Don't You Worry Child

Piece By Piece

Chapter Summary: Samantha is forced to deal with the Upper East Side bully moms when she picks Sophia up from school and Tony is left in a life-threatening condition by a surprising candidate.

Soundtrack: Piece By Piece by Kelly Clarkson

Being back home was nice, not good, not bad, just nice. She spent most of her time in the cinema her father had built within the tower watching Disney movies and throwing popcorn at the screen yelling "Liar" in an Elle Woods fashion. A part of her regretted breaking it off with Steve, another part of her knew that she had done the right thing in order to protect her heart. The battery on her phone had long run out and she refused to charge it again. When it was on, she had been so inundated with text messages and phone calls from Steve that she had nearly thrown the damned thing out of the window and onto some unsuspecting pedestrian on the ground below. Instead of doing that, however, she just allowed the device to run out of battery and locked it away in a drawer she had filled with things she never wished to see again, a bunch of things that mainly pertained to her now tainted memories of her mother including a diary S.H.I.E.L.D. had found in their search of her former home after Steve's kidnapping.

She had nightmares to contend with as well, nightmares about what she imagined could have happened during her time with the Red Room. They were all basically the same: One minute she was running fast, almost too fast, she would slow down the tiniest little bit and be jolted with a large and seemingly painful amount of electricity. She awoke screaming and sweating - as though it had actually happened. Her father would stay with her for an hour, attempting in vain to comfort her, until she told him to go back to bed. Apparently, at some point, her screaming must have woken Sophia because the little girl handed Samantha her favourite teddy bear, explaining that he was very good at keeping nightmares away.

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One day, Samantha decided to pick Sophia up from school - like her older sister, Sophia had proven too intelligent for pre-school and so was advanced up to her first year of elementary school - and so, Samantha found herself walking up the stairs and into the Philosophy Day School. After asking a receptionist, and receiving a filthy look from said receptionist - apparently, one did not wear skinny jeans and a cream T-Shirt that says 'Make it Simple but Significant' on it to pick up a sibling from a private school - Samantha found Sophia's classroom. She watched from outside, in amongst numerous mothers and nannies "You must be the new mother," one of the mothers said and Samantha giggled slightly. The mother looked like the Upper East Side personified, she was basically Blair Waldorf with kids.

"No, I'm Sophia's older sister," she replied and the woman who had asked the question rolled her eyes as though there were something wrong with Sophia "What?" Samantha decided to ask, never one to not ask a question.

"Well, Sophia's never going to be popular," the mother said and it was Samantha's turn to roll her eyes.

"Why is that?" she asked, quickly re-mastering her passive aggressive look that could put any of the women gathered to shame.

"Well, she's a know it all, she knows all of the answers and she isn't afraid to show it," the mother said and Samantha merely sighed, refusing to dignify the woman's idiotic statement with a response.

Soon enough, the children escaped the classroom and Sophia ran out, a bright, innocent smile appearing on her face when she saw Samantha "Sammy!" she shouted happily. "I thought Daddy was picking me up," she said suddenly confused and apparently upset, Pepper was on a business trip as sometimes happened and so Tony had been relegated to picking Sophia up from school. Not that he minded of course but he had a deadline coming up for his next device and... well, he'd already been procrastinating on it, hence the reason Samantha was picking Sophia up.