loud
"Why didn't I know about you at all these past fifteen years?"
Barton Homestead - January 9th, 2016
Christa wanted to scream.
Or, preferably, evaporate into thin air.
Whether she reappeared in another place or disappeared completely was up to fate.
Alas, the laws of physics weren't in her favor today.
Nothing was, as a matter of fact.
So she screamed.
And Stark (unsurprisingly, because the scream was loud enough to make any person with perfectly normal hearing wonder if it were to cause them to go deaf) let out a yell and covered his ears, stumbling backwards and tripping and falling onto the floor. After the sound dissipated, he stared up at her, shock and amazement and also a little bit of terror displayed very prominently on his face.
He stood up cautiously, rubbing his head, and shouted, "What--the hell--was that?"
Christa was breathing very slightly heavily, eyes opening and fixating on the man before her. Though not all her emotions had entirely settled, that burst of noise and energy had done a world of wonders on her soul.
"That," she said, sarcasm dripping from her words, "was what we call a stress reliever."
"Did it work?" Stark questioned in strongly evident annoyance, still rubbing his head. "Because I don't know about you, but it feels like at least twelve different sirens just went off in here at once, and my head feels worse than that one time I fell from space in the middle of New York."
Christa did a mock consideration, rubbing her chin with her right hand and looking in another direction as she did so. She looked back at Stark and, eyebrows raised with contempt, and gave a firm, sarcastic, "No."
Stark knitted his eyebrows together. "Was it worth it to make me go half-deaf?"
Christa considered him again. "Yes."
"And may I ask why, exactly?"
"Because you're a di--"
"Christa!" Laura exclaimed.
Christa looked over, taking in the brown-eyed gaze, the hand placed gently on Clint's motionless one, an arm wrapped around a wide-eyed Cooper, in whose arms was a slumbering Nathan. Christa hadn't even noticed the two come into the room. Cooper had probably been woken up when she had given that initial scream.
"No, let her finish." Stark had an arm up as though to emphasize what he was saying.
Laura raised her eyebrows at the man, but said no more except whisper something to Cooper, who nodded silently.
"Thank you," Christa said, voice dripping with sarcasm, to the woman. Then she turned back to Stark and spat, "Because you're a dick."
His previously somewhat nervously happy composure now gone completely, Stark folded his arms, head tilted and eyebrows furrowed at the girl. "And how did you, a girl who met me just hours ago, come to that conclusion? I'm not denying it, I just wanna know why." He was getting into his defensive self, a bad combination with Christa's furious one.
Christa rolled her eyes. "Let's look at the facts, shall we? And you might want to pull up a chair, because this is gonna turn into a whole essay.
"First things first, how you reacted when I first told you I was your daughter. You wanted to run away. Probably fling yourself into a pool of alcohol. 'All I can do right now is sit in my office and eat my blueberries as I contemplate everything I have done in my life,' my ass. You're crap. You don't care about anything or anybody but yourself. You were supposed to take responsibility over me like an actual dad. It doesn't matter that the paternity test results initially turned out false! You were crap! Clint reacted better when deciding to take me in, and he isn't even my real dad!"
Stark was unusually quiet. His eyes were locked on the ground, and he was fidgeting with something invisible on his metal-covered arm.
"Are you listening to me?" Christa asked.
"I can hear you." He looked up at her. "I just have have no way to defend myself."
That just infuriated Christa even more. She wanted him to get angry, to feel a fraction of what was coursing through her veins right now. She wanted him to hurt like she did, wanted him to yell, wanted something more than sad, pathetic silence.
So she continued.
"Now onto some more pressing things. Because yeah, I get that you were in shock, and hell, I was too. I mean, you're the great Tony Stark! Iron Man! Playboy, genius, billionaire, philanthropist, superhero Anthony Edward Stark!" she spat out with mock amazement. "Who wouldn't be surprised that their dad was all that!
"But there's another thing--why didn't I know about you at all these past fifteen years?
"All those times when I needed a dad most. All those soccer practices where I saw the other girls with their dads cheering them on, coaching them, moms being there for every single game because they didn't have to work all the time just so that their families could survive. All those piano recitals where kids had both freaking parents there supporting them, bringing flowers. All those Father's Days where I had to sit there and wonder why I didn't have anyone to celebrate, why I didn't even have a grandpa to spend time with and all my friends had at least somebody and I was alone.
"Wondering where my dad was. All those years.
"Timeskip to the present. Oh look at that, my mom comes wakes up one morning with the biggest headache on the planet and can't even remember her own kid's name for five minutes. Oh, wait, turns out she has brain cancer. And look at that! She has less than a year to live! And she can't even drink water without vomiting! Oh, look at that now, isn't that fun! She's dead! And her grieving daughter doesn't even have a dad to comfort her!"
It was all coming out now--all those year of bottled up emotions, thoughts, memories, and regrets came tumbling out of her, one after another, a waterfall that couldn't be stopped no matter how much one might try to stop it.
And Christa didn't want to stop it.
Stark was looking at her helplessly, his eyes sad, lips slightly parted and curving downward gently, his lines evident on his tired face. And for the first time ever, he looked old.
"So I was alone. When I needed a dad the most, I was alone. Freaking alone!
"And whose fault is that? Whose fault is that?!"
Stark didn't answer. For once, he was speechless.
"Now let's go back in time a little, shall we?" Christa continued. "How about to the day you impregnated my mother? Bet that was fun, wasn't it? Maybe a one-night stand? Back in your playboy days, when you didn't have a care in the world and all you wanted to do was have fun.
"Not take responsibility for anyone or anything but yourself. Just do whatever you wanted and have fun.
"I bet you didn't even care about my mom. She was probably just a plaything, one of your many tools for fun. I bet she told you about me, and you didn't even care. Screw a little baby you helped create, you just wanted to enjoy yourself. Screw sacrifice. You were the great Tony Stark. You could do anything and get away with it without any consequences whatsoever. You just wanted to have fun."
"Christa--" Stark began to interrupt, his expression firming into one of defense now, but the girl cut him off with fury dripping from every syllable, teeth gritted and practically spitting out with wrath.
"She didn't tell you? That's what you were about to say, wasn't it?" Her words were filled with false sympathy. "But you should have checked, you should have made sure, you should have made absolute sure that you didn't have anything you needed to be aware of after it because look at that! You did!
"And guess what else? Because of that, you really f--"
"LISTEN!" Stark bellowed, and Christa could feel her ears ringing after the word.
"I thought she was dead! Okay? Simple as that! I went out to meet her one night, and then the place was attacked! She was about to tell me something, probably about you, and then all hell broke loose! She ran off just after it started, and I lost her! I lost her, okay? I tried looking for her--searched everywhere, even places I wasn't supposed to. And guess what? I couldn't find her. And guess what else? There were bodies after that attack. People died. People went missing. It was assumed that she--that she was one of them.
"It was case-closed after that. I had no idea you existed. I had no idea she was still alive. I have no idea why she didn't contact me after that, didn't tell me she was alive, no idea why she didn't tell me a single thing about you! I would have done something about you! I would have helped out. I sure as hell wouldn't have been a great dad, but I also sure as hell would have tried to be better than my own!"
Heavy breathing. Sweat dripping from of their faces. Silence in the room.
Words reverberating in their heads like a wolf's cry in an echoey room.
"So I guess I have to go with you then, huh?" Christa asked finally, fists clenched, muscles tensed, as though she was preparing to begin a sprint that would determine her life or death.
"Since I'm legally supposed to take you in, I'd hazard a guess at yes," Stark responded with sarcasm. He looked around the room, eyes landing on the staring figures of Rhodey, Laura, and Cooper, on the bodies of Clint and Lila, silent on their beds.
He turned back to Christa, fury in his eyes faded, sadness in them now. "Are they--" He paused and looked down at his feet. "Are they gonna be okay?"
Christa stared at the two, suddenly becoming very, very tired. She sighed.
"At this rate, they're going to be about as okay as my mom."