Chapter 3
The next month flies by in a swirl of family bonding, meetings with Nezu, meetings with child services, and meetings with other buyers in Japan. Before any of them realize it, it’s already Thanksgiving the day where Tony is due back in Malibu for the board of directors meeting with Obadiah. He wakes up the morning he’s set to leave and brews coffee for himself and the kid getting two cups ready because gods forbid he forget and let the kid drink from the pot again, Inko would murder him. He looks around the kitchen and notices the new additions to it now that Shouta was with them. The fridge had tests that Shouta had taken and passed that he had been worried he was going to fail, the counter had the kids favorite mug lying face down on it. It was a black mug with a cat tail handle and kitten paws in the front. Tony had caught the kid more than once just holding the mug while it was empty staring into the bottom of it as if it held the answers to the universe in its pottery depths. Tony pauses for a minute, realizing that he’s going to miss this, the kid and all his unusualness, being this close to his sister and his nephew. Hopefully he’ll be back before Easter but knowing how Obie can be he actively questions the probability of it.
He hears the shower turn on in the next room meaning Shouta has woken up and will be out for coffee in a few minutes. Inko will probably be up next so she can do some last minute shopping, luckily being in Japan where Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated it shouldn’t be crowded and she’ll be able to find all the things she’ll need for the dinners which her mom used to make when she still lived stateside. As he hears the shower turn off the coffee pot beeps signaling the end of the brew time, and he pours two full cups for him and his kid adding the ungodly amount of sugar the kid usually puts in his. Just as he’s putting the cup on the table and popping a bagel into his toaster, the kid comes out of the bathroom in his school uniform with his wet hair hanging down in front of his face. Shota slumps into his chair, inhaling the scent of his coffee before downing the entire cup in two gulps. Wordlessly he hands his cup out to Tony for a refill, who rolls his eyes but obliges his charge. Tony takes a deep breath, steeling himself for the last conversation he’ll have with his kid until he comes back to Japan in a month's time.
“Kid it’s Thanksgiving now you know what that means right?”
“You’re leaving soon aren’t you?”
“Yeah kid, I'm leaving in a few hours. Just remember I’m a phone call away if you need me, and Happy, Rhodes, and Inko are staying here with you just in case. If anything happens and you need me make sure you use their phones to call me, there’s people around me back home that I don’t trust enough to let them know you exist. I promise this isn’t because of you, I’m not disappointed or ashamed I just want to keep you safe and happy which won’t be able to happen if they know about you.”
“I know Tony, I trust you. At least when it comes to me, you’ve proven that you care about me the least I can do is trust in that.” And dammit if Tony’s eyes didn’t start watering right there and then because this kid who’s been through hell and back, who had no one in his life that he could really truly trust before, just put honest trust in Tony. Tony of all people. His hard work towards caring for this traumatized child is paying off and he’s getting all sorts of emotional. Taking a deep breath Tony recenters himself to finish the conversation with his kid, “Thanks kid that means a lot. I promise I’ll work hard not to break any trust you put in me.” Tony sees a shimmer enter his kids eyes that he hasn’t seen before. It looks strangely enough like hope. Isn’t that a funny thing he thinks to himself blinking away the tears forming before they could fall. He already knows he’s going to be even more of an emotional wreck once he leaves and he doesn’t want to start too early or it’ll be obvious he has feelings and no one can know that. He pours a third cup of coffee for himself and the kid before setting a skillet on the stove to heat up. He’s no Inko in the kitchen but he knows everyone appreciates his breakfast, and as the last meal together before he leaves for the states he feels it only appropriate to cook for everyone else who’s helping him and Shouta out. He hears the happy giggles of Izuku come out of his bedroom with the hushed whispers of Inko trailing behind him, which makes him smile at the sense of domesticity he gets from just being around them.
As he drops eggs in the pan he starts another pot of coffee for the rest of the household and sits beside Shouta to help him with his advanced classes. It had become somewhat of a tradition over the past few months to help Shouta with his advanced classwork, to make sure he stays up to speed with the stout. Tony thinks he’ll probably miss that most of all while he’s gone, as it is the one way he’s been able to fully help his kid without help. Being a certified genius has its perks when it comes to highschool principals who are smarter than just about any other creature on the planet. Shouta hates the idea of being unprepared for anything which is why his advanced classes are on par with some of the things Tony was learning for his doctorate. Shouta is smarter than just about any other child his age, especially most of the ones in his classes who rely on their quirks to get them through everything in their lives. It makes it so much easier to teach him, he’s a fast learner with a thirst for any knowledge that you dangle in front of him, and a hard worker to boot. As the coffee finishes brewing and the eggs are fully cooked he double checks his checklist to make sure he has everything he normally would have after a business trip and a visit to his sister.
Once he starts thinking about going back to the states, he begins moving his schedule around to fit in talking to his kid and avoiding Obie finding out about him. Thinking about Obie gives him this feeling of wrongness in his gut that he can’t quite fully shake, even after he chocks it up to parental nerves about leaving his kid alone for so long after not being separated since gaining custody of him. He organizes his notes one last time for his Jericho presentation before he sets down plates at the table and divides up the food between them. By the time everything is set up and divided equally everyone in the small house had woken up and were taking seats around the table, joking around with each other and making small talk about their plans for the day. Tony sees Shouta feeding baby Izuku out of the corner of his eye, a shy smile on his face when the baby turns adorably huge eyes towards the teen and reaches for him with fingers covered in baby mush. Shouta sighs before picking the baby up out of the highchair and placing him on his lap so they can eat together, Izuku releasing delighted giggles the whole time. Tony allows himself one more minute to feel (nostalgic) about leaving this behind for a long period of time before he joins in on the fun and begins trying to throw baby food at Rhodey, being stopped at every turn by Inko who uses her quirk to stop the food midair and bring it back down to their plates.
Once the meal is done Tony packs up his bags into the car while Happy starts it up and calls to make sure the private plane will be there when they get there. He gives Inko one last hug goodbye before swinging Izuku around and throwing him in the air. He passes Izuku off to Inko before looking at Shouta one last time. “Remember kid, I’m one phone call away if you need me, I’ll be back before you know it and we can finish that conversation on quirk theories with the Rat when I get back. Don’t talk world domination. I can't afford the stress taking over the world would cause, I have no doubt with the two of you working together you’d succeed and then pin most of the work on my shoulders.”
“I know Tony. Besides it’s illogical to do it right now anyways I barely have experience as a hero. I'm not even out of school yet. And I don’t want to do the paperwork either, we might as well wait until someone else comes along so we can pin the paperwork on them.”
“You frighten and impress me more and more everytime you talk. Now give me a hug, I won't see you for a while.” As the father and son embrace, Inko discreetly takes a picture of the two of them together before clearing her throat to break them apart.
“I wish I could let you ride to the airport with me but I have a feeling Obie will ask for the security footage to make sure I’m coming back alone and he can’t know you exist, at least not yet. Be good for Inko, if you need help with your homework send it through J he’s attached to every room in the house and in our new apartment.”
“Goodbye Tony.” Shouta says with a roll of his eyes, ushering his father out the door. He knows that he’ll miss Tony but he also knows that this is something that has to be done especially if he’s going to avoid any attention being placed on him yet. As the door shuts behind Tony, Shouta allows himself a brief moment to remind himself he’s not being abandoned again, that Tony is coming back, before he swallows his nerves and gets ready for class.
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The ride to the airport is quiet, both Tony and Happy in their own thoughts, the silence only disturbed for a brief moment when Jarvis lets them know Pepper left a message saying Tony is expected to receive an award later on in the month before he leaves for Afghanistan and his presentation of Jericho. By the time they get to the airport Tony is back in his Playboy Billionaire mask and ready to call Obie and let him know he’s on his way back. Before calling him he calls a flight attendant over to sit next to him as he usually has them while flying privately, less suspicious to Obie if he’s acting like the playboy he portrays himself as. The call with Obie goes about as he expected and when it’s over he waves off the flight attendant and settles in for a nap, the emotional toll of leaving his kid making him feel exhausted.
By the time his plane has landed in Malibu he’s feeling refreshed and ready to work as fast as he can on this thing so he can get back to Japan and his family. He races Happy back to the mansion before tucking himself away in his workshop to begin preparations for Jericho. “J ACDC for this one I think.”
“Of course sir, the usual deafening levels I assume.”
“You know me so well J.” The music begins blasting from the ceiling as Tony starts preparing the things he’ll need to work on the missile and plotting out the assembly process in his head. The thumps of the hammer hitting the metal bring him into a trance like state where the only thing in his head is the work on the table. Time means nothing when he’s like this so hours go by without him noticing. By the time he’s done with the first prototype Jarvis is telling him that it’s been two days and he feels almost ready to keel over from exhaustion. He stretches his back out feeling a knot in his neck that he knows is going to kill him for the next week before finally leaving the lab and heading upstairs to get some food before going to bed for as long as his restless mind can manage. The prototype isn’t anywhere near functional but it does give him a baseline for how to build it and what’ll need to be adjusted as he goes. He calls Inko and talks to Izuku and Shouta to see how things are going in Japan before heading to sleep thinking of the best way to go about fixing the issues he’s found in the Jericho designs.
The next month goes by in similar fashion, spending days in the lab working on the Jericho, coming out for food and sleep caused only by sheer exhaustion, and a board meeting Pepper drags him to every time she happens to come to the mansion at the same time that he’s out of the lab for food. Next thing he knows it’s New Years Eve and he’s just about ready for the first working prototype to be shown to the board members. It’s still nowhere near ready for the demo in Afghanistan but he has another two months until that’s scheduled to happen. He’s talked to Inko and Shouta on the phone every time he leaves the lab and nothing much has changed over there, Izuku started saying words no normal one and a half year old would be able to say, Shouta finally started talking to Hizashi again and they’re practically inseparable now, Inko says they’re attached at the hip and always staying at one or the others house. It’s kind of adorable and it’s making Tony feel depressed that he’s not there to witness his kid and his crush being all in puppy love. The preparation for the board presentation goes smoothly and before he knows it he’s presenting Jericho to his board for demonstration approval. He still finds it stupid that even though he owns the company he needs approval just to demonstrate a missile to a customer when none of the board know anything about how his weapons work or are made.
Finally with approval from the board Tony begins making working prototypes of Jericho, working on the size of the explosion, the radius of flying shrapnel, and overall design. The scarier it looks the less likely they’ll have to actually use it. Another month goes by of Tony just testing out different ways to make the Jericho work to be most efficient before he starts finally putting all the separate designs and decisions together. It’ll take him a decent amount of time to make the missile work like it’s supposed to with so many delicate parts and procedures, making sure that nothing will explode in his face while he works on it. And a few weeks later it’s ready to be shown off. A working prototype for the Afghan soldiers with two weeks to spare. For the first time since he left Japan, Tony allows himself a moment to breathe and collect his thoughts. Just a little while longer, he thinks, a little while longer and I can finally go back home and see my kid in person. Now that he’s finally taking the time to figure out his own thoughts and feelings, the feeling of wrong wrongWRONG that he had before leaving Japan is back and worse than before. There’s no reason for him to be feeling like this, everything he had scheduled has been taken care of, his kids doing fine in school and in his “friendship” with Hizashi. Inko and Izuku are fine, they just had their doctors appointments the other day so he knows they’re not sick. Rhodey is stateside training new recruits, Happy is with him in Malibu, and so is Pepper. Nothing makes sense for him to feel like this and he tries to push the feeling back as far as it can get. He puts his public persona back on and calls Pepper to make sure he has his suit ready for the award ceremony or whatever it is Obie and Rhodey are making him attend next week before flying out for the demonstration. After confirming that everything was all set he goes to lay down and tries to forget the feeling of wrong that’s been going through his head for the past months.
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The day started normally for Shouta. He woke up, got Izuku ready while Auntie Inko cooked breakfast, ate and fed Izuku and then left for school. A normal day. What wasn’t normal was being called out of classes two hours early. What wasn’t normal was the grim look on the normally smiling principal's face. What wasn’t normal was Auntie Pepper being there instead of Auntie Inko and little Izuku to pick him up. The growing feeling of dread churned in his stomach making bile rise to his throat. Someone died. He knew this look, it’s the same look everyone had on their face when Shirakumo- he stopped that line of thought before it dug too deep in his brain. Somebody’s dead or left. He couldn’t hear a thing beyond the roaring sound of his blood in his ears, sounding like the strength of ocean waves hitting the walls at the beach during a tsunami. He vaguely feels himself being sat down, and a pattern being tapped on his hands. He vaguely recognizes a smell coming from the side of him that strongly resembles his aunt’s favorite perfume. He can’t see much beyond the blackness creeping into his blurry vision, can barely stand the taste of bile in his mouth that he needs to stop from rushing out. Can barely believe that he exists. Why does this always happen to him. Is he so cursed that everyone who loves him eventually dies or leaves. The last thought that goes through his head is please let Tony be ok before the black takes over the rest of his vision and he slumps to the side of the chair unconscious.
The next time Shouta woke up he was laid across the couch at the apartment, not Auntie Inko’s house which was weird considering he went there everyday after school he doesn’t usually come to the apartment unless he needs space, and then he remembers and the feeling of dread claws its way back up through his veins. He hears someone get up off the chairs at the kitchen counter and walk over, from the sound of the heels he knows this is probably Auntie Pepper. He sits up just as she crouches down in front of him running a hand through his hair.
“How’re you feeling Shou-chan? You gave us all quite the scare when you passed out like that?”
“Just tell me who died. Please.” There’s a hint of desperation in his voice, along with a pained whine like a wounded animal.
“No one died Shouta. I promise. But Tony was kidnapped in Afghanistan, after he gave his presentation the transport vehicles that were bringing him back to base were attacked and they took him hostage. We know he’s still alive, he’s Tony he has to be.”
“But how do you know did they send a ransom video? Anything to tell us that he’s alive?”
“...No Shouta. But he’s Tony Stark, he’s of more use to them alive than dead.”
Shouta lets out another pained cry before lunging forward and sobbing into Peppers neck. Deep gut-wrenching sobs that bring tears to her eyes because this child who’s already been let down so much and had felt more pain than should be possible might just loose another person who loves him. There’s nothing she can do to fix this she has no power to bring Tony back. But she does pray to any and every god she can think of to bring him back safe, if only for this child who needs him so much more than she thought anyone ever could. Shouta’s sobs die down as he falls back asleep, no doubt emotionally exhausted from the news he’s learned and the worry that someone had died, Pepper carefully lays him back on the couch before slipping a blanket over him and walking back to the kitchen counter where she had been discussing possible options with Rhodey. “I know you said there wasn’t much but there has to be something right? We can’t just let him stay there Rhodey, you know this kid better than I do and even I can see he’d be devastated if Tony never came back.”
“Legally there’s very limited I’m allowed to do Pep. We’re going to search for him for as long as we can but they’re more likely to give up the search than start offering rewards for finding him. He may be the best but they still think he’s replaceable.”
“Obadiah’s already acting like the company is his. We need to find him. Thank you for staying longer and looking yourself Rhodes. I know you had plans when you came back.”
“He’s my brother in all but blood Pep. Don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum. Besides there’s no one else I can trust more when it comes to Tones than me. I better get back to the search party I’m expanding the field by another kilometer today and I need to be able to defend that decision.”
“Good luck Rhodes. Please bring him back to us.” With that the conversation ends and Pepper goes back to sit on the floor in front of her nephew. She runs her hands through his hair while he sleeps soothing his brow when it looks like he’s getting restless with nightmares. She falls asleep just like that not noticing the tears running down her face.
Meanwhile across town Inko Midoriya paces her living room thinking of her defenseless, quirkless brother and how much less likely this would’ve happened if he’d had a quirk, or let someone with a quirk take over as head of the company. She bites at her fingernails, and tears at her hair thoughts running a viscous cycle through her brain how wrong she’d been not to push him to let someone else more qualified take over. How much more dangerous it was for him when he had no means to defend himself. She kicked herself for letting him leave her house to go back when she’d had this horrible feeling since he’d arrived that first day in Japan. She prays and prays to gods she doesn’t believe in, or hadn’t believed in until now when she needs them most, to let her brother come back safely and she’ll never let him out of her sight again. She’ll force him to give up the company to save himself, he’s weaker, undeveloped, he shouldn’t have been in charge of such a big task in the first place and how could she have thought otherwise. Everything her mothers ever tried to teach her is wrong, because this never would’ve happened to someone with a quirk. Her last round of pacing ends with her collapsing on the ground in front of her brothers bed letting out an earth-shattering wail and clutching at her chest which feels like it’s burning. Yes for the sake of her brother and everyone who loves him, he shouldn’t be doing anything like this anymore because how can he be trusted to stay safe if he doesn’t have a quirk to protect him.
Izuku doesn’t know what’s happening but he knows somethings very wrong. He can feel something shift within the house, the atmosphere tensing and making tears spill from his eyes, so tense that not a sound will come out of him even though he’s crying harder than he thinks he ever has. He doesn’t know what’s wrong but he knows he doesn’t like it and he wants someone to help him because he’s scared. He hears a loud cry come from a room down the hall that sounds exactly like his mama and this is the final straw that breaks through the tense atmosphere and allows him to wail along with her, finally giving sound to the sobs that keep tearing through him, his little body shaking with the force of them. He doesn’t know why he’s crying but he knows he won’t stop, can’t stop because something is wrong. He keeps crying for his mama but she doesn’t come, she must not be able to hear him over her own screams of despair, eventually both sets of sobs die down as the people letting them out succumb to sleep both feeling something fundamentally change inside them.
In the morning everyone wakes up with swollen eyes and memories of nightmares clinging to them. The scent of depression is cloying thick and heavy around them. They lay there in silence as they weep and sob, eventually stopping to think about other things, how they could’ve stopped it, what he must be going through, how much they miss him. They think about all the efforts being made to find him, how they’re no closer now than they were before, how they keep expanding the area that they’re searching. This goes on for weeks. Weeks of them crying, and hoping, telling themselves there’s nothing they could’ve done but not fully believing it. Weeks of expanding the search, of checking and rechecking every corner of the dessert that they think he could be at. They almost give up hope of finding him and then one day as Pepper is bringing Shouta to school she gets a call that makes her face drop. As she answers it her face turns up, going from despair to delight to confusion. “Are you sure Rhodey? You got him? Is he ok?”
Shouta can’t hear what Uncle Rhodes is saying on the other end of the phone but he can tell by Peppers expression that it’s good news. “They found him? They found Tony and he’s ok?”
“Yeah kid they did.”
“You’re sure he’s ok, this isn’t a dream or a trick? He’s not dead?”
“No kid he’s perfectly fine and already acting like himself. Said he’s been gone long enough already and he doesn’t want to miss any more time with you.”
A smile breaks out on the kids face before sobs rip from his throat. Pepper parks the car before throwing her arms around him and shushing him, telling him she knows and it’s ok, Tony’s back and this won’t happen again, I promise it’s not a dream. Once Shouta is calm again and sits back in his seat, Pepper turns the car around dropping Shouta back at the apartment before taking off to the airport heading back to Malibu. “I wish you could come Shou-chan, it would mean so much to Tony to see you there, but the people we’re hiding you from will be there too and we can’t risk it. Once Tony is stable and given the ok to fly back out here I promise you’ll be able to see him. Until then I’ll video call you when we get back to his mansion.”
“It’s ok Auntie Pep, just make sure my dad’s ok yeah? He’s going to need your help.” He throws his aunt one last smile before she runs out the door and he emails Nezu the good news. The rat had been working tirelessly, and semi-illegally, trying to find Tony with no luck he’d be so glad to know that he was found. As Shouta spreads around the good news to all his family, he has a niggling in the back of his head that says this isn’t over something isn’t adding up, but he chooses to think about that after he sees his dad again.