Chapter Text
Three days after Tony was photographed leaving a child-services office, there was another Avengers Assemble. It was during a shareholder meeting, and Pepper remembered Tony’s delighted face when Friday announced it. She remembered it because, ten hours later, when Tony climbed off the quinjet, there wasn’t a trace of that delight left.
In terms of damage, the mission had been a complete success and not an especially big one. For Tony and Rhodey however, it had almost been the end. Some scientist had managed to make a repeating EMP strong enough to take out an Iron Man suit, and they’d been hundreds of metres up when it activated. Vision had survived the EMP and caught both Tony and Rhodey, but both men were still pale, even two hours later. Pepper later got out of Sam that it had been a close thing.
Penny was already in bed and asleep when Tony got back, and they both agreed not to wake her. They’d tell her what happened in the morning, because she’d find out eventually and it was better she heard it from them, but she didn’t need to see the immediate aftermath. By morning Tony was almost entirely back to his normal self, and he and Penny dealt with it about as expected, which is to say they both vanished into the lab to work out how to stop it happening again.
What Pepper didn’t expect was Natasha coming up to their floor as soon as they left, a troubled frown on her face. She didn’t dance around it.
“What happens to Penny if you and Tony are incapacitated?”
Pepper paused, putting down her tea “She’s not legally ours, if something happens to us, we don’t get a say in where Penny is sent.”
“She’ll be yours in a month or two.” Natasha said, with a level of confidence that suggested she’d start on less-than-legal interventions if it took longer than that. “What then?”
Pepper didn’t pretend they hadn’t discussed it. As morbid as it was, both she and Tony knew that Tony’s job was dangerous and Pepper was a target for several reasons, so they had discussed it. “Once she’s legally ours we’ll be updating our will. If we’re both incapacitated, Rhodey gets her.”
“And if something happens to Rhodey?”
Pepper grimaced “She goes back into the system and probably tries to get emancipated. She’ll inherit our controlling interest in Stark Industries, and we’re going to make sure she has a trust fund she’ll get instant access to, so she’ll have enough to feed her metabolism for at least a few decades. It’s not ideal, but no situation in which we’re dead is going to be great for Penny.”
Natasha grimaced in agreement, “I know, I just wanted to be sure there was some back up plan.”
Pepper smiled more genuinely “You know me, I always have a back up plan.”
Natasha nodded, “Good.” and Pepper thought that was going to be the end of it as Natasha turned to leave as abruptly as she’d arrived, but just as she was almost out of sight she stopped and whirled around again.
“Nat?” Pepper probed, putting her tea down again as she took in the Avenger’s taunt body language.
“I want to be on that list. After Rhodey.” the red-head blurted out in a rush.
Pepper only just managed to keep her reaction down to an eyebrow raise “Are you sure? If we put it into our will that’s going to be pretty permanent.”
Natasha nodded, much of the tension fading from her posture “I’m not a parent, but I can’t be worse than the system for Penny.”
Pepper scanned Natasha’s face and then nodded “Alright, I’ll talk to Tony about it, and when Penny’s legally ours we’ll make you Godmother and include you when we update our wills. And Nat?”
“Hmm?”
“You’d be much better than ‘can’t be worse’.”
Natasha blinked at her for a moment, and then her lips twitched into a genuine smile “Thanks.”
---------------
The first time Penny called her Mom, Pepper thought she’d misheard for several seconds. She thought it was just wishful thinking until she looked up from the stack of paperwork (all signed by Tony, which was an impressive achievement even for Penny, but slightly damp for some reason she probably didn’t want to know) and saw how tense her daughter’s body language was. It wasn’t wishful thinking. She hadn’t misheard.
Penny was looking anywhere but at her, and her body language was speaking volumes. Pepper picked her words carefully, “So, how’d you get your Dad to sign so much paperwork?”
A slight intake of breath and a significant easing of the tension in Penny’s shoulders showed she’d received the message, but Penny’s voice was casual when she answered “Oh, I called him Dad in front of a bunch of my classmates by accident and then on purpose, and then left Wanda to deal with said classmates and gave him a pen and a stack of paper while he was too dazed to remember he hates paperwork.”
Pepper blinked at that, and then threw her head back and burst out laughing, and after a moment Penny joined her. “Tell me you have a photo of his face?”
“Friday took one.” Penny confirmed, lips twitching “I asked her for it along with the footage of Wanda and I trapping Natasha under the floor in the gym.”
Pepper opened her mouth, then hesitated “You know what, I don’t want to know. I want nothing to do with this.”
Penny laughed, slightly nervously “It’s ok, I’m fairly sure Nat’s not really mad.”
“Fairly. Well that’s all right then. I’m definitely not going to get caught in the cross-fire.” Pepper said with dry amusement.
Penny winced “Nat won’t let you get caught in the cross-fire. She’s too good to catch anyone in a prank she didn’t intend for them.” There was a sheepish note to her voice.
Pepper let her lips twitch “Any preferences on what we order for dinner? Since it might be your last meal before you meet a sticky Nat related end?”
“Pizza?” Penny suggested hopefully.
“Sounds good.” Pepper agreed.
“Thanks Mom.” Penny said, waving happily and heading for the door. Pepper tried to say something back but couldn’t get words around the lump in her throat. Hearing that word, properly hearing it, for the first time felt like flying and warm hugs and the buzz after a good workout all at once.
Luckily she’d regained the power of speech by forty minutes later when her daughter came running back into her office complaining “Mom! Steve’s stolen all my clothes!”
-------------------
Three weeks after ladies night, and a week after Penny’s birthday, one of Pepper’s assistants came in with an official looking envelope for her. This in itself was nothing unusual, even for a Saturday, Pepper was CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world so overly fancy and official mail was a daily occurrence, but this one wasn’t addressed to Stark Industries, it was addressed to their apartment upstairs and was, therefore, personal.
It was Penny’s adoption certificate.
Pepper spent a good two minutes staring at the sheet of paper before her brain finally absorbed what was sitting on the desk in front of her. Why nobody had emailed or called Pepper didn’t know, but they’d been on tenterhooks about it for so long she’d started to feel like this was their permanent state of affairs. That they’d be stuck forever in the bureaucratic jungle gym that was adopting a kid into a home with ‘concerns raised’. But here it was. A certificate and a single form Pepper and Tony needed to sign, and Penny was theirs. Properly, officially, legally theirs. Theirs and couldn’t be taken away. Theirs and nobody could tear them apart. Theirs.
Pepper stayed calm. She called her assistant back in and told her to clear her schedule for the rest of the day. She signed the form, put both form and certificate back in the envelope, got in the elevator and went to Tony’s lab. Tony’s sleep schedule was currently lining up relatively closely with Pepper’s, so she had to drag him away from his inventing rather than out of bed. Usually, this would require significant effort, but this time Pepper just said “I’ve got Penny’s adoption certificate.” and no less than three tools clattered to the ground.
Tony also stayed calm. He calmly extracted himself from some machine (Pepper wasn’t even going to ask), he calmly washed the oil off his hands and dried them, he calmly located a pen, he calmly signed the form, and then he calmly sat down and promptly burst into tears of relief. Pepper was only seconds behind him.
When they’d finished crying and laughing at themselves, Tony dove into a cupboard in the corner of the lab and produced an A4 sized photo frame, covered in a thick layer of dust. Pepper eyed it with some amusement. “When did you get that?”
Tony gave a slightly sheepish look “About two days after she moved in.” he gave it a bit of a shake, dislodging some of the dust into a cloud in the air. “Adoption took a little longer than I hoped.”
Pepper laughed, slightly giddy with relief and joy “You can say that again.”
Tony grabbed a cloth, double checked it wasn’t covered in oil, and cleaned the photo frame, and then they carefully fitted the certificate into it, and unashamedly stood drinking it in for a few minutes.
“So she’s really definitely ours now, right?” Tony checked.
“Yes.” Pepper confirmed.
“No-one can take her away?”
“No-one.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Good.” Tony said, with a heartfelt depth Pepper couldn’t agree with more. “Friday? Where’s Penny?”
“She is currently in her bedroom, she said she was going to get some work done.”
“Work can wait.” Tony said “Lets go tell her the good news.”
--------------------------------------
Penny stared nervously at the email she’d just written, or rather, at the file she’d attached to it. Logically, she knew it was only a first draft, and Dr Cho would doubtlessly send it back for significant revisions, but emailing it still felt significant. Her first academic paper. Which, given how well human trials on her web-bandages were going, was almost certainly going to be published. Which wasn’t daunting at all. Never mind that she was at least five years younger than most scientists were when they wrote their first journal article, and less than half the age of most of her potential readers. Never mind that half the academic world might be watching the kid Tony Stark took an interest in.
Unfortunately, thinking about these things over and over didn’t change any of them, so Penny should probably stop stressing out and just email Dr Cho her first draft. She hit the send button quickly before she could talk herself out of it, and then quickly moved on to other work and tried to put it out of her mind in favour of looking through Darcy’s third weekly report.
Penny suspected that, when Tony hired Darcy Lewis, he hadn’t realised just how good a scientist wrangler he’d managed to hire, but he’d hit the jackpot. Darcy was a force of nature. As well as the Potts rule, the R&D floors now had the Lewis system of incentivised good habits. She’d introduced a reward system where labs could earn stars for keeping to sociable working hours, eating regularly, and using their safety equipment properly. Stars could be spent on applications for equipment, time-slots for specialist labs, streamlined paperwork, and applications for what Darcy had termed ‘Penny time.’
She’d basically introduced sticker charts. Fancy, incentivised sticker charts, but still sticker charts. And it was working. Darcy’s weekly report showed that less than 3% of labs had broken the Potts rule in the last two weeks, 82% had a perfect record on eating three meals a day, 71% of labs were empty between 9pm and 8am, and overall productivity had risen 43%. Lab accidents and injuries were at an all time low, all paperwork that didn’t need Dr Stark’s signature went straight from the labs to the correct departments, and the remaining paperwork was neatly ordered by urgency for Penny to take to her dad. Project proposals went through three layers of checks and refining before they reached Penny, meaning there were far fewer she needed to weed out before giving them to her dad. Her mom rarely ever had to send her down to R&D to track down paperwork. And when she went to the R&D floors, she no longer got mobbed. Instead, Penny got to spend the time she would have spent hunting down paperwork (and convincing sleep deprived scientists to go home before they blew something up) working with labs that had sent in a request for her or her dad to have a look at a project. And when she went to have that look at the project she already knew roughly what it was about because Darcy had each lab writing weekly reports on their project and progress for Penny to look over.
In other words, Darcy Lewis had, in the space of three weeks, become absolutely essential to the smooth running of Stark Industries biggest research labs. On top of getting her research funded and a generous living stipend, Darcy now had her own, rent-free, apartment in Avengers Tower, and Penny knew her mom was making sure Darcy had a generous benefits package. Darcy deserved it. An hour of reading Saturday morning and Penny knew how each lab was progressing on the six big R&D floors, which were nearing completion, which were waiting on permits or legal, which were getting stuck and might need another pair of eyes, and which head-scientists could best provide those eyes based on their specialities and current workload. An hour after sending her first draft to Dr Cho she had a pretty good idea what was happening in the entire R&D department and had scheduled in the requested ‘Penny time’, mostly during the week but a couple Saturday morning, since those teams were currently in the building and Penny didn’t have anything else on today.
Or at least, she didn’t until her dad hammered on her door and she opened it to find her dad holding a rectangular wrapped package and practically bouncing with excitement, and her mom standing next to him with only marginally more restrained excitement.
“Late birthday present?” Penny asked, trying not to laugh at her dad’s impression of a five year old in a candy shop.
“Not exactly.” her mom said, trying and failing to hold back her grin. “Open it.”
Penny shrugged and retreated back into her room to sit on the bed, and pulled the cello-tape off carefully. Her dad whined with impatience, and even her mom looked like she was about to say something. Lips twitching, Penny put both of them (and her own curiosity) out of their misery and tore the paper off quickly. And then froze, her breath catching in her throat as she registered the certificate in the photo frame, and the name on it.
Penelope Parker-Stark
Parker-Stark
Slowly, her eyes travelled up to the words printed at the top of the page Certificate of Adoption.
“Penny? You ok bambina?”
Penny somehow managed to drag her eyes up from the certificate and unfreeze, looking up at her parents (properly, officially her parents!!!), registering the relief and joy and nervousness in their eyes, and flung herself at them. Luckily, both were used to her tackle hugs by this point, and her dad caught her without even much of an oooph, and her mom quickly joined the hug. The photo frame sat face up on the bed, a reassurance they only needed to glance over at to have.
They’d done it. She was adopted. She was a Stark and nobody could take her away from her parents. They were finally family in the eyes of the law. Not that they needed the law to tell them they were family, of course they didn’t need that, but now nobody could say they weren’t. Nobody could try to take her away.
Events after that were a bit of a whirlwind. They ran up to the Avengers living room to tell everyone else, and Friday told everyone to come to the living room and they passed the certificate round, laughing and talking over each other, and Penny got a whole collection of hugs and congratulations, and generally training and lie-ins were abandoned in favour of an impromptu party. They all went back to the Stark’s apartment to hang the certificate on the wall in a mock ceremony, and then piled into the Avengers kitchen for celebratory ice-cream, and shared both touching and silly stories about found-families, and reminisced (with a fair amount of teasing) about Penny’s life in the tower so far. Penny cried at more than one point, but her parents did too so that was alright.
Lunchtime came and went with pizza and more ice-cream, because it was that sort of a day, and then they were well into another board games marathon when Friday reminded Penny that she’d scheduled ‘Penny time’ with an R&D lab and they were expecting her in five minutes. Penny, who’d completely forgotten about this, looked a bit mournfully at her game, but got up. Her dad pouted at her exaggeratedly.
“I’m sorry, I did say I’d talk to them. I’ll be back in half an hour though.”
Her dad pretended to sulk, but Penny could tell he was only teasing, so she waved and headed for the stairs. Behind her she heard Sam pipe up. “She still hasn’t realised you two are setting her up to inherit Stark Industries, has she?”
What???
Penny walked right into the door she was about to open, bounced off it and knocked into a coffee table, sending a lamp and plant pot crashing to the ground.
“Now she has.” Natasha said dryly.