That will be enough

Summer has been quite a living hell because it was too hot for doing anything, and yet there was work to do. At least Tony has now a fixed part-time job in the back of the pawn store where he has ransomed his handkerchief and ring: despite his scrooge manner, the owner liked the kid, and, after Tony has repaid his debt,  the man started to pay to help with the shop, and also to fix broken objects he has acquired before selling them again. Tony lamented that Mr. Cohen may not pay enough, but he did it only with Jarvis because he didn’t want to lose that small income. Plus, the back of the shop was fresh, and Mrs. Cohen brought him an orange juice or a lemonade with cookies for a break.

For the first time, they’ve managed to put some money aside, which Jarvis knew very well they were going to be used once the cold season started, with all the extras included by their landlord. “No frivolousness” was their mantra.

One day Tony arrived at home with a strange vase he called “The Pandora”. It was a gift from the shop owner, officially.

“In reality this is a reward! There was a police inspection, and when they found me in the back of the store fixing a phone they wanted to charge him for tax evasion and minority work or something…” Tony joked. “So I told them I was Mr. Cohen’s nephew and I was just playing around my uncle’s shop for a school assignment. I’ve also said something in Hebrew or Yiddish, I guess… it was something Mr. Cohen kept murmuring… well, I don’t know if I’ve been very convincing but they believed every word! So, to thank me, Mr. Cohen gave me this small vase… which is from a fraud by the way! The lad brought it in one week ago believing to have an ancient Chinese vase, but it’s just another trifle!”

“Did Mr. Cohen reward you with a trifle?” Jarvis asked, a bit pissed.

“Well, I’ve picked it up among the other things he offered… not so much of a choice I have to say! But look inside the trifle! There are some coins, which put together could be around 15 dollars… badly counted. I’m sure Mr. Cohen knew but he gave it to me nevertheless. Problem: the coins are all attached to the vase probably with some glue… the easiest solution is to break the vase, but maybe you have another idea… it’s a fancy vase by the way! We can use this to put our spared coins instead of the drawer!”

Jarvis had indeed an idea on how to unglue those coins: the idea involved oil, dish soap, and a toothbrush, all things (but an extra toothbrush) they’ve already at disposal. It took them a couple of evenings of work, but in the end they collected 16.53 dollars (minus the expense for a new toothbrush), and a fancy vase they now used to put spared coins.

When he looked at it in the first daylight, Jarvis recognized that it was smaller but very similar to the big Chinese vase they had in the living room at the Stark Mansion… the same vase he has gifted to Howard and Maria for their wedding under Ana’s suggestion… the same vase with which Stane was going to smash Jarvis’s head before… but Tony snorted in his dream, and Jarvis was brought back to reality.

“Tony? Wake up, my boy!” he called him by ruffling his hair as always. The boy stirred like a little cat and then he smiled at him, opening his eyes. That made Jarvis’s day: these small moments of happiness were enough to endure all the rest.

That Sunday afternoon, they used the money inside the Pandora to allow themselves a decent ice-cream at the park. Jarvis has also found a small baseball ball in the garbage the day before, so they have played together on the grass like a normal family. It was funny.

______________________________________________________________

After the hot summer, September arrived with frozen winds that made everyone sick. Jarvis too got a small fever for a couple of days, but he must be made of steel because after one day in bed he was like new, and he took another day off only because, in the meanwhile, Tony has taken the fever as well.

Jarvis thought he was going to last only a couple of days, and indeed the boy was feeling well and he assured he could have remained at home alone. But on the evening of the third day, when Jarvis arrived home with a bowl of hot food from the soup kitchen, the boy was in bed with high fever, sweating and trembling hard. He was also hallucinating because he kept calling him for help, by saying there was a monster chasing him, and that he was a naughty boy, and his father hated him because he was a useless broken toy.

Jarvis was desperate, and dared to knock at every door to ask for medicines to low the boy’s fever. Finally, a guy named Santino called for him a young lady named Claire Temple: she was a nurse and, despite she didn’t live there, she immediately went to see the kid and prescribed him the right medicine. She had some at home, and for that night they were fine. But Jarvis had to use the money in the Pandora vase to buy the other medicines and to take some days off his jobs to attend to Tony until he was out of danger. Luckily for them, Mr. Dolan brought them some soup, and father Latom also passed by with something for both the boy and the father; both of the men also spoke with Jarvis’s masters and they made sure he would have maintained his jobs, although he wouldn’t be paid for those day offs. But it was a huge comfort for Jarvis, while he kept looking after Tony for the following three days.

In the end Tony went well quite soon but he remained extremely weak and he didn’t manage to leave the bed for days and his breath was very hard especially at night. To help him, Jarvis has learnt to sleep sat on the bed, with his back against the wall, and the boy sat on his lap rolled up in a covert. They also used Mrs. Cardenas’s trick with mint and hot water to help him breathing, and during the day Jarvis fought against the “mold monster” in their house.

In their neighborhood once again other poor kids weren’t as lucky as Tony, especially younger ones.

In their same building, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson lost both their kids, those Carl and Jacob that Tony has described as two little pests and has helped watching in exchange of food or the use of the oven. Jarvis knew they were sick as well, and one night he just heard a desperate howl coming from upstairs. Everyone went out in the corridor to see what has happened: when Jarvis realized the tragedy, he only managed to close inside his room and hug his sleeping hard-breathing boy again, by pushing away the unimaginable from his mind. The Jacksons moved away few weeks after the funeral of both their kids. Both Jarvis and Tony were quite shocked. On the media, only Ben Urich from the Bulletin addressed the issue by titling “The innocents’ silent massacre”.

Tony was still a bit weak when the school started again. Jarvis left him home for one week more, then the boy managed to go, even if Jarvis sacrificed a bit of their savings to have him taking the bus every day to avoid the cold.

After one month Jarvis was summoned by the headmaster once again, because the boy hasn’t shown up during the last 10 days.

Jarvis had two ideas of where he could possibly be: the first was at Mr. Cohen’s shop, but he got confirmation that the kid arrived there only in the afternoon as they’ve established; the second was the public library in the nearby neighborhood, since the boy liked to spend his time there whenever he could. It took a good 2 hours of walk from their apartment, so how the kid managed to be home on time, it was a mystery. Thanks also to America Chavez, who worked there as a security guard, Jarvis got confirmation that the boy passed his time in the library, technology section.

One morning Jarvis took a day off (an unpaid day off) and simply followed him and witnessed how he fast walked his way in the cold to the library where he spent time studying from huge volumes about mechanics and circuits. He has a notebook Jarvis has always seen him with, on which he sketched things. Jarvis deduced he spared the money of the bus to take something to drink there. Tony was so absorbed by his work that he didn’t notice that Jarvis at some point has arrived behind him and was looking at his sketches with interest. When he saw him stopping his writing, the man asked: “I beg your pardon, but where’s the kid section?”

Tony practically jumped on his place, and he turned to face him in dread panic. Jarvis has thought of mocking him and then scolding him, but instead he had to calm him down, by stating he was not angry and, most of all, he wasn’t going to beat him. He had a perfect idea on where this thought came from, but it hurt to see how some damages were difficult to be cured.

“I’ll never touch you with a finger, my boy” he stated with his hands raised, until Tony was persuaded at coming closer.

“I- I can explain…” he said. “There’s this winter expo at school, scientific stuff… there’s also a price… a money price… I wanted to win it, so I was working on it. This is actually homework!”

Jarvis has sat by his side, tenderly caressing his head: the most astonishing thing was that the kid was being honest, and he wasn’t not thinking that he had to still go to school while he was working on a side science project. That was Howard’s method, with the lack of formal education to his son! Whenever there was a job to do, Howard closed himself in his office or lab until he has finished his task, and instructed the boy at doing the same… Probably the kid was completely honest in not knowing that it was not how school normally worked!

“And what do you want to propose?” Jarvis asked instead, quite interested in Tony’s sketched.

The boy shined and showed him his sketches: apparently he had in mind something to filter water and made it drinkable even in the poorest districts, like their own.

“We will spare tons of money!” he stated. “However, I don’t have the money to buy the pieces so I hope they will entrust my project, give me the price, so with the money I’ll build a prototype and then I’ll present it for a patent. And maybe a company will buy the patent and we’ll be rich again!”

It was indeed a nice plan and a perfect project: Jarvis could recognize Howard’s spirit in it, but also something original, something that screamed “Stark” from every piece of the papers. And that was the problem.

“I- I don’t want to disappoint you” he started, feeling his heart heavy, “but you can’t win that price, my boy… actually it’s better if you go back to school and forget about that competition!”

“But why?” Tony asked aloud, astonished. “It- it’s a good stuff, I swear! I won’t disappoint you, I promise! I’ll win, and I’ll make you proud! I’ll be useful!”

“That’s not the point, my boy!” Jarvis explained patiently, while in reality he wanted to scream. It wasn’t fair, he knew. “I’m pretty sure if you go to that expo you’ll win, and everyone will write of an anonymous kid in a poor part of Hell’s Kitchen who has invented a brilliant water filter… and that’s the problem! Because when they’ll look at your picture, someone is going to recognize you, when they’ll read your project they’ll recognize the style… and we can’t… you can’t be recognized…”

Tony got it one second later.

It was painful to see the light of creativity disappearing from his eyes, while he put his notebook down on the table.

He didn’t say a thing, but he closed the books he was studying and put them back at the right place, one after the other. Jarvis helped him with the ones in the highest places, but Tony didn’t utter a word until they were back home, and also when he came back from his work at Mr. Cohen’s shop. He didn’t say a word about the dinner Jarvis has made (a very good risotto with zucchini). After dinner he opened his school books on the kitchen table and listlessly did the homework Jarvis has brought him back home from school: it took him 20 minutes, also considering he had to write a short paragraph for the literature teacher. Jarvis saw him erasing the writing a couple of times before throwing a piece of paper away, and writing in a new one.

While he was in the toilet preparing himself for the night Jarvis took a look at his writing about “Dreams for the future me”. On the official paper Tony has written: “I sometimes dream about a place with many trees and a small lake. I’ll go fishing there with my father. I dream to go there again and to spend next summer fishing with my family. I dream to do something important in my life, and to make my father proud.” Jarvis noticed that he has always written “fathers” and then deleted the plural marker. 

“Good night, Jarvis!” Tony mumbled, carving his way under the coverts.

“I’ll join you in a minute!” Jarvis said.

But before he did he took the piece of paper Tony has thrown in the trash and read what the boy has written: “I dream to have my life back. I want to go home.”

______________________________________________________________

Autumn run like the winds that kept flowing in the streets. It was a really cold Autumn, which left the place to an even colder winter. While December was approaching, Jarvis realized that their apartment was the only one with the heating functioning, while others lamented again with the landlord.

“He’s cheating on that, but I’ve blocked the access to our room from the basement… he won’t notice if you kept lamenting like the others, so please do it!” Tony explained one evening, while he was doing his homework.

“That… that’s amazing!” Jarvis told aloud. He saw the boy lifting his eyes with a sparkle of proud. “Could you do the same for the others?”

The sparkle passed and he lowered his head on the book again. “Only if they pay me…” he replied.

That was when Jarvis realized that his joyful little fellow has turned dull and almost sad. He has been so absorbed by the new work father Lantom has managed for him (always a cleaning service, but at least with more working hours and a better payment, so no need for another job), he has been so focused on providing him food that he hasn’t realized that Tony was like lifeless.

He went out quite early in the morning while the kid was still sleeping; Tony himself has created an alarm that wakes him up with Jarvis’s voice, and he regularly went to school (or, at least, the headmaster hasn’t summoned him again), then he had lunch with the remaining of the previous dinner and went to Mr. Cohen’s shop to work a couple of hours till evening, when they met again for dinner. Usually they were both quite wasted to speak a lot, and after dinner Tony did his homework and went straight to bed. Jarvis preceded or followed him according to the amount of Tony’s homework or his own level of exhaustion.

He was so absorbed by everyday life that he hasn’t realized Tony has stopped talking about his ideas and projects how he usually did. Even on Sunday during the Mass he was strangely silently, and whether they spent the afternoon around he hasn’t spoken about algorithms to predict the winds’ blowing or the cloud forms. And they have also stopped inventing stories of knights and monsters.

When have this started?

“How… how was that scientific expo at your school?” Jarvis asked then out of the blue with an idea taking form in his mind.

He saw the boy frowning, his pencil falling to the ground.

“I don’t know” he mumbled while he took it back and pretended to be focused on a geometry problem. “I had to finish my homework…”

“Tony, listen…” Jarvis started.

But the boy closed the books and raised. “You know what? I’m very tired! I’ll finish it tomorrow morning, now I’ll go to sleep. Goodnight, Jarvis!”

He remained speechless, completely taken aback. “Good… goodnight, my boy!”

He couldn’t manage to sleep, laying in his bed and hearing his boy breathing by his side (even if he started on his side of the bed, during the night Tony moved to spoon against him like always). They were financially more stable even if they had to count every coin, and yet the kid appeared sadder than before, like he wasn’t seeing anything else apart from the fixed routine school-work-sleep and the Mass on Sunday. And he has also sold his book of “Advanced mechanics”! Jarvis has discovered it with pain when Tony has arrived home with a different pair of old shoes on.

“I’ve broken mine on my way to school and there was no way of fixing them!” he said. “But don’t worry, Jarvis. I’ve sold the book… it didn’t provide us anything, did it? So, don’t worry for the money!”

Jarvis realized he was like losing or, better, suffocating his sparkling genius… well, not under his watch!

He made up his mind and he spared a bit of money by taking it from his own lunch and small expenses. That same Sunday Tony was ready to go to church as always but Jarvis surprised him.

“We’re not going to the Mass, today, my boy. Today we’ll go on an adventure!”

He was immediately interested, even if not fully persuaded: he didn’t work well with out-of-routine events.

“Where?” he asked, with a bit of curiosity.

“It’s a surprise!”

“For what? There’s no birthday or something… and I’m quite sure Christmas it’s after some months…”

“Actually Christmas is next week, my boy!” Jarvis smiled tenderly at him, while he guided him towards a bus. “And you should have noticed if you were listening to father Latom’s homely!”

“I was more focused on the acoustics of the room” Tony confessed. “It’s actually quite good everywhere but in some places the voice arrived with an echo and I can’t get why. It seemed the same everywhere…”

“This explains why every Sunday you make us changing seats!” Jarvis smiled. So at least he hasn’t lost his wit completely. “And I guess you’ll find interesting stimuli where we are heading!”

Tony was more than enthusiast when the bus stopped in front of the New York Hall of Science and Jarvis waved him to jump off.

“This is but an anticipation over Christmas, my boy!” he told him, passing him the tickets. “Now, hurry up! There’s a lot to see!”

Tony for once was speechless. He tried to act cool, but after 10 minutes he was running around, experimenting, reading the labels, fixing and trying things when he could. He was so good to see him so full of life and ideas that Jarvis didn’t feel tired by running behind him one room after the other. Actually, he reminded him of when he did the same at Stark Industries, by following the kid around one lab after the other and managing him not to hurt himself. It was a pleasant memory.

He forced Tony to take a break for lunch, and he surprised him again by allowing a cheeseburger with fries. He also added a big milkshake for Tony only: the boy widened his eyes when he saw how large it was.

“Can we… can we allow this?” Tony asked, perplexed.

“Don’t worry!” Jarvis smiled down at him. “I’ve spared some money… and the new job father Latom’s has got me is paid fair! And we can also count on your money from Mr. Cohen for the weekly expenses. But I’ve spared some money, so today I’m asking you not to worry about the money and enjoy the day off! You’re officially out of duty, Mr. St… I mean, my boy!”

He mentally cursed himself.

Tony was staring at him intensively. Nobody said nothing for a while.

“There are my father’s inventions too… and the story of Captain America’s serum” Tony said just to break the silence.

“I’ve seen them, my boy” Jarvis added, only to follow this trend.

But Tony has not lost the point. “Nobody has called me with my real surname since a while, Jarvis” he said. “It was…  weird!”

“Apologies, my boy” Jarvis said. “I’m… I’m sorry if I’ve caused you an unpleasant memory and maybe ruined this amazing day… I only wanted to have something back from our old life, you know? Like when we went at the Children’s museums or something… I think we both deserved it! But especially you! You are a smart brilliant boy, Tony, and I don’t want you to become less than you were because of the situation we are in!”

“And so you thought on a field trip here to… stimuli my creativity?” the boy asked, with a sarcastic tone so weird in his still childish voice.

“That was more or less the idea…” Jarvis replied, half embarrassed half astonished of how easy the boy read him. “Is it… is it working, Tony?”

And he saw him opening in one of his big warmth smile. “Yes, Jarvis! It’s working! Thank you! This is an amazing Christmas present!”

They finished the tour in the afternoon: to be honest, they were kicked off by the security guards because the Museum was closing. Tony lamented he didn’t have had time to visit the shop, but Jarvis was glad they didn’t because he didn’t have any money left to buy anything more expensive than a pin… which he has already bought him when the boy wasn’t watching. Now Tony was wearing it very proudly on his jacket.

Jarvis was glad he hasn’t grown much so his old warm jacket still fitted him, even if he had to patch it; but he had to come to terms that the boy has gained some inches. Still, he was like a child and he was really impressed by the Christmas’s Eve at the church, and the midnight Mass: the choir was indeed exceptional! After Mass they were serving hot soup for Christmas and they took a bowl for the following lunch that froze during their trip back.

They arrived home quite late, both very cold and in need of a hot cup of tea to warm up. And while Tony was preparing it Jarvis took something off the wardrobe and put it on the table.

“A present?” Tony asked without understanding. “For me?”

“Do you see someone else here?” Jarvis mocked him. “Go on, open it… I’m sure you’ll like it!”

Tony was almost crying with joy when he unwrapped the package and found the big book of “Advanced mechanics”. He looked at the book without a word, ruffling through the pages astonished.

“It’s a second-hand book and it had a previous owner” Jarvis clarified, by pointing at the notes someone has written on it. He indicated them and asked: “Do you recognize this writing?”

Tony stared at it for a while, then opened the book on the side cover: his own initials “T.S.” were there, handwritten by himself at age 3 when he has been gifted this book from his father Howard after having insisted with his mother at the bookshop and scaring the poor shop owner.

“How… how do you…” Tony was on the verge of crying, or, better, crying but with joy.

“You told me you sold your book... your favorite book to be precise! You sold it to buy your shoes not to have me worrying for it. But this wasn’t fair! So I’ve spared money and I’ve asked Mr. Cohen whether you’ve sold it to him, but he denied. Then he indicated me some bookshops who might have bought it. I’ve searched twenty-six different second hand bookshops before finding it! The owner pretended it was barely new and he has canceled some of your notes, but I’ve recognized it immediately and called his bluff. We bargained a bit about the price but in the end we reached a fair compromise!”

Tony was overwhelmed by everything, so after a moment Jarvis went next to him and hugged him tenderly. As he used to, the boy snuzzled against his neck.

“I can’t give your life back to you, my boy” he whispered to him. “But I’ll do whatever I can to take care of you… all of you! Body and soul!”

“Thank you, Jarvis! I mean… really!”

__________________________________________________________

The New Year has started well.

It has snowed in New York and many schools were still closed, including Tony’s one. In order to spare on the heating, Tony was spending the whole day at Mr. Cohen’s shop. The man has made clear the pay would have remained the same, but since the first day he provided him lunch for free at his home above the shop, by saying that his wife has insisted. Tony worked and studied in the back of the shop, and Jarvis realized he was starting to learn also a bit of Hebrew from the Cohens. 

Jarvis was working for the cleaning company and twice or three times a week at the soup kitchen. Their work there has doubled, and Jarvis has come to realize how many people in search of a hot meal were there: he considered himself lucky because for many of them that hot meals were the only ones in the week, while he and Tony at least managed to have lunch and dinner every day, and sometimes an extra on Sunday. Tony had also his breakfast every morning, while Jarvis was more than fine when he managed to have a bit of old bread for himself.

He feared that the cold temperature was going to make his boy sick again, but luckily he only caught a bad cold that forced him in bed for precaution for three days. According to nurse Temple, that was because their apartment didn’t have as much humidity as others… And Jarvis knew he had to thank Tony and one small inventions he has made by using discarded piece bought at Mr. Cohen’s shop, because at the beginning the mold stains covered almost all the ceiling and they kept coming back despite Jarvis’s efforts.

“We’ve almost killed the mold monster, my loyal squire!” Tony has joked that evening, while Jarvis was serving him a hot soup in his bed.

“Easy, my knight! And eat it all like a brave boy! Here you go!”

The boy seemed to have been reborn after their trip at the museum, and despite their economic conditions were far from being stable, Jarvis was starting to consider if with a bit of effort from his part he could have managed to rent for them a better apartment… maybe one with a living room with a TV, and a separated bedroom, and a bathroom with a tub and not only a shower, but especially with hot water everywhere. Even a small tub would have been fine… gosh, he missed a hot bath!

Sometimes, Jarvis liked to dream about their new home with his eyes opened while he was cleaning floors. His boss, Amanda Waller, once made a prank on him because he was distracted and lost in his thoughts. Jarvis ended up all wet with stinky water, but it was indeed a funny prank and he laughed with everybody else. Jarvis found his new job fine, much better than his previous ones, and his humor was also getting better. His co-workers were more or less in his own conditions, and many of them have many children at home; some were also former employees ruined by the financial crisis. They had a sort of ritual of buying a couple of journals and read it together during the lunch break, while they discuss the principal news, in particular the economic ones: they divided the small expense among them and it was fine, quite stimulating too. It was like a small reading club, and everyone was benefitting of that small break from their ordinary job. And it was also funny because they could integrate the news on the journal from what they’ve heard at the offices they were cleaning.

February was a bit warmer, and although they had winter last ditch effort, with a generous snowing at the beginning of March, the temperature were raising.

Jarvis thought nothing was going to disturb his good humor, until one Sunday evening while they were having dinner the bulb over their head literally exploded out of nowhere.

“Are you hurt, Tony?”

“No, I’m fine! But that’s weird! I’ve checked on the electric system last month, and I’ve changed the bulb… maybe it was defective!”

They had to throw away what remained of their dinner because of the possible pieces of glass (lucky for them, they’ve almost finished), then Jarvis kept the door open to see what they were doing while Tony cleaned the floor. He also took the broken bulb off, but they didn’t have another one, so they used the bathroom small light above the sink to see what they were doing before going to bed a bit earlier. They spent the time talking: they still loved to invent stories and Jarvis has found himself particularly good at this since the first day they arrived there. That time he imagined a ghost who has come visiting them and breaking their bulbs. Tony got a bit scared by the idea, and passed the night quite closed to him, even if he pretended to be fine.

The following morning Jarvis woke up and went to work as always, but he was having like a bad feeling. His neck was hitching a bit, and although he knew there were perfectly rational explanations for this (humidity, the wind, aging, the work, having slept in a bad position and so on), somehow Jarvis felt there was something more, like a bad omen.

He got confirmation when later that morning his boss called him with a sense of urgency: Amanda Weller was strict and very well-organized, but most of all she respected her workers and pretended to be respected back. Jarvis and her were on very good terms because of this. And she was also of the caring kind, so when he heard her alarmed tone, Jarvis knew that something bad must have happened to his boy.

“Elm!” she called him from her office that morning while they were charging the van for the second building. “Elm, you should leave now and go to your kid’s school! The headmaster has just called and there’s a problem with Tony! She seemed very upset and said you should hurry!”

His world cracked a part and he felt like he was lacking air. They needed to have him sit down and drink a glass of water before the boss could give him the keys of one of their other van. She told him to bring it back the following day and to worry only about his boy.

Jarvis rushed to the school by fearing the worst. When he arrived at the headmaster’s office, she looked indeed extremely pissed but one can tell both her and the literature teacher were quite worried as well.

“That’s simply unacceptable!” the headmaster shouted to him. “It’s not the first time your kid caused troubles, but this! If he had mental issues you should have told us before such episodes! How could we know?”

Jarvis tried to remain calm while he asked what has happened.

The literature teacher looked quite mortified while she explained that she was used to make this thing every Monday: she brought different journals into class and read the main news with the kids in order to help them understanding how to read a newspaper, to filter and organize information on the page, and also to compare the sources. Jarvis thought it was a good thing, and he didn’t get what was the fuss about, even if he had to admit he hasn’t seen the journals yet because it was a thing he did on his lunch break. But the teacher was going on explaining that he has divided the class into groups as always, and Tony was silently and calm, almost not interested… again, as always. He was keeping writing on his notebook, a thing they’ve all come to terms with, until he followed the lesson and did his homework.

One kid from another group was reading aloud the news of the day from the Times, while Tony has jumped up, took the journal his group has been assigned to and started to read through it by mumbling some odd words they didn’t get. At first the teacher hasn’t realized what was going on, until Tony has started to cry and when they’ve tried to touch him he had had an hysterical crisis: he had shouted and thrown objects to everyone who came close to him while he mumbled “naughty boy… broken toy…” like a litany. They needed to ask two security guards to force him down on the floor. All his schoolmates were astonished or horrified and they needed to be calmed down.

“This is simply unacceptable!” the headmaster stated. “He has hurt our teacher here by throwing her a book…”

“It’s not the problem, headmaster, I’ve told you!” the teacher replied, quite concerned. “The problem is he had an hysterical crisis and he could have hurt himself! And he has scared the others…”

Jarvis was petrified: apart from the first months, Tony hasn’t had a crisis in almost a year, and certainly not something like the thing they were describing. And even back there he never exploded in public, always managing to hide somewhere, for instance in a corner or in the market’s toilet, when the crisis hit. What could have caused this?

“Bad omen…” a part of himself thought.

“May I see the journal he read?” he asked aloud.

Despite everything, he wasn’t ready for what he read. The front page of the Bugle opened with the title “A criminal had her justice served”, while the article signed by J.J. Jameson stated: “Although sentenced twenty years for second degree murder, Maria Carbonell-Stark, the notorious assassin of Obadiah Stane, has died yesterday for complications of her cancer disease. She was detained in a federal prison in Texas, and her body was going to be buried there until further notice. Two months ago, his traitor husband, Howard Stark, has asked their lawyers to present a petition to revise her process in light of new evidences he claimed to have against the vice-CEO of Stark Industries. Obadiah Stane has been ruthlessly assassinated by a woman he believed to be a friend and in her very living room at the so-called Stark Mansion, now reduced to a bunch of ruins. It hasn’t been possible to reach Howard Stark for a comment after the recent turn of events, but for sure Mrs. Stark had what she deserved. Nobody has also heard a word of the so-called ‘golden boy’ Tony Stark, who accredited sources wanted to have rushed to Europe with Stark’s loyal watchdog Edwin Jarvis, a man discharged with dishonor from the Army during WWII…”

He had to read it twice to get it full. But if he was looking for confirmation, the picture of Maria Stark at her trial, right after her sentence: she was looking proudly at the jury like she couldn’t care less and despised them all.

Jarvis had to sit, too overwhelmed to realize the implications of everything, to remember that, despite Tony called him “Jarvis”, he has registered him there under the fake name of “Costanzo Zante”, and he has rented their apartment and his job as “Elmonzo J. Zante”, a fake identity Howard Stark managed to give them, together with official adoption papers.

Jarvis came back to his senses, when he realized the headmaster and the teacher were repeatedly calling him, in red alarm because he has gone pale as a ghost and has collapsed on a chair. He reassured them he was fine, then he refused to answer their questions by simply asking to see his boy and to bring him back home. He only wanted to go back to their shelter and hide there, mourning their loss together and in peace.

“That’s the second part of the problem!” the headmaster replied, blushing. “If it wasn’t enough, while they were trying to contain him, your boy has kicked one guard on his nose, and punched the other on his… well, down there. Then he has run away! He has jumped from the corridor window, and only by chance we were at the first floor! And our teacher had to stop the guards from shooting him…”

“SHOOTING MY BOY????!!” Jarvis shouted standing up, a pure fury running through his veins. “You have contained a kid in the middle of a panic crisis by having two armed guards pushing him on the floor??? And they have tried to shot my boy?!? And now you told me he has jumped out of a window and gone… since when?”

“Mr. Zante…” the headmaster tried, taken aback by the explosion of that quiet old man.

“Since when has my boy disappeared from your school?!”

“Three hours” the teacher revealed. “It happened three hours ago!”

Jarvis was completely astonished.

“We’ve tried to look for him before calling you!” the headmaster tried to justify. “Since you were working…”

Jarvis slammed his palm on her desk, having a drop falling from her coffee directly on the newspaper.

“Don’t you even dare!” he hissed. He had to breathe a couple of times, then he glanced again at the article, where the coffee stain has like underlined the words “Stark Mansion”. It was like a sign...

“I’ll tell you what we’re doing” he stated, calm and icy. “Now I’ll collect my boy’s things while you prepare his reports and all the papers to move him to another school. You won’t mention what happened today or I’ll swear to every gods I will drag you in the biggest trial you’ve ever seen! And I’ll bring that to the journals you like so much as well… I know for sure that Ben Urich from the Bulletin would have been quite interested in how you treated your pupils with guards here!”

“Mr. Zante, we…”

“NO!” he raised his voice a bit, before regaining control. “Prepare the papers now, and you won’t ever heard of us again. Now, please, show me Tony’s stuff! I need his notebooks in particular, all of them… and obviously his jacket!”

The teacher was quite kind, all things considered, but Jarvis had only one thing in mind: find his boy and keep him safe. He collected the papers from the headmaster and checked if they were okay before greeting his way out.

“Wait! But do you know where the boy has run?” the teacher asked him.

“In the only possible place a 11 years old kid would run if scared!” Jarvis replied. “Home…”

__________________________________________________________

He arrived at the Stark Mansion when the sun has already gone to sleep.

It took him a while to exit New York traffic, and besides his security he has wanted to check that Tony was not at their actual shelter, or he hasn’t been seen there, or in one of the other places he used to go. Mr. Cohen confirmed to have not seen the boy yet, and asked whether he was sick since he hasn’t missed a day apart when he got that cold. Jarvis told him he was missing and begged him and his neighbors to keep an eye open if he eventually came back. He left Tony’s copy of his house keys to a neighbor on their floor, in case the boy showed up there.

But while time went by and the list of places Tony used to go reduced, Jarvis was sure the boy has gone to the Stark Mansion. How and, most of all, whether he has managed to arrive safely he couldn’t tell. He was extremely worried he has got lost in New York, or he has been hurt by a car or someone else with bad intentions… he was a boy still looking like a child, alone in New York city, in dread panic and after having received a very traumatic news in the worst possible way. And, notoriously, Tony was very bad at orienting.

Jarvis canceled tears from his eyes. He needed to focus now and not to allow himself to paint the worst case scenario. Now he would have driven till the Stark Mansion and looked for his boy there. He had to be sure he went there, because otherwise he didn’t know what to do.

The big gates of the Stark Mansion were opened like that day when police officers and FBI agents have rushed in and dragged Mr. and Mrs. Stark away under their son’s watch, before forcing him and Jarvis outside as well, where they inspected their luggage, threw many things on the ground and then kicked them off with almost nothing but their clothes and few things they’ve managed to be allowed to take away, like a pajama and the boy’s book. He remembered Tony’s breath on his neck while they took a taxi, he remembered how the boy has turned around, with his hands on the back window while he was seeing his home and life disappearing. He remembered when the taxi left them in one road they didn’t know, and only because Jarvis has finally come to his senses to tell him to stop. He remembered when he has desperately looked for a room in a random hotel, and then when they had to leave their shelter because of the boy’s crisis, and when they were running out of money and his credit card was not functioning anymore. He remembered to have paid the hotel in cash, counting the coins one after the other, he remembered to have sold his beloved suit to pay the hotel, the next taxi and then the advance payment required to rent their actual house, that squalid one-room apartment they’ve managed now to turn into their safe shelter. He remembered Tony’s astonished and panicking eyes while he didn’t understand what they were doing there, why they couldn’t go home, while he hugged at him in panic at nights because he woke up and he didn’t know where he was or with whom, then he wanted to go home, he begged him to bring him home out of delirium when he had high fever. He remembered his own panic when the fever wasn’t lowering, and his boy was breathing hard, and he has feared he was going to die in his arms like Ana did!

Now Jarvis was back in front of the main door of the Stark Mansion, and without surprise he found it open behind the sigils. They haven’t closed it, but there was the rumor there was like a curse there, and it was quite isolated. The inside was cold and messy, for sure because of the police passage, but also for random guys who have left their marks on the walls with the paintings. Jarvis felt his heart sinking while he passed across the rooms that he used to call home, and automatically collected fallen things from the floor and put them in order, closed the drawers left open, and also a window that was slamming in the living room. He didn’t turn the lights on despite he was getting dark because he knew perfectly every corner of those spaces.

He found a candle on the big grand piano and lighted it up. He immediately noticed the big blood stain on the wooden floor, right where Obadiah Stane was shot to death: as he has suspected, the floor needed to be changed. There were also the police signs marking where the body has been found.

But Jarvis was more interested in the piano, all covered in dust apart from some keys and the seat, like someone has been there to play very recently. And the fingerprints in the dust were small ones, so Jarvis knew to have been right: Tony has come home.

He felt relieved and sad at the same time.

He didn’t need to call him aloud to know where Tony was. He slowly made the steps up to the rooms, and when he gently pushed the kid’s door open he saw him there like he has suspected: curling in his former bed, Tony has probably cried himself to sleep hugged at his former pillow, while the glowing stars Jarvis himself has helped him attaching on the ceiling were illuminating the room a bit. It seemed like someone has covered him up and now the boy was just sleeping there as nothing has happened during those awful months.

Jarvis remained there for long, only staring at his boy sleeping peacefully in a known environment while he seriously asked himself whether they could have remained there. For sure, he didn’t want to wake him up, so he could allow him to spend the night… but after that?

Jarvis knew they couldn’t stay, as well as he knew that at first light someone, maybe a journalist, was going to check the house in search of a scoop. He wasn’t worth hiding there only to be kicked out and risking the kid to end up in an institution, maybe a mental one after his public crisis… someone would have made the math if a picture of him was going public now.

He let him sleep, while he put the candle on the floor in the corridor and silently entered the room, with the intention of taking at least a couple of stars from the wall and put it on the boy’s side of the bed. He didn’t think they were going to arrest him for a couple of glowing stars, but the problem was that they weren’t getting away. He took his candle back, and, again silently, he reached the kitchen to take a knife to help himself.

He had to admit he got emotional by seeing his tools, his pans perfectly aligned, his wooden spoons, and his skimmer, other than his various kitchen knives.

He realized only after a long moment something was not right. And that was when the candle light met a wine glass who seemed to have been recently used.

“You should have realized by the lack of rotten food smell, old pal!” he heard a voice behind his back that made him jump.

When he moved the candle Jarvis thought to be seeing a ghost: Howard Stark was standing in his kitchen with wild hair and beard, and old clothes twice his size now, since he was skinner than Jarvis has ever seen him. Only his eyes revealed it was still him under all that misery, but there was a deep sadness in there, which Jarvis knew very well where it came from.

“Mr. Stark!” he exclaimed.

Howard smiled sadly. “No need to be so formal, my dear friend! Take a sit! We’ve lots to talk about and not much time... but first things first: you’ve aged!”

Jarvis didn’t know he was supposed to feel but the joke made him smiling warmly. “I’ve missed this… Howard!” he replied. “I wasn’t expecting to find you here… isn’t the property officially under federal custody?”

“Of course it is! But a man has by law the right of his home if it’s his only home… well, this is not properly my home but Maria’s… as all other properties…”

“So can we move back there?” Jarvis asked, hopefully.

He saw Howard remaining silent for a while, before he answered: “I’d rather prefer you don’t… this is not mine anymore. As I told you, it’s Maria and she is… was… well, I just got the right to live here for a while... well, not exactly here but at your former guardian’s house, but I’m basically living in this kitchen. But it’s very temporary: either they kill me or, as soon as they fabricated more proofs against me, I’ll be dragged away and this house definitively sold… so I don’t want Tony to live that again! I can bet it has been traumatic!”

“Indeed…”Jarvis admitted. But he knew the man in front of him couldn’t have the slightest idea of what they’ve been through.

Indeed, Howard has poured him a glass of wine. “I had a hidden reserve!” he explained. “Do you wish to tell me what has happened to you and my sleeping boy upstairs? Why are you both still here, by the way? We believed you two to be in Italy or France since we couldn’t find you anywhere… and why has Tony arrived there alone on his feet? And why are you dressed like a cleaning guy or something?”

Jarvis tasted the wine for the first time in years and he tasted that small pleasure fully.

Then, he felt ready to tell Howard everything that has happened to them in the last year and half. He told him everything from the beginning, when they’ve been forced out of their house with nothing more than their clothes on. He told him about his credit card, the hotel, the old stinky place that was now their safe shelter, his different works, and about Tony’s pneumonia, the panic crisis, and the school, until that day episode when he has discovered his mother was death by reading a newspaper during class.

When he finished, the other was astonished and trembling so hard that Jarvis feared for his life.

“I didn’t have idea…” Howard murmured with his head between his hands. “I left you money… but they took it… They’ve blocked your card as well, the sick bastards! They wanted the boy… they were telling me they had him, but I knew they were bluffing! In no universe you were going to let them take away your boy! But I didn’t know that aimed at you… that was not what we have planned to… where were the keys? Maria was supposed to give them to you… no, it was on me! I had to give you the documents and also the keys… oh my God! I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… I- I’ve made a mess! I’m sorry…”

And Howard Stark cracked apart, right in front of him. It was so similar to his son’s breaks in that moment, that Jarvis found himself automatically by his friend’s side, holding him until the majority of the crisis was over. And Howard, like Tony, put his head on Jarvis’s shoulder until he has calmed himself down.

“I’ve been naïve and stupid… an arrogant miserable idiot!” the former billionaire was cursing himself. “I knew that Stane was part of a dangerous network and that it could be dangerous to eliminate him… but I wasn’t expecting this! They wanted to annihilate us completely… that’s also why you can’t stay! There’s a chance they’ll burn the house with me inside just to shut me forever… and in that case I’d prefer to be alone!”

“But we could help you!” Jarvis objected. “You can’t do this alone, Mr. Stark!”

“Oh, haven’t I told you? I’m not alone!” he smirked and for a moment it was like in the good old days. “Peggy is retired but she has managed to give me some contacts and they’re investigating. And my former contact, that colonel Fury, has gone on the run for a while, but now he’s back. And I’ve got an old friend who officially threw shit on me… but he did on purpose, since he could become extremely little and reduce me to his same dimensions! A good idea if you need to escape or disappear!”

Jarvis was astonished to hear that: so Howard was not enduring the events without reacting to them, but he was making his countermoves! And Peggy Carter and Hank Pym were working with him!

But still there was something he didn’t get in that story.

“I’ll explain you everything!” Howard promised by pouring them more wine and taking a loaf of old bread. “After all you deserve it! Then it will be up to you whether and what tell Tony about this. Because it regards him even if I was too slow at understanding it! We were all pawns in a game bigger than us… my mistake was to not have considered Tony part of the game because of his age. Their mistake, apparently, was to not have taken you into the equation… But let me start from the beginning, old pal!”

And Howard Stark explained how he has discovered from a shipment failure that his vice-CEO Obadiah Stane, his friend and best-man at his own wedding with Maria, that man he has trusted like a brother was in reality playing both sides with the weapons Howard himself was producing. Stane was selling said weapons not only to the US Army but also to terroristic associations like the Ten Rings and also Hydra, to add insult to injury! But instead of rushing to him with that single proof, Howard made up his mind to figure out the whole network: he has opened the mythological Pandora’s vase and he fell in his own trap. Even before Tony was born he has started to collaborate with a Nicholas Fury, the Colonel Maria Stark has called that awful night. The Starks and this Fury were preparing slowly before the final strike, because they knew that there were corrupted police officers, judges and politicians involved.

“We’ve been stupid because I’ve never suspected Stane had such a network also in the Middle East!” Howard explained. “When you shot him, we weren’t ready and the situation escalated quickly… why do you think we had FBI agents at our door for a simple domestic murder?”

Jarvis only nodded, while his mind was painfully reminding those moments: when he has discovered Tony naked being hit on the couch with his godfather touching him, when he has rushed in and confronted the man, when Stane has overcome him and was about to crush his head with that Chinese vase… and then, the gunshot, the blood, Tony’s petrified eyes…

“And by the way Maria had a genial idea in assuming the blame!” Howard went on, without noticing Jarvis’s discomfort. “Stane has always told his people that Stark’s butler, as they called you, surely didn’t know a thing of what I’ve discovered but Maria probably did… and she did, obviously! I’ve always told her everything from the beginning… so she knew what was going to happen to us that night… she knew she wasn’t going to see our boy again… but it doesn’t matter now!”

He tried not to cry for his death wife, but Jarvis knew how much he has loved her.

He remembered when Howard firstly saw her, his lady killer’s reputation preceding him, but how he has fallen in love for her, desperately. And then the marriage, the honeymoon, and when they bought that same house, with Jarvis and Ana’s dependence. Their mutual desperation because kids weren’t coming and the idea of adopting one. Then Ana’s sickness and death. And when hopes were almost lost, Maria got pregnant and nine months later a screaming little genius named Tony has come to light. He smiled a bit remembering how Maria has looked at both Howard and Jarvis with extreme proud while she was cuddling Tony and she has told them both: “Look what I’ve made! Isn’t it the most beautiful kid in the universe?”

“Among my many creations” Howard mumbled now, “Tony is the one I’m more proud of! And I know his mother thought the same!”

Jarvis felt forced to ask: “Did you know? That she was dying?”

“We all knew we were just buying her more time with the cures, and after her arrest she couldn’t receive her treatments. They told me she was always in huge pain, and in her last weeks she has felt very bad… she probably knew she hasn’t much time left. I don’t know if she corrupted or begged or both but in the end they allowed her one phone call and she called your house. Maybe she was expecting you have come back there with Tony and wanted to talk with him… I don’t know! By a chance I was already there and answered the phone…” his eyes went distant. “I was almost able to see her, fragile but yet determined while she told me her last wishes, she entrusted me with her last words… they were all for Tony: she wanted him to know that she loved him and she was proud of her brave boy! She wanted him to know that she was sorry she hasn’t understood what was happening, who was the monster scaring her brave knight. And that she was proud of him, very proud of him for what he did and what he would do in the future, whatever that was going to be… she would have been proud of him forever!”

Both men were crying remembering the fierce and kind Maria Stark. Jarvis remembered her determination when she has realized what has happened, and her cold blood when he shoot Stane’s body with the same gun he has been killed with, when she took his fingers to scratch her neck and when she put a piece of her dress in his hands, by stating she has killed him in self-defense because he has sexually assaulted her. He has ordered Jarvis to collect Tony’s stuff and his own things and to disappear. And when Jarvis arrived with the luggage, she was cuddling Tony, softly reassuring him that it was going to be fine, the monster was gone, and now he needed to go on an adventure with his loyal squire… and that she loved him and was proud of her brave knight!

Then the cops have arrived, and everything has gone messy!

“Why don’t you tell this yourself?” Jarvis asked Howard after a moment of thick silence. “You know your son is upstairs, sleeping in his old bed…”

“Yes, and I’ve covered him up after he has fallen asleep… I have an alarm telling me if someone come closer so that I can hide. When I saw it was only a boy for a moment I took him for random explorer, you know? A courage game among kids to the hauled house… but then he went to the piano and played those notes, Maria’s song… it was when I’ve realized he was my boy and wondered what he was doing here! And I wanted to meet him… but not like this! This is a coverage, to make them believe I’m wasted and out of the game… but I don’t want my boy to see me like this!”

Jarvis didn’t agree but he knew Howard was stubborn and he didn’t insist. He didn’t have the strength to insist.

“It’s almost dawn” he stated, by looking outside the window. Gosh, he missed his kitchen: seeing the first lights while he was making coffee, then preparing breakfast for everyone starting with Mr. Stark, the tray for Mrs. Stark, wakening up his boy and serving him his breakfast… he missed those simple gestures and intimacy among them. Now he called himself lucky for the few times he managed to have breakfast with his boy on Sunday morning, or to wake him up before going to work.

“There’s no coffee left if you were wondering” Howard said.

“A pity!” Jarvis simply reply. “But as you know I’d rather prefer tea. No, I was thinking I should probably wake up Tony and go back … well, to our shelter!”

“On that matter… wait here for a moment!” Howard stated by raising. He went back after a couple of minutes. “I told you we’ve got all planned, but we weren’t expecting them to act so quick after you shot that bastard! Well, I screw up, but now I can make amend… here! Take these! I’ve hidden them quite well… maybe too well!”

He passed him a bunch of keys. Jarvis looked up at him with a question mark on his face.

“It’s a small flat don’t expect the grand hotel… but I guess it’ll be better than your present shelter as you called it! It has been already put under the name “E. Zante” so it is officially yours… no rent, and only some bills to be paid after you’ll start to use the electricity and the heating. See on the keys there’s the address. You’ll find all the documents inside the apartment, and also some clothes for you… I had put nothing for the kid back then, but I guess you’ll manage for that! I’m just sorry I don’t have another credit card but they are a bit dangerous… As for the flat, the only persons to know about this apartment are now here in this room, so don’t worry!”

Jarvis didn’t know what to say: that was really an unexpected turn of events!

“Thank you, Mr. Stark!”

“No! I don’t deserve it… I’ve been an idiot and put my boy in danger… twice at least! I was supposed to give you the keys together with the papers and money, but I’ve made a mess… I’ve thought to have more time to prepare everything, but then the cops arrived and dragged both me and Maria away! And when I went out I checked there and other known places, but you were nowhere to be found… I’ve thought you were gone in Europe… until I saw my boy there…”

He shook his head before adding: “This is the less I can do. And take this as well: it’s not much money, but it’s all I have left! I’ll ask Hank to give me some more, so don’t worry for me! Take a chocolate with my kid… I mean, our kid…”

Jarvis smiled sadly before parting his way from Howard Stark.

“I hope we’ll see again, my friend!” the man told him. “Otherwise, I’ll know my boy is in the best possible hands!”

Jarvis has already experienced too many emotions, but now he knew the most difficult part was about to come. He sat on the bed next to Tony and watched him sleep for a while: he looked so calm and relaxed while he slept that Jarvis didn’t dare to wake him up. He managed to take two stars off the wall, and then he simply waited until the big pendulum clock down in the living room beat for six times.

He ruffled Tony’s hair and gently called him back from the land of his dreams.

For a moment, he feared the boy wasn’t remembering anything and to be forced to tell him the truth once again. Instead, after a first moment of astonishment, he saw Tony’s eyes turning sad while he mumbled to him: “I’ve made a mess, Jarvis…”

“Hush, my boy… I know what happened… and you need to know your mother loved you and she was proud of you!”

“Did dad tell you that?”

That took Jarvis aback. “Have you seen him?”

Tony shook his head. “No, but I felt he was there, covering me up like he did when I was a baby… or have I dreamt of it? I was so wasted away… you know why … But I’m feeling better now, don’t worry…”

It was only partially true and Jarvis could tell from his face.

“Is he… is my father still here?” Tony asked with a note of hope in his voice.

“No, my boy. He had to go away. He couldn’t stay here for long… and we couldn’t as well! You understand that, don’t you?”

“Bad men have taken my castle…” Tony murmured.

He had to help him standing, and after a pause at the toilet, he helped him down till the van. Tony didn’t say a word for all the time, and Jarvis noticed he was forcing himself not to look at his home disappearing once again behind him. He glanced at the rear window, though, washing tears away from his eyes.

They both remained silent even when Jarvis parked in front of their shelter, and escorted Tony inside their one-room flat.

“It’s better if you stay here today, okay?” he told him. He took out the tranquillizer and asked his permission to give him some drops. After he has drunk them, Jarvis helped him getting clean and then go back to bed.

“Sleep for the whole day if you’ll manage” he whispered to him, with a kiss on his forehead.

He went out again to face the world.

_____________________________________________________

They haven’t referred to Tony’s crisis for the next couple of days.

After the first moments of astonishment and the numerous questions, Jarvis has managed to continue with his previous working life for almost a week. In the meanwhile, Tony was feeling better and three days later he tried to go to work at Mr. Cohen’s shop. Even without Jarvis’s explanation, it was pretty clear the boy didn’t want to go to school anymore.

“We could state we’re doing home-schooling” Jarvis suggested after a brief research. “I have to manage the paperwork and also the programs for your class, and there should be a test you have to take in June, but it’ll be better than going to school, what do you think?”

Tony has agreed, but it wasn’t so easy to plan it all out. So for the moment, Tony was working at Mr. Cohen’s shop every day and studying a bit on the notes in his notebooks (the books were borrowed from the school so they have left them there).

Jarvis knew he had to create a studying program for him. And he also needed to tell him the truth on what has happened at the Stark Mansion.

One Sunday he took the occasion because he has used the remaining of Mr. Stark’s money to buy Tony a chocolate ice cream. He never mentioned the ‘Stark’ name, though, because they were at the park after the Mass, just spending some free time outside. He told him everything. Tony was particularly interested at the idea of a new home even if he seemed a bit afraid to leave their place to face the unknown. He has really transformed it in his shelter, and was afraid to leave it, like he was afraid to leave his home before and kept asking to come back there.

“I think it’s somewhere in the nearby” Jarvis commented. “Why shouldn’t we just go and take a look? If we like the neighborhood and the house, we’ll consider… otherwise, we stay like we are. We have nothing to lose.”

Tony only nodded: he has become strangely silent after his mother’s death, and after the way he has found out. Jarvis remembered how much he took him to come back to himself the first time after their farewell, and he was ready to wait for him for as long as he needed.

They had to look into a map to find the street, and they immediately noticed it was a completely different neighborhood, quieter and, most of all, cleaner. The buildings looked like they’ve been recently restructured, and Tony admired some more futuristic architecture. They reached the right address and realized there was a doorbell under the name “E. Zante”: the keys worked, but they went up floor after floor to check for the right apartment. They found it at the 4^th of six. It was the only civil apartment, because the other doors had the sign of an office over them. Since it was Sunday, it was quite silent… really the opposite of what they were used to!

“The moment of truth!” Jarvis tried to joke, but he too was very tensed when he turned the key and they stepped in the flat.

It smelled like a closed space, but when they turned the lights on they saw a small corridor at the entrance, with a toilet immediately on the right, with only a sink and the WC. Then the corridor opened in a living room, attached to a kitchen in a well-designed open space that made the house looking larger than it actually was. Then there was the bedroom, with a large double bed, a huge wardrobe, and also a private bathroom... with a bath tub! It was a small one, but it was there!

“Tony! Look, there’s a tub!” Jarvis exclaimed with joy. He couldn’t believe it but he was getting emotional by seeing a tub.

He realized that Tony has remained in the living room. When he came back, the boy only pointed at the kitchen. He had tears in his eyes, and Jarvis hugged him before he could fall into another crisis.

“Should we move here, my boy?” he asked him. He felt him nodding on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea as well!” he confirmed. “And think about this: we could put apart the money we now use for the rent, because this is our house now… no more mean landlords or other stuff!”

Tony swallowed a couple of times than he said: “The heating is autonomous, and so it’s the electricity. And there’s hot water… on every sink… and we’ve got a couch… and the pans… check the kitchen, Jarvis! There’s a phone too… This… this is a house… a real one…”

“This is a house, I agree” Jarvis replied with a smile. He was more glad to hear the boy’s voice again than of every small luxuries they had there.

He swore to punch Howard Stark in the face at the first possible occasion for not having given him the keys of this flat before… they wouldn’t have had to go through the mess they went through, and Tony would have suffered less traumas and also risks for his health. But it has happened all so fast that awful evening that also a genius like Howard Stark has stopped working and forgot something. After all, Jarvis was the organized one…

So now he decided to let the past where it belonged, and to think only about the brighter future of him and his boy in their new shelter.

They decided to pack everything and move there the following week after the Mass. In the meanwhile, Tony has got paid by Mr. Cohen, told him they were moving and agreed that he would have worked there only three afternoons a week plus the whole Saturday. The man gifted him a notebook with the Stark Industries logo.

“Someone forgot it there! It’s not worth much, you can keep it for free!” he simply said. But Tony told Jarvis he has been glad of that small act of kindness, and that was Mr. Cohen trying to be generous.

They said their goodbyes to their neighbors but it was a quick thing: after Mrs. Cardenas and the Jacksons have moved, they haven’t developed very closed relationships, and they were glad to avoid their embarrassing questions about the boy’s health and where they were going to live. Jarvis wanted to punch their landlord in the face, but in the end he tried father Latom’s teachings about forgiveness… so he limited to distract the disgusting man, while he knew Tony was sabotaging the sink in his apartment. It called it fair, but father Latom scolded them both. In the end, however, the priest allowed them to use his car for the relocation, if they managed to bring it back by sunset.

“How will you do with your jobs?” Tony asked while they were walking back from the church to their new home.

“I suppose I’ll have to renounce to soup kitchen except on Saturday, because it’s a bit far from our home now. But it’s okay: with the money spared from the rent and your school taxes we can manage to pay the bills and the food we need for the whole week!”

“It’ll be a pity for Mr. Dolan, because your cooking skills are excellent even with poor ingredients!” Tony remarked by jumping as always only on the white stripes.

They stopped to buy some fresh vegetables and fruits, and also a vase of blueberry jam to celebrate. In their new kitchen they’ve found some long-life products and Jarvis had in mind to prepare something special for his kid that night.

But before dinner, Jarvis needed to do what he has been dreaming to do for months: a long hot bath all by himself…

_________________________________________________________

Their new home was a great help to their financial situation, Tony’s health issues, and, most of all, their humor. First, Tony stopped to suffer from that bad cough which sometimes got him, maybe because of the humidity and the mold (they have invented a story about the “mold monster” but Jarvis knew it was a serious issue). Second, they didn’t have to worry too much about hot water and heating: they couldn’t waste, but it was good to take a relaxing hot bath after a day of work. Third, it was amazing to have two separated rooms for living and for sleeping: it gave them, and to Jarvis in particular, a sensation of order and balance; and the couch could be good whenever Tony decided he wanted to sleep alone and not with his old man.

For the moment it didn’t seem an issue: they’ve celebrated his 12^th and then his 13^th birthday in their new house but at all effects Tony still looked like a child.

“Will I ever grow up?” Tony wondered in front of the mirror one day. All his clothes still fitted him perfectly.

Jarvis has smiled at him and told him that Maria Stark once confessed him to have had similar problems when she was young and she was not showing any signs of turning into a woman, but finally she did without helps or strange things. As many other things, it would have required only time. Tony accepted this explanation with a shrug. If Jarvis was a bit worried, he kept it for himself.

Tony was feeling better and, after the first days to adapt to their new shelter and to manage the shock of his mother’s death, even his panic crisis have disappeared again. By a silent agreement, they avoided to watch the news on TV, only putting on a cartoon or movie on Saturday night. For the rest of the week they were particularly busy and also tired, and they went to bed talking or telling stories until the fell asleep.

Jarvis has maintained his work, and her boss has been very comprehensive on his new situation: actually, she has already made her mind to promote him as team leader of the second van, so that he could park the van in front of his house, and in the morning go collecting his co-workers and start with the offices in that part of the town. He wasn’t paid more, actually, but the possibility of using the van to come and go from his house was a good think (gasoline was on the company until he used it only for working reasons but with that they’ve managed small trips by paying Miss Weller the difference).

Jarvis has also gone to the library with Tony, and he has spoken with one of the responsible by telling her the boy was homeschooling and they needed the programs for his class. With the programs and the borrowed books, Tony needed a good schedule not to waste time. During a raining Sunday, he and Jarvis had fun on the carpet in the living room by making a schedule with colored pencils and highlighters (a small extra present Jarvis has bought for Tony’s birthday). So even if summer was approaching, Tony had his duties: he woke up early and had breakfast with Jarvis, then he had to clean the house and make the bed. After that he had his morning school-duties with lessons, and homework: if he didn’t understand something (which was quite an exceptional case!) he had to mark it with a red pencil, so that they would discuss it in the evening; nevertheless, during dinner or immediately after, Jarvis would have checked what the boy has done and commented with him some passages. They would have also discussed the duties for the following day.

Tony needed to have lunch alone with what Jarvis has prepared for him the night before or in the morning, and he was allowed to watch the cartoons until 2 PM (the news channels were forbidden if they weren’t together to avoid crisis). In case of troubles, Tony could use the phone to call Jarvis’s boss at work and she would have managed to advise him. They’ve never needed it so far, but the perspective of having a way to communicate greatly reassured both Jarvis and Tony.

In the afternoon, after having cleaned the table, the boy went to work three times a week to Mr. Cohen’s pawn shop, by walking if the weather was good or taking the bus if it was raining (this was a small luxury they could manage now). When he was not working, Tony could decide whether to stay home or go to the library and spent time either at the park in front of it (where Jarvis knew America Chavez would have kept an eye opened for the boy), or in the library itself. After the first week, Tony was practically always inside the library, since he could study whatever he liked, and he has discovered he could borrow a place in the internet room to access the computer. Jarvis has reminded him to take care and not to look at the news alone, but after the first weeks he knew the boy was reading the journals at the library.

And by judging on the amount of borrowed books on electronics that have started to circulate in the house, the boy has started to be creative once again! He has filled his notebooks with schemes and ideas, and Jarvis left him his earnings from Mr. Cohen’s job so that he could buy other notebooks, or what he needed. After a while,  the carpet on the living room has turned into Tony’s small lab, and Jarvis smiled by thinking on his little kid drawing on the carpet at the Stark Mansion. Something never changed.

Jarvis usually met Tony after work at the pawn shop or at the library, and they went home together by stopping by a grocery shop whether they needed fresh food. Tony’s diet hasn’t changed much, despite now he could have his favorite blueberry jam and also a home-made cake every now and then on special occasions like birthday, Christmas or Easter. Jarvis was the one more benefitting of their new situation: now he managed to have lunch regularly and, at top of his luxury, he could have breakfast with hot tea and biscuits or a slice of buttered bread or one egg. But most of all he could have breakfast with his boy! And the first time he made a cake in their new kitchen, both Jarvis and Tony were almost crying for the joy: that small pleasure gave them the sensation of finally having their lives back.

To complete their weekly schedule, on Saturday both Jarvis and Tony worked full time, and on Sunday they slept a big longer, went to their old church for the Mass, and then they had a free afternoon to spent together, even if it was only watching a movie on the couch while drinking a tea or looking at the rains out of their window (it was nice to see something a part from a wall!).

Tony’s time-table was a bit strict, but Jarvis has discussed it with the boy and he has approved. After the first weeks, Tony told him that he was more than fine with his time-table, because he needed this kind of regime not to waste his mind. He also liked to study alone, without be surrounded by many people: Jarvis noted that he liked to isolate himself even when he was surrounded by other people and that only selected persons were allowed in his personal space. Apart from Jarvis, that’s to say. Contrary to his younger self, the traumatic experiences he has been through have turned Tony into an almost shy and way more silent boy than he was before. But he was fine, and that was all that mattered.

As programmed, they still went to the Mass in their old church, albeit sometimes they took the whole day off to make some small trips to other museums if their Pandora’s vase allowed them.

Tony has also started to collect things he found abandoned on the road to create small devices: Jarvis knew he need to work with his hands as well as with his mind, but he has imposed him to well clean everything that passed their door! For now he has created a sort of alarm which told them if someone was trying to open their door: they’ve tested and it worked even if Jarvis had something to say about the childish voice shouting “Hey, dumbass! Out of the way!”.

One December evening Jarvis has arrived at the library as always, but Tony was not there anymore. The librarian informed him that the boy has gone away a couple of moments ago with a tall black guy with whom he was speaking about robotics or something since the week before.

Jarvis’s heart sank: despite all the times he has told him not to go or talk with strangers, despite all the bad things that have already happened, what he has feared the most has become real and his boy has been kidnapped!

“Don’t jump to the wrong conclusion, old man!” he imposed to himself.

Despite the situation, he felt extraordinarily calm, like his inner self was telling him there were no reasons to be alarmed. Obviously the facts said something else, but he wanted to verify first, also because he didn’t feel the usual itch on his neck that announced a problem.

So he came back home, where he found a note under the door written by Tony: “Jarvis, I went with my friend Rhodey at his home, which is just two blocks from here. That’s the address…”

Even if he still feared for him, he followed the indications till a street with small independent houses looking all the same. He rang at the right number and saw that on the doorbell there was the surname “Rhodes”: where has he already heard that surname before?

When Mrs. Rhodes opened the door the answer became immediately clear: she was the kind woman who has bought Tony’s birthday cake for him at the market more than two years ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The woman didn’t remember his face, but when he reminded her the fact she opened into a smile.

“You look quite different, Mr. Zante!” she complimented him. “I dare to say you look younger than the man I remember at the market!”

“I’m for sure less tired or wasted… now things are getting better, and I dare to say it was also because of your help!”

“No need to even mention it! It was but a cake!” she replied.

The house was small but he had a nice ground floor with the living room and the kitchen, and stairs to lead probably to the rooms. From the upper floor, it was possible to hear Tony’s acute voice talking about something called “Bernoulli” or “Bimulli”.

“They were discussing since they arrived home!” Mrs. Rhodes told Jarvis by pouring him some tea in her kitchen (it was very orange, Jarvis took a side note!). “My boy Jimmy has managed to enter MIT this Fall and he has come home last week for Christmas holidays. But instead of passing time with his mother, he’s always in the library or closed in his room with his nose in the books! And yesterday he told me and his father he has met a weird kid at the library, and that the kid managed to solve the problem he was struggling with for months! I’ve mocked him and told him to bring this genial kid home for a snack… I wasn’t expecting to find your son at the door with mine this afternoon! But I’ve recognized him immediately from the church! Everyone knows “Fix it, Tony!” but we haven’t realized he was such a genius!”

Jarvis smiled at the idea of a 13^th years old kid helping a grown-up guy with his homework for MIT. In the meanwhile they heard the unmistakable noise of two teens running down the stairs, and a moment later both Tony and Jimmy Rhodes stormed in the kitchen.

“Hi Jarvis!” Tony greeted him with an hug. He was in a deep state of excitement… a positive one if Jarvis’s was telling it right. And indeed Tony immediately added: “We’re about to create something unique! Theoretically it could work! And Rhodey has a computer on his own!!! Oh gosh, I miss my computer… but I’ve helped him upgrading it and we are finishing a task!”

While Tony kept babbling about algorithms, the tall black guy with him was asking his mother and, then, Mr. Zante, if Tony could remain for dinner so that they could keep working. Mrs. Rhodes said it was fine and that Mr. Zante was also invited… and she didn’t accept a negative answer!

Jarvis at least obtained to help her in preparing the dinner (which translated into peeling the potatoes!), and when Mr. Rhodes arrived the men were exiled from the kitchen to chat on the couch and drink a beer. They talked about the Knicks, and also baseball, the weather and all general topics two men their age were supposed to talk about. Mrs. Rhodes called them to help with the table and then she shouted at the boys for dinner. Everything seemed so normal but it was the first time in a while Jarvis experienced such normality. And the dinner was nice, very tasty, and Tony and “Rhodey” didn’t stop talking about an artificial intelligence they could create as part of the tall guy’s task for the end of the year.

“For now it’s more like a neural network to collect and organize data according to pre-established categories!” Tony explained to him on their way home. It was quite late, but Jarvis didn’t mind: for once, it has been good to spend some time in company and he has promised Mrs. Rhodes to prepare for them all a cake for the next time. They’ve also been officially invited for Christmas and, once again, Mrs. Rhodes hasn’t accepted a refusal.

It was a bit weird to see the tall black guy and the young kid running around the house or going together to the library, always talking about science, but Jarvis felt a strange warmth out of it: his boy was happy and he was doing what he liked the most. And he has found a friend… even if he was six years older than him!

“Your son is very talented” Mrs. Rhodes told him one day while he was helping her preparing the meat loaf (he was in charge of peeling the potatoes once again, because she didn’t want anyone else to touch her spices!).

“It’s not exactly my son” Jarvis told her, although he perfectly knew both the Rhodes have got it already, since Tony never called him “dad”. “I’ve adopted him, and we had some… let’s call them bad moments, as you know very well! We’ve lost all, and we were about to lose ourselves… But now Tony’s fine and happy, and that’s all that counts for me!”

“Well, Mr. Zante, as they said ‘Shit happens’ and we are glad you managed your way out of it! And the boy seemed to be more than fine, I can tell!” she replied with a smile. “Now what are you doing to that poor potato? You’re torturing it!”

“I can assure you, madam, that I perfectly know how to peel a potato!”

Their quarrel escalated when they started to talk about the spices to put in the meatloaf. They were so passionate that they didn’t notice both Tony and Rhodey have come downstairs to check on them.

“Nah! They’re fine, Little T!” Jarvis heard the tall guy’s voice. “Mum gets always very fanatical when she talks about food or spices! And do not mention curry with her!”

“What about curry?” Tony made the mistake of asking aloud.

“I- I didn’t know there was so much to know about curry!” he confessed to Jarvis while they were going home.

Tony was a bit sad when winter’s holiday passed and Rhodey had to come back at MIT. He promised to call him and to write to him, especially in case of troubles, but they were quite moved when the tall guy took the bus to Boston.

“Jarvis?” Tony asked fixing the void that evening. “Do you think I might go to MIT one day?”

He didn’t know how to answer properly. For sure, the possibilities are limited, but their life has changed from one moment to the other twice already, for the bad and the good, so…

“Maybe, my boy” he told him, by kissing his head. “Life is full of possibilities…”

For now, Tony was satisfied by this answer.

_____________________________________________________________

When Tony turned 14 he woke up Jarvis by pointing excited at one proud hair on his chin.

“You should teach me how to shave!” he exclaimed.

He has got a few inches, and his voice has started to crack even if he still had that childish face with big brown eyes that opened him every door.

“I’m worried” Tony him one day, after he has managed to obtain a discount for a second-hand book on electronics. “I’m worried that when I’ll grow up I couldn’t use ‘cuteness’ as my winning card!”

Jarvis had to laugh by helping him with the heavy books. Tony was still in contact with Rhodey and from him he has learnt the MIT program for engineer students, and he was trying to keep his friend’s pace. That has meant to prepare him another time-table but it has been a funny activity to do together.

However, their immediate worry that June was a sort of test Tony had to take to testify he has studied properly at home and he could access the upper levels of education. They’ve looked at previous tests and run some simulations. Tony have found them “ridiculous!” especially for the part concerning math. They had to work together a bit more on history and geography, though. The day of the test Jarvis was so nervous he took a day off work to go with his boy to the school, and then he nervously waited outside. He also took a cigarette (he has never smoked!) gently offered by a lonely mother with both her kids also taking the test.

Tony jumped outside after only two of the four hours allowed, by stating it was super-easy, barely an inconvenience, and pretending a cheeseburger for his effort. They were sparing money for the visit at the Planetarium, but Jarvis considered that a cheeseburger could be granted to his brave boy. They received the results a month later, when Tony has already forgotten about it, because he was too focused in building a sort of robotic leg-jet in the Rhodes’s garage together with Rhodes junior back from MIT for summer holidays.

“You took a B, but you’ve passed!” Jarvis mocked him. Apparently geography and grammar have lowered his evaluation, but that was good enough.

“Yeah, fine!” Tony answered without really looking at him. He was focused in fixing a thing to the structure they have built all around Rhodey’s own leg. “Jarvis, it’s better if you move away from there! Rhodey, when you’re ready!”

“Are you sure, little T?” the tall guy asked, a bit worried.

“The calculations are correct… I’ve made them myself! So, no need to worry, my soldier! Press the button and prepare to feel a little push on your leg in 3…2…1…”

And immediately later, Rhodey was pushed back in the garage right over his father’s car.

“Ouch!” he mumbled by standing. “A little push, eh? I can’t imagine a huge one!”

“I don’t understand!” Tony mumbled. “Maybe we should reduce the power to a quarter… do you feel to try again?”

Jarvis prayed they wouldn’t end up by breaking Mr. Rhodes junior’s leg.

“It’s fine! It’s going to fly by the end of the summer… at least I hope so!” Tony told him one evening at dinner with his new almost adult voice. “And Rhodey has provided me some work to do for his schoolmates… a paid work! We discussed it and he will take a percentage on the incomes and he will send me the cash through his parents or by mail!”

For a moment, Jarvis thought he has been pushed back in time, when a young Mr. Stane has proposed a similar affair to a young Mr. Stark for a series of projects. But Howard already had his company, and Mr. Rhodes didn’t look like Mr. Stane at all. And, most of all, Jarvis didn’t want to upset his boy’s good humor with old memories. Tony was just enough sad he couldn’t go to MIT with his friend next Fall, and for sure he didn’t need to remember the monster that has caused everything. Maybe if it hasn’t happened anything, if Jarvis hasn’t discovered what was going on, Howard would have sent the boy at MIT by now… or maybe he would have ended up mentally compromised, broken… or worst.

“Better not to ask many what ifs…” Jarvis imposed to himself.

________________________________________________________________

One year has passed and they were in March again.

Tony was working hard on small jobs Rhodey managed to have him doing from MIT, and with them he made enough money to buy Jarvis a present that made him crying once more.

“I’ve looked everywhere also with the help of Mr. Cohen but finally we have found them!” the boy told him with a smile by passing him a small package. Inside, there were Jarvis’s cufflinks, the ones Howard and Maria has gifted him one Christmas. It was like having another piece of his life back! He couldn’t use cufflinks now, but they were part of his old life and they were like a symbol.

And then few weeks later the boy arrived with Jarvis’s big expensive watch, once again thanks to Mr. Cohen who has tracked the buyer in his big paper folders. Tony said he has needed to bargain a lot, but in the end he has reached an agreement, and Mr. Cohen has also complimented him for how he has managed the negotiation.

“But how is it possible?” Jarvis asked Tony, astonished. “I’ve sold it for a lot of money…”

The boy seemed a bit embarrassed and Jarvis feared he has done something illegal.

“Well, more or less…” Tony confessed. Then he explained: “Do you remember that Rhodey asks me to do some works for his friends at MIT? Usually I have to make their homework! I use the internet point at the library and I correct their calculations or do their essays. If someone finds out, they’ll never believe an almost 15^th years old kid is behind this! So yeah, that’s how I’m earning money… it’s cheating, but actually I’m not the cheater!”

Jarvis was astonished but yet amused. And the boy was right: he was not the one cheating. He had the impression father Latom would have had something to say about this, but Jarvis was neither Catholic nor a priest.

“So are you telling me that you bought back my watch by correcting homework as you did for the cufflinks?” he asked, because from Tony’s expression there was something more going on.

Indeed he blushed while he replied: “Not exactly…”

Then he took a small box from under the bed and passed him to Jarvis. “Do you remember that I mention the library internet point, right? Well, I was studying networks, and I’ve discovered that there’s a way to access a private network from the outside: it’s called hacking, and somehow is similar to a robbery into a house… but yet it’s different if you don’t steal anything! And then you have to get caught!”

They were on a serious borderline. But when Jarvis opened the box he found a really bunch of money: bad counted they were talking of 8,000 dollars or more.

“10,000 and something” Tony revealed. “And there were more before I bought your watch back… and the second book of “Advanced mechanics” you see there! It went out one month ago and I really wanted it… but it was so expensive…”

Jarvis was now worried: has the boy accessed a bank account or something? Where did so much money came from?

“Tony, I’ve told you not to do anything illegal…”

“I’ve only hacked MIT servers!” Tony confessed with an inch of guilty but also much proud in his voice. “I just wanted to see if I could… and I did! I was already satisfied, but Rhodey has told me of professor Stern who was quite a jerk so I... well, I’ve entered his profile and I wanted to update his information with some stupid sentences like “I’m a farting pig”. But when I was there, I’ve seen the drafts of his next exams… that guy is a dumbass because his password was his name and surname! So I’ve sent the papers to Rhodey through a secure account network we’ve created last Christmas. I was thinking only to help him, but he has sold the exams around… I wasn’t expecting it, I swear! But that’s how I’ve paid the book, and also spared some money. And then Rhodey also told me that there was a guy willing to pay me 7,000 dollars if I’ll manage to download for him also the other exams and give him the right answers. I’ve bargained: I’ve pretended 15,000 dollars, in cash, plus Rhodey’s percentage and advanced payment… and he paid me immediately! The money arrived last week and I’ve sent him the file online… with a small surprise!”

“Which… which surprise?” Jarvis asked, already fearing the answer.

There was something malevolent in Tony’s eyes when he replied: “I’ve put a virus in his mail. When he opened the file with the drafts nothing will happen, but when he will open the answers he would send a notification to the MIT director. They’ll know he has cheated or tried to! Still, he won’t manage to prove I or Rhodey did it… I made sure of this!”

Jarvis was astonished. “But… why? What has this guy done to you?”

Tony didn’t reply immediately, but took a newspaper from under the bed: it was the Financial Times of the previous week announcing the official bankrupt of Stark Industries; a side article revealed that the majority of the machines have already been sold, and the company was going to be sold at auction. Hammer Industries has offered to buy it for the symbolic prize of 10,000 dollars. The journalist commented that it was insult added to injury for Howard Stark, who couldn’t proposed a counter offer since he was again detained and the one forced to declare bankrupt. For what the journalists guessed, no one wanted to oppose Hammer right now, also because Stark Industries were like a black hole in the market nobody wanted on their shoulders. There was also a picture with Hammer senior and his boy Justin, who looked seven or eight years older than Tony and he had a very idiotic and yet malevolent mouse face! Somehow, he reminded Jarvis of that despicable hotel director who kicked them out in a cold January night.

Jarvis didn’t know that Tony knew about Stark Industries, even if he had suspected because he has been upset for the whole previous week. But still he wasn’t catching the connection with their actual case.

“The guy who asked me for all the exams together with the answers is Justin Hammer” Tony said by pointing at the picture. He swallowed. “Rhodey told me he keeps saying bad things about my father to everyone at MIT… He said my father is a failure and that his son was just a useless thing parked God knows where! That maybe once I was a ‘golden boy’, but now I’m a useless and broken thing like my father… “A broken toy, they should call him” he has said…”

He cleaned his eyes from tears which have started to form there. Jarvis passed him a Kleenex, by considering that Mr. Rhodes junior must have figured out whom he was “playing” with: no ordinary teen built a jet propulsion in a garage after all. Now he got also Mrs. Rhodes’s words.

For a moment he also feared that the phrase “broken toy” triggered one of Tony’s crisis (even if they hadn’t had any in a while), but his boy surprised him once more.

“I’m not a thing!” he stated with anger, despite the tears. “And for sure I’m not a toy… last of all a broken toy!”

He looked Jarvis in the eyes and the man could see an old scar bleeding behind them. But he saw also a determination he has seen only once in his life, when Maria Stark has made up her mind in front of the still warm body of Obadiah Stane.

“No, Tony” Jarvis agreed. “You’re not a thing or a toy… and for sure you’re not broken!”

He glanced at the New York Times and at the Hammers’ picture. He remembered to have worked for them, cleaning their shits (literally) in one of their offices. But now he was more interested in what the article said about the auction who was going to close in two months.

“Are you mad at me?” Tony asked him, worried.

Jarvis smiled at him. “It wasn’t exactly a legal thing you did” he told him. “But I’m the last person on Earth to may judge you for this. Maybe once I’ll tell you about what I did for your father together with agent Peggy Carter once… or for rescuing my wife-to-be in the good old Europe against the Nazis…”

“I’d really wish to hear that!” Tony replied, with a smile. “So… why are you so serious? What’s the problem?”

The man didn’t answer for a while, because he didn’t want to create fake illusions in the boy. But then he pointed at the newspaper and asked: “Do you have a plan for this? For the auction I mean…”

Tony’s eyes turned sad. “I’m 14, Jarvis! As you keep remembering me, there are things I can’t do as boy! And present an offer for an auction I’m pretty sure is among the things I can’t do! Even if I had the money!”

“Well I see the maximum offer is 10,000 dollars… the exact amount we have right here!” he stood and emptied the Pandora’s vase in front of them. “And maybe we can manage to spare a bit more or to pawn my watch again to have more…”

“But still… I’m but a boy! And with a fake surname! Or do you suggest I present an offer as Tony Stark, back from the land of the ghosts?”

Jarvis smiled at him one of his ‘British’ smile, as Howard called them: he has never felt so alive.

“No, my boy” he replied. “I don’t want to create an illusion but… maybe I could make the offer as myself, Edwin Jarvis, on behalf of the underage Anthony Edward Stark. What do you think about it?”

Tony’s eyes widened in astonishment and then realization: he was seeing a possibility, and, if Jarvis was reading him correctly, he was already making up a plan of action.

“How much… how much do we need?” he asked.

They were back in the game.

___________________________________________________________

Having friends in the cleaning service was a good thing: employees talked and gossiped around not minding the cleaning guys; and the Stark Industries auction was obviously the main topic. Through his co-workers Jarvis found out that, as the New York Times said, Hammer’s offer was going to be the only one, that Hammer senior explicitly wanted to humiliate Howard Stark, and that an offer could be advanced by the under-age Tony Stark, even if he was Howard’s son, but only with a caregiver from outside the family.

The last point was fine, but Jarvis and Tony soon discovered their problems were not over. It was not only about the money (which in itself were a problem) but they needed also to present a plan of what they intended to do with the company. Tony wanted to hack the server to know Hammer’s plans but he didn’t need to: Justin Hammer was telling it to everyone who wanted or didn’t want to listen at MIT, and on the Sunday edition of the Times Hammer senior himself released a long interview in which he carefully explained his plans for the former Stark Industries.

“He wants to dismantle my company and sell it piece after piece, that dumbass piece of shit!” Tony screwed. Jarvis was so shocked that didn’t remind him of language. “He wants to use our software and machines for their damn Hammer Industries and to sell everything else! Well, not under my watch!”

So they needed to prepare a business plan, and all of this without the help of Howard Stark, since he was still detained to answer for the occupation of his own house and other illegal activities connected with terrorism. The judge’s decision was expected to arrive in October, quite after the closing of the auction. But, after all, Howard Stark couldn’t have advanced an offer for his own failed company.

“They’re going to put the house on sale as well” Jarvis read with a sad tone.

“One step after the other, as you used to say!” Tony told him without looking up from his papers, extremely focused on a project he wanted to add at his request. It looked like a strange circle which the boy revealed was an extremely complicated power source.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my uncl… I mean, from Stane, it’s that when running a business you should have a primary line, and then a secondary one. A third one is possible if you’re big enough and if it is somehow related to the first two… and not very expensive!” Tony explained, by frowning a bit at the name of his former godfather and prosecutor.

“So our first primary target will be…?” Jarvis asked, by looking at the sketches the boy has filled.

“Green power!” Tony explained. “There’s lot of fuss about ecology, and I have this sensation it will only grow through time! So we put our efforts in this: green energy, recyclable sources, clean waters… like that project for the school expo! And as secondary target we worked on communication: computers, internet and so on…!”

They had to buy new notebooks, papers and pencils for him and Tony was passing days at nights at working either on their living room or in the library.

Sometimes he went by the Rhodes to use Rhodey’s computer if he needs to do some more complex calculations, and also to report his paper work into a document to be checked by the tall guy at MIT. Rhodey has become Tony’s right-hand man in this project, and the boy has asked his friend to become his formal business partner if the operation was successful. All the Rhodes have been extremely supportive: Mrs. Rhodes fed the boy when Jarvis wasn’t home, and one night that was raining quite hard, they phoned Jarvis to let him know the boy was going to sleep by them. Jarvis collected him again the following morning, a bit worried to have left him alone. When he arrived early in the morning, he saw as Mrs. Rhodes was hugging tenderly the boy: Tony has had one of his usual nightmare, and he has just told her and her husband how he has found out about his mother’s death. It was a very touching moment.

Obviously, both the Rhodes have long realized who they were hosting (a semi-talking robot in their garage has been a huge clue), and they wanted to invest in the company.

From them, Jarvis got the idea to expand their networks of investors since they lacked funding perspectives for the company development (in case of victory at the auction, obviously).

“Micro-investors” he told his boy once he had his plan completed in his mind. He has elaborated it by cleaning floors. “We create a network of people who are ready to invest a small capital each in our enterprise and/or on small selected project, and they will earn a percentage on said projects! You’ve tons of those ready so the problems will be only to find people!”

“Yeah, there was a long article on the Sunday Times last week about micro-investors… I read it at the library. It could really be the future for small companies or emerging ones!”

“Well, Stark Industries is at auction for bankrupt so it could be considered like a new emerging company also for taxation… how about the economic part of the business plan?”

“Almost done, but Rhodey said he knew a girl who could revise it… she has started a PhD at MIT this year under a fake identity but I’ve recognized her from a picture: she’s or was Kanma Chander, Stane’s assistant!”

Jarvis blinked a couple of times, quite sure to have misheard. “Are you… serious?”

“More than serious!” Tony confirmed. “She was barely at age when she started to work for him and I remembered her … she was abused as well so she changed her name. She knew the company and she has taken a Master in Economics with top scores in the meanwhile. And she wanted to help me… or so she said on the phone!”

He had to admit he was skeptic, but Tony put an hand over his hand and stated, wisely: “Everyone needs a second chance… especially when life hasn’t been fair with them!”

“I’m sure you’ve heard this from father Latom!” Jarvis mocked him and the boy scoffed.

“I’ve been lucky, Jarvis” he added, seriously. “She had no one to help her, while I’ve got you by my side the whole time…”

They smiled tenderly and then Jarvis proposed to order a pizza while they continued with the work.

In the following weeks Jarvis went on with his plan, and tried to involve, albeit only nominally, different investors. There were obviously the Rhodes, and then Jarvis’s boss at the cleaning service, Amanda Weller, and some of his co-workers, America Chavez (who was still a security guard at the library), her girlfriend (one of the librarian), miss Rhane Sinclair, and also Sean Dolan of the soup kitchen. Father Latom has a Catholic priest could not invest under his name but he promised some money to be put under the name of Matt Murdock, the blind kid he had in assistance after his father has died. Tony went also to Mr. Cohen and the man was part of the game only whether they’ve managed to have the company back; only in that case, he promised them a serious investment, in order of a six zeros one. They also discovered he knew the boy’s identity since that time he fixed for him a mixer, when Tony has bought back Jarvis’s handkerchief, but he has told nothing to anyone.

“My father has fought the Nazis in the old Europe and I’ve known my part of poverty and problems after war!” he told them. “It’s normal to want some…privacy, let’s call it, when you’ll try to find your way out from the pit you’ve fallen into!”

Mr. Cohen involved other investors from his community, and also his relative from his cousin’s mother’s side, that Mr. Abdullah Yussuf who run the shop “Second hand: Clothes for every occasion”. Mr. Cohen mocked overtly his relative for not having understood who his clients were, and Tony heard them screaming in a mix of languages while their discussion grew when they’ve touched the basketball topic.

When they had everything ready, they had to prepare the formal modules. Tony and Rhodey were screwing in front of the paperwork, when Jarvis begged their pardon and took their place. In three hours he has completed everything with extreme calm and professionalism. The two guys were astonished.

“Who do you think managed your father’s paperwork, my boy?” Jarvis blinked at Tony.

The following morning, with the auction closing at noon, they presented all the documents as requested by going in person at the office. They got the receipt that everything has been submitted correctly and at 11:50 they exited the office from a secondary exit, kindly escorted by the cleaning service: someone has called the journalists and there was a bit of a mess outside when the rumor spread that a Stark has reappeared. They’ll manage to get away safely and unnoticed ant they rewarded themselves with an ice-cream at the park.

“And now what?” Tony asked.

“Now I suggest you’ll taste that ice-cream well, my boy, because we aren’t going to have another one for a while!” Jarvis replied.

“Let me guess, we are again extremely poor, aren’t we?”

Jarvis nodded with a sad smile: they’ve put all their money in that project, and they had to ask Mr. Cohen for a loan to pay the taxes to present the documents. Tony was going to repay his debt by working for free for him for the whole summer, 8 hours a day, Saturday included. It was worth of it, and Tony preferred this way that having debts of gratitude with other people than the Rhodes.

“I was talking about the auction, Jarvis… now what will we do?” Tony asked again after he has finished his ice-cream and he was looking at the clouds.

“There’s nothing we could do” Jarvis replied, by imitating him. “We have to wait until the commission opens the different proposals, evaluates it, and then submits the results… then there will be an official hearing during which they will announce their decision! So, for now, we wait…”

“Now we wait…” Tony repeated with eyes closed.

When he searched for his hand, Jarvis was ready to grab it and squeeze it. A strange calm invaded him under June sun.

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