EDITED: 18 July, 2021.
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May 4, 2008. 7:04 A.M.
Her father had shown up for breakfast for the first time in years, his arm still in a sling. Even the chef had been surprised, quickly ordering the sous chef to set up a second set of tableware for their boss. He'd sat down beside her. Tony wasn't even wearing a suit.
Altaira had felt bewildered.
She'd been eating alone breakfast in the Malibu mansion for years. Though sometimes she'd convince a housekeeper or one of the chefs to sit down with her.
He'd asked for her opinion on something. Tony actually tried to hold a conversation with her.
Sure, she gotten frustrated with him when he had tried to embed his own ideas into what her future should be. But otherwise, he was... normal. He'd then asked her how she felt after all the harassment due to who her father was. Of course, she lied and said it didn't bother her. But it was all just so weird.
She'd left within fifteen minutes, not sure how to interact with him when she'd still been too tired to get angry at him.
Plus, they had bigger things to worry about.
Only a day had passed, and it felt like the entire world was watching them again. First, it had been the fact that Tony had went missing. Next, it was because everyone thought he was dead. Now, it was because he'd announced that Stark industries, a weapons company, would no longer be making weapons. The market was crashing and burning like the Peshtigo fire, or even like the Black Friday Bushfires.
It seemed she wasn't the only person who found it amusing.
"Stark Industries! I've got one recommendation!" The man on the television was surrounded by different red coloured items. His patterned tie was far too tight, with sleeves rolled up and thick moustache sitting on his upper lip. Every word was a spitted shout. He slammed a button and a cutesy animation of a bear appeared. "Sell, sell, sell!"
Beside her, Pepper sighed.
The man narrowed his eyes at the screen, "does the Hindenburg ring any bells?" He smashed a few buttons for sound effects. "Let me show you the new Stark Industries business plan!" The news persona grabbed a yellow bat and smashed the cup sitting on the table in front of him. "Look, that's a weapons company that doesn't make weapons!"
Altaira giggled, ignoring Pepper's disapproving glance. She was brushing out her thick hair, struggling slightly as she sighed in frustrating when she hit another chunk of tangled hair. Honestly, just cutting it all off was a great plan.
Suddenly Pepper's tablet displayed a call from Tony, his voice near inaudible over the sound effects coming from the news segment. "Pepper, how big are your hands?"
Pepper paused the show, ignoring Altaira's indignant squeak of protest, and asked. "What?"
"How big are your hands?"
"I don't understand why..."
"Get down here. I need you." He ended the call. Altaira empathised with confused look Pepper sent her but shrugged helplessly. Just because he was her dad, it didn't mean she'd understand what he was thinking. Rather, the fact that he was her father probably only aided to the miscommunication and resentment between them. Altaira had just been avoiding him, successful so far. But it had only been a day so that wasn't technically a fair judgement.
Pepper got up, leaving the tablet to Altaira to continue the show.
But as a curious child, despite being fifteen, Altaira followed a few steps behind.
She hadn't been in the laboratory in years, especially not after that time her father had ripped apart her attempts to bond with him. He had been drunk and angry, she'd been scared. That type of memory had become engrained into her idea of him, and the possibility of him acting like that again had always been a subconscious fear.
Altaira waited a few seconds until the glass door closed behind Pepper before she poked her head down the stairs to be able to look through the glass walls. She whispered to Jarvis, "let me hear what they're saying."
"Miss Stark, I do not believe—"
"Please, Jarvis." She whined, looking up hopefully with a pouting face. "It would mean so much to me."
"It is not morally accepted to lie, Miss Stark. However, I will accept your request as per my programming."
Altaira grinned victoriously, leaning back down. Blinking in surprise at what she saw. Her father was sitting on a reclining chair, shirtless. He had a few wires attached to him and a machine in his chest. It was glowing. Glowing. Why did he have a glowing machine in his chest?
Jarvis provided the audio moments later. Her father was speaking as Pepper approached with her hands lifted and displayed to him. "Oh, wow. They are small. Very petite, indeed." He glanced down at the other piece of glowing technology he was holding in his hand. "I just need your help for a sec."
"Oh, my god." Pepper nearly whispered as she stopped before Tony. "Is that the thing that's keeping you alive?"
Something was wrong with her father? Altaira felt extremely out of the loop. No one had mentioned or even hinted this to her.
"It was. It is now an antique." He gestured again to the device in his hand. "This is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future." Her dad glanced up at Pepper. "It was. It is now an antique. I'm swapping it up for an upgraded unit, and I just ran into a little speed bump."
"Speed bump... what does that mean?"
"It's nothing. It's just a little snag." Her father's self-assured voice seemed out of place compared to the situation that was before them. Even Pepper sounded slightly stressed. He grabbed the machine in his chest and began to pull it out. "There's an exposed wire under this device, and its contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short." He ripped it out and passed it to Pepper, "it's fine."
"Wha— What do you want me to do?" She held it with only two fingers, as if trying to avoid touching it as much as possible.
"Put that on the table over there. That is irrelevant."
"Oh, my god."
"I want you to reach in, and you're just gonna gently lift the wire out."
"Is it safe?"
"Yeah, it should be fine. It's like Operation. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes 'beep'."
"What do you mean, 'Operation'?"
"It's just a game, never mind."
"Just gently lift the wire. Okay? Great." Her father instructed Pepper, as she slowly reached out with her hand.
"Okay..." Just before she pushed her hand into his chest, she pulled it away again. She chattered nervously, "you know, I don't think that I'm qualified to do this."
Tony reassured her again. "No, you're fine. You're the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I've ever met. You're gonna do great." Altaira felt surprise, that was the nicest thing she'd ever heard her father say. "Is it too much of a problem to ask? Cause I'm..."
"Okay, okay."
"...I really need your help here."
"Okay."
Pepper reached her hand in, crying out in disgust. "Oh, there's pus!"
She blinked, suddenly recognising the machine. "Jarvis, is that an arc reactor? Why does he have it in his chest?"
"Yes, Miss Stark. The device was implanted by late Doctor Yinsen while they were in captivity to keep the shrapnel in his body from the attack out of his heart. It was the only option the doctor had to keep Mr. Stark alive."
"I didn't know that."
"He preferred that unless you inquired, you did not find out. He did not want to worry you."
She scoffed but leaned further down anyways. "That's dumb."
"I cannot claim to understand his reasoning, but it is concurrent with similar logical pathways of other parental figures in the United States of America."
She didn't respond. There was nothing else to say.
Altaira watched in rapt attention at the scene in front of her. She continued to lean down to try to see more. This sounded so freaking cool. Altaira was a bit jealous she couldn't be part of it. Pepper tugged it out and she started panicking because Tony mentioned cardiac arrest. Altaira leaned down so far, she almost slipped face first down the staircase and just barely caught herself.
She pulled away from the staircase, the beat of her heart echoing throughout her entire body in an irregular and fluttering pattern. Like a beating drum of its own rhythm. Altaira was left with the audio provided by Jarvis.
"Yeah I feel great." Her father laughed. "Are you okay?" Apparently, they'd finished the technological transplant while she almost fell down the stairs and then would have had to murder herself to save herself from embarrassment.
Pepper let out a laugh of relief. "Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again."
"I don't have anyone but you." The tone in his voice indicated he was very serious.
Altaira blinked.
I don't have anyone but you.
What did he think Altaira was chopped liver?
I don't have anyone but you.
"Jarvis, mute." Altaira commanded. The audio from the room went silent.
I don't have anyone but you.
She gritted her teeth. Altaira may have still been a child, but she wasn't no one. If her father actually cared, he would've put in the effort. Yesterday was a brief fluke in the system. He was merely feeling sentimental after having escaped a considerably traumatic captivity.
Altaira had never been more important than his woman, his parties and his machines.
Her dad wouldn't prove her wrong. She was sure of that. He'd never amount to more than an absentee father and a magnanimous disappointment.
He tried in the beginning, a little bit. Acted as if this demonstration of effort and care for her wellbeing would ever be enough to rectify nine years of abandonment. Tony Stark might have almost died, and he might not necessarily be back at perfect health if that arc reactor in his chest was to say anything, but that didn't give him a free ticket to excuse his mistakes. It didn't give him the power or the ability to just force Altaira to forgive him.
Too little, too late.
It didn't help that she was resistant to his attempts (because maybe she just wanted him to prove to her that he cared and that he would keep trying despite it anything and everything that she had done and would do). Her father took that as a sign that his efforts would be wasted, and she could see him trying just a little less every crack at it.
It scared Altaira. It left her wondering whether she should forgive him. Whether it wasn't worth it to lose him again. But she shouldered through, knowing that if she folded and forgave, she had no respect for herself. He needed to treat her with respect, he needed to gain her trust back. If he couldn't put the continued effort in, it was a lost cause.
Her father had started spending more and more time in the workshop downstairs, building some sorts of mechanical suits that utilised the arc reactor in his chest.
It nearly felt as if their relationship had returned back to what it used to be before Tony had been kidnapped. That is to say non-existent.
She'd been playing piano when it happened.
Altaira had opened her binder and instinctually flipped to a specific page. Her hands naturally drifted over the chords of her comfort song, and without thinking her fingers had begun to glide and press the notes until Maria's beloved and final song resonated within the mansion, she didn't even consider who else was still in the house. She'd never had to before.
He'd practically burst into the room, eyes wide as he stared at her.
Altaira's hands froze, trapped with only the ability to stare back.
His eyes jumped between her and the sheet music. The older state of them clear, likely even some of the words written in Maria's handwriting visible from where she stood. Tony asked impassively, "what are you doing?"
She couldn't gauge anything from that. "I'm... I'm playing piano."
"Why are you playing that song?"
"I thought— it's a good sing. I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to play it."
"Where did you find those notes?"
"In... in the storage room. I was bored." Altaira shifted on the seat, disliking the interrogative tone he had taken with her. As if she'd done something wrong. "I've been playing it for years, I'm sure you would've heard it once or twice—"
Tony interrupted her. "I promise you I would've remembered. Are you doing this specifically to spite me? I've never heard you play that before."
"Maybe if you'd been around more you would've heard it."
"Kid, don't talk to me like—"
Altaira slammed the cover shut. "Stop calling me kid!" She got up from the piano seat and tried to storm past him.
He grabbed her arm, "you have no right to speak to me like this. Apologise, now."
She scoffed, "and you have no right to pretend to be my father."
"I am your father."
They were both shouting now. "Yeah, I can bet that when the paternity test showed that you were disappointed! You certainly don't act like a father! And if you don't act like one, I sure as hell don't need to respect you like one! You've been absent and distant for ten years!" She pulled her arm out of his bruising grip. "Honestly, you're probably a damn near perfect replica of your own father."
"If you keep talking..."
She spun around, "you'll what? Hit me? Do it, for all I care! You're no better than mom and Tommy! If only they'd never discovered I was your child, I'm sure I would've been better off in the damn foster system then with you!"
He didn't bother to respond to her jive, lowering his voice to a low angry pitch. "Don't play that song again."
"I'll do whatever I want!" Altaira had shouted back before she'd escaped to hide in her room.
She'd come out several hours later and the beautiful grand piano was gone.
The young dark-haired girl had stood there in the empty piano room, staring at the spot where she'd sat for hours learning to play and falling in love with it. Her only true safe space, because even her rooms had never felt permanent with all the many different houses and places she'd lived in.
Her hands trembled.
An overwhelming rush of defeat echoed in her bones as betrayal rushed through her veins, desperate and helpless tears coming to her eyes.
She breathed it all in, the fear and resentment and betrayal. She took in the room and pulled all the warm memories closer to her heart, the hours of feeling close with her grandmother. All those times she felt normal with the sound drifting through the room, like she wasn't horribly, terrifyingly alone and desperate for someone to love her. As if she wasn't petrified that her mother and Tommy were right; that she'd never be loved because she was ungrateful and a dirty blemish on this beautiful world. Altaira closed her eyes.
When she opened them and left the room with a defiant purpose written out in her mind, the only thing left was manic burning fury.
Within an hour, the mansion was burning. Set off by a series of her father's favourite vehicles exploding.
Naturally, she's sent back to school immediately (Pepper had stared at Altaira as if she didn't recognise her, while her father looked like wanted to murder her). Unsurprisingly, they pay off the media and don't press charges. They couldn't possibly ruin their own reputation (maybe even leading to doubt arising about Tony Stark's capabilities of being a father).
She didn't speak to them properly for months (so thankfully, everything was back to normal). She still had Jarvis, no one bothered her, and she could play all the piano she wanted. That's all that mattered.
Months later, when the news erupted with images and videos of a familiar iron suit attacking a group of terrorists in Gulmira, Afghanistan and then destroying a United States military jet during their escape, she'd merely laughed.
Screw them all.
Altaira was better off by herself.