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“Applejack,” says Rainbow Dash in a voice that mostly sounds like a four-year-old girl who doesn’t know exactly how to make her My Little Pony sound like the actual My Little Pony.
“Rainbow Dash?” asks Applejack in a voice that is a flawless representation of voice actress Ashleigh Ball (if, you know, she had a head cold).
“I think we should get married and have baby ponies.”
“Sure, R— Wait, what?”
Tony blinks, twice, just—in case. Lying on the floor on her beach towel, still wearing her frilly-edged bathing suit that Tony’s pretty sure he should’ve made her change out of once she was mostly-dry, is Dot. Her braids flop when she tilts her head like one of the dogs when Tony opens a tin can in the kitchen. All the other ponies—the ones they’re not playing with—are lined up on the carpet. Tony catches Jarvis batting at one of their tails with a lazy paw.
“Are you still being Applejack?” she asks, finally, after Tony’s still trying to—
“Yeah, I— Well, no, not right now, I just—” And it is one thing, Tony Stark thinks, to read the fanfiction and know what people ship—it’s called “shipping”, you know, wanting two ponies to have ridiculous pony-sex in pony-beds with … he’s not going to finish that thought right now—and it is another to have his four-year-old not-really-niece with the bouncy braids and the big blue Rogers eyes to—
“Uncle Tony.” Dot says it like Bucky says it, no-nonsense and instantly annoyed. Her eyes narrow at him. “Girls can get married.”
“That isn’t my—”
“Girls can get married and have babies,” she provides, “and boys can get married and have babies, and girls can get married to boys and have babies. And,” she continues, after a deep breath that practically lifts her off the floor and towel because there’s not enough space in her little lungs, “they can not have babies. Or they can not get married but live in a house. Or they can get married and then unmarried and—”
“Whoa, whoa, okay, hold up.” Tony holds up his hands, because— Because there is deep, there is meaningful, and then there is deep-and-meaningful with a four-year-old who he is supposed to be, you know, caring for, not … teaching about kinky pony harems in which they don’t get married but live together in naughty pony sin. “I wasn’t questioning that they’re both girls. I’m okay with them both being girls.”
Dot tips her head at him. Tony can hear the invisible Z-formation snapping.
“Really,” he promises, and crosses his heart. Which, you know, when you’re four, is pretty much like swearing on a stack of Bibles. “It’s just that they’re … ponies.”
“So?” Dot demands.
“So nothing,” he replies, waving his hands. “Girl ponies can get married. Totally. And live together under—Equestria’s equality rainbow, or whatever.”
She keeps looking at him. She didn’t get that intensity from her biological father, that’s for sure.
“And have babies?” she checks.
“And have babies,” Tony vows—and also vows, internally, to lock down his internet filters (and clear his fanfiction cache) the instant she learns to read, because that—
Yeah.
That could end very, very badly.