two prologues
Clint is offered the Oath when he's nine years old. He's not very good at reading, so the manual comes to him as a picture book, thick like a collection of fairytales and nicely bound.
It's the binding that attracts him--the book is too nice to be tossed in with the beaten and dog-eared old textbooks which is what's usually on offer when they get secondhand books--school library rejects, usually. This one is a hardcover, and dressed up to look old and important, so Clint isn't sure whether he's elated or disappointed that when he opens it, it appears to be a kid's book.
On the one hand, that's not cool and mysterious at all, but on the other it isn't something boring and unintelligible either, which is what nice books usually end up being--outdated and for grown ups and full of text from cover to cover.
But it's still a nice book, and full of drawings, and Clint's not likely to get a pick of the robot or space books anymore, not with the strongman's sons elbows deep in the pile, so he tucks the fairytale tome under his arm and looks around for Barney, to see if he's ready to go.
So no one can take if off him even if fairytales are kind of a baby book. Maybe a girl book.
Barney says, "God, you're such a loser," but it's fond and Clint falls into the safety of his shadow, and follows him around until he gets fed up with tripping over Clint and declares there's nothing there but crap.
Later, Clint shoves the book away with his things and forgets it in between chores and practice and work and watching the townie kids, and watching Barney watch the townie kids while he strings lights and they walk the slowly lighting-up carnival hand-in-hand.
It's not until their packing up is interrupted by rain and Clint's lying on his belly inside one of the magician's trick boxes--Now you see her, now you don't!--armed with a flashlight, that he finally opens the book, flipping through it and it's detailed drawings--circles and cars and whales and strange words, phonetically sounded out underneath.
For a baby fairytale book it's pretty weird, Clint thinks, thumping a foot against the painted wood in absent pleasure. The sound he makes is covered by thunder, which is good, because he's likely to get in trouble if he's found; for running down the flashlight's batteries and for hiding from work, and for playing with and in the magician's things again.
He leafs back to the front of the book, to start looking at the pictures in order, and finds one page at the front with no drawings at all. Just tidy, dark text. Large enough letters that it's clearly a part of the book and not an introduction or study questions or anything like that, and it's simple and short enough that even Clint's shaky reading skills can manage it.
In Life's name, and for Life's sake, it says.
-----
Tony isn't offered the Oath until after he's forty. Until after the Nine Rings and Stane and being nearly poisoned by the very technology that was supposed to be keeping him alive. After he's Iron Man.
He acquires the manual by accident when he's downloading some light reading of the That's none of your business, Stark variety, when the file appears in with the mess of shady SHIELD dealings and personnel files and pictures of Coulson from his college fraternity days.
"The shit is this?" Tony asks JARVIS, but JARVIS probably considers that insufficient parameters for a query, because he doesn't respond. Or maybe he's finally grokked the concept of rhetorical questions.
This wasn't one. Tony really honestly wants to know, because scrolling down gets him dire warnings, and not of the Eyes Only variety, or even of the The FBI cares a lot if you copy this movie variety either. Instead it tells him to stop right the hell now unless he's willing to undergo an ordeal--been there, done that!--and is very, very, very certain that this is in fact what he wants to do because otherwise, he'll just be killing the universe a little faster by making it waste energy on him.
"I don't even know what this thing is and already it sounds like my father," he grumbles at JARVIS, but further along the crazy file also promises him a good look at the cogs and gears and inner workings of the universe, and even if it's probably some extra stupid SHIELD lackey mis-uploading their kid's entertainment or something, it catches Tony's interest.
Even MIT hadn't been able to promise a behind-the-scenes sneak-a-peek at creation, but the thing's optimism is entertaining. Some kid is either in a very promising class or being taken for a ride.
Tony gets up to pour himself a scotch and comes back, frowning as he scrolls up and down. The language of the file isn't kid language. It's not quite legalese, and not quite textbook technical, but it's straight-forward, clearly presented information, in an undecorated text file. Huh.
It's taking itself very seriously, this spot of crazy.
Tony rolls his eyes and keeps going. I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life, the last part says, which is fair enough, if kind of vague on the technicalities. Just the way Tony likes his promises. There are a lot of thing he'd consider servicing life, that maybe others would categorize differently.
He reads the whole bit out loud to JARVIS. It's a little hippy-dippy, but when he finishes his lab feels very quiet, like even the constant hum of machinery and air filtration has stopped or at least gone muted and distant, and when he tries to scroll down again the screen moves up just a bit and a line of text reads Install manual? With a space for inputting a directory and followed by a button reading Execute.
He installs it to his Starkpad.
Two weeks later, cars start talking to him.