Chapter Text
The workshop was quiet.
Well, as quiet as Tony Stark ever let it be. Holographic schematics hovered in lazy loops above his worktable — blueprints half-built and half forgotten. A wrench sat in his hand, but he wasn’t using it. His gaze had drifted, distant and unfocused locked instead on the picture frame tucked between a stack of prototypes and an empty mug.
The picture was worn from being handled too often. A five-year-old Lex — chocolate on her cheek, hair in crooked pigtails grinning like she’d blown something up and gotten away with it. Her eyes were wide and wicked— just like his.
Tony sighed and set the wrench down.
“JARVIS” he said quietly.
“Yes sir?”
“Remind me to delete the backup footage from the 2004 kitchen fire. Again”
“Already handled, sir. For the eight time.”
Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “Good. Don’t need the press catching wind that my kids first science fair project tried to ignite the fridge”
“It was technically a success sir. She achieved controlled combustion. The fridge was merely collateral.”
He huffed a laugh. The fridge, and half the pantry. And maybe Rhodey’s eyebrows depending on who you asked.
Tony leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling like it held the answers. There were too many nights like this — too many long silences filled with things he wasn’t ready to say. To her. To anyone.
She was fifteen now. Smarter than him, maybe. Definitely smarter than she had any right to be. MIT was practically salivating to get her on campus. She hadn’t even told him yet — he could tell she was trying to find the perfect moment. Probably wanted to announce it with a bang.
Everything Lex did was loud, brilliant, and just a bit reckless.
His daughter.
He picked up the photo.
1992 – Infant
He held her like she might detonate. The nurse had handed her over with a smile like this was the most normal thing in the world.
It wasn’t.
His hands had been steady building robots, defusing unstable tech in foreign countries, flying jets with one hand while calculating trajectories in his head. But now, they trembled under seven pounds of squishy, pink, utterly fragile chaos wrapped in a hospital-issue blanket.
“Why is it so squishy?” Tony blurted.
Rhodey, leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed and the world’s most annoying smirk, didn’t miss a beat. “It’s a baby, Tony. That’s how they work.”
Lex screamed. Loud.
Tony flinched. “Oh god. Is that normal?”
“She’s got lungs. That’s a good sign.”
“Feels like she’s trying to rupture mine.”
Rhodey just chuckled and walked over, adjusting the blanket that had already started to slip. “Support her head. She can’t do that herself yet.”
Tony tried. She flailed. One tiny fist thudded against his chest. Her face scrunched up like a furious tomato.
“What does she want?” he asked, half-pleading.
Rhodey shrugged. “To ruin your life, probably. She’s a Stark.”
Tony shot him a look, but he was too focused on not dropping the child in his arms to deliver a comeback. The nurse said something soothing in the background and then left them alone — as if the world hadn’t just tilted permanently on its axis.
She cried for almost an hour. Loud, relentless, full-body wails that echoed in the small room and rattled around inside his chest. Tony had no idea what to do. He tried holding her differently. He tried humming. He tried not crying himself.
And then, without warning, she stopped.
Just like that.
Her tiny body slumped against his chest; her fist curled into the collar of his shirt. Her breath went warm and soft. And slowly, slowly… she drooled on him.
Tony stared down at her.
Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. One of her feet gave a twitch, like she was running in a dream.
His shirt was soaked. He didn’t care.
He didn’t move. Not for three hours.
Rhodey eventually sat down beside him. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.
Tony’s arms ached, but he didn’t shift. He watched her breathe. Counted each little exhale like it was a code he needed to memorize.
No arc reactor. No tech. No billion-dollar schematics. Just this tiny person, sleeping against him like she belonged there.
Like maybe he could be enough.
1996 – Age 4
She told him she loved him “more than three thousand.”
He’d looked at her like she was speaking in alien code, caught mid-bite of his own ice cream cone, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, and a faint smear of chocolate on the corner of his mouth.
“That’s weirdly… specific,” he said slowly.
Lex just grinned wider, her tiny legs swinging off the park bench, ice cream dribbling down her wrist. The cone in her hand was already soggy, a slow-motion disaster of sprinkles and sugar. Her face was a mess of strawberry smudges and sheer joy.
“Three thousand is a pretty big number,” she declared confidently.
Tony tilted his head, studying her like she’d just explained quantum mechanics instead of feelings. “Bigger than a hundred?”
She nodded.
“Bigger than a thousand?”
She nodded harder. “Way bigger.”
He let out a soft huff of a laugh. “Okay, alright. I believe you. You love me more than three thousand.”
Lex beamed like she’d just won a Nobel Prize. Then promptly dropped the top half of her ice cream. It hit the pavement with a soft splut.
She stared at it in horror.
Tony didn’t even blink. He stood up, handed her his untouched cone with a dramatic sigh, and said, “Fine. But now you only love me like… seventeen.”
She gasped. “No! Still three thousand.”
He crouched beside her, nudging the sticky cone into her hand. “Even after I gave you the last of my triple fudge deluxe?”
She nodded solemnly. “Three thousand and one.”
Tony stared at her. Something in his chest twitched. He didn’t have a name for it yet — not really. This whole parenting thing had been an accident turned obligation turned… something else.
He sat back down beside her on the bench. Watched her go at the new cone like a wild animal.
“Three thousand and one, huh?” he said, more to himself than her.
She gave a messy thumbs-up, cheeks puffed full of ice cream.
He didn’t say it back. Not yet. He wasn’t wired that way. But he watched her, memorized the weight of her head leaning against his arm, the way her sneakers didn’t quite touch the ground, the quiet trust that she always—always—gave him first.
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he filed that number away.
Like maybe one day, he’d understand exactly how big it really was.
2001 – Age 9
She shorted out the lab’s main power grid. Sparks flew. Alarms blared. Smoke puffed out from under the worktable like something from a cartoon.
Lex stood frozen, hands still hovering over the open panel of wiring she’d been “just looking at.” Her eyes were wide behind oversized safety goggles, and her mouth twisted like she was fighting not to cry.
The overhead lights snapped off. Emergency red strobes blinked to life. Somewhere behind the glass, Dum-E let out a confused beep and dropped the wrench he was holding.
Tony didn’t even flinch.
He casually grabbed the fire blanket off the wall hook, flung it over the small electrical fire like he was throwing a tablecloth at a bad picnic, and strolled through the haze like this happened twice a week. Which, frankly, it did.
Then, he held out his hand to her. “High five.”
Lex blinked. “What?”
“C’mon. You earned it.”
Tentatively, she slapped her palm against his.
“Congratulations,” Tony said with a grin. “You’ve officially had your first Stark-level disaster.”
Behind them, Pepper appeared in the doorway, phone in one hand, a file in the other. Her heels clicked to a halt at the threshold. She took in the blackened corner of the lab, the dark screens, the smoke, the faint zzzzt of the shorted circuits—and Lex, standing like she was waiting to be grounded for life.
“Tell me she didn’t just—”
“She did,” Tony cut in, clapping Lex gently on the back like she was a fellow war veteran. “She bypassed the dummy circuit and hit the main line. Fried the whole board. Total carnage.”
Lex’s lip wobbled. “I just wanted to see how the bypass worked…”
Pepper’s jaw clenched. “She’s nine, Tony.”
“And already more curious than half the engineers in R&D.” He crouched down beside Lex and nudged her shoulder. “You scared?”
She nodded, eyes big. “It sparked.”
“Yeah. That’s how you know it’s working.” He gave her a wink. “Now you know what not to do. And that’s called science.”
Pepper sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Tony, we have safety protocols for a reason. She could’ve—”
“She didn’t.”
“She could’ve hurt herself.”
“She didn’t,” he repeated gently, this time glancing back at Pepper. “And next time, she’ll ask before touching live wires.”
Lex nodded furiously. “I will. I promise.”
Pepper looked at her for a long moment—this tiny, soot-smeared girl with flyaway hair and oversized boots, who already had grease on her cheek and sparks in her veins—and sighed.
“Okay,” she said, softer now. “But maybe stick to simulations for a while, yeah?”
Lex looked down. “Yeah.”
Tony stood and ruffled her hair. “Look at it this way. Most people’s first disaster involves fire alarms and a microwave burrito. Yours came with power outages and a light show. You’re ahead of the curve.”
From the corner, Dum-E let out a confused brrrt, lifting the dropped wrench as if offering a truce.
Lex smiled, just a little.
2003 – Age 11
They fought. She wanted to go to a coding summer camp in Europe. He said no.
“Why?”
“Because the worlds insane and you’re still a kid!”
“I’m not like mom, you know.”
He went quiet. So did she. He never brought her mother up after that.
Lex stood in the center of the living room, arms crossed, defiant even as her voice cracked with emotion. Tony’s back was turned to her now, his fingers flexing around the edge of the kitchen counter like he was trying not to break it. The silence felt like punishment. No yelling. No lecturing. Just... silence.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, quieter this time. “I just meant—I’m not soft. I can handle it.”
Still nothing. He reached for a glass of scotch he hadn’t poured yet, thought better of it, and settled for running a hand through his already-messy hair.
“You think that’s what this is about?” he finally said. His voice was low. Measured. “You think I’m trying to keep you from going because you’re soft?”
“I think you don’t trust me.”
He turned then, sharply, eyes flaring like he’d just been slapped.
“You’re eleven, Lex.”
“And I’m coding at a sophomore college level. MIT said that themselves.”
“That doesn’t mean the world is going to treat you like a genius. They’ll just see a little girl and figure out how to use her. People aren’t... good.” He sighed, deflating. “Especially not the kind that fund international tech camps.”
Lex blinked. “Is that what this is about? You think someone’s going to steal me?”
“Don’t be dramatic.” He avoided her gaze.
Her jaw set. “You said the world was insane. Maybe you're projecting.”
Another pause. Something dark passed over his face. Not anger—fear, maybe. Or guilt.
“You don’t get it yet,” he said finally, his voice barely audible. “But you will.”
“I don’t want to get it,” she snapped. “I just want to learn stuff. I want to build things.”
“Then stay here. Build them here. I’ll get you anything you want—robots, labs, software. Hell, you want to turn the east wing into your own personal mad scientist lair? Done.”
She shook her head. “It’s not about the stuff, Dad. It’s about being somewhere else. Being someone else. Just for a while.”
That made him flinch, like she’d landed a punch right beneath the arc reactor he didn’t wear yet.
He crossed the room in two steps, knelt to her level, hands on her shoulders. “You don’t need to be anyone else, Lex. You’re the only good thing I’ve ever made without screwing it up.”
Her eyes stung. She hated that. Hated when he got like this—raw and real and talking like something was going to take her from him.
But still.
“You’re screwing it up right now,” she whispered.
Tony’s eyes closed. His hands dropped from her shoulders.
“Camp’s in July?”
She blinked. “Yeah.”
“I’ll send Happy with you.”
“You’ll let me go?”
“I’ll regret it,” he muttered, standing up. “But yeah. I’ll let you go.”
She didn’t smile—not yet—but her voice was lighter as she headed toward the stairs.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He watched her go, then poured the scotch after all.
2005 - Age 13
She asked him to write her a recommendation letter for MIT.
He grumbled the whole time. “If they try to name a building after you before me, I’m suing.”
Lex grinned, perched on the arm of the couch in his workshop like she owned the place. She’d been hovering for twenty minutes, pretending not to hover.
“I think we both know if anyone’s getting a building first, it’s me,” she said, flipping a pen between her fingers.
Tony didn’t look up. “I have a building.”
“You paid for that one.”
“Semantics.” He kept typing. “Besides, you’re thirteen. There are laws about this. Or at least unspoken societal contracts. You’re supposed to be sneaking out to concerts and making bad haircut choices.”
“I’ll schedule both after finals.”
Tony stopped typing for a second and just stared at the screen, like it might answer a question he wasn’t ready to ask.
When he finally printed the letter, he signed it with a flourish—then paused, pen hovering, and scribbled a line beneath his signature.
“If you don’t take her, you’re idiots – Tony Stark.”
He handed it to her with a sigh that tried to sound annoyed but didn’t quite stick the landing. “There. Happy now, Doogie Howser?”
Lex took it carefully, almost reverently. “You know this might actually help, right? Like... for real?”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Of course it will. I’m me. But also—” he leaned back in his chair, spinning half a turn “—you didn’t need it. They’ll take one look at your file and realize you’re the only applicant in the pool who could’ve reverse-engineered my biometric lock for the lab fridge.”
Lex smirked. “In my defense, you said the ice cream was for both of us.”
“It was,” he said. “The other one. You cracked into the pint with the bourbon.”
“It was a science experiment.”
“You’re thirteen!”
“You leave the good stuff right there. That’s entrapment.”
Tony laughed despite himself, rubbing his face. “God, you’re gonna give them heart attacks. I should warn them.”
“Maybe you should warn yourself. Once I’m gone, you’ll have to learn how to order takeout by yourself.”
He made a face. “Rude. I can order takeout. I’ll just starve while forgetting to.”
Lex tilted her head. “You’ll miss me.”
Tony didn’t answer right away. Just looked at her — not like she reminded him of anyone else, but like he still wasn’t totally sure how someone like her came from him. There was no trace of her mother’s features in Lex’s sharp face, no soft nostalgia to cling to. She was all original, all grit and spark and relentless intellect.
“You think I won’t?” he said eventually, softer.
Lex’s smirk faded a little. “I think sometimes you don’t know what to do with me.”
He reached over, tugged gently on a loose strand of her ponytail. “That’s fair. You’re basically a firecracker with a laptop. But you’re my firecracker.”
She looked down at the letter again.
“Thanks,” she said.
He raised a brow. “Don’t make it weird.”
She gave him a dry look. “You signed it like a drunk Yelp review. It’s already weird.”
Tony grinned. “That’s the Stark brand, baby.”
Present
Now she was fifteen. Practically grown. Too sharp for her own good. And here he was, sitting in a garage full of built projects and haunted echoes. Unsure how he’d raised her this far without breaking everything.
“She’s going to leave soon,” he muttered. “And I haven’t even figured out how to tell her I’m proud.”
“I believe she already knows, sir,” JARVIS replied gently.
Tony blinked. The voice cut through the quiet like a whisper through water.
“Yeah.” He ran a thumb over the edge of the photo. “Maybe. But I should probably say it anyway.”
He stood slowly, joints creaking more from tension than age. For a second, he just stood there — surrounded by the guts of machines, the silence of memory, and the echo of a child’s laugh that still lived somewhere in the walls.
Then he tucked the photo back onto the table — not filed away, not hidden, just… waiting.
He turned toward the prototype on the other bench. A sleek, untested weapons interface. Something Stark Industries could sell for billions. Something he wasn’t sure he wanted to finish anymore.
Tomorrow he’d be flying to Afghanistan for a weapons demo. Just another Stark pitch to keep the military happy.
He didn’t know it would be the last normal night they’d have for a very long time.