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When she took the job as Tony Stark's personal assistant, Pepper Potts expected the drunken debacles, she expected the naked hijinks, she expected the frustrating eccentricity, and she even expected the explosions and fires and general irritation that came with working directly for Tony.
Expectation is not the same as acceptance, however.
During her first year as his assistant, she spent part of every day composing her resignation letter in her head. In the beginning, she was very serious and the letters contained words like 'unprofessional', 'harassment', 'improper', 'unethical', 'OSHA', 'lawsuit'. But, as weeks turned to months the letters became less serious and more of a way to vent the day's irritations. The new letters contained words like 'jerk', 'lech', 'floozies', 'drunk', 'jackassery', 'combat pay', 'I set your desk on fire and stole your Bentley'.
Most people expected her to last not much longer than any other PA, most people expected her to be too sensible to put up with Tony Stark. But, despite the sundry annoyances, Pepper liked her job. No, Pepper loved her job. She did not love certain aspects of it, but, she relished the challenge. She loved taming or, at least, containing the chaos surrounding Tony Stark. The truth, as she saw it, was that anything else would probably kill her with boredom. She was a chaos-junkie. She loved the high that came with creating order out of madness. She loved the unexpected. No one day was ever going to be the same as the day before, and she found that to be profoundly satisfying.
Braced as she was for the unexpected, that did not mean she was at all prepared to walk into Tony's house on a gloomy summer morning to find her boss asleep on the couch, and his twelve-year old daughter kneeling next to him, gently, carefully, and with a Stark-like intensity, placing tin robot toys on and around his body.
Honestly, Pepper hadn't expected the daughter, either. That was so far outside of anything she might have expected, she still had trouble with it. It was taking some doing to get the idea of Tony Stark Lunatic Genius and Tony Stark Decent Father to agree in her head. And the fact that seemingly sane, rational people would allow their young child to spend time alone, unsupervised, with Tony just blew her mind. Pepper didn't even like leaving Tony alone and unsupervised by himself. Adding a child to the mix seemed too much like courting disaster. Or, at the very least, expensive therapy bills at some point in the future.
And yet, Darcy seemed like a perfectly nice, polite, normal girl, who maybe enjoyed motorcycles more than unicorns, but there was nothing at all wrong with that. A flouncy skirt, and sparkly Keds, and a grease stain on her cheek; well, that was just an adorable picture, really.
But, other than the over-grown child she worked for, Pepper hadn't spent an awful lot of time around children, so she wasn't always exactly sure how to talk to Darcy. Darcy didn't seem to mind; she was a very self-contained individual, perfectly content to play in her room, or read a book, or sit at her bench in his workshop with a small box of tools and a machine of some sort, or, in so many ways, simply be entirely the opposite of her attention-starved father.
That threw Pepper quite a bit, and she was trying very hard not to treat Darcy like a mini-Tony in need of constant watching, or to overreact the other way and ignore the girl too much. It was not a balancing act Pepper expected or felt the least bit prepared for -- boardroom politics, yes; boss's secret child, no.
Pepper came to a stop a few feet away from the couch and watched Darcy continue to place the robots for another minute before the curiosity forced her to ask, "What are you doing?"
Darcy looked up and grinned and looked so much like her father in that moment that Pepper almost felt dizzy from the surreality of it.
"Entertaining myself," she said.
Pepper nodded slowly and smiled back a little. "Of course you are."
"He was up all night," Darcy explained, waving a hand at her father. "Did you need something? Because we're waiting for some code to compile and then the thingy is fabricating the firing pins."
Pepper blinked and shook her head. "He has you helping him?"
Darcy nodded and placed a small red robot on Tony's right arm. The robot's arms were raised threateningly at the big green robot that was balanced on Tony's chest. "He says I listen better than the bots. Also, my hands are still small and that's good for some of the delicate circuitry work."
"I see," Pepper said. And she did see. The ideas shifted in her head, and it was clear it wasn't so much about Tony being a father, as it was about Darcy being his daughter. And as she watched Darcy continue to place robots with almost unnerving precision, the idea that she really was Tony's daughter settled and solidified in Pepper's mind. Yes, this she could finally, actually see.
A blue robot was laid at the feet of the green one, and the three yellow ones near Tony's shoulders looked upon the scene in horror. Above them, on the back of the couch, a large silver robot watched the proceedings with a grim face, and red, unforgiving eyes.
With the placement of a final red robot on Tony's stomach, its own form prone as it reached up a beseeching arm to the green robot, Darcy sat back on her heels and surveyed her work. Seeming satisfied, she reached for a camera on the coffee table and took a picture. She looked down at the screen with her lips pursed in a thoughtful frown, then moved a little to take a picture from a lower, no doubt more dramatic, angle. A couple more pictures followed, then Darcy set the camera down and began to carefully remove the robots, placing them into the backpack by the table. Tony didn't so much as twitch.
When she'd put everything away, Darcy stood up and shouldered her backpack and smiled at Pepper. The whole process was done with such oddly confident efficiency, that Pepper couldn't help but laugh. Starks, even the nice and polite ones, were simply not normal. Which Pepper was really, honestly okay with.
"I take it you've entertained yourself like this before," Pepper said.
"Well, mom always says everybody needs a hobby. She also says this will be my retirement fund." Darcy frowned at that, like she wasn't entirely sure what that meant. "Since the Cap'n Crunch incident, I try to use things that won't make so much of a mess if he wakes up."
Pepper bit her lip, trying to hold back the laughter. "Do you have pictures of that?" Dear God, please let there be pictures.
Darcy shook her head. "No, I hadn't got that far. It was a really neat design, too. I used hex nuts and washers the next time, only I probably should have made sure they were clean first."
Pepper felt her chin start to quiver and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Live and learn," she offered weakly.
"Yeah, I guess so."
Darcy looked so disheartened by the nut situation that Pepper decided she really needed to leave the room before she hurt Darcy's feelings by laughing again. "Well, I'm sure Tony understood. I have some work to do this morning, so I'll be in my office if you need anything."
Pepper escaped to her office where she shut the door and took deep, even breaths until she felt composed again. Then she wondered what it would take to get Darcy to show her these photos. Then wondered how ethical it was to try and bribe her boss's twelve-year old daughter. Then the phone rang and her email pinged and the business of daily life intruded on her thoughts.
It was a couple more hours before she could break away and wonder if she should wake Tony or if she should see if Darcy wanted lunch. Before she could decide a loud boom echoed through the house, followed by high-pitched manic laughter and the sound of rubber-soled shoes squeaking across polished marble.
Pepper opened the door and watched Darcy, arms covered in what looked like green powdered-paint shoot by. Tony followed seconds later, one side of his body covered in the olive drab dust. Judging by the squealing, he caught up with his daughter somewhere near the kitchen.
Darcy's tidy impulse seemed to only extend to her art projects. Pepper sighed.
"No! No, Tony! Not the pool. Pepper! Pepper, save me! Save me!"
Oh, ethics be damned, Pepper might love the unexpected, but it could love her back every once in a while -- she had two Starks to deal with now, and she deserved to experience those pictures. Yes, she did.
She shook her head at the splash, and the much larger one that followed, and walked slowly outside to see the pair turning the pristine sapphire of the pool into a murky swamp. Darcy was on Tony's back, trying to push him under, but he had a hold of one of her legs and almost had her tipped off.
"Who wants ice cream for lunch?" She called, getting the attention of the wrestling duo the most direct way she knew how. It worked. They looked like drowned rats as they smiled up at her with matching green-streaked grins.
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Who's cleaning up whatever happened in the living room?"
"Her."
"Him."
Pepper smiled, the same flat, cool smile she used on gossip columnists and board members when she was done letting them think they could get their way. "Work it out, or I'll be the only one enjoying a sundae. I'll be back in half an hour."
In between this life of what was expected and what was unexpected was one, brilliant truth -- Pepper was never, ever going to be bored.