Suiting Up For Fatherhood

Legacy

It was a standard sunny California day and Morgan Stark found herself waiting outside her high school on a bench, on her phone, scrolling through her Twitter feed, trying her best to stay invisible from her peers who were boarding vibrant yellow busses or heading to their cars in the adjacent parking lot. Being a freshman and starting high school wasn't easy, but being the daughter of Tony Stark made it even more challenging with all eyes on her anticipating her impending genius and academic success. It's not like she wasn't smart, she was taking AP calculus already with seniors, but the stress of being perfect and excelling at basically everything was putting a tremendous amount of pressure on her.

The screech of tires on the asphalt in front of her comfortable spot on the bench pulled her out of the trance she was in from staring at her phone. The black Audi with tinted windows contrasted with its surroundings of green palm trees swaying in the wind and blue skies. The window rolled down and she was greeted by none other than her father's right-hand man and most trusted employee, Happy Hogan.

"Hey Morgan, get in; It's time to go." He encouraged, waving his hand, gesturing for her to hop in the car.

"About time you got here. You better have McDonalds in there or something for being almost twenty minutes late." She joked, but truthfully she would rather be picked up late so the other kids wouldn't have to be around to see her being picked up by either Happy or her dad, the later usually drew a larger crowd. She got up from the hot bench, which she was beginning to stick to, and slid into the cool black leather passenger seat in the air-conditioned car, tossing her purple JanSport into the back seat.

Happy didn't answer her, instead he punched the gas and drove out of the school's lot. He was in a rush and she could tell, as she fell back into her seat from the sudden acceleration. The rest of the drive was smooth and silent. Morgan, again, went back to her phone and connected it to her Bluetooth earbuds to make the half an hour drive to their destination more enjoyable. It's not like she felt uncomfortable talking to Happy, in fact she considered him more like an uncle than just her usual chauffeur/bodyguard, but she had an exhausting day at school, and being the fourteen-year-old she was, she just wanted to be in her own little world for the time being. Happy understood this from spending so much time with the young Stark, so he just let her be and focused on getting her safely to Stark Industries.

Morgan was yet again pulled back into reality when she could feel the car coming to a stop, as they pulled into the parking spot in front of the glistening glass building. Removing her earbuds, she took the sound of Happy's door slamming shut as a sign that it was time to get out.

She got out of the passenger seat, opened the door to the backseat to grab the familiar material of her backpack, and headed towards the entrance of her family's company. Morgan and Happy swiped their security badges into the metal scanners that lined up in the lobby, and with a flash of a green light and a high-pitched beep, they were in.

It was a Friday afternoon and she had a big weekend ahead of her, as the Stark Expo was kicking off, and her father and her were going to head straight there. Of course, their plan to leave right after she came home from school was changed at the last minute, as Tony had to pick something up from Stark Industries before they left. Pepper was already in New York since Wednesday, prepping for the expo and doing interviews to promote it, as she was the head and CEO of the company. Tony, being the devoted and loving father he was, didn't accompany his wife because he wanted to be in California for Morgan to look after and be there for her. He trusted Pepper would handle everything smoothly there by herself. Actually, it was probably for the best that they were apart for the first few days of prep because he would be too distracting for her when she desperately needed to get a lot of work done for to expo to be a smashing success.