The Stark Trap

~16~

Tony loosened his grip and looked at her confused. “What are you talking about? How do you know about Melissa…?”
 
Melissa freed her arm from his hand and went to stand on the bottom step with Peter, who put his hand on her back comfortingly. She didn’t mean to tell him the truth, she just wanted to stop being yelled at and she panicked. “Because I am Melissa, I just said that”
 
Tony shook his head. “No… Melissa is…” He looked between the two kids and saw that they were serious. He took a step backwards in shock and sat down on the arm of the chair. “You-You’re… Melissa… How? Since when…? Where the hell is Andi?”
 
“Andi and I switched places around a week ago-”
 
“Are you saying my kid is all the way in Malibu?!” He asked, raising his voice slightly, raising a hand in the vague direction of Malibu.
 
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Well your other kid was in Malibu her entire life and you never seemed to care…” She said quietly to herself.
 
Tony heard her and sighed. “I never liked this situation, but I agreed to it otherwise both of you would have been taken away from me. It killed me to lose you…”
 
“What’d you guys do, rock paper scissors to see who got which kid?” She asked sarcastically. 
 
Tony smiled slightly. “God you’re just like your sister…”

“She’s really not,” Peter said from next to Melissa, laughing to himself.
 
Looking up at him, Tony crossed his arms again. “Did you know about this whole thing, Parker?”
 
Peter nodded. “Of course I did, they never would have been able to trick me.”
 
“Does everyone know except me? Does Harley know”
 
Peter rolled his eyes. “Harley doesn’t know anything.” He looked over at Melissa and then back over at Tony. “I’m gonna go upstairs and leave you two to talk…”
 
He went upstairs and Melissa turned to Tony, looking at him nervously. “Are you mad at me…?”
 
Tony shook his head, looking at her as if it finally just hit him that it was Melissa standing in front of him and not Andi. “No, of course not hunny… I’m not mad… Not at all…” He smiled at her. “God you’re so grown up… Can I have a hug?” He wasn’t an affectionate person, but he desperately wanted to hug her. 
 
Nodding, she went over and hugged him. Tony held his daughter close for the first time since she was a baby. He started to tear up as he held on to her and Tony wasn’t an emotional person, unless it came to his kids.
 
“I missed you so much…” He said, kissing the side of her head. “You have absolutely no idea… I’m so sorry that I yelled at you…”
 
Melissa started to cry, for the first time in her life she was hugging her father. She waited for this moment her whole life… For the first time since she had been there, her father was looking at her as Melissa and not Andi. “It’s okay”
 
They both unwillingly pulled away and Tony cupped her cheek in his hand. “Jesus, Honey Bee, I never realized how much you’d look like your sister…”
 
Melissa smiled at the nickname, it was a new one she had never heard before and she liked it. She knew her name meant Honey Bee but she never thought about it being a nickname. “Well we are identical twins”
 
Tony laughed and nodded. “That you are…” He kissed her forehead, standing up and walking into the kitchen. “You want anything to eat hun?”
 
Following him into the kitchen, Melissa shook her head. “I’m fine” 
 
Tony turned around, pointing at her and raising an eyebrow. “Does your mother know about the switch?”
 
Melissa shook her head. “No…”
 
“Who all does?” He asked, raising an eyebrow as he pulled some lunch meats out of the fridge to make a sandwich. 
 
Melissa sat down at the island. “You, Peter, and Nat…”
 
He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Natasha knows? Why does she know?”
 
Melissa shrugged. “Apparently I’m not as good at pretending to be Andi as I thought I was, she saw right through it.”
 
“And I didn’t. I’m a horrible father…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t tell that my daughter wasn’t actually the daughter that I thought she was. Natasha could tell that you weren’t Andi the first time she saw you.” He shook his head, sighing.
 
Melissa shook her head. “You’re not a horrible father, Andi taught me how to be her. You weren’t the only one fooled. If it makes you feel any better, Andi is fooling Mom just as much.” 
 
“That does actually make me feel a little better” Tony smiled and went back to making his sandwich. “I want to know everything, how you and Andi met, who came up with the switch, what you were planning on accomplishing, what Andi is doing in Malibu. I want to know everything.” He finished making his sandwich and sat down across from Melissa, waiting. 
 
Melissa was hesitant to tell him about the reason for their plan, she didn’t know how he would react to them trying to get their parents back together. After thinking about it for a few minutes, Melissa explained most of the plan to Tony. She told him everything he asked to know, except for what they planned to accomplish, for that, she told him that they just wanted to know the other parent. 
 
“So you Parent Trapped us?” Tony said jokingly, before realizing something. “Holy shit, you are Parent Trapping us… You didn’t just want to get to know us, you could have done that by telling us that you two knew about each other… You’re trying to get your mother and I back together…”
 
Melissa shook her head. “No…”
 
“Don’t lie to me Melissa Jane…” He said sternly. 
 
Melissa sighed. "We just want our family back together" She said sadly, looking down. 
 
"I know hun, I do too. But you can't force things like this… You don't understand-"
 
"I'm not a child, Dad!" Melissa shouted, surprised by the tone of her own voice. "I hate being told that I don't understand things, I'm sixteen not six. I understand a lot more than you think I do. I know that I can't force you two back together but Andi I can at least try, we found out what happened with Christine and-"
 
"What do you mean?" Tony cut her off. "What did Christine tell you?"
 
Sighing, Melissa told him everything that Christine told her, including everything about the tape. 
 
Tony sat there quietly, taking everything in. Melissa was scared that he wouldn't believe her or that he'd get mad that she went to talk to Christine again and send her back to Malibu. "Where's the tape?"
 
"I gave it to Peter… We haven't watched it, obviously, so we don't know if that is what's actually on it…" Melissa looked up at him. "Come to Malibu with me, talk to Mom, we can tell her everything and fix this"
 
Tony shook his head. "It isn't that easy… Your mother is harboring sixteen years of heartbreak and anger against me, just because we tell her this happened, doesn't mean she'll just automatically forgive me…"
 
"But we can try! Please Dad… I can't just go back to not knowing you or Andi again…"
 
He reached out and put his hand on hers. "You won't, now that you guys are older, we can send you guys back and forth… But your mother will never forgive me…"
 
Melissa regretted ever telling him that she wasn't actually Andi. If she didn't, they might have still had a chance to pull their plan off… She looked up at her father on the verge of tears. "Just come to Malibu… Please…"
 
"Melissa-"
 
"Mom is dating someone, and they're getting serious." She cut him off. "She always told me that I wouldn't meet any of her boyfriends unless they were getting serious and then she told Andi, thinking she was me, that she wanted her to meet her new boyfriend. Andi met him a few days ago and she doesn’t like him and I probably won't like him either, but they're getting serious!"
 
Tony crossed his arms. “Melissa, your mother is allowed to date someone if she wants. She’s a grown up”
 
“Don’t you still love her?” She asked. “Don’t you want to get back together with her?”
 
Tony stood up from his seat, putting his empty plate in the sink. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms, avoiding eye contact with Melissa. “Of course I still love your mother and I want to be with her again, but like I said earlier, your mother is harboring sixteen years of anger and heartbreak towards me and that isn’t going to go away overnight, or even in the next few months or years. If it even does go away… If your mother wants to move on, then let her move on… I just want you and your mother to be happy…”
 
Sighing, Melissa set her head on her hand and looked down. “I’m not going to be happy though…”
 
“You don’t even know the guy, Liss… Give him a chance…”
 
“Are you going to send me back to Malibu?” She asked, looking up at him. She didn’t want to go home yet, she liked being there, and if she stayed, she’d be able to spend more time with her father as Melissa, not as Andi. 
 
He sighed, running a hand over his chin. “I don’t know… I don’t want to send you back, and I have the feeling that you don’t want to leave either, but your mother deserves to know. It isn’t right for us to not tell her that the kid that she should have is all the way in Manhattan, she would be mad at both of us for keeping it from her and then she probably wouldn’t let you come back here. You need to call your mother and tell her everything. Or call Andi and have Andi tell her, and next time you talk to Andi, tell her that she’s going to be in big trouble when she gets home.” He said, rolling his eyes. “Why don’t you head to bed, it’s getting late”
 
Melissa looked over at the clock on the microwave, it was almost ten and since now she didn’t have to pretend to be Andi anymore, she could go to bed before midnight. “Yeah alright, goodnight”
 
“Goodnight Honey Bee” He hugged her and kissed the side of her head. “I love you”
 
“I love you too” She went up to Andi’s room and sat down on the bed, sighing. 
 
A few seconds later, the door opened and Peter poked his head in. “Can I come in?” Melissa nodded and he came in and sat down on the bed. “So, how’d it go?”
 
She shrugged. “It went well, I told him everything. The plan, everything that happened with Christine… He wants either me or Andi to tell Mom, he says that she deserves to know, and she does.” She sighed and laid back onto the bed. “He doesn’t want to go to Malibu to talk to Mom. He says that we need to let her move on and that we can’t force them to get back together…”
 
“He has a point…”
 
Melissa glared at him. “I thought you were on our side?”
 
“I am,” Peter said, shrugging. “But he still has a point, you can’t force anything. I saw we talk to Andi tomorrow and either have her tell Miss Potts about what Christine’s assistant told us or tell her that she’s not really you”
 
Sighing, Melissa nodded. “We’ll call her tomorrow, hopefully before school… I’m gonna go to bed, goodnight Peter.”
 
“Night Liss” He said getting up. He started to open the door but stopped, turning to look at Melissa. “I don’t know if it will work, but we might be able to get my Aunt in on trying to get Miss Potts here… They’re really close…”
 
“We’ll bring it up to Andi tomorrow”
 
Peter nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. Melissa laid back onto the bed and sighed. This changed the whole plan…
 
Grabbing her phone from the nightstand, Melissa pulled up her text convo with Andi, sending her a text that contained only two words.
 
'He knows'