Alaina Richards-Stark is the youngest daughter of Tony Stark and his high school sweetheart, Meera Peréz. When Alaina was a mere baby her parents got divorced, and for quite a handful of years the former pair struggled for the custody of both their...
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Heavy footsteps thundered in a skidding manner as Tony Stark dashed through the swinging doors and the clean corridors of the hospital. Panic flowed through his veins and sheer dread cascaded through his emotions and his teary eyes. His parents were dead and that too from a brutal car accident. His mom was dead and he couldn't do anything to prevent that, to protect her. But what gutted him the most was that they weren't in the car alone, his youngest daughter, his baby was with them. One of the nurses almost reprimanded him as he knocked down her tray of equipment in a sheer hurry to get to his daughter. The officials hadn't told him much, or they had, but he wasn't exactly listening to their solemn statements. The disbelief of what they were saying only morphed into multiple nods of denial. He first assumed that this was a dream, that his parents were fine and safe. It was just a cruel joke that was being played on him. The strong beliefs of denial only crashed down into thunderous waves during a horrid storm in the waters, when the words 'daughter' and 'hospital' muffled through his ears and it was almost a distant echo in his head. He hurriedly collapsed from his bed before he ran towards his door. The man had been sleeping when he got the call, but now he just knew that he wasn't going to get a good night's sleep for a long while from now.
"Raia!!" his voice was guttural with fear and panic as he kept calling for his oldest daughter. In no time he was speeding away recklessly in his car, with Raia holding onto support for dear life. The twelve-year-old was almost in tears. She had never seen her dad this scared and distraught and he was driving like a madman. Unlike her dad, Raia took the elevator overhearing Tony screaming and demanding the receptionist the room where her younger sister could be admitted.
When the kid finally got to the floor, she hurried towards the door where her dad was standing. The man was completely frozen. He was barely breathing as paleness and sweat coated his usual light skin. Raia noticed that her dad was standing at the door, staring at something with a look she couldn't decipher and with tears which was far deeper than the rush of fear he had felt the past few hours. When Raia finally made it to the door, utterly fearful of what her dad might be looking at, her gaze fell on Alaina who was being comforted by their mom and David. Her six-year-old sister was making grabby hands at Tony, crying and calling out to him for comfort, but the man was just looking at her with the same unreadable expression. She watched her mom let go of her sister before she walked towards Tony with quite an angry and solemn look as she mumbled 'We need to talk' and she pulled his almost frozen being out of the door.
Alaina continued to cry into David's chest as she wrapped her tiny hands around his middle. She looked like a rabbit trying to hibernate in its burrow as with a wobbly tone of his own, David whispered 'shh' and sweet nothings into her hair.
Raia took timid steps towards the pair, not knowing exactly what to do. But her little sister was hooked into an IV and the idea of such a small entity being in a hospital just scared her a lot. The twelve-year-old looked at David helplessly, as if asking for his guidance on what to do. Bearing teary eyes, the man gave the kid a sad smile before he opened his arms, inviting her. With the same timidness, she walked slowly, she climbed onto the bed before she wrapped her arms around her sister's torso from the back, wanting to comfort her, as she laid her head on the back of her shoulder. Raia shuddered a breath of all these mixed emotions swirling in her before David wrapped his arms protectively around her too.
