@shardsofstark liked for a starter from Tony -> Nadia.
Location: Stark Tower – Workshop Level, late evening
The holograms were still flickering when he heard her footsteps. Tony didn’t need to look, the biometric sensors had already told him it was her.
The one who’d spent most of her life as a ghost between the headlines: quieter, smarter in her own right, and somehow still a mystery even to him.
“Didn’t think I’d see you down here,” Tony said, voice breaking the still hum of machinery and half-assembled suits. His reflection glimmered in the glass wall behind the main console, shoulders slouched in a way that betrayed fatigue, or maybe just the usual brand of self-inflicted insomnia. “The family reunion notice must’ve gotten lost in the mail.”
He turned, the faint smirk tugging at his mouth doing a poor job of hiding the weariness in his eyes. “Careful where you step. I’d hate for you to trip over my emotional baggage. I was trying to keep it neatly stacked, but, well…” he gestured vaguely to the wreck of tech strewn about “somebody had to go and stir up nostalgia.”
Tony swirled the scotch in his glass before setting it down. “So. To what do I owe the pleasure? Guilt trip? Intervention? Or are you here to tell me that I’ve finally outdone myself in the ‘Stark messes up spectacularly’ department?”
He meant it as a joke… but it landed somewhere closer to confession.
For all the armor, all the bravado, there was a flicker in his expression when he looked at her.
The kind that said: you’re one of the few people left who gets it.
“I know,” he said after a beat, quieter now. “You’ve got every right to hate me. To hate him. The name. The legacy. Hell, sometimes I hate it too.” He exhaled, rubbing a hand across his jaw. “Howard did a hell of a job teaching us how to build things. Not so much how to… be people.”
He tried to smile, but it came out crooked. “You were the smart one, you know. You stayed out of the spotlight. Built your own thing, didn’t need the press breathing down your neck every time you sneezed. Meanwhile, I was out here trying to turn ‘daddy issues’ into a billion-dollar brand.”
There was a beat of silence- then that spark of Stark mischief flickered back to life. “So. What’s the verdict, Nadia? Am I still the world’s biggest disappointment, or have I finally crawled my way up to ‘functional train wreck’?”
He leaned against the console, eyes flicking toward her with a rare kind of curiosity.
Not judgment, not pity.
Just the awkward, genuine interest of a man realizing he might actually want to know his sister.
“Don’t worry,” he added, tone lighter but edged with something real. “I’m not gonna do the whole ‘we’re family, we should talk about our feelings’ thing. You’ve probably got enough of that from therapy or… well, whoever you vent to when I inevitably screw something up.”
Then, a little quieter: “I just… figured maybe it’s time we stopped pretending we’re strangers who happen to share DNA and a knack for self-destruction.”
He reached for another glass and poured her one; not an invitation so much as an unspoken truce. “Here’s to the Starks,” he said, raising his glass with a wry grin. “The universe’s favorite cautionary tale.” Then, softer- just for her: “And maybe, if we play our cards right, the first generation that actually learns from it.”