“Head in the game, guys.”
September 3rd
Tony was still awake when his alarm went off at three, reminding him to text Harry. Sirius said that Hogwarts classes started at eight, so Tony figured if he sent the kid a text at seven, he’d catch him before class when he had time to answer. So far, he was one for one.
What’s first on the agenda today?
The time difference was a bit of a bitch, but it wasn’t as if Tony slept much anymore anyway. Not since Harry left and the tower was too quiet, too empty, without him.
His text sent, Tony rolled out of bed and slid his slippers on. He nudged the sleeping puppy on his bed enough to wake it.
“Come on, let’s take you outside,” he said. Even the dog looked sad when it lifted its head and stared at Tony with literal puppy eyes.
“I know.” Tony leaned down and scratched the pathetic thing behind the ears. “I miss him too.”
Joey whined and Tony only barely resisted doing so as well.
While Tony sipped a cup of coffee and Joey ran laps in the yard, he got a text back from Harry.
Defense and Potions.
Tony chuckled at the deadpan emoji that Harry sent along with his text and fired off a response too quickly to pretend to be casual.
New teacher for defense this year, right? Bring them an apple, really let that sweet personality of yours shine.
Hilarious. How’s Joey?
Tony sent proof of life in the form of a video of Harry’s dog running around in the yard.
Tell your friend I sent her a phone. I sent it to Sirius anyway, since I don’t have a carrier pigeon of my own.
Ron says he hates you.
No phone for Ron then.
Gotta go. Bye.
The small smile Tony had from the familiar banter with Harry slipped away when Harry put his phone away to get to his classes. Returning to the apartment and roaming around the empty rooms only made his smile more difficult to reach. Even if Harry was the quietest teenager to live, there was a thick silence in their place that Tony hated.
Tony wasn’t sure what he did before his summer began and his son showed up and caught his office furniture on fire, but he figured it was probably as bleak and dull as everything he’d done since Harry left.
“Would you quit moping?” Nat slammed her hand on the table, drawing Tony’s attention to her. The team had been in a meeting for what felt like hours. A possible new HYDRA base, Steve wanted to ‘plan for an attack’, blah blah blah.
Tony always had a plan when it came to HYDRA: attack.
And since none of the others seated at the round table, save for Clint, maybe, had agreed with him, Tony quit listening pretty early on.
He hadn’t been ‘moping’ though, not in front of them. Currently, he was bored out of his mind. Tony saved his moping for when he ate a solitary dinner of takeout and bourbon; Pepper joined him a couple times since Harry left, but Tony mostly avoided her in an effort to not get nagged at over his drinking.
Plus, Pepper sat in Harry’s seat and chatted about work and ideas she had for the company and a hundred other things that Tony couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about.
Whoever invented the idea of boarding schools had been either sick in the head or Howard Stark. It was a form of mental torture wondering what Harry was up to, if he was doing okay, if he was sleeping or having headaches. Couple it with Tony’s inability to track Darth Vader (and Tony Stark was not a person that others could hide from usually, so he was beginning to take it personal), and Tony had been moping harder than ever.
Just not in front of Nat though.
Tony raised a mocking brow at Nat’s look of irritation and took a long sip of what was probably his tenth cup of coffee for the day. “Oh, I’m sorry, is my opinion wanted now? Because a few minutes ago you didn’t seem to want it.”
“He’s at school, Tony, not dead,” Nat spat after taking a calming breath that did nothing for her little angry face. She shot a filthy look at Tony’s phone, face up and ready for any message from Harry or Sirius. “You’ve been distracted for days, ever since the kid left.”
“I haven’t been distracted, I’ve been working,” Tony lied. He would be working if he were inspired to work on anything. All his projects were uninteresting and he couldn’t force himself to work on things that didn’t currently interest him. Even the StarkCar, now on the European markets, couldn’t hold his attention. All the small bugs in the system that popped up, Tony pushed off on his technicians.
He wasn’t paying them to not handle the things he didn’t want to do.
And all he’d really wanted to do was… well… mope. Mope, drink, and mentally count down the hours until Harry came home.
“You’re drinking a lot too,” Bruce muttered with a ‘disappointed dad’ aimed look at Tony. “I can smell you from here,” he explained.
Tony knew he should have showered before the meeting.
“Can we get to it?” he asked, waving his hand impatiently and evading all conversation. “Some of us have better things to do.”
“Yeah?” Clint put his elbow on the table and propped his chin on his fist. “What’s her name?”
Tony snorted, “Your mom,” he said childishly.
Steve chuckled and then turned in his chair to face back at the hologram outlining the possible Hydra base once more.
“Head in the game, guys,” he said affably. “Now, look,” Steve clicked a button on the remote, zooming in on the base and lighting up the center of it brightly. “What does that look like to you?”
Tony put down his coffee mug and leaned forward. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Something pretty damn powerful,” he mused.
“Something like Loki’s scepter,” Bruce said quietly, saying what they were all thinking.
The damn mind controlling stick hadn’t been seen since HYDRA agents stole it from SHIELD. It was the reason no one on the team, except for Mister Righteous and Miss ‘SHIELD Gave Me Purpose’ did any side jobs for Fury anymore. Tony wasn’t going to work for a guy who once ran the agency that allowed something with the possibility of such devastation to get in their enemies hands. Plus, personally, Tony was itching to get his own hands on the scepter. Especially now that he had been closing the gap between magic and technology.
Bruce glanced at Tony and then they both looked away quickly lest they be caught by the two spies.
Ultron was a fantasy for so long. Something idealogical since the aliens first invaded earth. A magic shield around the planet- protecting it from outside invaders. And a few months ago, Bruce had laughed at the idea. But now? Now that they had seen proof that magic existed and it could work with technology?
If Tony could create an AI with both arc reacting powers, protecting it from the magical world he now knew existed, and guided by the same magic that powered Loki’s scepter, then the Avengers could pick tomatoes for the rest of their lives and the earth would be safe.
That scepter could help create the superior peacekeeper that would keep their vulnerable planet safe until the end of time.
It could keep Tony’s son safe, he would never witness the terrors that outside invaders could bring.
And to do that, Tony needed a closer look at that scepter.
“That’s exactly what we think it is,” Steve confirmed, tilting his head to Nat. “We don’t know what they’re doing with it, but we need to do everything we can to retrieve it. If we can get it, get it back to Thor, then it neutralizes the threat on Earth.”
Tony hummed an agreement and then sat back, studying the layout of the base with calculating eyes. He let the others discuss the best place to store a weapon of such magnitude while his mind began whirling with the ways he could best put it to good use.
Aside from his main goal of finding Darth Vader and blasting a hole in his head, it seemed as if Tony had found a project to hold his interest after all.
*****
Every day for the next week, Tony followed the same routine with a fervent focus.
He got up, sent a text to the kid, took the dog out, sometimes he grabbed a quick breakfast, mostly he skipped it. He always had time for coffee in his lab though, the place where he was beginning to spend most of his waking hours in.
He’d been in there one morning, running diagnostics on a magical clock he’d had Sirius send him, waiting for the results, when Jarvis alerted him to Bruce’s presence in his apartment.
“Tell him I’m in the lab,” Tony muttered, distracted by the results slowly appearing on his screen. “Son of a—”
“Woah, language.” Bruce walked in the lab, the door sliding open automatically when it recognized him, with an easy smile and a crisp white shirt buttoned up nicely. “Hey, Tony, Steve’s looking for you.”
“Come here,” Tony said instead, waving Bruce over to where Tony stood before a wall of screens. Steve could wait, discoveries couldn’t. “Look at this, tell me what it reminds you of.”
Bruce pushed his glasses up then tilted his head at the diagnostic results.
“It looks like the same energy that powers your suit,” he murmured slowly, drawing the same conclusion Tony had. Bruce took a step forward and traced a finger over one of the lines on the screen. “Except way stronger.”
“Exactly.” Tony picked up the clock Sirius sent, the old fashioned one that he warned him shot bullets out of it every hour on the hour. “It’s from this.”
Bruce smiled slightly as he looked at the clock. “Did you really need a StarkClock, Tony?”
“It’s not mine, it’s magic,” Tony said. He carefully place the clock back on the table, the face of turned toward the wall since the time getting too close to the hour for Tony to want to dodge another bullet. “Harry’s magic, my reactor, Loki’s scepter, I think it’s all the same,” he said quickly, eager to share his discovery with an equal who would appreciate it. “If I’m right, then we could have Program Ultron done and ready to go before we even touch that base. All we’d need—”
“Is the scepter that Thor’s on his way to help us get and take back with him,” Bruce cut in. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes beneath his wire-rimmed glasses. “Even if you’re right—”
Which Tony knew he was.
“—then that matrix is going to be back in Asgard not even an hour after we get it. Thor isn’t going to just let you play with it.”
“Then we don’t tell him,” Tony said with a shrug. “He’s not here, and friends do sometimes keep secrets. I think Cap and Nat have been going at it for a while. He seems awfully dodgy lately, doesn’t he?”
Bruce laughed and walked over toward the covered window. He pulled up the blinds just enough for Tony to blink disconcertingly at the storm outside.
“Steve isn’t with Natasha, and Thor’s on his way,” Bruce said. The thunder and lightning that struck the sky only emphasized his words. “I’m sorry, Tony, but I think this one is going to need a different matrix to run it. Why don’t you see if Sirius or Harry…?”
“No.” Tony waved him off curtly and then threw himself in his desk chair so he could study the results on the screen and think. Harry couldn’t do magic outside of school and Sirius’ magic wasn’t like the scepter- it didn’t burn endlessly. If Sirius were gravely injured, or God forbid the man died, then Tony imagined the magic that came from within him would go as well. The scepter was a power source of its own thought, and if Tony could copy its code, study its core, he could have a shield that never lost its power. “If we could just distract Thor long enough for Jarvis to run a scan…”
The entire tower shook with the force of the next strike of thunder out in the sky.
“I think you’re out of time,” Bruce said drily. He glanced out the window again, at the peaceful sky, and furrowed his brows together. “Thor’s home.”
Tony snorted and massaged his forehead with his thumbs. He’d thought they’d have at least a few days after the mission before Thor’s watchdog alerted him that they had the scepter.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Tony sighed and glanced down at his phone, picking it up as a way to stall. “You go on, I’ll meet you guys for lunch or something.”
“It’s six o’clock, Tony.”
Tony looked at the clock on his screen in surprise. “Huh. Alright, well then you go order takeout and I’ll meet you guys for dinner then.”
Bruce scoffed and mumbled something no doubt insulting as he left the lab, but Tony distracted himself with checking up on Harry. As uninformative as the kid was in his texts to Tony, he talked a little more when he communicated with others.
There was a recent thread between Harry and Sirius where Harry described his new defense teacher as ‘nearly as nice as Sirius’ mum’. Sirius suggested that Harry ‘blast a hole through her head as well’ and Tony wondered what he’d missed during the week Harry stayed at Sirius’ home.
Nice lady, your mom? Alive? Not murdered by my kid?
His text to Sirius sent, Tony scrolled through a mess of awkward teenage texts between Harry and Peter. Harry told him that studying with his friends ‘wasn’t as much fun as studying with Peter had been’. Tony grinned to himself and wondered if Peter really could be the key to convincing Harry to stay home after Christmas break. Peter told Harry about Gwen’s internship at Oscorp that made Tony frown.
Tony sent a quick email to Miss Gwen Stacy’s school account, requesting an interview for an internship position at Stark Industries in his media department. The girl was bright, Tony would rather have her intern with his company than the genetic based research facility ran by Norman Osborn.
He would have to first actually make an intern position for Harry’s friend, but Tony usually had a good read on people and he thought it might be worth the hassle later.
The truly interesting messages were between Harry and his friend Hermione. And by interesting, Tony meant that they made him want to pull out his hair at their content.
Ignore him Hermione. He’s being a bastard.
Do NOT text me during class! Pay attention!
All I’ve learned today is that I’m an arrogant idiot with an inflated sense of self-worth that I undoubtedly got from my father.
As true as the accusation was against Tony, it was an odd insult to use against Harry who seemed to have inherited none of Tony’s vanity. Or, more accurately, had it beat out of his head that he was worth anything at all.
Tony sighed as he scrolled through a few more messages between the two teens. Hermione complained about a rule someone was trying to enact, banning ‘muggle tech’. Harry responded with a smiling face and a gun, stating that technically the phones weren’t muggle technology or they would have blown up before then. About the time that Tony read Hermione’s texts reminding Harry to ‘eat his lunch, do not simply glare at it’, he sighed and shut his screen off.
He couldn’t get a general mood from Harry’s messages; he couldn’t figure out if another offer to fly in and drag him home would be well received or not. When Tony had been Harry’s age, he would have dug his heels in harder if his mom had insisted he leave MIT and study somewhere else. Harry and Tony had some pieces of their personality similar, but just the crappy stuff that made it hard to get to know the kid on a deeper level.
Although, Harry was a big fan of sarcasm…
I hope your fancy magic school sucks. I hear Midtown has cute nerds with skateboards and sloppy hair.
Despite it being ten Harry’s time, Harry text back before Tony could even make it from his desk chair to his office door. He only sent a middle finger emoji, but it was enough to bring a small grin to Tony’s lips.
Why are you still up? Don’t you have bedtime there? No bedtime here, just saying.
Just finished detention.
Tony laughed and leaned against the wall, shaking his head.
You’ve been there less than two weeks. How do you already have detention?
I apparently don’t know when to shut up. Maybe it’s genetic. Further testing may be required.
Tony had a true smile at that. Sure, detention sucked, but Harry wasn’t wrong, necessarily, either. Harry was a mouthy thing, all prickly and ready to snap at any true or conceived slight. It was something Tony never got tired of, but he imagined a teacher might not really appreciate.
It’s a Stark trait. When you’re out of school it won’t matter anymore because people will be too scared of you to tell you to shut up.
Brilliant. Can’t wait. Goodnight.
Night, kid, love you.
Tony pocketed his phone and whistled a jaunty tune on his way to Thor’s floor, where he assumed the others gathered. He didn’t like to count his pixels before they were placed, but with a mission coming up, a project to work on, and Harry not seeming thrilled with his school, Tony thought maybe things were looking up for him.