Chapter 1
Tony didn’t know why, but since the day he was born he could see it. The Matrix. Don’t ask him how, he wouldn’t be able to tell you, but the green code running in front of his eyes never slowed down, or stopped. It was an endless, patternless thing at first, but as he grew older he learned to control it.
So as a six year old, Tony was still pretty clueless. He fumbled with his schoolwork, knowing all of it, but… everything was so distracting, and distant. His paper seemed thousands of miles away, yet his hand was scrawling down answers faster than he knew he knew them.
The thing is, right now he’s taking an IQ test. And most of it is patterns, which are easy when the only thing you’ve seen for six years of your life is coding. Except for a few, that is. Tony learns that the people who are covered completely by coding are bad. They are fake, mean, rude. The people whose coding is dimmed are real. They are people like his mom, his nannies, and mostly everyone he sees.
And then one day, he meets Jarvis. While his father’s coding had been more dimmed than most, Jarvis’ was nonexistent. He walked and talked and smiled the same as everyone else… but, Tony could see him. It was incredible to him, the colors and actions that seemed entirely natural, when before they had all been strict and under patterns. While he was amazed by it, he was also… scared. Everything had a comforting shade of green (even though that was his least favorite color) and suddenly here was this bright man coming along with no green whatsoever. Yeah, it was a little disconcerting. Well, when his father had first introduced him Tony had yelped and hid behind Maria’s skirts, earning a kind smile from the man. Later when Jarvis asked him what scared him so, he just shook his head softly.
But yes, back to the IQ test. Six year old Tony flew through it, seeing the patterns -and, more commonly, just the answers- and writing them down. When he was done he handed it out to the doctor, who looked amazed. The thing was, this doctor was fake, the coding below him was bright green, and it was just saying “Act surprised. Who is he? What is he? How? Who? What? Act surprised. Who is he…” and so on. Tony scowled at the doctor, and pushed his chair out, walking out of the room into the waiting room, sitting quietly next to Jarvis.
“Hey Jarvis?” He whispers quietly, because the coding for camera’s are in the walls, and they might have audio (he doesn’t know how to read that much yet).
“Yes, young Sir?” The blonde caretaker gives him his full attention, a small smile on his face. Tony looks around nervously, for no apparent reason, and says,
“Can you see the green?”
Tony doesn’t remember this, it didn’t seem an important conversation to keep. He does know that he told Jarvis at some point what he could see, all the green codes, but he doesn’t recall how Jarvis’ eyes widen, or how his mouth parts slightly in excitement. How he takes Tony to the car with a skip in his step- or how much more protective he is of the little boy from then on.
Barely a week had passed before they returned to the doctor once more during his lunchtime, and he was told he had a spectacularly high IQ for someone his age, or for someone fourteen. Well, really, Tony couldn’t be surprised. The codes had told him about it before the doctor had. He beamed up to his father, hoping beyond hopes that maybe this time he would be rewarded.
“Good job, son.” A hand came down and mussed his hair, and then his father was gone, faded green lines traipsing out of sight. Tony looked down sadly, then walked away too, not bothering to finish his lunch.
The next day Tony was patted awake lightly, when the time was still too early to be pleasant. The numbers swam before his eyes, out of control until he blinked. Then it was uniform, all in order and perfect and… dull. He sat up, yawning and covering his mouth. Then Tony hears the thud of luggage against the floor, and his eyes shoot open.
“J- Jarvis?” His tiny voice nearly echoed around his bare room. (Because, you know, a young man shouldn’t have such childish accessories, as Howard says.) The butler-caretaker smiles sadly, and says softly,
“Young sir, you’ve been assigned to a prestigious boarding school. Your level of intelligence has not gone without notice, you are to begin as soon as possible.” Jarvis sounds prompt, clean, and Tony has no way of telling if there is sadness behind those words -although he likes to imagine there was- because of the man’s lack in coding.
Tony is not ashamed to say he cried. Well, not ashamed to say it to anyone but his father. His father would have given him that condescending look while the faint lines on him said “Disappointed, Grow Up,” and so on. He was boarded onto a private jet, unable to say goodbye to even his mother before he was carted away to his new school. Fear and anxiety bubbled up inside his little chest, and he sobbed until he fell asleep, listening to the rumble of the engines.
When he woke up he was being tugged to a car, sleep making his surroundings a hazy, blurred green. A cold breeze ran across his arms, and he shivered in the person’s tight grip. They shushed him and then someone else put a fuzzy blanket over him, and he fell back into slumber.
The murmuring of voices snapped him back to reality, but Tony pretended to sleep all the while, because that would be the most logical thing to do if you wanted to figure out what was going on. They were purposefully hushed, probably because they thought he was still asleep, and Tony could only catch snatches of “So little… you sure? Alright…… tomorrow….. Rest.” And then they walked off. He sat up groggily, looking around with interest.
He was on the bottom of a bunk bed, with plain looking sheets, but a regal frame. The walls were ornamented lightly, and the light was embedded in the ceiling. There was soft, plush carpet beneath his feet, so he didn’t really feel the need to complain. Tony could see that his meager luggage was already packed into one of the two dressers; his bags were under the bed. The only problem was with the fact that it was a bunk bed, meaning another person. And that would be awful, especially for someone like Tony.
Now that he thought about it, there was a slight shuffling in the bed above him, and the sound of quiet breathing. He startled, but relaxed once he realized whoever was in the bunk above was asleep. Soft brown hair poked out from the covers, and his - it was definitely a boy - frame was small, yet strong. Tony hung from the top bed and poked him repeatedly, with a shy smile plastered on his face and his eyes wide.
The boy stirred, and turned over with startling speed, looking directly into Tony’s eyes. Tony yelped and fell back, landing on the carpet. The boy laughed, fixing Tony with his calculating blue-eyed stare. It was then Tony realized that this boy had no coding, just like Jarvis. He brightened and scrambled up from the floor.
“My name is Tony S-Stark.” He says confidently, mentally hitting himself for stuttering, and clenching his fists in agitation. He held out his hand then, shyly.
“Tiberius Stone.” The kid says, sliding out of bed and dropping down in front of Tony to shake his hand. His eyes are not only blue, but icy and almost cold, but at the same time inviting and warm. It was impossible for Tony to read them without coding. This was a kid who knew how to hide his emotions. Tony liked that, and he wanted to be like that, so immediately he aimed to become the kid’s friend.
“H-how long have you been here?” Tony asked curiously. The boy shrugged, which told him that he too only got here today. Then Tiberius yawned and shook his head slightly.
“Wanna go explore? My dad sent me here ‘cuz I’m super smart, what about you?” He looked at Tony with a near smug expression on his face, as if he believed he was the smartest. (Tony might have known this, but the stupid absent green code didn’t help him whatsoever.)
“Uh, sure. M-my doctor said I had to g-go here because I was too smart to start in school for normal k-kids my age.” He blushed at his stuttering, but when his stomach was fluttery he couldn’t help it.
“Great!” Tiberius grabbed his arm and tugged him to the door, then opened the wood -mahogany, the coding told him- and led him into a hallway, where the same plush carpet decorated the floor and numbered doors led to the of it. Tony gulped, looking around nervously to see if there was anyone to reprimand him. The boy laughed at his scared face and looked around curiously. “Which door first?” He whispered, suddenly all quiet. Tony looked at him as if he had grown a second head, wondering why on earth he was so spontaneous.
“T-this one?” Tony pointed to the nearest door to them, and Tiberius nodded, then walked slowly up to it, Tony’s wrist still attached to his hand. The boy glanced down the hallway (he couldn’t glance up it, they were apparently at the very end of it) and then to the door, before finally opening the door knob smoothly. The door slid open soundlessly, and the room itself was dark, but they could see it was near identical to theirs. Tib- no, that was too annoying, Ty sighed boredly, making Tony fidget and try to pull his hand out of his grasp.
“T-Ty, couldn’t you- couldn’t you let go o-of my hand?” Tony asked nervously, his tongue stiffening as he tried to produce words. Ty nodded and smiled.
“Ty, I like that. Better than Tiberius,” he states, and lets go of Tony’s hand as quickly as he’d held it. The lack of it sent cold running to Tony’s palm, and he almost wished he hadn’t said anything. Then he shook himself and looked around the hall, trying to notice anything interesting. Suddenly low, carpeted footsteps came from around the end of the hallway, and Tony looked at Ty in alarm. Tiberius began to run back to their room, and Tony followed at identical speed, before closing the door as quietly as they had opened it.
The person entered the hall, and then a soft clinking of metal -keys, they must have been- could be heard. Then the opening of a door, and then….. Silence.
It was so quiet Tony wanted to yell to break it, but instead he breathed out slowly, looking at Ty and nodding. It occurred to him that the fact he could communicate with Ty so easily without the code and while barely knowing him was incredible, but he pushed it from his mind and once again opened the door.
The green lines of coding running through the walls gave way to the soft crimson of the wallpaper as Tony trailed his hand against it. He walked down the hallway soundlessly, stopping at the door he knew was the one the person had gone into (the handle was smudged more than any of the others) and pointed to it, waiting for Ty to catch up.
“This was the door?” The boy whispered quietly next to him, and Tony nodded, then slowly tried the handle. It held stubbornly, and Tony sighed, ready to turn away, but Ty was grinning, and he held out a pin. “Watch this,” he smiled, then stuck it into the hole for the key. A minute or two later, a soft click rung out, and the door slid open. Tony gaped at it, then at Ty.
“I’ll teach you how to later, for now, let’s check this out!”