Life as Maya Stark • Iron Man's Daughter [ 1 ]

11

Utter silence filled the air around them as Maya and Tony sat across from each other. Neither of them spoke and Maya watched her father as he seemed to be at a lost for words. His mouth opened and then closed a couple of times before he looked up at Maya.

He stared at her for a second and rubbed his hand across his face before resting it over his mouth as he just stared at her. Maya stared right back and once the silence and staring had become too much for her, she coughed slightly to catch his attention.

Tony snapped out of whatever he was thinking about and sighed. "Listen, kid. We've been sitting here for what, like ten minutes now, and I still have no clue what I can say to make any of this better," Tony admitted. Maya made a face before crossing her arms and rolling her eyes, "Well-"

"Don't," Tony quickly cut her off making her look at him in surprise. "Let me do this on my own." Maya stared at him for a second before unfolding her arms and nodding her head.

"Look, I know I haven't been the best father. Hell, I don't even know how to be a normal father. I never had a father that was ever really there for me, Maya. And now, having to actually be a father when I didn't even have one there to show me what a father should be like is hard. If you haven't noticed already, I have no clue what I'm supposed to do," Tony sighed.

"Well, just don't blow up the house. Oh wait. . ." Maya muttered. Tony chuckled slightly and looked down at the floor. "I deserved that," Tony said while Maya let a small smile slip past her serious facade.

Tony smiled slightly at that before looking back up at Maya with a serious face. "I know that no matter how many times I say that I'm sorry to you, it will never make up for what I did. I've been going through a lot lately with the whole dying thing and I've been so stressed with trying to figure out how to stop it that I didn't even consider the fact that I had a daughter that needed me," Tony muttered, his eyes flickering away as he started to pour his heart out, something that was very unusual for Tony to do.

"It's different having a kid around you know? Especially one that's already nine," Tony chuckled slightly before his smile disappeared and he got deadly serious. "That's nine years that I've already missed out with you, Maya. Nine whole years where I didn't have a daughter in my life."

"A-and now that I have you in it, everything's been thrown out of whack. I've had to get used to the fact that I'm in charge of a human being and that scares the hell out of me. But truth is I wouldn't change it for the world," Tony admitted, this time looking straight at Maya as he said it. Maya blinked in surprise, but Tony didn't stop.

He gave her a shaky smile, "I didn't understand why people cared so much about their dumb kids until I got a dumb kid myself. Maya, ever since I met you, I knew that if a single thing ever happened to you, I would kill everyone in the room and then myself. But now look what's happened. I was the one to hurt you in more ways than one and then I couldn't even pull myself together long enough to try and apologize to you until now."

He looked away and Maya froze when she saw his eyes tear up slightly. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about my illness," Tony began. "I'm sorry I embarrassed you in front of a bunch of people. I'm sorry I broke your guitar. I'm sorry I missed your birthday. I'm sorry I've missed every little thing since I announced to the world that I was Iron Man. I'm sorry."

He looked up at her again and some tears fell down his face as he whispered out, "I'm sorry." Maya's eyes filled with tears as well, but neither of them made a move towards each other. Instead, Tony continued.