#shardsofstark

❛     you  can  hit  harder  than  that.        i  can  take  it.    ❜         his  stance  has  remained  defensive  ,  mostly  just  deflecting  @shardsofstark's hits.         he's  here  to  train  her  ,  not  take  her  down.       well  –   a  faint  smirk  is  all  the  warning  @  gets  before  he  swipes  a  leg  out  ,  knocking  her  knees  out  from  under  her  to  hit  the  mat.      ❛   you  leave  your  right  side  open.    ❜       he  extends  a  hand  to  her  ,  offering  to  help  her  back  up.         he  doesn't  expect  her  to  take  it  ,  but  he'll  always  reach  out.     

     He just wanted a nap, or a snack, or some way to do both because the way the world was blaring he needed a break. Which meant ear buds in, pulling things from the cupboard to bake. Ma had always told him it helped calm her mind, ease her nerves. and she was rarely wrong.

    And if the music blaring in his ears matched the jangling of his nerves, the yeedm music pounding harder than his heart had been during his run that was no one's business but his own. Shortbread cooling at his elbow, Steve reached for the cream he needed to add fruit to. It wasn't a trifle by any means, but he missed her shortbread, and he wanted the mousse.

"Shit.' He watched the cream slowly spread across the kitchen floor, unable to bring himself to clean it up. Just toss a towel over it Rogers and start over.

    So he did, Nadia wasn't going to be home for a few hours yet, right? Yeah, that sounded right.

@shardsofstark's been invited to tourney...

"That was absolutely stupid!" Clint was not amused, in fact, he was rather furious. He was used to such stunts from Tony but he had always considered Nadia to be more reasonable and as such more careful. Today, however, he could see how much she and her brother were actually alike.

Naturally she would try to tell him it wasn't so bad - it was a notorious habit for people in their line of work. Unfortunately for her he didn't buy it. "Don't even try to argue with me," he stopped her instead, taking a step back to take a deep breath. "You were this close to getting yourself killed."

@shardsofstark liked for a starter from Tony -> Nadia.

Location: Stark Tower – Workshop Level, late evening

The holograms were still flickering when he heard her footsteps. Tony didn’t need to look, the biometric sensors had already told him it was her.

Nadia Stark. His sister. 

The one who’d spent most of her life as a ghost between the headlines: quieter, smarter in her own right, and somehow still a mystery even to him.

“Didn’t think I’d see you down here,” Tony said, voice breaking the still hum of machinery and half-assembled suits. His reflection glimmered in the glass wall behind the main console, shoulders slouched in a way that betrayed fatigue, or maybe just the usual brand of self-inflicted insomnia. “The family reunion notice must’ve gotten lost in the mail.”

He turned, the faint smirk tugging at his mouth doing a poor job of hiding the weariness in his eyes. “Careful where you step. I’d hate for you to trip over my emotional baggage. I was trying to keep it neatly stacked, but, well…” he gestured vaguely to the wreck of tech strewn about “somebody had to go and stir up nostalgia.”

Tony swirled the scotch in his glass before setting it down. “So. To what do I owe the pleasure? Guilt trip? Intervention? Or are you here to tell me that I’ve finally outdone myself in the ‘Stark messes up spectacularly’ department?”

He meant it as a joke… but it landed somewhere closer to confession.

For all the armor, all the bravado, there was a flicker in his expression when he looked at her. 

The kind that said: you’re one of the few people left who gets it.

“I know,” he said after a beat, quieter now. “You’ve got every right to hate me. To hate him. The name. The legacy. Hell, sometimes I hate it too.” He exhaled, rubbing a hand across his jaw. “Howard did a hell of a job teaching us how to build things. Not so much how to… be people.”

He tried to smile, but it came out crooked. “You were the smart one, you know. You stayed out of the spotlight. Built your own thing, didn’t need the press breathing down your neck every time you sneezed. Meanwhile, I was out here trying to turn ‘daddy issues’ into a billion-dollar brand.”

There was a beat of silence- then that spark of Stark mischief flickered back to life. “So. What’s the verdict, Nadia? Am I still the world’s biggest disappointment, or have I finally crawled my way up to ‘functional train wreck’?”

He leaned against the console, eyes flicking toward her with a rare kind of curiosity.  Not judgment, not pity. 

Just the awkward, genuine interest of a man realizing he might actually want to know his sister.

“Don’t worry,” he added, tone lighter but edged with something real. “I’m not gonna do the whole ‘we’re family, we should talk about our feelings’ thing. You’ve probably got enough of that from therapy or… well, whoever you vent to when I inevitably screw something up.”

Then, a little quieter: “I just… figured maybe it’s time we stopped pretending we’re strangers who happen to share DNA and a knack for self-destruction.”

@shardsofstark liked for a starter

' Stop moving.'

The comment is clipped. Monotone. Measured. But not entirely UNKIND. A shadow of...SOMETHING in the words. The unspoken. Almost too loud in the small cramped space. The motel light overhead blinked above the scene. Washing the already aged bathroom in an unsteady, SHIVERING yellow hue. Electrics humming. Only helping to give the slightly chipped off-white tiles a further unclean filter. The bulb above the medicine cabinet offering a consistent b u z z i n g in the background. A faucet dripping absently into a drain reddened with rust.

Mismatched hands bunched up a THREADBARE towel to the woman's side. Attempting to stymie the slowly oozing red that bloomed in a f l o w e r y crimson against her shirt. The bullet had only clipped. A FLESH wound. Yet the movement that followed, the half stumble to a seedy motel, had only served to aggravate it. A heart pumping fast. Pushing blood around and out of the wound.

The Soldier felt her shift. Felt her body tense and TAUT. Leaning back against the bathtub like she was trying to flee. Perhaps she was. Hard to be beneath the hands of a man who had taken so much from you.

' It needs stitches. '

@shardsofstark asked: gently  tugging  on  their  sleeve  to  get  their  attention.

@shardsofstark | url positivity always accepting

It's not obnoxious at all!! I adore you and you deserve all the love. You are always so much fun to see on the dash just talking about your thoughts and ideas for Nadia not to mention all your other characters.

I love how you seamlessly but Nadia in the story. She feels so real and tangible and this is coming from someone who has big ideas about Tony Stark and it took me and Tony all of 5 seconds to adopt Nadia as canon

Then add how willing you are to craft the universe with me since I'm more comic based and you're MCU but it doesn't feel forced at all. Just talking with you and plotting with you is so much fun!!