Guilt For Dreaming

Chapter 3: Draw the blinds on yesterday it’s oh so much scarier

Edwin was alerted to the, incident, by the shouting. He entered the dining room suite at a run and caught a glimpse of the problem through the open door. Maria was shrieking at Howard, Tony’s small limp form cradled to her breast.

Infuriatingly the serving staff were blocking the doorway to the anteroom, all keeping well back from the chaos. Edwin swept through the small crowd of waiters and maids that had gathered around the entrance of the side room, glaring at them with the contempt they deserved.

“Howard what have you done?”

Maria was shouting, Edwin noticed that she kept the couch between them at all times,

“Tony, Tony darling, my bambino, my baby.”

Howard was red in the face, swaying on his feet shouting back just as loudly and incoherently himself,

“Maria! It’s all your fault he’s a sissy boy! Look at the way you’re coddling him. He needs to be a man. Stark men are made of iron.”

Maria kept circling the furniture in the suite, using it to keep Howard out of grabbing reach. She was awkwardly clutching Tony’s small, but not quite small enough to make her load easy, form to her chest taking him with her as she moved. Howard’s face slowly turned puce, another burst of rage forced it’s way out of him in a stream of invective and spittle.

“Look at you! Is it any wonder he’s such a pathetic little mummy’s boy?!”

The chaos that followed was difficult to parse. Maria’s face warped in rage, she quickly, but carefully, laid Tony’s limp body down at her feet, and lunged across the coffee table for Howard. Swearing in rapid-fire Italian she crossed the gap between the two of them surprisingly agilely, given that she was wearing stilettos and a tight cocktail dress.

“Ti amazzo!”

“What are you doing you stupid Sicilian witch?”

“Figlio di Troia!”

The table screeched loudly as her stiletto scored its surface, Howard backed around the table just as quickly, but stumbled as he tripped over Tony’s small form. The boy was sandwiched uncomfortably in the gap between the couch and the coffee table, Howard’s foot dug into Tony’s abdomen before he caught himself on the hard edge of the table. Maria took advantage of his distraction; she scrambled over the coffee table again, talon-like fingernails outstretched.

From her new vantage point on top of the coffee table, she scored a set of gouges down the side of Howard’s face, the tip of her index finger bisecting the end of his moustache. The curse slipped through Howard’s lips almost involuntarily, a shouted exclamation of pain and rage,

“Argh! Stupid fucking whore!”

“Ce un cibirut!”

Clutching his face Howard reared back in pained shock, before raising his fist as if to strike her back.

Edwin called on skills that he hadn’t had to use seriously in years. Long legs crossing the room rapidly, he strode across the small anteroom and forcibly separated the pair of them before either could do any serious damage to each other or the small boy lying slumped awkwardly on the floor between them. Resisting the urge to hide his head in his hands until the whole situation went away Edwin surmised that they’d both been drinking heavily all evening. Neither one was backing down, he had to use all of the martial arts skills that Ana and Peggy had drilled into him to stop them from hurting each other and himself.

If the situation weren’t so serious the scene would almost be comical, Maria kept trying to reach past him over his shoulders towards Howard. Her arms were outstretched, flailing in her husband’s direction. For his part Howard had his chest puffed out angrily, he was red in the face and shouting abuse about Maria’s family, Maria’s virtue, or lack thereof, and Tony’s failings as his spawn. Blood slowly soaking the white collar of his shirt Howard bellowed out,

“The ungrateful little shit doesn’t appreciate single malt bourbon when it’s forced down his throat. It’s all your fault, you’re a filthy moor-infested Sicilian blooded slut, you Mafioso bitch. You’re a whore aren’t you? Maria, you slut, who did you sleep with? Who!? He can’t be a Stark, Stark’s appreciate good scotch when they’re given it. You filthy cu-”

“Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo!”

Edwin genuinely couldn’t believe his ears, that his old friend was capable of spewing such hateful filth towards his own family -

“Bastardo! You, you – how dare you!”

Edwin’s moment of distraction cost him, Maria evaded his grasp and leapt towards Howard. Heels thoroughly destroying the finish of the coffee table she grabbed him by the collar and started trying to shake her husband bodily.

From his position crumpled half under the coffee table Tony groaned something inaudible, clearly struggling his way back to consciousness. Edwin had had enough of this nonsense. Tony was in danger of being crushed underfoot and the staff were still uselessly huddled in fright around the doorway. Edwin noted with some satisfaction that the newest member of the skeleton crew was the only unafraid face in the bunch; she was industriously clearing away the broken glass in the corner.

Howard’s patent-leather clad foot came uncomfortably close to kicking Tony in the kidneys,

“Stop this at once!”

Maria, and surprisingly Howard both fell silent meekly at the tone of his voice. Maria still clutching Howard’s shirt tightly, Howard with a facial expression that could curdle milk.

“Maria, we need to get help for Tony.”

Maria seemed to calm down at that, releasing her husband and moving to scoop up her son, somewhat predictably Howard immediately started up again on the verbal tirade,

“Whoreson. Mafioso slut, whose is he?! The pathetic little shit can’t be mine!”

Edwin interrupted the stream of hatred coolly.

“Howard, do you really want SI’s stocks to take that hit if the news gets out that you killed your own wife and child?”

Edwin wasn’t sure if it was his words, or his tone that got through to the man. But fortunately Howard seemed to falter at that; he seemed to come back to himself, blinking down in horror at Tony’s crumpled form and Maria’s tear-streaked face. Howard stumbled backwards and away from his family, face twisted in self-loathing he turned and shakily poured himself a large helping of whiskey from the drinks cabinet.

His old friend’s reaction disgusted Edwin, but it would do for now. He gently, but firmly pushed Maria aside and started checking on Tony’s vitals. Calling out instructions to the staff that were still crowded uselessly in the doorway he got to the important business of making sure that his charge was all right.

After twenty frustrating minutes of barking orders Edwin finally had the situation under control enough to call in the family physician. The man was well paid, in fact he was paid enough not to ask awkward questions, or raise any alarm bells. Edwin hated to the very depths of his soul that the extra money was so very necessary but in this instance having a discreet doctor available around the clock was an absolute boon.

~~~~~~~~

Tony knew that he’d woken up, there’d been pain and light and noise, and now he was lying on a flat horizontal surface. It was even vaguely comfortable, which was quite a large step-up from his expectations.

He cracked open his eyes cautiously, the ceiling was cracked, plaster forming a familiar landscape of crevices and gorges. He was back in his childhood bedroom again, he glanced to the side, it seemed to be the middle of the day. Tony groaned as the ache that made up the entirety of the left side of his face made itself known to him. He catalogued his teeth with his tongue; thankfully they all seemed to be there. Though he honestly thought that it wouldn’t matter that much, he was young enough now that they’d grow back in. (Hah! Tony wondered how he hadn’t caught the parallels before, new-old teeth, that really was weird.)

Tony shifted on the bed, a whole new host of aches lit up his nervous system, his entire lower abdomen felt strangely tender. The horribly familiar sensation of bruised kidneys gradually made itself known, body cashing in cheques that he hadn’t even realised he’d sent out.

A familiar woman was dozing in a chair at the foot of his bed she looked anything but matronly despite her attempts to appear so with that floral dress. She looked tough, hardened in a way that forcibly reminded him of Natasha at her most beautiful and deadly.

Ana Jarvis was sat at the end of his bed, sleeping peacefully. Something in his chest loosened and Tony relaxed immediately, he’d missed the woman dreadfully. He’d honestly forgotten just how much she meant to him, it had been such a very long time since he’d seen her last.

Tony pushed down the wave of utter heartache that threatened to overwhelm him completely. He couldn’t believe how thoroughly he’d managed to forget this woman, she’d taken care of him when his parents couldn’t be bothered with him.

He focussed fuzzily on her face, she looked exhausted and he had a sinking feeling that his current situation had nothing to do with it. The tiredness looked bone-deep, her face milk-white, skin nearly translucent in a manner that spoke of long-term illness. Tony desperately hoped that he remembered the timelines wrong, but he knew that his memory for numbers was excellent.

The thought that had been jumping up and down trying to get his attention finally made itself clear, the sheer amount of medical gear lying around his childhood bedroom was frankly alarming.

The creepy family doctor had obviously been in to patch him up, that thought was utterly horrifying. Despite his best efforts and the rising wave of panic Tony found himself drifting back down into unconsciousness lulled down by the pull of the drugs.

~~~~~~~

Once the immediate danger had passed Edwin was guiltily grateful for the brief respite in his duties that the terrible Incident had provided. Howard had holed himself up in his workshop like a petulant child in a sulk, Edwin was under no illusions that his old friend was working, he recognised the beginnings of one of Howard’s alcohol binges when he saw it.

The great snit that Howard was in at least meant that the man wasn’t making any more outrageous demands of the staff, and somewhat luckily Maria’s continued outrage at Howard’s actions had prevented the man from hiding away until after Doctor Constantine had finished tending to Tony. So the cuts on Howard’s face had been tended to, Edwin had felt unbutlery vindictiveness at every pained hiss his employer had made as the doctor had dabbed at his face with the iodine. Dawn had been breaking when Edwin had finally packed the doctor off with a grateful smile, and several hundred dollars of hush money from the mansion’s petty cash fund.

The incompetent staff Howard had brought with him had been cowed by the events of the previous evening, so Edwin had had very little trouble sending the majority of them home for the day, and giving the more reliable skeleton-crew their orders in the certain belief that they would be obeyed.

During a lull in the chaotic activity he’d called his wife Ana and asked that she’d take a day off at the mansion, fortunately for his state of mind she’d agreed immediately, no sign of hesitation in her voice. Edwin had desperately wanted to sit in with Tony himself, however he’d needed to make sure that Maria didn’t do anything foolish in her current state of mind. The woman had been on the verge of tearing at her own hair when he’d seen her last.

~~~~~~~

Well, Tony mused resignedly as he stared up at his bedroom ceiling, laid up with half his head covered in ice packs, it seemed Howard nearly killing him had irrevocably altered the timeline. He should be begging not to be sent to that bloody school by now, not confined to the mansion until his face healed up enough that he was decent for the public eye again. Tony had lost a whole day, he really didn’t like the frequency at which he was being bedridden, he hoped it wasn’t the beginning of a trend.

Fortunately Howard’s reputation played into Tony’s hands, his black and blue face meant the older man didn’t want him interacting with the staff more than absolutely necessary. So for once Tony was actually getting the recuperation time that his injuries required. Once again Tony was aware that he was losing stretches of time to his infirmities, but with Ana’s continued presence he hadn’t cared.

Whilst he’d longed for her company Tony hadn’t been able to bring himself to be selfish enough to wake Ana, she’d looked so very pale. When Jarvis came in with a nameless staff member in tow to relieve her, Tony had settled for thanking his lucky stars that the creepy doctor hadn’t been back yet. He repressed the shiver of utter revulsion that his memories of the man and his clammy hands brought up. Forcibly pressing down the memories of that awful man and his awful secretive touches into the darkest depths of his mind he tried to focus on the here and now through the haze of drugged pain.

Ignoring his latest interchangeable keeper Tony absentmindedly hummed the riff from Thunderstruck, incapable of remaining silent for such a long stretch of time. He was struck with a pang of deep homesickness when he realised that the song wouldn’t be written for another fourteen years. Damn he missed the familiar strains of ACDC far more than he’d ever have thought possible. He couldn’t in all truthfulness say that he missed very much about his home-situation back in the future, but familiar and much loved music was one of the few things that he unequivocally longed for.

Half-heartedly working on a way to improve the suits interfaces and response times without the aid of Extremis or an AI, Tony focussed on upgrading the implant designs he’d used in conjunction with the MK42. If he could improve the subroutines in the receptor chips it would take hardly any processing power at all to connect the suit to his nervous system’s outputs.

The schematics for the devices he’d injected into his arms all those years ago had him spiralling again, flashing onto the eerily similar ports in the people trapped in the Matrix. Tony really didn’t want to contemplate the likelihood that this whole situation was a giant fucking trap, one that he had sprung. Tony didn’t know where to stand, in the here and now there was no sense to be had, just Tony Stark where he had no fucking right to be.

Tony was aware in a distant sort of way that he wasn’t in a normal frame of mind; he didn’t think he’d have thought a sentence quite that twisted at anything approaching his usual operating parameters. Staring at the yawning chasm of shit that was his life, the almost certainly real current-future and possibly unreal current-past. Christ, that thought was even more garbled than his usual parallel streams of pure ideas, the English language really wasn’t designed for this kind of utter temporal and existential uncertainty.

Tony started the breathing exercises that would help him drop into a meditative trance and help him create some order out of the whirling chaos of his mind. However between the painkillers, the remaining aftershocks of the panic, and the persistent ache in his jaw and side he gave up on the attempt fairly quickly. He’d ended up focussing on nothing but the strangely distant sensation of the pain rather than separating his thoughts from the concerns of the physical.

Actually he was pretty bloody bored by this point, but he knew better than to push his luck where Howard was concerned. If indeed this was actually Howard, for all that his father’s actions had read pretty close to his expectations Tony still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t all a horrible Titan-induced hurricane of piss that he’d have to clean up.

Staring up at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster he could feel the frustration building up, real or not, what had he actually achieved in the last few weeks?

Fuck all that was what.

He’d been so caught up in his own head that he hadn’t managed to make any progress at all on finding out whether or not this situation was what it seemed, or somehow, improbably, even fucking worse than the one he’d just left. As soon as he could sneak away he was going to get back to working on Phase II of his WTF is Going On plan.

Forcibly dragging his thoughts onto a productive track he got back to hedging his bets. Tony remembered something that he’d read about Jarvis, Edwin, the Original Jarvis on the SHIELD files that JARVIS had acquired for him. Jarvis and especially Ana were both apparently experts in martial arts – perhaps he could use this latest incident with Howard as an excuse for the sudden interest.

~~~~~~~

Edwin hugged his wife tightly when she came down from her shift watching Tony the next morning. She looked wan in the bright summer light, dark circles under her eyes contrasting unpleasantly with the waxen paleness of too little sleep. He was grateful that she’d chosen to use one of her rare not-on-active-duty days off helping him watch his charge.

“How is he?” he asked quietly.

“Sleeping, the poor dear.” Ana looked pained, “Howard’s really done it this time, the poor mite is black and blue all over.” She scowled suddenly, ”If word were to get out about this we could take Tony away from that horrible, odious little man.”

“If only we could guarantee that we’d be the ones to take him in darling.” Edwin sighed, they’d had this discussion a thousand times before, and their reasons for inaction still hadn’t changed. Despite Ana’s eyeroll he voiced the thought out loud, it could do with the reiteration,

“But you and I both know that Tony would only be used as a political pawn. I dread to think what would happen to him Ana if he ended up in the system.” He gusted out a breath, the next argument was hateful, “And unfortunately Stark Industries is too important to the world at large to be allowed to collapse under the weight of the board squabbling for power.”

Ana’s face darkened further at the reminder,

“Damn Stark Industries. And damn Howard Stark too.”

“I know darling.” Edwin agreed in pained tones.

“I hate that we can’t do anything for the poor boy. Hate it.”

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, given that they’d had this conversation a thousand times before, and as always were no closer to coming to an acceptable solution, Ana had to rush off to work. Edwin didn’t envy her the sleep-deprived day ahead, a woman in a high-powered position still faced difficulties even now nearly thirty years after people like Peggy pioneered the concept.

Ana pecked him on the cheek and hurried out of the kitchen door in the direction of the garage. Edwin thought he heard her mutter.

“And damn SHIELD, and us all.”

He found that he rather agreed with the bitter sentiment.

~~~~~~~

Tony was surprised when Jarvis tentatively put his head around the door that afternoon, he’d been brought bowls of nourishing gruel by generic interchangeable members of staff and had thought the older man would be far too busy organising the household to take care of him. The butler looked worn thin, tired and old in a way that made Tony’s heart ache.

Jarvis turned pained eyes on Tony, seeming to inspect him head to toe for more injuries. When he’d apparently satisfied himself that Tony wasn’t about to drop dead at any moment Jarvis thrust an unmistakeable flat square shape towards him.

Tony blinked up at him nonplussed from the bed.

Sighing heavily Jarvis sat on the edge of the bed, mattress dipping under the older man’s weight Tony shifted away so he wouldn’t roll into him. Jarvis quickly backed away as if he’d been struck, Tony froze, he didn’t know what to do, how to react.

Jarvis seemed to spot this and started making soothing hushing noises,

“There, there Tony, it’s alright. I promise. I promise, I would never hurt you.”

“J-Jarvis?”

Tony croaked out. Did he honestly think? Is that why J had been so miserable lately? Tony felt awful. Dammit, even when he knew he was hurting the people he lov- he couldn’t help it.

Unable to bear the look of remorse, and suspicious dampness in Jarvis’ eyes for a moment longer Tony threw himself into the other man’s arms and clung to him tightly.

Jarvis seemed to crack at that, wrapping Tony up in his arms, resting his chin on Tony’s head, and murmuring,

“Tony, oh Tony, my boy. I’m so so sorry.”

They remained like that for several minutes, Tony could feel that his hair was getting damp. The sudden knowledge that Jarvis truly genuinely cared set him off too, and soon Jarvis’ shirt was utterly ruined, sodden with tears and snot.

Eventually the pair pulled apart, Jarvis looking down at Tony with such love and inexplicable guilt (what on earth did Jarvis have to feel guilty for?) in his red-rimmed eyes that Tony almost burst into tears again. He’d always known that Jarvis must have cared, but to know that he cared on this visceral level was another thing entirely. He desperately hoped that this situation wasn’t all some cruel illusion, Tony was semi-convinced he would break if it turned out that this Jarvis was illusory, and that the real Jarvis hadn’t cared for him after all.

Somewhat sheepishly Jarvis reached around behind him, and picked the LP bag up off the bed,

“I was saving this for later, maybe a Christmas present, but after everything that’s happened I think you and I could both do with some cheering up.”

He somewhat gingerly passed the LP over, as if afraid that Tony might break.

Tony was surprised when the brown bag revealed a dark night-time scene, the dark blue-black sky and the gleaming wet streets of London. A blonde man stood in the alley pictured, leaning on some boxes, clutching a guitar, and wearing a bright turquoise jumpsuit. The title itself had tiny stars embedded in the font, the whole image somehow ridiculously evocative, the album was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars.

“Mike ahem, “ordered” in a first pressing specially so I do hope you like it.”

Tony flipped the LP over and gazed down at the back cover, Bowie was posed provocatively in a red London phone box, sneering contemptuously out at the camera. He snorted when he spotted the instructions underneath the track listing, “To Be Played At Maximum Volume.” Tony had every intention of doing so at the first opportunity.

Tony stared down in awe at the gift, it wasn’t the album in itself that was precious, it was the very fact that Jarvis had thought of him, and put so much effort into buying a gift for him, for Tony.

Blinking back the tears that wanted to reform, Tony didn’t know what was wrong with him today, he just couldn’t stop all of these strange emotions from welling up left right and centre, Tony timidly glanced back up at Jarvis.

“Th-Thank you.” He managed to croak out in a small voice.

“You’re welcome Tony.” Jarvis’ voice was warm with a tone that Tony hesitated to put a name to. The older man looked fond, at least Tony thought he looked fond. Tony was becoming less sure of his ability to read facial expressions with every minute he spent in Jarvis’ company, too many unfamiliar emotions, full of warmth and, dare he think it, care for him to feel comfortable trying to name.

Forcing back the growing knot of emotion that wanted to sit heavy in his chest Tony got around to asking the question that he’d been ruminating over ever since he’d woken up with half his face black and blue,

“Jarvis, um, can I, can we,” Tony trailed off uncertainly, swallowed and tried again, “Couldyoupleaseteachmemartialarts?”

“What was that Tony?”

“Jarvis, could you please teach me martial arts?”

~~~~~~~~

Staring down in consternation at his charge Edwin considered his suggestion, it was obvious that Howard had triggered the idea in the boy’s head, and honestly Edwin couldn’t blame the poor child.

He thought he should consult Ana on this, Edwin had a feeling she’d have plenty of suggestions about how he should go about teaching Tony the basics without giving him any grand ideas about fighting larger opponents than himself. Before he could reply Tony started talking rapidly,

“We’ll need to keep this on the down low.”

“Tony?” Jarvis questioned, amused by the assumption of agreement, and unsure what his charge meant.

“We need to keep it quiet that we’re doing this. I don’t want Howard to know.” Tony seemed to check himself here, “I don’t want anyone who’d want to kidnap me to know I can defend myself.”

“Ah. I see.”

Tony seemed to take Edwin’s pondering tone as a signal to bring out more persuasive arguments. Edwin felt his consternation growing as Tony’s face settled into an incredibly grave position, voice low, rushed and certain with a self-confidence that he’d never heard from his charge before. If he didn’t know better Edwin would think that Tony were gearing himself up for a business deal with rivals, his behaviour was so similar in body language and tone to Howard’s at an important meeting,

“There’s already been what, three, kidnapping attempts? I need to be able to take care of myself, even if I’m in a situation where fighting back would be the worst idea in the history of mankind, if I were to somehow get myself out I’d need to be able to look after myself. Or maybe even be able to put myself in a position where a kidnapping wouldn’t actually be possible.”

Edwin paused before replying, whilst he hated that the boy sounded so, so adult, Tony’s arguments actually seemed to make sense. The boy was being rational and logical, for all that Edwin thought that this turn of events was triggered by the emotional fallout from Howard’s latest round of, well, there was no other word for it, abuse. Being honest with himself, Edwin wouldn’t have blamed Tony for his motivations being less than sensible, but his charge’s arguments seemed to make sense.

He decided to acquiesce,

“Okay Tony, but, we only start once you’ve healed up enough.”

“Thank-“

“And,” he interrupted, “Ana has to be there to supervise.”

Edwin was puzzled by the momentary flash of triumph on Tony’s face, he had been sure that bringing up Ana would put his charge off the idea. Thanks to Howard Tony had some very definite ideas about what women could and couldn’t do. But if anything Edwin felt as if he’d somehow just been played.

He wasn’t sure that he liked the feeling, or the implications.

This new manipulative streak was yet another item for the ever-growing list of personality traits that Edwin was compiling. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever bring up the full extent of the changes with someone else, quite a few of the differences were extremely difficult to explain verbally let alone convincingly. Even with Ana he’d struggled to convey the breadth of his concerns.

Edwin wasn’t entirely sure what the puzzle pieces were adding up to yet, he felt as if he had nearly all of the pieces of the jigsaw now. If he could just find an edge, or a corner, some part of the picture that wasn’t just yet another useless piece of sky, than he felt as if the whole image would come together and start to make sense.

~~~~~~~

The following evening there was yet another gentle knock on the door, Tony was getting tired of people walking on eggshells around him, it only made him more acutely aware that the other shoe was going to drop any moment, and that Howard’s patience would soon run out or possibly worse The Titan would reveal himself. If Jarvis hadn’t practically ordered him to stay in bed Tony would have hidden himself away in his shop as soon as he’d woken up, but he was still on the good-drugs and didn’t trust himself to do any delicate or dangerous work.

He was surprised when instead of Jarvis, or one of the few other staff members allowed in to see him, Maria stuck her head around the door. Her gaze lingered on his face, taking in the ugly bruising but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was looking around everywhere but at him, he caught the moment when she realised he’d done some minor redecorating, her expression morphing from one of shame to puzzlement for a fraction of a second.

“Oh Tony.” She breathed out; in a moment she’d crossed the room and gathered him into her arms for a breath-stealing hug. After a moment of stunned immobility Tony found himself clinging tightly back. He’d forgotten this, her softness, her scent, the way she truly cared.

“Mom!” he sobbed back, clinging tighter still.

It was so easy to forget the genuine love she’d somehow held for both Tony and Howard, selfish hateful Starks both. It was all too easy to focus on the bad times, despite the utter care she’d always shown him on her good days.

There was something horribly fragile about his mother, she had been a strong woman once upon a time, before Howard had happened. Tony knew it for a fact; he’d seen the evidence. A scientific genius in her own right Maria had caught Howard’s attention at a stupid social event by fending off Obie’s unwanted advances with cool indifference, sass, and when all else failed a well placed heel to a groin.

It had transpired later that evening that the pair of them had far more in common than merely having to attend the same unpleasant societal events with New York’s upper classes, Maria had been amongst the score of scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Somehow she’d earned herself enough of a reputation in an era as backwards as the forties to gain herself a position as a researcher there. Whilst she didn’t have a particularly major role, after all she was only a woman, she had been there on her own merit for her scientific mind, not to fetch the coffee.

Tony still wasn’t sure why Maria had fallen for Howard’s flash and dazzle, she was far more intelligent than that, but he was painfully aware of just how charming his father could be when he wanted to put the effort in. After all, Tony had employed the same techniques himself many a time; he’d learnt the hard way that it was the only way to survive when you were an incredibly young “naïve” CEO at 21 and the sharks were circling.

He was horribly aware that the drugs were doing strange things to his thought processes, they were rose tinted and nostalgia filled. Christ, perhaps this was part of the trap.

Tony wasn’t sure which of the many possible existential scenarios he’d prefer to be real at this point, he couldn’t face the idea of dealing with his parents and all of their shit. Yet somehow the thought that his mother was merely a figment was utterly terrifying.

His spiralling thoughts were interrupted by Maria’s own stream of nonsense,

“Oh my bambino, can you ever forgive me for allowing your father” the words were spat like a curse, “to ever lay a hand on you?”

Tony’s heart sank, whilst Maria wasn’t having one of her truly bad days he thought that she might be having one of her bitter days, one of many she’d spent drinking and bemoaning loudly to anyone who would listen that Howard Stark had ruined her life. Whilst Tony was aware that there was an awful lot of truth in that statement, he hated seeing his mother so darkly and helplessly angry with her lot in life. She could have done things to help herself he knew, after all her siblings would have welcomed her back into the fold of the Carbonell family with open arms.

“It’s okay mom.” He uttered on rote, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He noted that she seemed to relax at those words. Ah, she actually was having a bad day then. If she’d been entirely with it Maria would have checked on his wellbeing for herself, not just taken his word for it.

The visit home must have been a bad one if a little shouting match with Howard affected her so much. Holding in the sigh by effort of will Tony hugged her again, this time more for her comfort than his own. Tony admitted to himself that he was angry with her for this. He knew it was unfair, but he was a Stark, and they had a well-earned reputation for selfishness.

She’d gotten better by his late teens, he’d just been building a proper relationship with her when she’d been snatched away. Tony acknowledged that that little fact may have contributed to his reaction when he’d found out about Barnes’ involvement, well that and the way he’d found out. Steve had lied to his face for two whole years about it, despite hypocritically ragging on him about transparency within the team.

Tony was far too relieved when Maria seemed to think she’d done enough mothering for the day. He couldn’t cope with the massive step-back in their relationship, not in his current state of mind. He supposed that was all part of Than-The Titan’s trap, and he was playing straight into the purple ass’s hands.

~~~~~~~

Now that the household consisted of more than just Edwin and the cleaning crew he had more opportunities to spend time with his darling wife, however every time he made the short journey to their shared home Edwin felt a sharp stab of guilt. He felt as if he was betraying Tony every single time he left him alone in that hateful mansion with Howard. Edwin had decidedly mixed feelings every time their lonely shared summers came to an end, and this time around was no exception. Edwin was of the opinion that home was where you had to feel safe. If you didn’t feel safe, it wasn’t home. Edwin was under no illusions as to how Tony felt about the mansion.

Thankfully something about the incident seemed to have knocked some sense into his erratic master, Howard had retreated to his workshop, avoiding everyone else in the household except when forced. Edwin had only really felt comfortable leaving Tony in the household after giving the staff explicit instructions not to let Howard anywhere near Tony’s bedroom. Though fortunately Edwin felt that the idiot man was unlikely to make an appearance that evening.

Over a shared dinner of shepherd’s pie (it had been his turn to cook, and he’d opted for British comfort food given the situation) Edwin finally found the time to voice the question he’d been meaning to ask Ana all evening,

“Darling I need to ask you for a favour.”

“Yes dear?”

Edwin swallowed, his previously appetising supper sitting like concrete in his stomach. He wasn’t sure how Ana would take this suggestion, but he’d already as good as promised Tony that this would happen.

“I need you to teach Tony martial arts darling.”

Ana surprised him with the wry tone in her voice,

“Am I to assume the latest incident with Howard brought this on?”

Edwin didn’t quite know how to respond to that question,

“Uh, yes darling.”

“Damn that man.” She hissed, “Well you’ll be pleased to know I got the time off you asked for.”

Edwin smiled wanly at his wife, she continued in a determined tone of voice,

“It’ll be no trouble to teach Tony some of the basics, lord knows you could do with a refresher course dear,” Ana shot him a warmly condescending look, “and I was planning on spending my hard-earned holiday with the pair of you anyway. It’ll be fun, wiping the floor with both of you big strong men.”

Edwin found himself smiling at his wife sappily, her no-nonsense approach to life and love somehow always managed to catch him by surprise despite the manner in which they’d met.

~~~~~~~

Avoiding the young woman mopping down the kitchen corridor Tony snuck down to the nanotube cellar, it was a relief to have the freedom to move around again. He’d hidden the painkillers in his cheek to take advantage of Jarvis’s absence, ever since the chaos that came with Howard’s return it had gotten far too difficult to check up on the progress he was making down there.

Shrugging on the coveralls and respirator, and wincing when the mask pushed against his still tender jaw, Tony eagerly entered the dark and sooty chamber. The spool of filament was filling up, but not as quickly as he’d like. Whilst he’d managed to make a relatively efficient set-up it wasn’t anywhere near the levels he’d achieved with SI back in the day.

Breathing out a heavy sigh through the respirator filters in disappointment Tony quickly checked over the ethanol feed levels, topping up the tank when he saw that it had gotten a little low, though fortunately not low enough to trigger his alarm. Tony had no idea how he’d have gone about explaining that one to Jarvis. Though there wasn’t as much filament being produced as he’d like in an ideal world, Tony needed to start thinking about how he’d process the fibre into something useable.

It would be quite easy to make a basic rope from the filament, the only real difficulty would be in making sure he didn’t introduce any flaws into the structure when he twisted the fibres together. Tony had spotted some 316L stainless steel tubing in his kid-self’s scraps-bin that would be perfect for the task, and might later be repurposed for the casings of those implants he’d been thinking about.

If he could produce enough filament to make something more complicated than that though, he’d need to start thinking about more complicated processing equipment.

Thoughts about forges, metallurgy, phase diagrams, temperature and leatherworking spinning through his mind Tony felt downright cheerful as he habitually snuck through the mansion back to his squash-shop. Tony started to reconsider his plans for those wonderful struts of blue-tinged metal that he’d pinched from Howard’s scraps bin, perhaps he shouldn’t waste all four shards in the robotic dog. Whilst the original long thin shard was far too slender to make anything useful, the shorter lengths of metal he’d created could be formed into something extremely useful indeed.

He automatically started to catalogue the materials he’d need to make the designs he was contemplating. Tony knew he’d need to find a source of wood, or failing that a plastic he could cast with similar properties if his half-formed idea was going to take fruit.

When he arrived at the shop Tony finally got around to integrating one of those metal struts into the chassis of the robot dog. It didn’t take very long given how much time he’d spent deliberating over the idea, the shard wasn’t actually there to do anything structural so didn’t actually need to be worked. If history repeated itself he was going to be ready this time.

Closing up and setting aside “Rex” Tony got on to his attempts to programme basic learning software into the small rudimentary computer formed from several pieces of circuitry he’d managed to cobble together. Whilst it wouldn’t be up to snuff, it could be a proof of concept for his MK42 replacement ideas. He’d need to build himself a computer with halfway decent specs to properly compile this stuff, but it was useful to run through the concepts.

Mentally cataloguing the electronics he’d seen around the mansion that he might be able to press-gang for his purposes Tony unthinkingly improved Rex’s chassis, automatically replacing several panels of bodywork with improved shapes that more closely resembled the musculature of an actual hound.

~~~~~~~

Luckily Tony had finally been allowed up and about the following day, he’d been going stir crazy cooped up in his room like that. Following the sound of music he found himself outside the music room, it’s centrepiece a large grand piano. Cautiously entering the forest-scene wallpapered room Tony found himself sticking his head around a doorjamb this time. Some of his fondest memories of the mansion involved this room, also some of his worst.

He could hear the far too familiar strains of his mom playing “Try To Remember” on the grand, the song sent a thrum of nostalgia up his spine banishing the lingering homesickness the lack of ACDC had brought on. Even on her bad days his mom had always loved playing this song with him.

“Hi Mom.” Tony choked out, he hoped she was having a good day; somewhat selfishly he didn’t think he could stand it if she was having a bad one.    

“Hello Bambino.” She beamed back at him, “Do you want to join me?”

“Please.” He breathed out.

His mum shuffled along the piano stool, making room for him, wincing at the ache in his abdomen Tony took his habitual spot at the high C, he would be playing rhythm in counterpoint to her melody two octaves down.

The notes came to him easily despite the decades between the last time he’d played and now. Tony lost himself to the music and the memories, he allowed himself to simply appreciate the moment.

~~~~~~~

Edwin smiled softly to himself when he heard the familiar strains of Maria and Tony playing the grand together, in this at least the pair could provide each other some much needed comfort.

The influx of staff to the household had at once made his life easier and more difficult. Edwin no longer had to deal with the minutiae of cleaning the mansion, but instead he was managing a staff of thirty or so.

Fortunately the skeleton-staff had been allowed to stay, and they at least were competent enough to be left to it. Nodding to the new-girl on the skeleton crew as she mopped the far end of the hallway Edwin made his way over to a mess in the making that he could see beginning to happen.

As he calmly threatened the incompetent fools with demotion Edwin plotted. He needed to organise things by the end of the week so that he’d have the freedom to help supervise Tony’s lessons with Ana. Edwin thought that one of the smaller halls in the west wing would do nicely for their purposes. The halls had originally been planned as entertaining rooms anyway so there was plenty of floor space, and if he remembered correctly the wood was nicely sprung for dancing, or sparring.

Edwin refocused on dressing down the idiot who’d thought that floor-polish was a suitable substitute for the wax that was supposed to be used on the banisters. He was spending far too much of his time dealing with the idiocy of the staff that Howard had hired, Edwin had seen even less of Tony in the past couple of days than he usually managed when the poor boy was attending school.

Still Ana’s leave was due at the end of the week, Edwin was looking forward to having another excuse to spend time with his young charge, and Tony had actually suggested this one.

The extra time together might just provide the final pieces of the puzzle that he needed.

~~~~~~~

The next morning saw Tony attempting to sneak Rex to his decoy workshop under the stairs, he didn’t want anyone but Jarvis to know about the little robot animal yet. He certainly didn’t trust anyone, even Jarvis, to know about his newly chosen workspace. Unfortunately the route that swung around to his old workshop under the stairs took Tony down the oppressive, dark wood wainscoted, long straight corridor that went directly past his father’s study. There were no alternate routes, no turnings, and nowhere to hide if Howard should spot him. It hadn’t been an issue when it had just been him and Jarvis in the mansion. Tony could curse himself for forgetting that the route between one half of the house and the other took him past this room, but it had been decades since he’d lived in the mansion.

Tony had planned on making his way down the corridor as quickly as he could without making his footsteps echo loudly along the hard wooden chamber that formed the corridor’s walls, floor and ceiling. However the snatch of conversation that he overheard as he passed the partially ajar door to his father’s study stopped him dead in his tracks,

“Howard listen to reason man, you’re haemorrhaging money, you need to cut a deal.”

“No Obadiah, I’ll never betray my principles like that, SI does not deal under the table and especially not with communists, or double crossing Nazi affiliated corporations.”

As Tony was beginning to learn, few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight. Obadiah was looming almost threateningly over Howard, whilst he didn’t have the shear bulk that he’d possessed in the future he was still a tall man. And as a young man, he hadn’t yet run to fat, so what bulk he did possess was mostly muscle.

Howard for his part refused to be intimidated, scowling furiously up at his business partner he got right into the other man’s space, moustache bristling with his anger.

After an apparent age Howard seemed to slump, anger leaching out of him, he turned and poured himself a generous helping of whiskey from the decanter. As Howard was gulping the drink down in a long swallow Obie continued the argument,

“Howie, you need to make a deal, get in bed with Roxxon, it’s only temporary. With SI’s finances the way they are...”

“No! Obie, they’re all Nazi bastards. I, I can’t. I wont.” Howard seemed to square his shoulders and said quietly, “Steve wouldn’t.”

Obie glared pointedly at the scratch-marks down the left side of Howard’s face, eyebrows moving in an exaggerated fashion. They were both aware of the reasons why Howard hadn’t been able to leave the mansion to meet with the board or go out in public for the past week, despite his well-publicised return to New York.

If Tony hadn’t spent decades swimming in the shark-tank of corporate bullshit he doubted he’d have been able to follow the non-verbal conversation, as things stood the body-language was clear as day.

Obie was threatening to reveal the details of the latest incident in the Stark household to the press if Howard didn’t play ball, and Howard was attempting to call his bluff. Tony thought that Howard would win this one, Obie wanted to run SI not burn his cash cow to the ground.

“No Obie, I refuse to work with those bastards who tried to frame me.”

“Howard, that was all conjecture, there was never any proof. Besides – “

“I said NO, Obie.”

Obie gradually seemed to realise that there was no changing Howard’s mind on this matter. As he’d always done with Tony when there was no recourse he rapidly changed the topic of the conversation, in the hope that Howard would forget the discussion so that he could carry out the plan of action regardless. The calculating expression crossed his face again; it was so transparent Tony wondered for the hundredth time how he hadn’t spotted it before. He thought that Howard might have been able to read it, but the other man disappointed him by rising to the bait.

“So Howard, how’s your boy doing?”

Obie’s gambit worked perfectly, Howard’s face immediately twisted in rage, this time aimed at Tony,

“Ungrateful little shit didn’t know good single malt bourbon when I shoved it in his face. Pathetic little mommy’s boy. Sissy. I swear he’s no son of mine, no Stark would ever-”

Obie seemed to realise that he’d miscalculated with his choice of gambit; he clumsily attempted to break the productivity halting rage with a jovial quip, all the finesse he’d possessed by Tony’s time missing.

“Young people these days, eh?”

Tony quietly snorted to himself from his spot in the corridor, he focused on the first half of Howard’s rant; ignoring the second for fear that it would break him. Typically of his father, the man was being a snob about a topic he knew nothing about. Single malt bourbon my ass. The whole term was an oxymoron.

Single malts were all about 100% Barley maltings, heritage and frequently, Scotland. There were single malts, blended malts, blended whiskies, and grain whiskies. And then there were the utterly separate US definitions, such as Bourbon and Rye. Bourbon by definition was produced using a mash of 51-80% corn, again by definition nothing close to resembling ”single malt”. The two whisky disciplines by the very text that defined them were legally utterly disparate.

Tony was pretty thoroughly lost in the technicalities of the different whisky and whiskey definitions. He was trying desperately not to think about the scotches that had given him the final push into full-on alcoholism; Tony genuinely loved the taste of the heavily peated scotches that tended to come out of Islay. He could almost taste the contrast of the sherried variety of Ardbeg that had been a firm favourite of his, the heavy smoky peat, segueing delightfully into the sweet tones of the sherry casks the liquor had been aged in.

That appreciation for the flavours, made his issues with the Demon Drink all the more painful to deal with. There was no such thing as non-alcoholic scotch, no other way to gain access to that savoury miasma of smoke and pure taste.

He attempted to drag his thoughts away from the remembered flavours of his favourite drinks, but Tony only succeeded in derailing his thoughts onto the Japanese single malts that he’d gradually developed a taste for, or even the delights of peated Australian whiskies. Where the flavour was definitely the intense savoury peat that drew him back every time, but somehow utterly unlike any peat he’d ever tasted from Scotland.

On the basis of taste alone (who was he kidding, he’d picked up alcohol for more than the taste) Tony had ended up drinking a glass of scotch a night, gradually increasing his intake in increments until he was on nearly a bottle of scotch a day at his lowest ebb. Oh he’d liked Bourbon plenty too, the almost-sweet taste of the whiskey could be pleasant when he was in the right mood. The almost spicy rye-forward blends had melded nicely with the sweetness of the corn. However Tony had generally preferred the far more savoury flavours that tended to be prominent in even the most basic scotch whisky.

Lost in his thoughts on alcohol, and alcoholism Tony didn’t realise that Howard and Obie’s conversation inside the study was winding down until it was far too late to do anything about it.

Howard stepped out of his study and double-took when he spotted Tony right outside his door, the older man’s face twisted with rage instantly. Fortunately Obie’s presence stopped Howard from doing anything to Tony there and then, but his father’s face promised retribution later.

“Tony! My boy!”

Tony peered up at Obie’s bulky form looming over him, he couldn’t help but take a step back away from the man.

“How did you manage that bruise eh? Scrapping in the garden? Rough and tumble with the other lads?”

Tony internally laughed cynically, what other lads? Espying Howard’s severely quelling look Tony straightened his spine and answered with spiteful honesty,

“Yes, rough and tumble.” He drawled coolly, “I ran into Howard’s fist.”

Obadiah did his best to look shocked, the expression soon fading into cold calculation. It saddened Tony to realise that the older man had likely always been a shark, ersatz father figure or no. It was a painful epiphany, that Obie had always viewed him as the “golden goose”. He’d honestly hoped that the betrayal hadn’t been that long in the coming, but he should have known better, nothing good in his life was ever pure for long.

Howard was still glaring pure murder at him from over Obie’s shoulder; Tony shot him a look of pure loathing. If looks could kill, Stark Jr would win the contest hands down he knew - Tony had had decades to practice that paparazzi-perfect look of contempt. Though truthfully he didn’t mean it, Tony was a worse monster than Howard had ever been.

Once more thanking his not-so-lucky stars that Obie’s presence was good for something at least; stopping Howard from getting physical with him. Tony backed away from the pair, Howard’s eyes continually promising bloody murder all the while.

“What’s that you’ve got there myboy?”

Tony suppressed a shudder at the too familiar nickname and the falsely jovial tone that Obie was employing; he automatically shoved the pathetic little robot dog behind his back. He didn’t want Obie to see any tech that he’d made, the response ironically pavlovian considering precisely what he was carrying.

He found himself backing further away from the pair of men, before turning and running in a manner very reminiscent of the six-year-old he appeared to be. Howard’s loud voice followed him down the corridor, increasing the feeling of claustrophobic panic,

“Get back here boy! No son of mine would be so rude to a guest!”

Obie said something inaudible to Howard that Tony couldn’t catch, tone cajoling. Fleeing into the depths of the house Tony didn’t dare to go down to his shop in case Howard should get it into his head to follow him. Instead he headed over to the staff kitchen, hoping to run into Jarvis - one of the few adult figures from his childhood that hadn’t been utterly tainted by the perspective that adulthood brought.

~~~~~~~

Edwin was pleasantly surprised when he found Tony in the tiny staff kitchen, there was something off about the boy’s facial expression, but Edwin couldn’t quite read it. He still hadn’t learnt the new book that was his charge’s changed set of default expressions, and the now sickly green bruising following his jaw line and merging with the boy’s cheekbone was throwing off his ability to hazard a guess.

Thankfully the staff were all treading carefully today with Obadiah Stane’s visit so Edwin actually had the time to try to work it out. He was grateful for the moment of respite from the idiocy of others, much as Stane gave him the willies. There was just something about the man that raised his hackles, though damned if he knew what it was.

Edwin was doubly surprised when he spotted the gleaming shape of Rex the robot puppy on the little kitchen table, between the utter chaos that came with Howard’s return and the Incident he was ashamed to admit that he’d nearly forgotten about the little robot’s existence. Though being fair given the sheer insanity of the last week he could hardly be blamed that it had slipped his mind. The design looked somehow sleeker than he remembered it being, the little robot far more canine shaped than the boxy little cylinder on legs than he remembered.

“Oh did you finish him Tony?”

Tony seemed downhearted somehow,

“Yeah.”

Edwin was worried enough by the unenthusiastic response that he dared a direct question,

“What’s wrong? Did something not work with his design?”

“Huh? Oh no, it’s fine. He works perfectly. See?”

Tony depressed a hidden switch in the dog’s underbelly, Edwin suppressed a wince when he realised precisely which section of anatomy the button corresponded to, and the little robot sprung to life.

Rex toddled surprisingly realistically across the kitchen table towards Edwin, yapping with apparent enthusiasm when he tentatively reached out and petted it on the head.

Edwin was impressed, he hadn’t remembered Tony saying anything about the little robot actually behaving like a real animal. Then again he shouldn’t be too surprised, his young charge was a budding genius after all.

The little dog made it’s way back over towards Tony, butting its little head against the palm of his hand until he half-heartedly petted it, whereupon it barked excitedly, and it’s little springy tail started wagging.

Tony seemed to sag at the response, though Edwin couldn’t for the life of him guess why. The little robotic puppy was far better than anything he’d have imagined. Something about the little robot’s happiness made Tony wince, and he quickly, but carefully, lifted the dog up and re-engaged the off switch.

Not knowing what to do with Tony’s inexplicable despondency Edwin got on with the business of serving them up lunch, before somewhat underhandedly offering to play Tony’s latest LP with him. Music was still the only social activity that he’d had any real success with at drawing Tony out of the shell he seemed to have retreated into. Edwin regretted that with the return of the family he’d had hardly a moment’s peace, let alone much time to spend with Tony. Lord knew the poor boy desperately needed some human company.

He was glad when the boy jumped on his suggestion, Edwin had seen far too little of his charge since the Incident, Tony’s recuperation time seemed to have exacerbated his tendency to vanish into the mansion at all hours. Hopefully he’d be able to catch an hour to himself, Edwin had a sinking feeling that managing the newly expanded household was a fool’s errand, the staff were all being ridiculously nervous and prone to strange mistakes. However given the behaviour that both Howard and Maria were indulging in he wasn’t sure he could blame them for their lapse.

Edwin could only hope that Tony too hadn’t lapsed back into the utterly haunted child that he’d been a few weeks ago, though he honestly suspected it was a wasted hope. Their relationship had still been far too strained when all of this nonsense had swept into their lives, Tony still alarmingly skittish. Now that things were calming down again Edwin could only restart his desperate overtures with his young charge and keep his fingers crossed that the puzzle he was putting together wasn’t going to form as alarming an image as he suspected was hiding underneath all of those painful silences.

~~~~~~~

Tony and Jarvis were sat in the older man’s rooms, preparing to listen to Ziggy Stardust together when Jarvis was called away to deal with something Maria had done. Tony gratefully stayed where he was, he didn’t want to have to try and deal with her brand of trouble, it was usually emotionally crippling.

After a moment’s hesitation Tony carefully settled the needle onto the LP, relaxing as the opening, a solo drumbeat, sounded out over the speakers. He had been planning on examining the LP’s intriguing looking cover, however the dire apocalyptic tone of the first song caught his attention, yet again Bowie’s work was drawing terrifying parallels with both his current mood and his past. The months of build-up to Than-The Titan’s invasion really had felt like a countdown to doomsday.

By the time the screamed chorus of “We’ve got five years that’s all we’ve got!” came along Tony was on the verge of hyperventilating, Bowie’s plaintive cries pushing him right over the edge into utter existential uncertainty. This current crisis even worse than the usual brand of shite and piss he had to deal with. It wasn’t just the usual self-flagellating thoughts of whether or not he deserved to try and do right by the world, but whether or not reality actually fucking existed. His whole world had spiralled down into the question of whether this, here and now, was real or not.

Tony was likely caught in a trap, one that he couldn’t even begin to see the edges of. He was dragged back into the moment when he caught the next song’s message about the dangers of love sweeping over the world, startling a cynical spurt of laughter out of him. Tony still wasn’t sure if he was projecting his mood onto Bowie’s lyrics or not but the bleak seventies-ness of the LP cover probably backed up his suspicions that Bowie was at least as cynical as he was about these things.

Tony was grateful for the interruption to the dark whirl of his thoughts, the LP was just barely giving him something to focus on, however the next song’s lyrics of utter nonsense allowed him to withdraw back into his own mind, only the dark tone of the music itself penetrating the confused tangle.

It was as if his body, trying to devote as many resources as possible to untangling the spiralling thoughts was drawing those resources from the rest of him. His vision darkened, Tony slid to the floor, knees weak. His whole world narrowed down to the numbers printed on the record deck. The speed selection buttons and the orange glow of the speed indicator light absorbed all of his focus, Tony tried to use Bruce’s breathing exercises to calm down to no avail.

There was nothing but bewildered despair.

The speed dial had blurred into unreality because his eyes were filled with tears. Tony was startled back to the present when the uplifting Morse-code sequence of Starman blared surprisingly loudly over the speakers. He hadn’t expected a song that was so positive to pop-up after the bleak beginnings to the first handful of tracks.

The surprise Morse-code only succeeded in pushing his thoughts back towards the moral dilemma that he’d been battling with ever since he’d realised it was a possibility, should he try to resurrect FRIDAY and JARVIS? Did he have the right to drag someone else down into this hell with him? Gods knew he could do with all of the help he could get down here, and the ability to implement their code would be another tick in the not-a-trap column. Or possibly not.

Making the attempt to pull himself together he realised he’d come back to himself just in time. Jarvis reappeared as the first side of the LP ended interrupting the strange country music that was echoing over the speakers, he gave Tony a concerned and puzzled look. Tony must have done a piss-poor job of hiding the evidence of his mini-breakdown.

Jarvis settled down on his lounge-chair next to Tony and gestured for him to continue playing the record. Wordlessly Tony moved to do so, relieved that Jarvis apparently wasn’t in the mood to play twenty questions with him. Whatever Maria had done must have been pretty exhausting to deal with.

Tony flushed when the first track on the second side of the LP referenced a man wearing make-up, he wasn’t sure what someone from Jarvis’s generation would make of references to gender-bending. Fortunately when he sneaked a look up at the older man through his lashes Jarvis’ face was utterly impassive and apparently appreciative of the music.

Fortunately for Tony’s peace of mind the next song was a harmless ditty about wanting to be a rock and roll star, but the following one had Bowie drawling out suggestively “oh come on, oh come on.” The song tailed off to Bowie gasping out “Come on! Uh!” repeatedly, Tony was distracted from the mortification when a familiar guitar riff thrummed out over the speakers. He honestly didn’t know why he was feeling so jumpy, he knew that Jarvis had never, would never, well he just wouldn’t – right?

Tony allowed himself to relax back on the rug, he tried to focus on the music, not his newfound fear that Jarvis would turn around and, and what – hurt him? No Jarvis wouldn’t, couldn’t, but what if he wasn’t really Jarvis? What if this really was all some horrible Thano-Titan induced LSD nightmare?

“Ziggy played guitar” droned over the speakers, Tony needed to get out, away, but he couldn’t, not without making Jarvis think that he hated the album. And he didn’t, it was pretty cool, insofar as he could tell given that he felt like he was shaking apart at the seams. The unreality of everything bearing down on him like a ton of bricks.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut and focussed on keeping his breathing regular, he really didn’t want Jarvis to worry about him, it would be selfish to upset the other man when he already looked so tired, and LPs had become their thing.

Somehow Tony managed to keep his panic from Jarvis, he would never be able to work out how he’d managed it but he had. Thanking his lucky stars that Bruce’s breathing exercises were proving so handy, Tony managed to refocus on the present, pleased to note that the song currently playing was a hopeful ballad of sorts – Bowie was screeching out “Give me your hand! Cos you’re wonderful! You’re not alone! Cos you’re wonderful!”

On balance Tony thought that he rather liked the album, though he cynically disbelieved the message in the final song. Since when had he ever been not alone? Even when he’d thought that he’d finally found himself his own family of choice it had all turned out to be nothing more than a thinly veiled illusion. Why would his current situation be any different?

With an ease born of long practice Tony pulled on his paparazzi ready mask of pure hedonistic enjoyment, he longed for his signature sunglasses as an extra layer of protection between himself and the outside world.

Finally he dared to glance up at Jarvis, ah, no wonder the older man hadn’t noticed his distress – he was dozing head lolled back at an uncomfortable angle.

~~~~~~~

He left Jarvis to it; he really looked like he could do with the rest and if Tony was being honest with himself he didn’t trust the older man enough to give him even a hint as to his current state of mind. It had only been his waning good luck that had hidden his mini-breakdown from the other, and he couldn’t afford to risk another in front of him.

Tony had been carting Rex around for most of the day at this point, he didn’t know why he kept dragging the little robot dog around, but he felt as if he was planning on cutting the thread pre-emptively. He couldn’t deal with yet another sword of Damocles hanging over his head, as it was if the ones he was waiting for all fell at once Tony was pretty sure he’d be turned into proverbial mince meat.

As he entered the entry-hall Tony remembered why he’d been hiding out with Jarvis in the first place. Obie and Howard were there, shaking hands in a congratulatory fashion over something or other. Tony attempted to back up, but Obie spotted him and called him over,

“Tony! My boy! You never did show us what you had there.”

Tony barely managed to suppress his instinctive shoulder hunch, it was bad enough that Howard was there, let alone Obie too. His brief respite, if a panic-attack over a record could be called a respite, was over. Tony was only grateful that he was nowhere near anything that was actually important he wasn’t sure he could trust himself to keep anything from the pair at the moment.

Howard snarled out at him,

“Well Tony, aren’t you going to show your old man what you’ve built?”

Swallowing back the insult that wanted to work it’s way out of his throat Tony attempted to play the scene out as it had in his fuzzy memories, though Obie’s presence had already changed things. He heard himself say,

“It’s for you.”

He thrust the pathetic little dog out at Howard, watching in detached fascination as Howard’s face flickered through revulsion, greed and jealousy before settling firmly into rage.

Howard snatched the little robot roughly out of Tony’s hands, startling a cry from him; irrationally he tried to pull the little thing back to himself. Now that the scene was playing out he didn’t want it to happen. He couldn’t put himself through that again.

Unfortunately Tony was six, not the sinewy forty-six he had been, Howard easily pulled the robot further away. He cursorily inspected it, expression morphing into outright jealousy as the little dog nuzzled at his palm affectionately before rasping a metallic tongue over his fingers. The little dog whimpered as his clutch tightened around its belly, if it were a real animal it would have been in genuine distress. The little robot was wriggling as if attempting to escape his grasp, the realistic response seemed to enrage Howard. He raised it above his head before throwing it to the ground viciously.

Despite the hard hard marble of the floor the little dog was still operating, it was outright yelping now, the noise distressingly realistic, little limbs wriggling helplessly in the air. Tony felt like he really was six all over again, he was desperately trying to get past Howard to rescue his robot, he’d betrayed the pathetic little beast in the worst possible way, he was an awful human being. A monster. The distant part of him that was always watching rationally noted that Obie’s expression had once again regained that calculating cast to it, Tony could practically see the dollar signs flashing in the man’s eyes.

Attracted by the shouting several members of staff gathered at the foot of the stairs, the entire situation had spiralled out of control in a way that Tony couldn’t possibly have predicted.

“Pathetic! Do you hear me? Pathetic! Stark’s shouldn’t be wasting their time building toys, you should be making something worthwhile.”

Howard backhanded Tony across the face, he’d had far worse sparring, but somehow the blow pushed him down to his knees.

“I don’t need to be dealing with this nonsense! Showing me up in front of my business partner like this, how dare you!?”

Howard raised his boot over the still whimpering form of the small robot dog. Something inside Tony snapped, but in a very controlled manner. Acting as his adult self would, rather than feigning the six-year-old he appeared to be, he pulled himself up and threatened,

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Soon you’ll be embarrassing yourself in front of your business partner.” Tony added suggestive emphasis to the word partner noting with relish the way Howard’s face purpled.

“Really boy? And how on earth would I manage that?”

“You’ll recognise it when you hear it, a sort of high pitched whining noise, like a bunny rabbit.” He paused for emphasis, “And you’ll be the one making it.”

The implied sexual innuendo pushed Howard over the edge into incoherent rage, Tony grinned his grin with far too many teeth. Howard stomped. A loud crack echoed through the room, followed by a long high whimper of pain.

The pathetic little dog wasn’t intact; it really hadn’t been worth the effort to reinforce it to withstand Howard’s viciousness, Tony never wanted to see the bloody thing again, it brought back far too much pain. But it had fulfilled its purpose beautifully; a large 6-inch spike had driven itself up through Howard’s foot.

Perfect, the adamantium was perfect.

Tony’s grin grew impossibly wider, he admitted to himself that his actions may have verged on sociopathic, but he thought the bastard deserved it. It wasn’t innocent little Tony’s fault that one of the vertical reinforcing joists through the central unit was that much stronger than the rest of the chassis was it? He wasn’t to know that this metal that looked so much like low-carbon steel was in fact nothing of the sort… After all Howard never sorted through the scraps he threw out properly.

Howard attempted to lunge for Tony, Tony danced back laughing mockingly. Howard on the other hand paled several shades as he put pressure on his injured foot, the squeaking noise made a reappearance.

Distantly Tony realised that Obie and the rest of the staff were still in the room with him, his entire focus had narrowed down to Howard, and his robot, now in hundreds of broken pieces.

Whilst Tony was still feeling strangely detached from everything Jarvis materialised out of nowhere, barking orders to the gathered staff with terrifying efficiency, he managed to usher Obie out of the mansion before phoning for Dr Grabby-Hands.

Thankfully Tony’s expression of no-doubt terrifying vindictiveness seemed to frighten Dr Constantine away from him, he was glad, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to cope with another steaming helping of shite piled onto his already heaping plate.

~~~~~~~

The discreet family doctor was called in to treat a serious injury for the second time in as many weeks, though for once he was treating Stark the Elder rather than Stark the Younger.

Obadiah had seemed strangely unconcerned by the blood and the chaos, and Tony had looked worryingly blank when he’d first arrived on the scene. Edwin’s heart had ached for his charge when he’d spotted the catalyst for the latest shouting match, Rex, the little robot puppy was a sad lifeless looking piece of dented metal, innards scattered across the marble entryway.

Edwin wasn’t entirely convinced that this turn of events didn’t frighten the dickens out of him. As he’d rushed about sorting out the mess, screaming orders at the utterly useless idiots Howard thought formed a decent household staff he’d spotted the look of all too vicious triumph on Tony’s face when the boy had finally unfrozen. The expression had been terrifying on such a young child.

The latest item for the ever-growing list might possibly be the most alarming one yet. Edwin really didn’t like the shape the puzzle was beginning to form.

~~~~~~~

Howard had been holed up in his room after the humiliation that he’d dealt himself with Rex, though being fair he was also under orders to keep all weight off his foot. Tony thought the best thing about the whole situation was the way his father kept shooting him suspicious looks, he had no way to prove that Tony had done it on purpose, but he clearly remembered the taunts that Tony had shot out at him beforehand.

Thankfully Ana had already agreed to Tony’s suggestion, so his attempts at relearning self-defence weren’t hampered by the events in the entry hall. Tony was sure that Jarvis had been having second thoughts about this plan ever since the tin-dog incident yesterday. Tony had caught the man shooting him contemplative looks whenever he’d thought he wasn’t looking.

The sheer amount of the mansion that was sitting empty and neglected had once again played in Tony’s favour. Jarvis had quietly commandeered one of the many empty halls for Tony’s use, the man had chosen well. The ubiquitous brown wainscoting looked warm in the summer sunlight, wooden floor gleaming in the bright beams of light shining though the tall floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the leafy wooded area of the gardens.

Tony looked at Jarvis questioningly as they entered the huge empty hall, the older man had been annoyingly secretive again, facial expression full of secretive mischief. It was rather disconcerting to see that expression on someone else’s face for once. The multi-story room had been transformed; the floor was covered in crash mats, the pungent smell of rubber and old sweat warring with mansion’s usual odour of floor polish and wax.

Jarvis lead Tony around to the huge bay window in the far corner of the hall, standing there previously hidden by the corner Ana grinned sharp and deadly and lovely.

“Hello again Tony dear.”

Jarvis was looking far too smug, expression somehow anticipatory.

“Hi Ana” he said warily, her grin had far too many edges to it.

Tony looked up at Jarvis feeling as if he might be being ganged up on. Jarvis contributed,

“Ana will be here to keep an eye on things for both of us.”

“Cool.” Tony agreed automatically, he had wanted this after all.

Ana’s grin morphed into a smirk.

Eyeing the expression on Ana’s face Tony swallowed, suddenly his plan didn’t seem nearly so smart, he was going to be cheesed. (Like creaming but it lasts longer.)

“So Tones, ready to start on some warm-ups?”

Tony decided to roll with it, he grinned back, sharp and mean.

“Sure thing Ana. What kind of thing are you thinking of teaching me?”

Ana started to run down a list as she warmed up, Tony automatically followed his own warm-up routine, noting with some surprise that some aspects of it were now far easier and others far more difficult than he was used to.

“Basic holds and escapes, nerve clusters to hit, how to block, how to hit, that sort of thing.”

His usual pectoral stretches and crunches felt ridiculously gentle, Tony had a moment of utter body dysphoria when he realised that all of the scar tissue from the arc-reactor and the permanently reduced lung capacity had vanished. Flexibility that he’d resigned himself to having lost years ago had suddenly returned with a vengeance. He wasn’t entirely sure why that hadn’t sunk in before, he’d been living with the day in day out realities of a twenty percent loss of lung capacity for over a decade now. How on earth hadn’t he noticed that earlier?

Tony was utterly caught up in the realisation that it was gone, well and truly gone. Even after the arc-reactor removal, only made possible by the judicious use of a heavily neutered version of Killian’s Extremis virus, Tony’s chest had been full of scar tissue, large chunks of his lungs irrevocably gone, his heart permanently pushed aside by the reactor casing.

By the time he’d been forced to use Extremis-proper during the build-up to Than-The Titan’s invasion regular exercise of this sort had become a luxury that he couldn’t afford to –hah- exercise. Christ no wonder it hadn’t really registered, he’d been living like this for months, in a healthy body, and he hadn’t had the chance to stop and smell the roses.

Ana was staring at him in puzzled concern, Tony realised that he’d stopped moving entirely as the realisation had struck. He tried to play it off with a quip,

“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

Tony realised his mistake when both Ana and Jarvis gave him puzzled looks. Christ, Star Wars didn’t even exist yet. He focussed back on the here and now and grinned daggers at Ana,

“Shall we get started then?”

She surprised him by bantering back,

“I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire, there may be no survivors.”

Tony found himself grinning viciously back up at her, eyes sparking in delight as he realised that she wouldn’t be holding back just because he was apparently a child.

“Yeah,” he shot back relying on tasteless humour as he always did when nervous, “Like the poor bastards in the Killing Fields who went up against the Khmer Rouge.”

Tony was so caught up in being grateful for his suddenly improved mood that he completely missed the significant looks Ana and Jarvis shot each other.

~~~~~~~

Edwin didn’t know what to make of the apparent non sequiturs his charge had dropped, he thought that they might be cultural references but he didn’t recognise either phrase. He catalogued Tony’s sudden look of guilt when the boy seemed to realise that he’d let something slip that he shouldn’t have. Edwin supposed it was yet another item for his list.

He wondered why Tony had frozen halfway through the warm-up exercises, the boy’s face had seemed to pale with some sort of realisation, but he’d started moving again before he could ask what was wrong.

Ana’s face had taken on a contemplative cast when Tony had started with the nervous chatter, morphing to one of outright disbelief for a moment when the second incomprehensible statement dropped from his lips. His wife recovered her calm quickly, smoothing over her face to a professional mask as she went about correcting Tony’s basic stance, and positioning.

Edwin as always was utterly enamoured by the cool efficiency of his darling wife’s movements when she was in this frame of mind, though he noted that she seemed to be prodding at Tony far less often than she’d done with Edwin himself when he’d first been learning.

Unfortunately he was called away as the session began winding down, this time by a member of his skelton-crew. It seemed that some idiot on Howard’s staff had decided that the floor polish would make a good substitute for silver polish. For god’s sake, if it was the same idiot as last time he would personally fire the fool with great relish.

~~~~~~~

Grumbling internally Tony rolled back up from the sparring mat for what felt like the umpteenth time. He was worse at this than he’d ever been, even compared to when he’d been learning for the basics for the very first time. Ironically he thought it was his previous experience at hand-to-hand combat that was tripping him up.

Tony had never been a slouch, despite what the Avengers had all seemed to think. He was a weapons designer for fucks sake, he more than knew his way around a gun, had to know how the equipment behaved if he had a hope of improving the designs. Tony was secretly glad his team had never taken him seriously in that respect, he wasn’t sure he could take how they’d inevitably start looking at him if it came out how well he could shoot – and why.

In terms of hand to hand combat he’d had basic self-defence courses from bodyguards when the kidnappings had gotten too frequent, regular sparring sessions with Rhodey, boxing with Happy, and even a few SAS courses that Peggy and the Commandos had organised on his behalf.

Before everything had gone to hell, back when they’d been a fami- before Sokovia Tony had had plenty of opportunity to improve his skills with the rest of the team. Sparring with Nat and Clint, learning all the ways to be sneaky, to use an opponents own strength and pride against them. Then had been working out how to hold his own against demigods and super-soldiers, or rather how to roll with the blows until he could get to weaponry that would at least enable him to fight back. Even Bruce had taught him a few tricks, decades living on the run from an incredibly long list of covert organisations had taught the apparently peaceable man a thing or three.

For fucks sake he’d even gotten along well enough with Gamora that she’d deigned to show him a few things. He should be better than this.

Though he had no muscle memory built up he kept automatically trying to pull off moves that he couldn’t actually allow himself to follow through on, he had to constantly rethink his moves so that he wouldn’t reveal the level of skill that he’d actually had. However he wasn’t sure he needed to bother, his new build, his lack of weight, of muscle tone, all of these things were constantly tripping him up.

Jarvis was looking at him pityingly. It was sickening. Ana was watching thoughtfully from the corner of the room as he ran through the latest painfully basic punch sequence.

The one move Tony had proved to have any success with that session was Jarvis’ signature move, the Raging Turtle. Tony was utterly disheartened by the time Ana called time on their session; he didn’t think he’d ever had a more unproductive workout since before Afghanistan.

~~~~~~~

Ana genuinely didn’t know what to make of Tony, from the moment he’d started his complex warm-ups without prompting the boy hadn’t been at all what she’d been expecting. Edwin had warned her, but the full extent of the mystery surrounding his charge hadn’t been conveyed despite her husband’s best efforts.

She’d been content to go along with Tony’s nervous banter, since it seemed to comfort the boy, when he’d dropped a conversational bomb. She’d been utterly shocked when Tony had casually dropped an international secret into the conversation as though it were public knowledge, she wasn’t sure she’d been able to keep the gobsmacked expression off her face, how on earth the boy knew about the shitstorm going down in Cambodia, when SHIELD had only just started being able to smuggle agents in let alone get refugees out she had no idea.

It had taken all of her training to focus back on the task at hand, and begin the process of testing and teaching the boy, when all she’d wanted to do was pin him to the mat and demand he tell her everything that he knew and how.

She’d eventually decided that Howard must have let something slip, she’d thought that the co-founder of SHIELD would be more careful than that, he of all people should understand the importance of keeping secrets from those he loved. Apparently not.

Just watching Tony run through the warm-up routine had provided another mystery, they were a relatively complex set of moves, a sequence that most non-combatants would probably have had to warm-up for. She supposed the posh-school Howard shipped him off to might be responsible, but it was suspect. Ana’s professional eye had noted that something about his balance seemed off, and that he was holding his torso strangely rigidly, as though guarding an old injury. Ana would need to correct that tendency before they could continue. She decided that she’d focus on teaching him the basics of swings, how to hit properly without telegraphing the movement. It would have the handy side effect of forcing him to flex the areas of his chest that he seemed determined to hold still.

Ana noted that Tony kept catching himself halfway through many of the moves, in many ways he seemed to be a natural, so she wasn’t sure what the reason was for this alarming uncertainty that he tended to lapse into unchecked.

Unfortunately Edwin was called away towards the end of their session, so she had to wait to bring up the topic with her husband. It was frustrating being married to Howard Stark’s butler, no matter how much the pair of them owed the infuriating man. Now that Ana had seen Tony for herself she understood her husband’s worry all too well, there was certainly a mystery surrounding the young Stark heir.

She decided that she’d need to make some more observations of her own before bringing up her suspicions with Edwin, she didn’t want to put herself at risk of confirmation bias by hearing too many of his opinions on the matter before she could draw her own conclusions.

~~~~~~~

Gently pushing the young woman, the newest member of his reliable skeleton crew, aside Edwin took over mopping the small dining room, he didn’t want her to get into trouble for having the misfortune to do her job near the volatile masters of the household.

Howard and Maria were standing far closer together than he’d seen them in a while, heads bent close together in the light of the French windows. The couple were silhouetted by the bright pink glow of the summer sunset, if Edwin didn’t know better he’d have thought the image a romantic one.

“No Howard, he’s far too young.”

“It’ll stop him from being such a little sissy boy Maria.”

“Howard no, don’t send our bambino away.”

“Maria.” Howard ground out, tone somehow threatening. Maria pointedly shifted her heeled foot closer to Howard’s heavily bandaged and splinted one, he paled slightly but didn’t back down.

“He’s far too young Howard. Far far too young.” Seeing the look on her husband’s face her voice sped up stubbornness shining through, “If you weren’t so drunk all of the time.”

Howard’s facial expression turned black at the reprimand.

“If he wasn’t so bloody irritating this wouldn’t be necessary. But it is. Necessary. This isn’t a discussion Maria, we’re sending the boy away to learn and that’s the end of it. Lord knows this house isn’t any sort of place to raise a child.”

Edwin discreetly slipped away unwilling to listen to the rest of the conversation, with a sinking feeling he realised that the greater part of him actually agreed with Howard on this. The mansion was no place to raise a child.

~~~~~~~~

Tony was beginning to regret his suggestion about sparring, it was taking all of his concentration not to slip and carry through on a move that his six-year-old self would have absolutely no right to know. He really shouldn’t have allowed his drugged-brain to make conversation, he’d managed to trap himself in long daily sessions that took up far too much of his time, and took far too much mental effort not to completely blow everything out of the water.

Still at least the utter exhaustion meant that he had little time to work himself into a panic every evening, it was nice to be able to drop off to sleep without having to worry about nightmares. Though it did have the unfortunate side effect of taking away the time he’d set aside to attempt Phase I of WTF-is-this-crap-really-magic plan.

After a week of daily sessions with little progress to speak of Ana had suggested that Tony try out a form of movement meditation, specifically dance katas. She’d explained that she thought the forms were similar enough to complex katas that it might help him to get acquainted with the way his body worked and moved without violating the basic principles of martial arts.

After sitting through her patient explanation last week, and only managing not to roll his eyes by a great force of will as she very precisely enunciated how she’d teach him the very basics first, and only once proof was had of competence and black belts were earned were katas allowed, Tony was quick to agree to the plan, regardless of the loss of dignity. He knew he wasn’t doing as well as he should be at this point, since unlike Ana he knew that he’d been through all of this before.

Ana had proven to be an extremely skilled practitioner of martial arts. As Tony had suspected, she was far more capable in this area of expertise than her husband and Jarvis was already formidable.

It was a relief to finally be able to let himself move without thinking about it too much, the dance katas were complex enough and unfamiliar enough that Tony had to focus on getting the moves right. Every step of the sequence formed a complicated design requiring enough concentration that he soon forgot to second-guess his every move. The relief was enough to unwind the great knot of tension he’d been carrying around all week. He no longer had to hold back and let himself go, moves flowing fluidly for the first time since he’d started this little exercise in futility. Though if he was being honest with himself Tony wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d actually be able to follow through on half of the combat stances he kept accidentally settling into.

~~~~~~~

Nodding in satisfaction Ana stepped back to watch Tony practice, it seemed that she’d been correct in her assumptions. Remove Tony’s thoughts and second thoughts from the process and he rapidly picked things up. The boy needed to learn to trust his own body, though Ana had certainly noticed that some of the stances that he tended to drop into automatically before double guessing himself had very interesting implications.

She thought that some of the positions had vague similarities to the fluid moves her assad contacts tended to use. However there was enough there that was different about the stances that Tony fell into that it was difficult to recognise what the forms might actually have been originally.

He’d gradually loosened up the stiff hold he had on his upper torso over the course of the week, the dance forms helping him to learn the full extent of the flexibility that he possessed. Ana wondered about that, why on earth had he held himself so rigidly when in so many other respects he was suspiciously good at this?

Ana resolved to have a word with Edwin at the end of this session, knowing her husband he had a whole list of similar observations that he’d been keeping to himself. He was a perpetual worrier, and they did say that a problem solved was a problem halved, and that two heads were better than one.

Once the session ended Ana carefully watched Tony retreat down the hall before broaching the topic with Edwin,

“Tony’s certainly seems to know what he’s doing.”

Unfortunately her husband wasn’t his usual perceptive self,

“Hmm.” He murmured back distractedly.

“Edwin dear?”

“Yes?”

Ana resisted the urge to huff, it was undignified, even if they were husband and wife, and he was acting the epitome of head in the clouds male. She cut to the chase,

“Edwin darling, what is it?”

“Oh,” fortunately for Ana’s sanity he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her, “I overheard Howard and Maria discussing boarding schools.”

Ana couldn’t contain her dismayed gasp, Edwin continued doggedly,

“Well, Howard telling Maria that they were sending Tony to one at any rate.”

“Oh Edwin, do you think we can do something to stop him?” Ana paused, “That hateful man, isn’t it enough for him that his own son is terrified of him, to send him away from his own home too…”

Ana trailed off into speechlessness, Edwin shot her a guilty look before admitting slowly,

“Perhaps the school really would be for the best darling.”

Ana shot him a look of displeased contempt,

“What?! Do you want the poor boy to be turned out from his own home because of his selfish father?!”

Edwin seemed to find a sense of inner resolve, visibly tilting his chin up before replying lowly,

“I think home is where you have to feel safe, if it isn’t safe it isn’t home. Can you honestly say that Tony thinks of this place as a home?”

“Oh Edwin – don’t you dare play philosophy with me, it’s the only home he’s ever known. Of course the poor boy does. How do you think Tony will react if he thinks we condone what Howard’s been doing?” Edwin opened his mouth, she continued on grimly, “Which he will, if he learns we didn’t fight this for him.”

Edwin refused dignify her with a response, Ana shot her husband a look of disgust before deciding not to bring up her earlier thoughts with him. If he was willing to send the poor boy away without even discussing it with him, then what would he do if he knew that Ana had some worrying suspicions about Tony’s level of combat training?

No, whilst she had no idea where Tony had learnt to fight like that she refused to betray the dear boy’s secret to a man who was willing to throw him to the wolves. Ana understood that the so-called innocence of children was a nonexistent concept dreamed up by adults who really should know better. She’d seen the cruelty of children first hand back in Hungary, when the Jews were the targets for being different. Tony was already an isolated child at the school he attended now, how on earth would the young genius cope as the new boy at a boarding school?

~~~~~~~

Tony took advantage of the relatively low-key training session that afternoon to go and check on the coal cellar. He knew that something wasn’t quite right between the couple given the heated glares they kept sending each other, but he’d been willing to take advantage. Between the Jarvises constant presence and the fact that Howard had been back for three weeks checking in on the progress of his nanotube filament was difficult. The furnace had been running constantly for a whole month now, whilst the process he’d jury rigged was much much more efficient than the original set-up Windle & co. had discovered, Tony wasn’t sure there’d be a useful amount of nanotube fibre to play with.

Tony snuck down to the coal cellar, donning his protective gear, he opened the door with some trepidation unsure of what he’d find.

The spool of nanotube fibre was overflowing. Christ, if anything he’d been a bit too successful. Calling it a job well done, Tony began the laborious process of shutting the automated furnace systems off. Once he’d checked that everything with the fibre was as it seemed he’d dismantle the jury-rigged furnace. He could always build it again, and better, it wasn’t worth the risk that someone would stumble across it and work out what he’d done.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to get this stuff out of here – the spool was huge, and contaminated with asbestos-like shards of loose nanotubes. He’d need to transport it to his workshop undetected to wash it off, and start weaving it into something useful.

The cloth he’d get out of this stuff would be stronger and lighter than Kevlar. Or perhaps he’d settle for some rope, or garrotte wire, that was always useful.

Tony resolved that he’d sneak back to the coal cellar in the evening when there wasn’t anybody around.

~~~~~~~~

Tony took to the dance meditations with enthusiasm; something about focussing entirely on keeping his stances correct without the fear of discovery stilled the constant thrum of thoughts and second thoughts that flowed through his brain. He genuinely had to concentrate on keeping his balance, and maintaining the positions of his limbs, if it weren’t for the fact that the process took up too much of his attention Tony would be tempted to replace his standard meditation attempts with this new technique.

He noticed that Ana and Jarvis still seemed to be having an ongoing argument about something, there was a distinct tension between the couple, though Tony knew better than to ask.

His routine had settled into a tenuously comfortable, but exhausting pattern. He’d wear himself out sparring during the day, then collapse into the oblivion of sleep. Tony was aware that it wasn’t healthy, or necessarily safe given that Than-The Titan might spring out of nowhere at any moment, but he was grateful for the opportunity to push everything aside and just allow himself to focus on the here and now.

Whilst a small niggling part of him was always, always aware that Ana and Jarvis might well be figments of his imagination, or worse his jailers, it was ridiculously comforting to just let himself soak up their company and affection.

Unfortunately Tony hadn’t been able to achieve a decent trance state since the night Howard had returned, something in the chaotic turn of his thoughts prevented him from being able to detach himself enough to even begin to think about attempting to solve his current dilemma without falling into a flashback of some description.

By the fifth time he’d gotten caught back on that hateful rock in space, staring down at the accusatory corpses of his frien- the founding members of the Avengers, he’d given up. Just being here, in the mansion, with his ersatz parents, and the ersatz Jarvises was torture enough, there was no point adding to it.

The second option to carrying out Phase II of Tony’s plan was looking more and more attractive with every day caught in this strange holding pattern. If he couldn’t damage the simulation enough to break it, then maybe he could take the alternate route out.

~~~~~~~

Tony didn’t have the freedom to hide in his new workshop as often as he’d like, however it was another of Jarvises Sundays off, and Howard was still gods knew where in New York after his latest argument with Maria over who-knew-what, he’d have hours to himself today. Breathing out a sigh of relief as he slipped inside the ex-squash court Tony allowed himself to relax slightly, he had successfully avoided Howard ever since the incident with Rex. However he knew that the other boot would drop, and soon if past experience was anything to judge by.

Tony had been working on several projects simultaneously, as well as the nanotube fibre he’d been trying to decide if he could risk building himself something with genuine offensive capabilities. He thought that even in the 70s he’d be able to build himself a repulsor gauntlet in his sleep. The controls would have to be analogue, the gaunlet would likely be a bulkier than any model he’d previously put together, and he didn’t have access to the nanotech that had made the recent models so easy to take with him everywhere disguised as a wristwatch, but the repulsor tech itself? Childs play.

In the meantime Tony was making do with working out just how far he could push current computer tech. Seventies-grade chips weren’t great, but they did allow Tony to play with novel solutions to several display issues, he’d jury rigged a colour TV-set to the heap of components he’d put together, unwilling to use analogue dials. With some industrious rewiring, and several hours of frantic binary compiling Tony had a computer operating system that was vaguely reminiscent of the stuff from the late-90s boom in personal computing. The computer vaguely reminded him of those hideously colourful Applemacs, the TV-casing acted as a self-contained unit for both the computer itself and the display.

Tony would have been vaguely ashamed of the similarities, however the chips he was working with had less than a tenth of the power of the 90s home computers, so he’d had to be economical with the complexity of the coding. As it was he’d need to be extremely careful with the basic OS that he’d quickly written out, the software used several computer languages that didn’t actually exist yet.

Whilst the chips he was making do with weren’t very powerful, Tony had been able to set up a subroutine in the base code of the little computer that monitored radio transmissions worldwide for keywords such as Hydra and The Winter Soldier. Tony had forgotten more than most people would ever know about past tech, but he was quickly catching up again. He’d managed to piggyback on several incredibly insecure and patchy government spy-systems, whilst the thing was no where near as comprehensive a system as JARVIS had been it would have to do until he actually managed to put together some resources of his own to work with.

The whole thing was protected by several layers of encryption, the firewalls and security software actually took up more space on the woefully underpowered chipsets than the operating software itself, but Tony was taking no chances.

He hadn’t been able to resist adding a digital-style clock to the top of the thing; in lieu of his usual digital output Tony had scrounged together some Soviet kit from the depths of Howard’s shop. The Nixie Tubes allowed him to have a clock display reminiscent of an early digital wristwatch, the crudely elegant solution amused him every time he spotted it. They doubled as a handy kill-switch, smash the small case containing the delicate glass tubes and the chips inside the computer casing would fry wiping all trace of the programming they’d once contained.

Tony had been taking baby steps towards building an offensive object, he’d eventually managed to find a slightly battered chair made from ebony in a dark corner of the mansion. It had been an absolute bugger to break down without wasting anything, but Tony had eventually gotten the pieces back to his shop.

Between the wood the chair provided, and the results of his other trips to strange corners of the mansion he thought he might have a chance to create something genuinely useful out of the remaining shards of adamantium.

He was under no illusions that he’d be able to do anything further to work the metal, as it was it had been a minor miracle that he’d been able to calibrate the laser precisely enough to find the frequency needed to cut it into pieces along pre-existing faults. However it should be possible to mount the shards in other materials.

Tony had slowly been sequestering away the basic tools and materials he needed to hide his own forge, it would be no good for any complex metallurgy, but would definitely be more than adequate for the basic work of pouring molten metal for sandcasting and possibly with some finagling on his part some actual anvil work.

He’d managed to split the arm rests of the previously bulky chair into decently symmetrical knife-scales, the dark dense wood was heavy enough that Tony thought he might end up with some nicely balanced daggers to play with.

Two of the adamantium shards were long and wide enough that they could happily take a significant section of their length disappearing between the two pieces of wood that would make up the handles without any loss of practicality. Tony wasn’t sure that he’d be able to bond any metal to the pre-existing shards, so it was quite likely that the daggers wouldn’t have any guards to speak of, but he thought that overall the idea was workable.

The third shard was an extremely narrow little piece, a smaller mirror to the jagged edge Howard had stepped on, and Tony thought it might just make a decent stiletto with some careful planning on his part.

Tony admitted to himself that his plans for weaponry weren’t exactly living up to his old Merchant of Death reputation, but frankly he’d been purposefully diverting the deadly schematics that seemed to just pop-up out of nowhere for long enough that it was getting tiring.

He didn’t want Than-The Titan to get his hands on any Stark-grade weapons schematics, but he did want to find out if he’d be allowed to build something genuinely dangerous. The daggers seemed like a nice little baby-step in the right direction. If he was allowed to finish his schemes for these little packages of death, then he might start putting together the parts for one of the later Stark semi-automatics. Much as Tony had vowed to never let SI produce and sell weaponry ever again, he’d made no such vow when it came to items for his own personal use.

~~~~~~~~~~

Edwin made the phone call twirling the phone cord impatiently around one bony finger as the line rang on. Whilst Ana and he still couldn’t see eye to eye over the boarding school topic he was determined to prepare. He was calling up an old friend; he hoped his fellow Brit would be able to help him. Biting his lip to stifle his grin Edwin mentally estimated how much money was left over in the household expenses account that Howard had left for the duration of Tony’s care that summer, whilst SI really wasn’t doing well at the moment Howard had no idea what things actually cost in the real world – not any more. Normally Edwin wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of that fact, but this was in the name of a good cause.

“Yello? Adamson Antiquities?” the slow laconic drawl of the clerk sounded over the phone.

“Hi, is Ben there?”

“No man, but I can get him on the line?”

“Sure, I’ll wait.”

There was a loud click and a buzz as the line operator connected the call.

“Hello! Ben? Hi! I need a favour, and I’ve got a budget of $500 to play with.”

“Hello Ed.” Ben’s droll voice sounded both amused and resigned.

~~~~~~~

Staring down at the huge spool of nanotube filament resting in the centre of his workshop Tony realised that he didn’t have enough of the nanotube to make a huge amount of cloth. Running some quick calculations he realised he could either weave half a child-sized shirt (as much use as a marzipan dildo) or make several lengths of rope and thread. At least he didn’t need to put together a loom or anything too time consuming, whilst cloth weaving was fairly simple when compared to some of the processes he was used to overseeing, it would be incredibly time consuming to set up and produce.

Eventually he settled on making a bracelet similar in style to those “survivor” bracelets that had become fashionable after the animal abusing ass Bear Grylls (what the hell kind of name was that? It sounded like a statement of intent) had made them popular. The chunky black bracelet looked like a strange bangle, but could be unwound to form several hundred metres worth of thin rope. It would probably be extremely uncomfortable to climb up or down, it was so thin, but Tony was more than confident that it could take a huge amount of weight.

He’d ended up with enough fibre left over to make that garrotte wire he’d been half-jokingly thinking about. Tony took to habitually wearing several lengths of it threaded through whatever shirt and pants he was wearing that day. If his future-kidnappers (he was under no illusions that he’d avoid attempts this time around, given how frequently it had happened last time) were serious enough to strip him nude, then he was in trouble and had more important things to worry about.

The brilliant thing about the fibre was that it wouldn’t show up on any scans. It wasn’t metal, it wasn’t even tech, in it’s processed state it was exactly what it looked like, even on a microscopic level (well alright not down to the scales an electron-microscope managed but still), woven fibre. Harmless right?

Tony had also made significant progress on setting the adamantium shards into the handles he’d planned. Tony had decided to cap the handles with metal, as well as use metal pins to stop the shards from working their way out of the wood. The daggers wouldn’t be as useful for combat as say a custom made piece of military equipment, however the opportunity to have an adamantium blade in his possession that could slice through nearly anything was too good to pass up.

The only dagger that was giving him any trouble at this point was the stiletto, the two larger daggers both had fairly large, and most importantly blunt ends that would happily sit within the encasing wood without working their way free. The stiletto on the other hand was a sharp shard of metal at both ends, just as likely to cut the wielder as the person they were attempting to hurt.

If the adamantium shard wasn’t so likely to cut it’s way through the handle and his hand if he left it Tony would have been tempted to simply embed the thing in the smallest ebony knife-scales and call it a day.

Unable to solve the situation satisfactorily with the tools at hand Tony took to secreting the two larger daggers about his person, whilst concealing the third needle-like shard of adamantium in the sole of his shoe. The positioning reminded him uncomfortably of what he’d done to Howard, so he religiously made sure the thing was angled just so. It wouldn’t do to slice his own foot off if he got careless, but it might prove a useful object in a pinch.

The fact that he’d successfully manufactured several genuinely dangerous objects at this point didn’t escape him. However since knives generally weren’t capable of doing too much damage to the surrounding environment he didn’t really think they counted for too much.

~~~~~~~

The music room was achingly silent, Maria sitting ghost-like at the grand piano in her pale nightdress unmoving. She looked achingly frail, as if a strong breeze might blow her over at any moment. Her long elegant fingers were resting unmoving on the keys of the piano, the rigor she was holding them in making her hands look nearly skeletal.

Maria was having one of her bad days, Tony skirted the edge of the room he knew it was selfish but he didn’t want to have to deal with this possible illusion of his mother having one of her episodes. She could be terrifyingly down on days like this, from his position by the door Tony could see the overlarge glass of gin resting on the polished wooden top of the piano, nearly empty bottle sitting forlornly next to it. From the looks of it Maria hadn’t bothered with a mixer, not even a token bottle of tonic water from the drinks cabinet.

He must have made a noise, Maria turned lightning quick, and effectively trapped him there with the power of her stare. Tony found himself unwillingly walking towards her, she grabbed his upper arm as soon as he was in reach, grip steely.

At this distance he could see the crazed light in her eyes, she was having a very bad day.

“Oh my bambino we’re sending you away.”

“Mum?” Tony asked, puzzled, he couldn’t quite grasp why the information upset her so much. Then again, he’d been feeling… Off emotionally for weeks now, ever since he’d managed to persuade Howard to humiliate himself in front of Obie, perhaps even before then if he was being brutally honest.

In his own distraction he’d allowed his mom to spiral down, completely missing the narrow window of opportunity to bolster her mood for long enough to at least help her get into bed. The grip around his arm tightened painfully, Tony was shocked when he saw the macara stained tear-tracks running down her face,

“Away away away.”

Maria was rocking back and forth on the piano-stool, the very embodiment of misery.

Tony couldn’t stand it any longer, tearing himself from her grip he fled the moonlit room. Dashing as fast as he could away from Maria into the furthest depths of the mansion.

~~~~~~~

As he fled down the hall to the basement Tony had a hell of a time keeping himself calm, something about seeing his mother so painfully distraught had shattered his own fragile veneer of calm. He knew he wasn’t behaving rationally, he couldn’t afford to be caught anywhere near this section of the mansion, yet he kept going. Tony was taking a hell of a risk he knew, it was one thing sneaking into Howard’s shop when he was away, another entirely when he was in the house. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Tony found that he was clutching the needle-like shard of adamantium in one hand like a talisman.

Fortunately years as Iron Man, and an Avenger had made him far better at evasive covert movement than he had any right to be. Especially given that many of the others had still thought of him as a useless civvie outside of the suit, he’d never been up to the level of superspys, gods and monsters, but Tony was perfectly capable of taking down teams of trained soldiers without the suit. Or at least he had been. His attempts at training with Ana and Jarvis had shown him that he was currently incapable of fending off one grown adult who wasn’t even trying to hurt him.

Tony dreaded to think what would happen if Howard caught him down here, his face was still blotchy from the blow that had felled him nearly a month ago. Then again getting killed in this simulation was sort-of the goal he was aiming for right now, so perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Though Tony would prefer not to add yet another Howard-related complex to his already far-too-long list.

What he wanted, more than anything in the world, was a drink. The world came into focus when viewed from the bottom of a bottle, but Tony knew from bitter experience that one drink tended to arrive in many different containers.

As Tony cautiously made his way further into his father’s shop he automatically catalogued the half-assembled weaponry and schematics he passed into deadly, non-lethal and not-immediately lethal columns. A large part of his brain automatically started improving upon the schematics and designs, despite the fact that he’d been designing better in his sleep for decades.

He needed to balance this carefully, make the self-inflicted damage look accidental, not purposeful, but equally not something that would get him banned from the workshop outright. He didn’t want Jarvis to worry, or his jailers to think he was suicidal and up the security measures. Though that countermeasure at least would let him know one way or another.

Squashing down the mild guilt at framing his father Tony looked around the workshop for a way to make it seem as if the incident was due to Howard’s carelessness. Gods knew he’d gotten hurt often enough at that man’s hands that another workshop incident under the man’s belt would barely register.

As he cautiously shifted a heavy looking piece of equipment a sudden movement in the corner of his eye startled him. Tony jumped heavy load forgotten, and registered that the new cleaning girl was improbably mopping the entryway to his father’s shop. Something about his actions seemed to upset her, Tony registered a hot wetness running down his leg.

Looking down at the gushing blood Tony felt a distant sort of horror.

He’d miscalculated.

As his eyes fluttered closed Tony heard the beating of wings.