A Prologue of Sorts
Tony has an excellent memory and, or so he claims, is able to remember everything that ever happened in his life with the exception of maybe a couple of times when he passed out drunk.
Unfortunately, the older he gets the more he feels that this gift is a mixed blessing. Not everything is worth remembering and with the years, the bad memories keep accumulating.
His favourite memories are those of his very early childhood, many decades before the regrets started. This period of his life seems to be mostly bathed in a soft, golden light. He lives in a beautiful house with his parents, Howard and Maria, and two live-in servants, Edwin and Ana, who are a married couple from Vanaheim.
His father is a hard working weapon smith, tough, talented, and ambitious. He is also a clever and cunning businessman who has made a considerable fortune very early in his life, settling down in a wealthy village near the largest garrison on Asgard and systematically building a network in the highest military circles. As an adult, Tony learns that when he was young and before he met Maria, his father was known as a fun-loving womaniser who enjoyed nothing more than partying hard with the officers of the garrison and generously paid many rounds at the inn.
It was hard for Tony to imagine Howard in this role, but he has no doubt that many of the lucrative contracts his father made were signed on such occasions.
Howard, as Tony remembers him, is a hard and somewhat absent figure. Having spotted his son's great talent and potential early, Howard is demanding and often short tempered; it seems he has no clue how to connect emotionally with his child and helplessly barks orders when a simple explanation would have been helpful. Tony remembers being shooed from his father's workshop quite often. Often, he recalls the hurt and the humiliations but in later years, he sometimes wonders if his father tried to protect him that way. After all, a smith's workshop can be a dangerous place for a toddler.
But outside of his father's workshop, Tony is living his best live. His mother adores him, and so do Edwin and Ana. Maria is also from Vanaheim and the three of them bonded immediately when she moved in after her wedding. Sometimes, Howard complains of being made an outsider in his own home; Tony hopes he is just making fun, but he is not so sure because the one thing he doesn't remember is hearing his father laugh.
Still, Maria has brought the Vanir talent for gardening and taste for art and beauty with her. She uses a large part of her considerable dowry to buy more land around the house and creates a garden that soon becomes famous on Asgard. On a day that went down in village history and is still talked of as of this day, the Queen Consort, another lady from Vanaheim, comes visiting.
Now this is a memory Tony cherishes.
He can still hear the rustling of the silk skirts as the ladies-in-waiting moved around the garden. He is not a toddler any more, but he is still a small boy on that day, and the sight of those colourful dresses excites him. He adores those happy, smiling ladies and the ladies adore him back. But the best thing is the sight of his mother proudly walking next to the Queen Consort, accompanied by Ana who is apparently his mother's entourage on this day.
Maria and the Queen are dressed all in white and they're discussing the garden (or rather, the various gardens) in a very serious manner. It had never occurred to Tony that gardening was such an important business; he'd always thought that all the real work (like, the one that matters) took place in his father's workshop and office. For him, the garden had always been his playground where he could do almost anything he wanted to while his mother and Ana were caring for whatever plant or patch they considered interesting at the moment. This pleasant routine was only interrupted twice each day, usually early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when Tony had to go and fill is his little watering can and water the small flower bed that had been assigned to his care.
Now Tony, who had always felt that being made Keeper of the Random Flower Bed totally against his will was a tad unfair, starts to think that he might need to reconsider his opinion.
But then, tea time happens, an event which is naturally close to the heart of any child of Tony's age, and Tony forgets about his fresh ideas for a while. His mother, the Queen, and their entourage assemble in the drawing room were tea is served by several youths from the village who had been hired for the occasion. Ana is sitting next to Maria and the Queen's ladies-in-waiting accept her as one of them.
And Tony enjoys the treats but, unconsciously, makes several mental notes. He'd never realised that the apples for the apple cake came from his mother's orchard. He knew there were beehives in Maria's gardens, but he never knew that that's were the honey for his tea comes from. Or what the bees actually did for their living.
It seems, Tony thinks, that Asgard is a far more interesting place than I thought.
And this is quite a promising observation for a boy who still thinks that the realm stops somewhere close to the front door of his house.