Tony was probably the one person Carter felt the most guilty over. In previous years, she had made it a point of pride to always give him a gift on Christmas day. It was their relationship, and they always tried to make Christmas special for one another. But now, he had Steve, and she had Pietro. They were growing up, and it was crazy to consider. So, in an effort to keep themselves as childish as possible, Carter wrapped a number of boardgames in different boxes, left him with a stocking full of suckers and other candies, and wrapped up various other boxes with various colors of wrapping paper. She delivered everything the day she went over to celebrate their own Christmas, hoping he would focus more on the gifts than anything else.
Tony,
I love you and you’re grand and I hope you realize that. You always make me smile, and I want you to know that I love you even more for that simple ability. I know this is late by a week, but I hope you can forgive your little sister… just like when I broke something in your lab as a toddler.Â
I love you, and Merry Christmas.Â
Your Sister,Â
Sharon Carter
Tony shut down the computers when a small tap on the glass door of the workshop caught his attention. The noise was not, as he’d suspected, coming from the outside—one of his team members or Rhodey come to drag him out of work—but from Dum-E’s claw as he peered out of the glass to set his sights on a stack of boxes just outside the door. Tony stretched, smiling amusedly—not that he’d let his bot catch sight of that (then he might think that Tony actually liked him, and they’d be in a world of trouble). He carefully kneed the bot out of the way so he could scoop up the stack of boxes and grinned when he saw the name on the tag. It had been a while since he’d seen Sharon—not by a long shot their longest blackout (there had been a time in his, well, “darker” years when he hadn’t seen her at all, and SHIELD, Avenger-ing, and Stark Industries kept them both more than busy), but Tony couldn’t say he didn’t miss her antics and, he thought as he ripped open the first box only to find several smaller boxes of sand inside and then a stack of board games, her sense of humor.
He’d barely had time to read the included note before JARVIS announced over the workshop’s loudspeakers that Sharon was upstairs. “She’s what?” Tony repeated, squinting at the ceiling despite the fact that he knew—and often told everyone else who did it—that JARVIS did not live in the ceiling wires. “Ms. Carter is in the kitchen preparing dinner and she appears to be wearing an Iron Man mask, Sir,” repeated the AI.Â