I Sing the Body Electric

DOB: May 29, 1991 at 2:58 pm 

Sex: Male

Weight: 7.0 lbs

Allergies: N/A

Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:

   Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treatment: Light Therapy — succcesful. 

   Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treatment plan: observe. 

   Separation Anxiety; patient is prone to violent outbursts and/or nervous episodes when separated from primary guardians.

Notes:

   Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box. 

   Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks. Patient was switched to formula after four months.  

EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON/S

   MR. Obidiah Stane - Legal Guardian 

   DIRECTOR Margaret Carter - Legal Guardian 

 

"Anthony? What's the matter, darling? What's wrong?"

"I want my abba."

"Sweetheart . . . I'm so sorry, but he's not here right now."

"Where is he? I want him."

"He's . . . away."

"He will be coming back."

"I don't think so, darling. I'm so sorry. But I'm here, and I promise that I will not be going anywhere."

"Good. He'll wanna meet you when he comes."

Tony's problem isn't that he doesn't know how he got here.

(I mean, he doesn't, but that's not the most concerning thing at the moment.)

That problem gets knocked down a few pegs when he takes his first breath after waking up. 

Or, when he tries to, anyway.

The gaping hole in his chest put a damper on that pretty quickly. 

"I would refrain from taking deep breaths at the moment if I were you."

Somewhere between his head and his lungs screaming at him to do something he registers a calm, deep voice chiding him. 

He can't speak. He can't breathe. He feels like screaming but knows that he can't or won't because oh god hurts hurts so much painpainpain

"Mister Stark?" The voice is closer now, or just considerably louder. "Mister Stark, can you hear me?"

"Hurts," he grits out. This turns out to be a mistake. It turns out that when you move parts of your body, other parts that are connected to, that part move as well. 

It's all very fascinating. 

The voice chuckles. "I imagine it must. You're still a growing boy, after all. But I'm afraid it was this or death, Mister Stark."

At this point, he's not sure he knows what death is, but anything has to be better than this. Death has got to be some sick relief from whatever spot in Hell he's apparently earned himself.

Because that's got to be what this is, right? 

Hell?

Beyond the hole in his chest, he can feel the stiff, punishing heat of the room. He can feel how whatever is beneath him isn't a bed at all, but some sort of uneven, sharp bedrock that juts into his tender spine. He can feel his skin — both the chest parts and the not-chest-parts — stretch and pull unnaturally. Later, he'll understand that it was a mixture of blood and sweat drying on his skin, but for now, everything just feels like some sort of clawing ache.

Distantly, he thinks he hears a heart monitor pulling steadily along.

Weird, he thinks. Because it can't be his. 

Because he's dead. 

This is Hell. 

"I need to go to the doctor."

"Tony, darling, you just need to breathe."

"Peggy, back off. Boy needs to get over these episodes sooner or later. He won't get to it if you keep coddling him like that."

"I will have you removed, Obadiah. This is a courtesy visit."

"I want my abba. Where is my abba?"

"Darling, I'm sorry but—"

"What is this 'baba' business he goes on about, anyway?"

"Abba."

"It's the Hebrew word for 'father'."

"Howard wasn't Jewish."

"He's not talking about Howard, you twit! Help me get him down!" 

"This isn't Hell," the voice informs him. "This is Afghanistan."

"Tony, you have to talk to someone about these episodes."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not sure how much your little body can take, poppet."

"Will I die?"

"Not for a very, very long time."

"Did Abba die?"

"I . . . I don't know."

"How old are you, Mister Stark?"

"Yinsen, how many times do I have to start telling you to stop calling me that?"

"It is your name."

"People who've had their hands in my chest get to call me Tony."

"I hope you haven't developed a coalition."

"Boy, you've got to stop this 'abby' business you go on about. Peggy tells me you're something of a sensitive child, but Howard wouldn't have wanted a pussy for a son. You see all those people down there? Those machines their building? Your father and I built all that from scratch. And now he's . . . He just . . . You know, your father used to tell me . . . Used to say, 'Stark men, they're made of iron'. Think he really believed it, too . . . Now, hold still."

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The first time he refuses them, they beat him. They dislocate one and a half of his shoulders, his nose, and maybe his jaw. A few teeth come loose that Yinsen later has to yank out with an old dirty pair of forceps. Countless bruises bloom on his body for days, like the blood just gets tired of clotting itself together. His scabs take forever to scar, too, but that's nothing compared to the magnet. 

He can feel the magnet cave into a dent the size of the head on a dime and it's the only time he screams for them. 

"Darling, if you keep asking for Steve stories, I might not have any left to tell you one day."

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The second time he refuses them, it's lingchi. Not to kill, he doesn't think, but it's a close thing. They start with cuts to the soles of his feet. It's nothing deep — little, slanted slices into his skin like papercuts or cardboard scrapes. They make quick work of his heels and the arches of his feet and slow down when it comes to the webbing of his toes and the backs of his ankles. They keep the pattern until they make it to his chest, and they hesitate. 

The crew working on him that day speak Mandarin and Japanese, and even though he only catches half of what they're saying, they come to an agreement quite quickly on what to do with the magnet. 

He gives them nothing in return. 

"I don't think that Bucky would appreciate me telling you that particular story, love."

"Who's Bucky?"

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

The third time he refuses them . . . that's when the water comes. 

He thought the point of the desert was that there was no water. He thought the point was that you were supposed to feel the dryness in your bones as nature's water cycle tried to suck you dry for the raining season. Tony thinks (after the water comes, of course, because even he isn't that multi-faceted) that the single most ridiculous thing would be for him to die right here, right now. 

Tony Stark Drowns In Afghanistan — Dehydrated, Miles Away From Ocean!

So, he decides, floating in a basin of dirty water, vomit, and rust. 

He refuses to die there, so he doesn't. 

"When Bucky fell off the train, did he die?"

"Yes."

"An' Cap died in the ocean?"

"Yes."

"Are they ever going to come back?"

Yinsen tells him the story of how he was supposed to die.  

It's on a night when it's too cold in the cave to light a fire. They're breathing heavily in the darkness, trying to find any heat in their body to exhale into their hands. The battery doesn't facilitate great circulation, so his hands went numb hours before the sun fully sets, but he can't complain. 

They're lying on the fake blueprints Tony drew up to get the materials he wanted. He wants to laugh. Says that if he dies on these, it'll be the most poetic way anyone's ever died on anything before.

Yinsen laughs. "It was something like an auction, I think. When I refused them, they raided my home, bid everything I owed to their comrades, and then to the people in my village. They took my family and sat them in front of the crowd. They twisted my bedsheet into a rope and tried to hang me with it."

Tony laughs. "What's so poetic about that?"

Yinsen says, "Everyone had come to watch me die that day. Before they put the rope around my neck, I said that I only had forgiveness left. They pushed me off the footstool, and the branch broke."

Tony says, "And?"

Yinsen says, "It was an olive tree."

Tony says, "You win."

"Uncle Obie says that Cap was a hero."

"He was."

"Uncle Obie says that Bucky was a hero, too."

"He was."

"Uncle Obie says that Howard tried to be a hero but that it didn't work out."

"We call that a tragedy, dear. Now go wash your hands before lunch."

They fill his lungs with sand.

They don't start there, though.

They wait until the fourth time he refuses them and then they give it a go. 

It's nothing like the "sessions" he's had before. Every time before they would bathe him and dress him and lull him into some sort of security before ripping it from him. They would have teams rotating in and out over a period of what must have been days of putting him through a thorough physical and psychological wringer. They never spoke to him directly. They never let him sleep. 

They were methodical.

They were organized. 

Until they fill him with sand. 

The translator says, "So, what'll it be?"

And Tony says, "Fuck you."

And then—

And then silence. 

Tony still doesn't know how the captor knows what he's saying. Tony doesn't know if it's something in his face that gives it away. He doesn't know if his tone speaks of a special sort of petulantly defiant type of no that there's no mistaking it for a universal sign of I will not be building you a bomb today, good sir or what. He doesn't know, but the next thing he does know, his head is bouncing off of a fallen piece of wood and there's sand in his eyes. There's a boot crunching into his temple the next minute as the translator chuckles a little and tells him to lie still if he knows what's good for him. 

He does, but squirms a little out of spite, anyway. 

There are orders barked and words exchanged, of which, Tony only understands a bit of the Farsi that Yinsen had taught him and a few Turkish expletives. There is more movement and more noise than he'd heard in he didn't know how long. Nothing is still except for the steady pressure of the boot digging into his skull. 

He can hear his pulse like this. He can hear the blood rush by his ear or his brain and he has a distant urge to wave hello at it. 

It doesn't make sense, but, Tony thinks while staring down at least fifty copies of the same two pairs of shoes: nothing here really does, does it?

I'm gonna die here, he thinks, not for the first time. I'm gonna die surrounded by black leather and human rights violations. 

(And then he cheekily adds to himself: Well, not like that.) 

Before that thought can get any traction, though, there's a tight grip on his ankles that flips him onto his back. There are knees resting their full weight on his wrists and somebody straddling his torso. Suddenly, there are two hands framing the sides of his face and a funnel being shoved into his stupid mouth. 

He gags as the opening stabs at the back of his throat. He vomits a little and shakes violently, trying to get a purchase on something, trying to fight. 

But all there is is sand.

There's sand worming its way into his ears and throwing itself into his eyes. He's on a wood board, but even that feels like it's sinking farther into the ground surrounding them. There's nothing keeping him there in that moment except for all of the hands on him, holding him out and vulnerable. He thinks he ought to look like some parody of Jesus laid out on the board like this. 

When they start to pour the sand down the funnel, he stops thinking much at all. 

Tony hates holidays.

Aunt Peggy is always working during them because she earns something called a 'salary' and has to make something called a 'living'. She gave away all of her Thanksgivings and Halloweens and Easters and Martin Luther King Jr. Days and all the others so that she can have the weekends to spend with Tony, which he guesses is a plus. The only part he doesn't like is that he has to spend all those days with Uncle Obie, and Uncle Obie is always much meanier and slower on those days. He always tells Tony those boring stories about Howard and Maria until Mr. Jarvis has to come and tuck him in for the night. 

One good thing, Tony supposes, is that Aunt Peggy always gets him for Christmases. 

Christmas with Aunt Peggy is always amazing. He doesn't know how to describe it, exactly, but it's just always the best. Aunt Peggy never answers the phone for work, she's always there to tuck him in and tell him Steve and Bucky stories, and Mr. Jarvis actually gives him hugs when he asks for them. Aunt Peggy always gets him the best gifts, too. Tools for his secret workshop, broken cars and electronics for him to fix, a cat that one time . . . It's just a good time.

They have a schedule for the week leading up to Christmas. They spend two days at home in their pajamas (except for Mr. Jarvis, who Tony is almost convinced only wears suits and tails) at Aunt Peggy's house in D.C. The last night, they visit a synagogue just outside of Georgetown to do nothing but sit in silence for an hour. The next day, they fly into JFK to spend the night in Brooklyn and go to Mass that same evening at an old church Tony can't pronounce the name of. After that, they always fly somewhere warm. 

Aunt Peggy likes warm places. She likes anywhere that has a beach and is as close to the southern hemisphere without crossing it as she can get. Tony doesn't understand the need, really. Every year, she tells him about how the beaches where she's from are cold and all smell like rain. She tells him about how she just loves the sun and the warmth and the brightness of white sand and tropical sun. She tells him, "Just because your mother was Italian doesn't mean you should take the sun for granted."

If it's just between Tony and himself, though? He's just not a fan of the beach part. He loves the sun and the ocean and all. 

Really, it's just the sand he's not a fan of.

Gets everywhere, if you're not careful with it. 

He can't breathe.

It's worse than the waterboarding in some ways. He has no guarantee he'll be able to breathe once they let him up; he can feel the burn of the sand in his lungs. There's grit in his throat because he couldn't help but swallow some of it at the beginning. The funnel has definitely chipped a tooth or two, and they're starting to kick dirt over him. 

They're going to bury me alive, he thinks. 

Good.

Tony doesn't think he really believes in God, but Aunt Peggy doesn't either, so he knows it's alright. 

They're supposed to be praying or contemplating God or whatever, but Tony doesn't really buy the whole thing so he just sits there. 

He doesn't even really have anything to pray for, so he doesn't.

People here are as busy and buzzing as they are quiet. It's a tight-knit neighborhood, wherever they are, and everybody here seems to know everybody else. They're kind, though. They're a kind enough people to recognize whatever kind of lonely that follows him and Aunt Peggy around. They have to decline at least three different offers for a homecooked meal before they leave.

It's nice, though.

Really. 

He sits and stares at the one lit candle on the menorah and smiles. 

He thinks. 

At night, Tony thinks. 

It's rare for him to fall deep enough into sleep to dream, so he doesn't.

The nights are cold and silent and filled with blackness.

They're safe.

Tony doesn't believe in the god he's supposed to pray to in the synagogue and he doesn't believe in the one he's supposed to pray to at Mass, either. 

He listens to the songs and the preaching. He listens to the whispered gossip and sobbed prayers. Catholics, he's noticed, are always much sadder around Christmastime.

It's nice.

Not the sadness, but the quiet and the reverie. It's all about forgiveness here, he's realized. Repentance is begged for at every turn, like all of these people have suddenly come to the senses of their mortality. 

Maybe they have.

(Tony won't for ten more years in the middle of a cave.)

Instead of that, Tony sits in the back of the pews studying an odd set of scuff marks on the bench next to him. Peggy's in confession and it's not like he has anything better to do.

He sits and stares at the saints they have immortalized in pieces of broken glass. 

He tries to pray.  

He breathes.

He thinks of Cap's shield.

He thinks of Bucky's gun.

He thinks of the buttons on Aunt Peggy's blouse.

"Are you there, God? It's me, Tony Stark."

He thinks of Obie's soldering iron melting his hands together. 

He thinks of the sound of Yinsen's laughter when Tony blinks himself awake to keep watch on his shift, the bell that's placed into his hands to ring if there's trouble.  

He thinks of the sound of Yinsen's sobs when he's told of the firebombing of his village, his hands shaking around a very reflective rosary.

"You seem to be a really shitty parent. You're a father, right? The Father? I had a father once, I think."

He thinks about metal planes flying into metal buildings, wonders if maybe he wouldn't be here otherwise. 

He thinks about a filing in a tooth they pulled out when he had asked for an extra bowl of broth. 

He thinks about bleeding all over the floor of the desert, about what he really loses every time they drain him dry.

"Before, I was halfway into your shtick. I could get behind it: the wrath and the love. But the forgiveness thing . . . That was never really yours, was it? I guess I didn't notice that all you're good for is sending in your son to clean up your messes."

Tony doesn’t think he’s Jesus. 

His ego isn’t quite that big, really.  

In Afghanistan, he prays for death without praying to anybody in particular.  

He doesn't know how long it takes him to think of it. 

He's grown something of a what could be considered a beard by someone not cruel enough to judge an eighteen-year-old stuck in a cave on his shaving prowess. (Shaving with broken shards of glass and rusty straight razors doesn't lend itself to intricate design techniques and gentle grooming.) 

He's always dirty, anyway, so it's not like it matters at this point. 

He's suffered three infections around the magnet and one week of temporarily losing his vision because of reasons. There's a pain in his arm starting up so bad that Yinsen has already started giving him Civil War doctor talks about it. 

"If it healed wrong or there is an infection, it could kill you. The beatings don't help, of course, but there is nothing we can do about those until you agree to build your machine of death."

"I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death; I am not on his payroll."

"I think Miss Millay would've objected to me cutting your arm off."

But yeah, he thinks of it all anyway.

He doesn't dream, so he thinks.

He thinks of metal.  

And that's all he needs. 

"That could power your heart for fifty lifetimes!"

"Yeah . . . or something big for fifteen minutes."

Finding out it's Obie . . . Well, it puts some things into perspective for him.

"You got a family?"

"Yes, and I will see them when I leave here. And you, Stark?"

"No."

"So you're a man who has everything . . . and nothing."

Killing Obie wasn't supposed to be part of that perspective . . . 

Nobody's perfect. 

"I am Iron Man."

The press conference hurts.

Everything hurts. 

The suit pinches and the arc reactor itches and pulls and he just feels too small not enough too little the only father you can remember wanted you dead—

"That's quite a head on your shoulders."

Tony almost dies right there in his living room, if only out of shock. "Uncle Nick?"

JARVIS says nothing (some sort of EMP or dampening device) but the lighting increases enough so that he can see Nick standing in front of the couch with a deep frown on his face. 

Tony is too tired to be angry. "What are you doing here?"

Nick does look at him then, long and soft just like he did when Tony graduated from undergrad. "I'm sorry I didn't come see you after you got back home."

Tony straightens up his back. He had assumed they would have done this over the phone like any other self-respecting adults, but he knows Nick still sees him as a kid and probably was concerned about his emotions or other such garbage. He wants to talk about that. He wants to tantrum, just a little, because he is angry, if only distantly. He had Pepper and Rhodey, sure, but with Nick and Aunt Peggy MIA when he came back . . . And then Obie . . .

"Did you know?" he asks, moving to sit on the couch. (He means to gracefully lower himself, but he ends up collapsing completely.)

Nick sighs and sits across from him. "Did I know about Obadiah selling weapons under the table? Or did I know that he kept selling after you shut down production?"

Tony feels a heat rise on the back of his neck. "Oh, there's a committee for all that bullshit. All offices and branches of the United States government will be searched and questioned for that all the way down to the Post Office. Don't worry, you'll get a phone call." He turns and fixes a glare on Nick, whose face sits like stone again. "I'm asking if you knew that he tried to have me killed. I'm asking if you knew where I was that whole time and just let me rot there. I'm asking if you let good Americans die on a mission— Three months! And I come home to you, sitting in front of my fireplace all cozy justbecauseyou can?"

"You think I would let you die? On my watch?"

"THAT DOESN'T ANSWER MY QUESTION!"

Silence. 

He needs to calm down. There's a cold numbness making its way up his left arm (which he knows he needs to check out) but he can't focus on that. There's too much angry and hurt and bitter buzzing around in his head. There's a whole hornet's nest of repressed aggression trying to convince him to chuck the marble coffee table at Nick's stupid, half-blind face. 

Nick swallows. "The answer to your question is no: I didn't know where you were. I searched for you that whole time. I never gave up; I never rested on you. I rode my teams as hard as I could— Hell, I think I even tried to break the Patriot Act on you!" Nick reaches for him, puts steady hands on his shoulders and kneads them with his calloused fingers. "Kid, I promise, I haven't left your corner. 

"I'm sorry about Stane, I really am. I knew he was a rat bastard, but I swear, that's all I knew."

Tony's not quite crying, but he can't deny the knot in his throat and the wetness in his eyes. "Why weren't you there for me?" Nick breaks then, too, and tugs Tony through the distance between them. He pushes Tony's forehead onto his shoulder, but Tony keeps speaking, barely muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "Rhodey got me, and Potts and Hogan were on the tarmac, but you weren't there for me."

Nick doesn't say anything then. 

They don't do this. 

This is something Peggy does when he's upset because she wears neutral perfume and it's something of a Pavlovian response to him at this point. When he's upset, she'll pull his head to rest in the crook of her neck and just let him breathe. Sometimes, she'll rub behind his ears or sing him songs from during her time in the War.

But Peggy isn't here right now and Obadiah is dead (not that he was ever a source of comfort) and Carol's probably filling out paperwork and Rhodey is in traffic.

They don't do this.

But they're doing it right now, apparently.

They stay like that for some time. He shakes, but he doesn't cry, and eventually, his breathing slows and evens out to a point Nick has deemed safe to let go. 

They sit separately for some time, too. They haven't done this since long before he graduated, but he knows he won't mention that if they ever speak of this again. It's not a comfortable silence, but it's really not doing any harm, either. They're close enough to touch, but they don't, and Tony can't figure out if that's supposed to be tragic or not before Nick speaks again.  

"You've got some head on your shoulders, kid."

"You said that."

Nick chuckles a bit. "I did. I mean it. You're not just 'Think Tank in Washington' smart. You know that, right?"

Tony actually considers this for a moment. "I'm not an ideas man, Uncle Nick. I like to fix things."

It's a bold-faced, outright lie, but Nick seems to think about it. 

"You ever think of fixing the world?"

"Don't waste your life, Stark."

When he finally does see Peggy, she yells at him for thirty-six minutes before hugging him for twelve. 

"I am Iron Man."

Pepper calls him for months in the middle of the night just to see that he's still where she left him.

She'll never admit to nightmares, but he knows what that sort of breathlessness sounds like when left unchecked. 

(He can't judge — sometimes he calls twice as much for the same reason.)

"Tony, it's not a matter of wanting anything from you, exactly. See, I just . . . Well . . . I had this idea . . ."

Rhodey lives with him for about two months after he comes home. 

It helps more than he'll ever admit — having Rhodey there. He knows what the magazines think about someone of Rhodey's age being so closely linked to someone like him, but he doesn't care and neither does Rhodey. 

(Some days, they run issues that are half-correct in their assumptions: he and Rhodey do sleep in the same bed every night. However, he always makes sure to call in and clarify that it was his time spent being tortured in Afghanistan that has made him require an Old Fashioned Human Teddy Bear, discretion to boners implied.)

"I am Iron Man."

It's decided (without him, specifically) that the only human being in the world allowed to drive Tony anywhere for the rest of ever is Happy.

Tony, obviously, has no objections.

"No, I don't want to join your super secret boy-band."

Coulson sends him a basket of socks and repurposes a Get Well Soon card that Tony had made him the time he got shot when Tony was in fourth grade. 

"I am Iron Man."

When Coulson shows up in New York, looking like he'd rather be jumping off of the building than to talk inside of it, Tony's ready. 

"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message!" 

. . . Or so he'd like to believe.

"I am Iron Man." 

DOB: May 29, 1991, at 2:58 pm 

Sex: Male

Weight: 7.0 lbs

Allergies: Basil, 

Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:

   Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treatment: Light Therapy — successful. 

   Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treatment plan: observe.

   Separation Anxiety; patient is prone to violent outbursts and/or nervous episodes when separated from primary guardians.

   PTSD; [see attached file]

   Vascular Prothetic(?) —> ARC REACTOR-BASED PACEMAKER, palladium core [???]

Notes:

   Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box. 

   Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks. Patient was switched to formula after four months. 

   Patient has shown early signs of heavy metal poisoning. Low levels detected in blood. Observation required. 

EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON/S

   MR. Obidiah Stane - Legal Guardian 

   (EX) DIRECTOR Margaret Carter - Legal Guardian

   DIRECTOR Nicholas Fury - Employer 

   MISS STARK INDUSTRIES CEO Pepper Potts 

Anthony Edward Stark

Avengers Initiative: [see attached file]