such care when we first rescued her really had me convinced that this was all going to work out relatively smoothly. Now, I'm not so sure.

The first real indicator that things might be going south was when Tony got upset with Willa after she was shot at the safe-house and hid it from all of us. I wasn't in the room when it happened, nor did I hear his comments to Bruce after, but the doctor let me know that he was very concerned, and when I tried to bring the incident up with Tony later, he didn't want to talk about it.

Then, there was a period of a few days where Tony just didn't see Willa much at all. Bruce didn't want him talking to the child alone, and Tony felt insulted that we would suggest he be 'supervised' during his visits. While I understood his frustration, at least, to a certain degree, I don't think the best decision was to ultimately ignore the girl completely.

And then, when the child was finally able to leave her bed more and be out in the common space with the rest of us for the majority of her day, Tony began to display even more questionable behavior, which thankfully the five-year-old was mostly oblivious to; the scientist would just disapprove of various things and express his concerns to me. He still didn't like the pacifiers. He thought I was too "soft" with her, as he put it. He thought she got too much attention from everyone, in general. He didn't like that we prepared separate meals for her. He didn't like the way the little girl acted; he said we were babying her and therefore she was acting like a baby. Which Bruce has had very strong things to say about, on the contrary to Tony's ignorant opinion. He just doesn't seem to be grasping the fact that Willa is hurting. She's been hurting her whole life, and even though she's safe from her captors, she's still going to carry that hurt with her wherever she goes.

A few instances have ultimately escalated to where Willa has been exposed to his bad parenting, and each time, I've had to remove her from the situation while Bruce or someone else talked Tony down. At this point, it's clear to me that this is no environment for the child to be living in. Tony has no right to make things difficult for her like this.

Things have been so difficult, in fact, that Bruce has decided to call a team meeting for all of the fiftieth-floor residents to discuss concerns for how we're going to continue raising Willa collectively. While Tony and I carry the responsibility of her guardianship together, the rest have agreed that Willa is going to be a group project. Peter is the only one missing from the bunch; he's up watching the girl while the rest of us, the adults, meet.

That's how we all ended up in this stuffy conference room on the forty-somethingth floor, sitting around a long oval table in cheap rolling chairs. Bruce is at the head, since he is the one who called for the meeting. To his right are Tony, Nat, and Thor. To Bruce's left, I sit across from Tony, followed by Wanda, who's across from Nat, and Clint, who's across from Thor. Bruce brought his notepad, but other than that, we're all empty-handed. Tony attempted to bring down a little science gadget to mess around with, but Bruce scolded him, reminding him that this is a serious matter.

"So," Stark clears his throat, breaking the awkward silence. "Are we gonna do anything in this meeting, or what? 'Cause I got a whole bunch of stuff I gotta work on back in the lab, and I'm really starting to think that maybe this is a waste of my-"

"Alright," Bruce cuts him off as a few faces around the room roll their eyes at Tony's impatience. "We'll get started, then. I was just going over my notes to make sure I have everything written down that we need to cover."