Babysitting a Superhero (Stark's daughter X Peter Parker)

30. Broken Trust

Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah, you'd bleed just to know you're alive
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

Amara slid the door to her balcony open as she sheepishly stepped inside. Her father's eyes remained on the floor, not even acknowledging her presence.

He was quiet, scarily quiet. The kind of quiet where Amara knew she was fucked.

Without looking up, he said, in the calmest voice Amara had ever heard him use, "Where have you been?"

"Just for a walk. You know I haven't been allowed out for a while, so I just wanted-"

"For four hours?" He asked, still looking at the floor.

"What?"

He looked up to meet her eyes, "You went on a walk... for four hours?"

"And, I-I got some - some dinner-" she started.

"From Queens?" He asked.

"How did-" she asked.

"You think I'm an idiot?"

Amara remained silent, staring at the floor.

"You know, when I came up here, I was gonna apologise, because I was thinking that I might have been a little harsh. But, I thought, even if I was, you still listened to me, and respected the fact that I grounded you. So imagine my surprise, when I get up here to talk to my daughter, only to find my B.A.R.F creating a holographic illusion of little, grounded, Amara Stark."

"Dad, I-" Amara began, but Tony held up his hand to silence her.

"No, I don't want to hear anything. Not yet. My first thought was, obviously, where the hell is my child? My second thought was is she in trouble? Which was then cleared by my third thought: how the hell did she get her hands on my B.A.R.F? Without being seen, too? So I did the natural thing, right? Went through security footage, found the loop, and reset the system to see you breaking into the weapon's vault. You know, considering I grounded you, I held a trust in you. I trusted you would listen. I trusted that of all things, at the very least, you wouldn't sneak out! And do you know why I trusted you? Why I didn't feel the need to keep an eye on you at all times? Because you have never done anything to make me doubt you. Ever. And I don't know what happened. Whether you've changed or my misplaced trust in you has just blinded me. But you've broken my trust. And broken trust is really hard to build back up, again."

"Dad, I know I fucked up. I'm sorry. But this was important for my mission. You remember? The ground-level safe mission you said that I wasn't focusing on?"

"I also remember saying no to Aura, even for that mission. Specifically for that mission."

"But I didn't go as Aura. I went as Amara. I was-" She stopped herself. What reason could she possibly give for being out late, when she was grounded, to meet the superhero she was only supposed to be in contact with, as her superhero alter ego?

"You were, what?" Tony then looked at Amara's outfit, her hair and her makeup, "Why are you so dressed up?"

"I was just... I had..."

"Don't lie to me, Amara. Did you go on a date?"

"What? No! A date with who?" Amara said, way too defensively. Now anything that she said, whether it was real or not, would not be believed by her father. At all.