I Thought You Were Different

History

Minor language

It didn't take long for Steve to gather the team, each of them now sitting around the conference table and doing a very poor job of concealing their stares at both you and Tony. He wanted answers for himself, but felt that the team had the right to know too, given that two of it's members had been hiding a major secret from them for years.

"We made the conscious decision together not to tell anyone, and this wasn't just her or I. It was a plan laid out by us and Nick Fury several years ago."

"Okay, I can understand that, Tony," Steve replied sternly with his hands resting on his lap, "but what I don't understand is this entire relationship. I thought that you two were just close friends, but now this is all coming together. This explains so many things. This is why you're so protective of each other."

When Tony faltered, you leaned forward into the conversation, resting your hand over his to signal your intent to try to explain. "When I was younger, my parents were really poor and had no way to raise a child on their own. They were just barely adults themselves, so when they befriended Tony, they were in awe of his wealth and abilities. He was a stable, secure and knowledgeable person who they believed could give me a much better life than they could."

"When they never came back for her, I adopted her as my own," he agreed. "But it didn't..." he paused, sighing deeply and shifting to look down at his feet, his expression saddening, "it didn't last as long as I thought it would."

"Okay, you lost me," Clint broke in. "Did you...un-adopt her or something?"

"I ran away when I was fifteen. Tony wasn't exactly the kind of dad that was very involved, if you can imagine."

"Hey, watch it," he gasped, "you had everything you ever needed or wanted."

"Except an actual father, yeah."

"I had responsibilities that pulled me away often, I'll give you that. But when I was there, I was involved."

"Sure, involved in being a friend. You didn't know how to be a father, Tony. It was a job that you weren't ready for, so you shouldn't have taken it." You leaned back and away from him, crossing your arms over your chest to bring distance to your interaction. "You were never really there. When you were home you were in the lab working on some innovative way to kill people. Not exactly someone to look up to."

"I feel really uncomfortable," Clint mumbled into Natasha's ear, trying to be subtle.

"You never wanted for anything, (Y/N). Never once did you go without."

"I went without you for years!"

"Okay," Steve interrupted, raising his hands to pacify you both, "let's just stay calm and on topic here, alright? You two can get into that later. Tell me how Fury plays into this whole thing."

'We're definitely getting into this later,' Tony mouthed to you silently. "Fury was the one who found her."

"When SHIELD took an interest in him, Nick knew that Hydra would too, along with anyone close to him. He helped Tony find me so that I would be protected." You gave a look to each of your teammates around the table, trying to read their faces; it was a varying degree of responses, mostly of shock but when you looked at Steve, it was if everything was making sense. You could see him replaying the years together in his mind. "As you all can imagine, I'm not the kind to take well to babysitters," you smirked, "so I told Nick that they only way I would come with him was to be trained and a part of SHIELD in my own right, and no one could know about Tony."

"Yeah, the shame runs deep," he groaned.

"That's not it and you know it!" you snapped back. "I didn't want preferential treatment, and I didn't want it to compromise the work. Don't make this about you."