CHAPTER 1

It was two months after Obidiah Stane's death when Pepper Potts gave a letter to Tony Stark, addressed with a jagged hand and sealed with a small sticker of some kind. Normally, she'd never ask her boss what was inside the letter, but his reaction sent Tony into a near rampage. He even ignored a manila envelope from SHIELD all because of that letter. Two days after the letter's arrival, Pepper dared ask him, "Tony, that letter you got....what was in it?"

Tony's initial reaction was a virtual shutdown in his face. She had asked him while he was fiddling with one of his cars, the blue convertible he had smashed after his first test flight, and Tony stopped so suddenly that Pepper was almost afraid his electromagnet had popped out all too suddenly and he was going into cardiac arrest like the time he'd asked her to trade the crystals out. Mercifully, though, he wasn't, but the silence meant he was phrasing an answer.

"If you really wanna know," he said not long later, "it was from someone I never thought I was gonna hear from again. Now she's on her way here." The she was what got Pepper on alert. If a woman was coming here, that usually meant Tony was planning on having a 'quiet' night. Then again, that had been before he had nearly died from one of his own missiles detonating in his face.

"Hence the guest room finally getting cleared out? She's not staying in?"

"Miss Potts, I would never invite a lady into my room unless I have been drinking and she is exceedingly gorgeous," Tony answered blithely. "And even then, I'd never have sex with a member of my own family."

That made Pepper even more shocked. Tony would never mention family except his father, and she had the idea that Tony wouldn't let any relatives come anywhere near his fancy Malibu home, much less the garage/lab underneath that housed the advanced AI robots that knew Tony's armor suit from the boots up. But she hid it all expertly, because it was her job. "I see. So, she's arriving when?"

"She was planning on today," Tony replied, setting his tools aside and standing up. Pepper's gaze momentarily latched onto the glowing blue electromagnet that kept Tony Stark alive and still giving hell to anyone who tried to mess with him. But she broke her gaze quickly while her boss went to his workstation and pulled out the rumpled paper of the letter. She drew a little closer as he unfolded the note inside and cleared his throat before reading, "Tony, I'm heading out there. Government papers giving me fiasco sorting, and it's your fault. Besides, things get lonely when all I've got are computers and nice big codes to hack...." Pepper gave Tony a half-smile as he paused to shake his head and mutter, "Yeah, she always tried to compete..."

"I can guess, genius," Pepper commented with a smirk. Tony glanced up at her with a bit of a smile before he looked back down at the letter. She would have sworn that, whoever had written this letter, she always, somehow, got Tony Stark to give up a genuine smile.

"Anyways, she says she's arriving in two days – today," he continued. Pepper knew he was jumping personal details, but he was allowed his privacy as much as he allowed her her own discretion in matters. "And she's coming into LAX sometime around noon." He straightened, looking instantly at Pepper. "What time is it?"

She consulted her watch. "Ten until eleven..."

"Dammit, and it'll take at least an hour to get –" Tony shot up immediately and leaped up the stairs. Pepper tried to scurry after him, but he was already off in his room to get cleaned up, so she just sighed and looked over to where Tony had left the letter. Glancing down to the bottom, she spotted the jagged signature: Andy.

Well, whoever Andy was, Pepper decided, she might have to take her out like all the rest of the trash that inconceivably ended up in the house. It came with the job.

------

LAX International Airport, Los Angeles, California

"Call Rhodey."

"He wouldn't be tracking jetliners just because you say so, Tony," Pepper chided. Tony looked a touch more snazzy than he usually did, wearing a crisp tan suit that was perfect for the oppressing southern California heat. He was also pacing impatiently, and Pepper tried not to reach for her cell phone to call Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, or Rhodey as both he and Tony preferred, just so Tony could calm down.

"Her plane was supposed to be here by now! She said noon!"

"Maybe she was delayed?"

"DC doesn't do delays," Tony bit back sharply, but he did stop pacing. Pepper leaned against Tony's Audi, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him as he resumed his circuit. "Maybe she decided to take a train instead of fly....where's the nearest Amtrak?"

Pepper was about to answer him and then watch him jump into his Audi and roar away, but then Tony's cell phone started ringing. In two seconds it was open, and Tony had it pressed to his ear. "Andy?! Where in hell are you?!"

"Sorry, Tony!" Pepper could hear Andy's voice easily; the woman must've been shouting, if woman could be applied to the light, almost carefree air in it. "Yeah, that's why I'm callin'. You wouldn't believe how hard it was just to get a ticket, government hounds all over my back...I still blame you, it was your name heading the stuff."

"Just tell me where you are, Andy, you've already had me waiting here for two more hours than you said!" He sighed and shook his head, mouthing "twenty-somethings" at Pepper before talking into the phone again. "Look, which gate are you coming in at, I've got the car here and ready to rumble."

"I'm not taking a plane, you moron, I get airsick."

"No you don't. Fine, if you're not flying then what, you take the train?"

"Motion sickness."

"You don't get motion sick! All right, then what did you do to get out here?"

"My bike. I'm about five minutes out from your place....very classy, very chic. Mind not putting mansion mark two on a switchback road?"

"You're already at my house?!" Pepper had to hide a smirk; there was no denying the relationship, because both parties had high levels of sarcasm and stubbornness to match. Tony sighed in exasperation and came right up to the door of his car. "All right, when you get there, you can go inside, but stay in the main room, all right? Otherwise I'm taking it out of your part of the cash."

"Just you try! Bet I can hack your security and get at your precious hot rods!"

"All right, that's it. I'm gonna be there in ten minutes. If you so much as breathe in my garage, you're dead." Tony snapped the phone shut and sighed, putting a hand on his forehead.

"Trying times?" Pepper asked lightly as she started walking for the Bentley. He nodded as he glanced up, eyebrows high.

"That's the trouble with having Andy in the family," he sighed, "always trying to win."

"Sounds like someone we know..."

"Should. She's my sister."

Pepper didn't even have time to reply before Tony jumped into his Audi and fired off, engine roaring. With a sigh, she climbed into the Bentley. Boys and their toys....
But Tony Stark had a sister. And he didn't seem like the brotherly type, not from first looks. As the car got underway, she wondered if it would be wise to ask Tony why he'd never mentioned it. Did he do anything for her birthdays? All she did was use some of Tony's money to buy something she wanted; did he send Andy money so she could buy something?

Then again, asking wasn't in the job parameters. And asking about a sister most certainly wasn't.

Tony Stark has a sister.

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Tony Stark has a sister.

"You're sure?"

"She sure left Washington in a big hurry. Didn't send any of the forms, either. Think she's trying to evade?"

"She hasn't filed taxes since she became legal. Been using her hacking skills to make the IRS not audit her. We should've expected that."

"But to go to Malibu? She's gotta be desperate."

"It's for her brother. Stark's distracted; didn't get our mission profile, supposedly."

"You suggesting that we...remind him of his priorities?"

"I'm just saying he needs to rearrange them."

"I agree. And maybe we can get some new help to go with it."

"Thinking of anybody in particular?"

"There's only one person I trust to refocus Stark. I'm going."

"But, sir –"

"I'm going, and that's it. Oh, and someone get me a gun. Flechette."

"There's a semi-new Stark model...if you want to go for irony, sir."

"Poetic. Highly poetic."