khlara replied to your post “Anyone want to send me prompts for a little ficlet? I finally have...”
Tony/ Pepper getting ice cream after losing something
Oh, you fucking asked for it >:)
To everyone else: this contains heavy angst. You’ve been warned.
Blue with Sprinkles
Tony stared numbly at the small bowl of ice cream that someone had put in his lap. Blue, with sprinkles. It was really cotton candy flavored, but every kid who ever ordered it called it “blue with sprinkles.” His brow pinched when Pepper slowly sat beside him. Her ice cream was nearly melted, too.
“Whose fucking idea was it to have ice cream?” he mumbled, his knuckles white around the little bowl. He wanted to throw it. Maybe he would. Pepper didn’t say anything, but leaned her head against Tony’s shoulder. He leaned his head against hers and winced.
Children ran around them in chaos, some of Maria’s classmates and their parents who had been invited. The kids were young, five or six years old. They didn’t know better. They played hide and seek, they called for Maria, they screeched and laughed when they were found. Tony jolted slightly. Pepper lifted her head, and Tony squeezed his eyes shut.
“Do you want them to leave?” She asked softly, obviously feeling the same as Tony.
“No. They’re just being kids,” Tony murmured. He and Pepper used to play hide and seek with Maria like that, and she loved showing off how high she could count before coming to find them. Once she never did come to find them, and worried, Tony and Pepper came to find her, only to hear her happily counting into the thousands. She giggled and preened when they scooped her up and praised her.
Tony’s heart was so proud and full. Their little girl was smart, precocious, laughed more than she cried, and lovingly bossed her dad around day and night. Tony was a complete sucker for it too, wearing matching tutus while teaching her to program some little game app she’d come up with about making custom ice cream cones. She took to programming the way Tony had taken to engineering at her age. Tony went around in purple nail polish that Maria made him wear, then sat patiently while his little Sugarplum changed it to sparkles “because the purple didn’t look pretty with Iron Man.”
Tony read her exciting adventures at night about actual knights in armor, and she insisted he get on his knees by her bed one night, and she dubbed him “Sir Daddy, the Super Best” with a pool noodle in her stateliest voice. Pepper laughed from the foot of the bed, and Maria scrambled into her lap for hugs.
“He is the super-best, isn’t he, sweetheart?” Pepper asked her, and Tony let Maria put a paper crown on his head and grinned, overflowing with love, as Maria and Pepper enthusiastically listed all the ways he was the best.
“Well, because I love him. That’s why he’s the best,” Maria had said, and Pepper smiled softly at Tony.
“I love him too, sweetheart. And he loves us both more than anything. Right daddy?” Pepper asked, cheek to cheek with Maria, and Tony smiled at them both.
“More than anything, Sugarplum,” Tony said, and scooted closer so they could all snuggle before bedtime. He and Pepper laid in bed with her while Maria talked, telling them vivid stories of all the adventures her imagination took her on, her arms in the air as she painted holographic pictures of robot pirates and space kitten mermaids, and as always, adventures where her mommy and daddy and uncle Rhodey and uncle Steve and aunt Nat fought the bad guys and saved the world.
Eventually she tired out and the holograms faded into nothing more than a nightlight, and Tony and Pepper just looked down at her and marveled that she was really theirs, that they were so lucky and so happy.
Tony jumped as one to the children shrieked again, startling him back to present day. His ice cream was a pool of blue in his bowl now, and the shriek pierced him, exploding in his mind like Maria’s scream.
She’d been so scared when their jet was attacked. None of this putting on a brave face bullshit that people ascribed to children they thought to be mature beyond their years. No. Maria was five, she was a child. Delicate like a bird, and terrified as the jet went down. She screamed for Tony and reached for him desperately, tears on her beautiful face as Tony squeezed her hand and made the armor wrap around his precious daughter as the plane shook apart.
Daddy, no, I want to be with you and mommy!
Iron Man will keep you safe, Sugarplum, I’ll be right by your side. I love you so much, I promise we’ll get ice cream after this, okay?
Daddy, please!
That was the last time he saw her blue eyes. The armor closed around her and flew her to safety as Tony and Pepper both armored up and a quinjet approached for support. They’d always said they’d never let this kind of danger be a part of Maria’s life, but they prepared for it nonetheless, because it was inevitable.
In the end, Maria’s armor didn’t respond to comm calls, and Tony and Pepper were both pale and shaking as their whole team scanned with every tool they had to find her. And when they did- they never knew if the slash in her armor had been from enemy or friendly fire. If she was still…. when the armor plummeted….
Tony stood abruptly, upsetting Pepper’s bowl of ice cream to the floor. He was immediately contrite, tears spilling over, his face hot, as he used a wadded napkin to try to clean the mess.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” he mumbled on his knees, getting his hands blue and sticky.
“Honey, it’s okay, come here,” Pepper said gently, her voice wet, and laid a hand on Tony’s nape. He fell to the side, sitting by Pepper’s feet and leaning his head against her knee. He sucked in a breath and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
“Our baby…”
“Tony…”
“Pep, she’s gone…”
Tony was vaguely aware of the room quieting, and Pepper kneeling to the floor with him, their tears flowing openly. Was it causing a scene if your breakdown was at your own daughter’s funeral?
The casket had been so little. Tony made it sparkly just for her. The service was small, but only relative to the scores of people who utterly adored her. She brought love with her wherever she went, and left adoration behind her in waves. She was the light that gave him and Pep life, and now that light was out, and Tony wasn’t sure they’d ever get it back.
Pep’s tears soaked his collar, and Tony looked down at his green nail polish (“it goes with Iron Man because it looks like Christmas”), only chips remaining from when she’d painted them for him the morning that they boarded the jet. Tony’s vision blurred with tears.
He’d promised her they’d get ice cream.
Blue with sprinkles. It was her favorite.
