Guilt For Dreaming

Chapter 5: Will you see, that I’m scared and I’m lonely?

Gulping down his nerves as the car drove down the long gravel drive Tony peered up at the forbidding sight of the school that was home to many of his more unpleasant memories. He squared his shoulders; Stark men are made of iron. He’d survived this once before, he’d be able to breeze it this time around. Somehow the large stone walled buildings seemed smaller than he remembered, despite their impressive bulk and tall windows built to intimidate.

He resisted the urge to sigh it would only worry Jarvis, and the older man had already been shooting him worried looks throughout the whole journey. At least Ty wasn’t due to show up for another year, if he hurried perhaps he wouldn’t need to face the psychopathic monster at all. Of course that meant that Hammer was around somewhere, the little weasel had been packed off to boarding school even earlier than Tony had been. Tony wasn’t sure if he sympathised more with Hammer or Hammer’s parents on that one, the sleaze ball was utterly repulsive, had been even as a snotty child.

Sadly when the day had finally dawned Maria had been in no state to go with Tony on the long drive to the school, the effort of keeping him away from the worst of Howard’s moods had clearly worn her down over the past couple of weeks. He hadn’t been too surprised but it was disappointing. Tony had been relieved when he’d realised that Howard wasn’t even going to try to put on a show of being a halfway decent father for the public eye, choosing instead to spend the time putting out metaphorical fires at SI. Ana had regretfully gone back to work the morning after the concert, though not before teaching Tony a nerve cluster grip in case he had trouble with bullies. In the end only Jarvis had accompanied him on the long journey upstate.

The car-ride had been awkward, Jarvis clearly expecting Tony to be far more emotional about the situation than he actually was, during the first hour of the drive the older man had kept trying to reassure him before eventually succumbing to the inevitable and trailing off into an uncomfortable silence. Tony had briefly considered feigning the correct emotions, but quickly wrote off the idea; odds were good that his de facto guardian would spot the deception. The pair had sat quietly together in the thick atmosphere of the car both unable to breach the divide that had reappeared between them. Obviously he was going to miss the Jarvises, and Maria. It had been heartening in the past couple of weeks to actually understand on an emotional level that Maria really had cared even when he was a young kid despite what his memories had told him. But in all truthfulness Tony had begun to grow tired of their well-meaning attempts to protect him from the adult world.

A tall nastily familiar figure was standing by the school doors. Tony briefly wondered how long she’d been waiting there. The car finally pulled up outside the large double doors, alongside the decorative lawn that the students were forbidden from walking on, Tony had fond memories of utterly destroying the pointless bit of landscaping during his final year there. (Though even in the space of his own head he felt the need to point out that it had actually been an accident.)

Tony clambered out of the car, and adulthood and propriety be damned, he ran around to the driver’s door before Jarvis had a chance to act all formal on him. Hugging Jarvis tightly he listened with only half an ear as the adults talked, peering in an uncertain mix of nostalgia and fear at his surroundings. Jarvis hugged Tony tightly one last time, whispering in his ear,

“Write to me if you need anything. And if you can, call me. Oh and remember, he’s called Ben, and you should ask for the password.”

“Okay. I’ll – I’ll miss you, and Ana.” Tony hesitated before adding gravely, “Take care of each other ok?”

Jarvis blinked in shock, and Tony allowed himself to be led away into the depths of the main building.

Not quite under her breath Mrs Kowalski who’d been watching their little display awkwardly muttered disapprovingly,

“Dropped off by the family butler!”

~~~~~~~

Tony’s face took on an incredibly mature expression,

“Take care of each other ok?”

Edwin didn’t know what to make of that, surely the boy should be more worried about his own welfare, not that of his caretakers? He hadn’t failed to notice that Tony hadn’t been paying a bit of attention when the principal of the school had tried to introduce herself, not that the woman had seemed to notice. He got back into the rather discrete, by Howard’s standards at any rate, sedan that he’d driven up in, only just remembering to wave Tony inside through his mild daze of worry.

As he began the long journey back to the mansion and hopefully Ana, if her shift at work hadn’t unexpectedly overrun, Edwin began once again to mull over the puzzle that his young charge was presenting him with. He could kick himself; he really should have pushed the matter. Instead he’d spent much of the summer tiptoeing on eggshells around the young boy he should have been looking after.

Edwin resisted the urge to rub at his eyes, it wouldn’t help matters to be lax with his road safety on top of everything else that he’d let fall to the wayside this summer. He sighed, he’d been so close to working out what was wrong, but he’d allowed himself be convinced to let things lie by Tony’s patchy smiles and the young boy’s willingness to make an effort.

In reality of course that in itself was a sign of something, for all that the boy was in many ways far too adult for a child of all of six, he’d never before displayed the level of emotional awareness needed to recognise when a front was necessary for other people’s sakes.

What on earth had happened to Tony, what did it all mean? The vague outline of an idea that Edwin had thought he was so close to working out seemed further away than ever.

Edwin shook himself out of his disturbing train of thought when the car began to drift into the oncoming lane, only veering aside in time to avoid the truck coming the other way by a hair’s breadth.

He refocused on the road, and getting home safely to Ana, he could only hope that his young charge was going to do well at his new home away from home… Well Edwin hoped that the school would prove to become a home away from the poor excuse for a home that the mansion had always been.

~~~~~~~

Tony trotted along behind the familiar presence of the school principal, his short legs taking three steps for every one that she took. For all that she ran a school the woman seemed to have no idea how to actually treat children, or short people.

Mrs Kowalski smiled a too wide smile, frog-like mouth stretching grotesquely, as her goitre wobbled distractingly. Tony only knew her name because he remembered it from his first time here, she hadn’t even introduced herself yet. Ah no, she probably had when he hadn’t been paying attention earlier.

They paused outside of a door marked Principal’s Office. Tony resisted the urge to roll his eyes; the woman had been waiting outside the school at the main doors for who knew how long for him to turn up and she hadn’t even bothered to have everything she needed with her?

She flashed him another too wide smile, this time Tony recognised her nervousness for what it was, the woman was clearly as anxious about meeting him as he was about her. Tony tried not to stare too obviously, her perpetually flushed face was all the more bizarre for her obvious physical fitness, she wasn’t a large woman, and what Tony could see of her legs was muscular. Gods Tony had honestly thought that his childhood memories of the woman had warped her into a monstrous caricature of herself, apparently not.

Mrs Kowalski was rummaging through the paperwork on her desk, clearly searching for something. Tony took the opportunity to try and size her up, he wasn’t sure if he should trust his hazy recollections of her. Or to put it another way, he wasn’t sure he should trust the perspective of his child self.

Still, somehow despite the clearly accurate memories of her slightly frightening appearance, she seemed more human with his newer perspective. She was obviously nervous, and trying to make a good first impression on him, for all that for the foreseeable future she had him by the metaphorical short and curlies.

Tony silently chastised himself, he shouldn’t let his patchy memories taint his opinion of this woman just yet, he should try to judge her for her own merits. Tony noted the frown lines, and the harsh set to her mouth. She’d had reason for grief then, or perhaps she really was just angry, or it could even be an example of resting bitch face. He almost snorted at the internet slang, before he pulled himself together and made himself look more closely. Besides the incredibly distracting, and utterly out of place goitre, she looked like she hadn’t had reason to smile a lot lately, though crows feet did indicate that she had at some point.

He admitted to himself that his kid-self’s memories that focussed so inexorably on her goitre rather than her personality was less than helpful. He had no idea if she was cruel or kind, likely to go out of her way to stop bullying or turn a blind eye.

His memories of the school during that first unpleasant year were hazy at best, full of misery and emotion over his parent’s choice to abandon him there, rather than any real information about what the school-situation was actually like. Everything after that was tainted; his memories of the place almost happy, he’d have called the recollection rose tinted if not for the instinctual shudder and mental shying away that Ty’s involvement immediately summoned.

In his distraction Tony hadn’t noticed that Mrs Kowalski had finished rifling through her desk, she was smiling down at him in what she probably thought was a benign teacherly fashion, though truthfully it just made her look worried,

“Let’s show you to your room then. I’m sure you’ll like it Tony, it’s a nice airy double, on the top floor of your block. It’s got a good view of the lake, and I’m sure your new roommate will love the company.”

Tony just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes, she couldn’t have done that without him? Tony followed her down corridors that were somehow unfamiliar despite the years he’d spent at the school. It seemed that even with a brain like his the memory really did play tricks. The corridors that he’d always remembered with a warm tinge looked cold in the early fall sunlight.

“I’ll let you get settled in here this morning Tony, and come and collect you for lunch, okay?”

The porter who’d been discreetly following the pair around dropped off Tony’s luggage with visible relief. Tony didn’t blame the man, the jury-rigged TV/computer was amongst the possessions that he’d brought with him and that thing weighed an absolute ton. After directing the man to dump the computer on the floor Tony moved to start unpacking the few other things he’d bothered to bring with him, clothes, scavenged parts and tools mostly, and then actually started paying attention to his surroundings.

Tony backed away in horror as he saw the state of the room he was supposed to be sharing. Apparently his roommate was obsessive over the half-way demarcation in the room; they’d already left their mark on the small-shared space, and it took up precisely half of the room.

Tony wasn’t sure yet if this was the same roomie he’d had the first time around or not, he honestly couldn’t remember much about them beyond a seething ball of anger, resentment and guilt.

Gods he hoped that feeling wasn’t a harbinger of things to come. He really didn’t want to have to watch his back in the space that he was supposed to sleep in. His sleeping patterns were haphazard enough as it was.

The room had a pretty standard, if relatively luxurious dorm layout, everything mirrored for both occupants. Two single beds pushed against opposite walls, two wardrobes, two desks, two sets of bookshelves and cupboards.

Tony was already desperately looking forward to being old enough to be assigned his own private room. Younger boys had to share; boys at high-school level received their own space.

The only problem was his roomies half of the room was an absolute disaster zone, the floor wasn’t littered with clothes or anything obvious like that. The school had strict rules about the state rooms were to be left in after all. No the spine-crawling disgust came from a far more subtle source than that.

With a horrible sinking feeling Tony thought he might know precisely why looking at the other half of the room made his skin crawl. He knew that idiosyncratic approach to filing and organisation all too well. His palms itched with the desire to fix the disgusting affront to organisation and common sense.

“Helloooo! Antfhhhhony!”

The voice, with its particular way of pronouncing his name confirmed all of his worst fears.

Suppressing a reflexive shudder at the memories of betrayal, Vanko, corporate sabotage, murder attempts and worst of all exposing the nature of his and Ty’s relationship to the press, hasn’t happened yet, hasn’t happened yet, hasn’t happened yet.

Tony turned around to meet his new roommate, Justin Hammer.

~~~~~~~

Tony frowned as he was led into a side office filled with blocks, abacuses and other educational toys. Lunch with Mrs Kowalski had been, educational.

Apparently he’d forgotten a few things, Westchester Academy For Privileged Boys made all students take several aptitude exams upon acceptance so that they could be placed in lessons that were suited to their intelligence levels and temperaments. (Tony snorted at the lack of political correctness used in the terminology, clearly the 70s hadn’t gotten past the hateful “No Irish, No Coloureds, No Dogs” stage yet.)

Mrs Kowalski dumped him outside a secluded little office before bustling off to do principally things.

~~~~~~~

“Hello Anthony! You can call me Mr Leekie.”

“It’s Tony.”

Tony disliked the man immediately. In truth he was surprised he hadn’t remembered him, he was memorable enough; tall and balding, obvious comb-over doing nothing to hide the shiny dome of his head, especially with the carefully teased over strands of hair constantly slipping into his face like that. The man was lanky, stick insect-like, the overall effect was like a lollypop that had been sucked on for too long. His false friendliness set Tony’s teeth on edge.

At that moment Leekie passed over a colourful little red disk of sugar on a stick, it was almost as if he’d known. Tony suspiciously accepted the candy and looked questioningly up at the surprisingly young man.

“Now Tony, I want you to work your way through as many of these papers as you can manage. Feel free to stop whenever you want, though do try your best to get as far as you can.”

Surprised by the almost modern approach to encouraging educational helpfulness Tony blinked at the man. Tony was sat down at that, and given a pen and a thick stack of worksheets.

“These papers will determine who your classmates will be, so it really is important that you give this your best shot.”

Tony tried not to scoff at that earnest little pep talk; he suspected that this afternoon was going to be painfully boring. The small piece of sickly candy lay ignored on the desk.

He doodled his way through what he recognised as logic tests, idly sketching a schematic for an improved water filtration system over one of the test papers. It morphed into the schematics for an improved coffee machine. Gods he missed coffee, so much it made his teeth ache. He belatedly finished with the pile and coughed.

Leekie looked like he’d swallowed something unexpected; Tony had thought that the tests were rather boring, though from the frown on Mr Leekie’s face he clearly hadn’t thought so.

“Tony?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever done anything like this before?”

How should he answer here, truthfully relative to his actual age, or truthfully relative to his body’s age?

“No?” He tried out.

“Huh.” Leekie looked doubtful, “Well try these on for size.”

Creepy Leekie passed over some more papers, they were clearly supposed to be more difficult, some mechanical logic and middle-school pre-calculus was introduced.

Sighing Tony dutifully filled the papers in.

Leekie’s eyebrows nearly rose to his hairline at the speed with which the tests were passed back over. Tony thought they might merge with his remaining hair and fly off to form a colony, a separate entity of self-aware hair, they rose so much with each page the man checked.

Tony resisted the urge to fidget – his six-year-old body came with a burst of energy that felt like going on a caffeine and engineering bender, accompanied by the same erratic and unwanted crashes.

Leekie coughed and reached for yet another pile of papers, for some reason he’d started to sweat nervously, the additional dampness making his comb over give up the ghost entirely and flop fully into his face as he reached down into the cabinet.

Tony stifled a bark of a laugh, he was being cruel in his observations he knew, but something about the man reminded him far too much of Obadiah for his comfort. Probably something to do with the forced joviality, even though he knew on a rational level that it almost certainly came from a different source.

He somewhat gleefully noted that they were onto the “hard” stuff now. Tony hummed a few bars of You Shook Me All Night Long as he solved the problems, the questions were a mixture of high school level logic, calculus, science, and literacy tests.

Of course given that he was mentally a 40-something year old, multi-doctorate holding, Fortune 500 CEO Tony still found the questions pathetically easy, but at least they weren’t insultingly low-bar. Well, they wouldn’t be insulting if he were anyone else.

Still humming Tony cheerfully tossed the pile back over, misjudging the throw entirely with his still too-short arms; he ended up spilling the pile out over the desk instead. Flushing in embarrassment and no little shame Tony cringed, expecting Leekie to react as almost all men in his life had – with anger and violence.

Leekie misinterpreted his actions completely,

“There, there Tony – There’s no shame if they’re too hard. It’s alright.”

He gathered the papers together and started checking the answers against his swot sheet, he paled slightly as he realised that once again the answers were correct.

He got up from the desk, and walked around it to talk to Tony, this time crouching down to his level at the table, rather than looming unnervingly over him.

“Tony there’s only two more sets of tests I have that I can give you. I’ll need to phone Mrs Kowakski to get permission but when she sees your results I think she’ll allow it. For now you can play with these games.”

Tony recognised the “games” as a 3D form of IQ test often given to recalcitrant children and people who had trouble with language comprehension, huh. The school must be costing Howard more than just a pretty-penny, Tony had been sure those things hadn’t really come into use until the late eighties. Still it would be something relatively harmless to do with the time he supposed.

They were even easier than he’d remembered this sort of thing being, it seemed that years of manipulating three-dimensional holographic schematics and piloting the Iron Man suits had improved his already excellent spatial awareness immensely. He ended up completing every test in the box long before Freaky Leekie returned with Mrs Kowalski in tow.

He’d returned to doodling schematics, notations all in the unique, and heavily encrypted shorthand of a language that only he and JARVIS had shared, and had amassed quite a pile of paper when the door finally opened. Leekie gave Mrs Kowalski a significant look at the sight of the neatly lined up row of solved IQ tests.

“How long did it take you to do that Anthony?” Mrs Kowalski asked, sickly sweet saccharine lacing her voice.

“Dunno.” Tony replied purposefully vague, he’d been told he behaved like a five year old often enough. He might as well act his apparent age now.

He leisurely finished adding an e-curve to the corner of his current schematic. Some things from extremis had remained with him, his control over the accuracy of his drawings was one of them.

In an undertone Leekie was whispering to Mrs Kowalski,

“Either way he completed all of them. In well under the allotted time, that indicates an IQ of at least 180 – but you know as well as I do that IQ gets increasingly inaccurate at anything approaching 150. But well given that I was gone for a little over 30 minutes, and he’s had the time to do all of that.” He indicated the technical drawings, “We should give him the more accurate tests and maybe try him out on the college entry exams.”

That surprised Tony, he’d thought Leekie was creepy and freaky, and had perhaps unfairly categorised him in his head in the same place reserved for business rivals, corporate spies, and psychologists.

Mrs Kowalski smiled tightly, something unreadable in her expression.

“Very well Mr Leekie. If you think it’s necessary I won’t argue, student welfare is your purview after all.”

With great ceremony Leekie pulled out a set of keys as large as his fist and unlocked a door Tony hadn’t paid much attention to. He disappeared inside to the rustling of paper, the door clearly led to a storage cupboard, probably used to house the school exams.

After several minutes of awkward silence, and pointedly not meeting Mrs Kowalski’s eyes, Tony was relieved when sneaky Leekie emerged triumphantly clutching several sets of papers to his chest.

In his nervousness Tony had disassembled the pen without any conscious input from his brain, using the spring as a launching mechanism for the otherwise ignored lollypop. The wrapper had been sacrificed for a crude aerofoil, and the hard candy itself had ended up in pieces scattered around the table, the remaining jagged edges still connected to the stick used as fins and as a counterweight.

With a lollypop, a pen and some paper Tony had, whilst entirely ignoring what his hands were actually doing, made a scale model of one of the more recent space worthy aeroplanes.

At Leekie’s triumphant reappearance Tony accidentally launched the miniature space vehicle, face reddening as it sailed to the far side of the room, embedding itself in a gap in the bookcase.

“Oops.”

Mrs Kowalski’s mouth was open as if to reprimand him, but Leekie stopped her eyes gleaming.

“Well done Tony! A nice little paper plane, that one travelled very far.” Spotting Mrs Kowalski’s disapproving look he continued hastily, “Ah – but you aren’t supposed to make projectiles like that Tony. You could have had someone’s eye out.”

Dumping the heap of papers on his desk Leekie strolled over to the bookcase on the far side of the room, and plucked the tiny fructose-based vehicle from it’s landing site. Something on Leekie’s face made Tony think that he seemed to recognise that it wasn’t just your standard paper plane, but he said nothing more about it.

“Well Tony, we’d already been asked to carry out an IQ test. So this first set of papers is an application form for a more accurate set of papers that we’ll have to send away to have verified. Mrs Kowalski, an external adjudicator and myself will all have to be present when you take the questions. This next set is a MENSA application form, and finally we’ve got some mock SAT exams for you to cut your teeth on whilst we organise all of this with your legal guardian.”

Tony casually filled in the paperwork after carefully checking the small print, decades as the CEO of one of the largest corporations on the planet had long since ingrained the practice of checking everything he signed in him. (There was a reason it took him so long to get back to Pepper whenever she gave him a small mountain of already carefully vetted paperwork after all.)

Paperwork dealt with, and ignoring the strange looks the two adults were shooting him, Tony matter of factly moved onto filling in the SAT practice papers.

He was honestly disappointed by how easy they were, the only aspect that tripped him up was trying to remember how much of the science he knew wasn’t actually common knowledge yet.

Tony ignored the whispered phone call going on in the background, it was taking quite a lot of concentration to remember just how out of date, or rather how far ahead? His knowledge actually was. The rest of his thought processes taken in tamping down the cynical urge to wonder whether Howard would actually bother signing the permission forms for such a complicated set of events.

Mr Leekie nodded in satisfaction, before noting something down in the folder on his desk, presumably Tony’s.

“I think it’s fairly obvious which class you’re going to be placed in. You’ll be going into the advanced class for your year group.”

Mrs Kowalski seemed to feel the need to interject there, speaking in an unintentionally condescending tone,

“Where you’ll have the option of choosing which qualifications you take here from an international list of recognised examinations.” Tony mused bemusedly that if he had been an actual kid the spiel would have been utterly lost on him, “Anthony we want you to be able to get into any university world-wide, if that means taking the Japanese or European tests then so be it. Whilst America has many of the best universities in the world, we like our students to have options, and as a school that takes in International Students we are prepared to go the extra mile for every single pupil.”

She beamed down at him, Tony stared up at her blankly. The poor woman had clearly thought that her little speech was inspirational, and whilst Tony conceded that the spiel might work on the parents, the woman really needed to work on her child-wrangling skills.

Leekie shot Mrs Kowalski a look before taking over,

“Once the more accurate IQ-test arrives you may end up being placed again. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Okay.”

“Well then!” Mrs Kowalski said, in that too-bright tone reserved for children, old people and the terminally stupid, “It’s too late to join classes now, so I’ll let you get settled in with your roommate and you can join Mr Smythe’s class tomorrow.”

“Might as well go and watch Hurt Locker the musical.” Tony muttered to himself, looking forward to spending the time with the Hammer brat with dread.

~~~~~~~~

Edwin was trying not to worry about Tony, but he couldn’t help it. The boy had left with a veritable cloud of worry floating over his head. Ana clearly noticed his distraction that evening, for once taking over cooking duties without complaint.

He shot his wife a grateful smile as she laid down the steaming plate of paprikash in front of him, it seemed that Autumn had finally begun to make itself known. The weather had changed from the warm sunny temperance he’d gotten used to into a downpour halfway through the long drive back to the mansion temperature dropping noticeably.

The weather had seemed to him to reflect his mood, though of course he knew that it was a flight of fancy. Edwin wondered how Tony was doing on his first day. He hoped his young charge was getting on well with the other students.

Ana reached out and grasped his hand, giving him a tired smile; Edwin smiled back at her and resumed eating the stew. He knew she was just as worried as he was, it wasn’t fair to have his head off in the clouds like this. Besides, given the arrangement he’d come to with the school he’d be sure to hear if anything happened to his erstwhile charge.

~~~~~~~

Tony’s first night at Westchester Academy For Privileged Boys wasn’t exactly what you’d call pleasant. He entered the large canteen and almost winced at the smell of hundreds of damp bodies, teenaged male bodies at that. The whole room was filled with a fugue of bad cooking and wet-dog, to put it politely. Still, Tony supposed, at least he wasn’t one of the people who’d been out in it, it was pouring down with rain outside.

He ended up spending the evening meal sat alone in the communal canteen, isolated at the end of one of the long tables a noticeable gap between him and his nearest neighbour, the stares of the other pupils prickling uncomfortably on the back of his neck. He knew he was the new boy, but did the other kids have to make it so damned obvious?

The canteen was strangely old-fashioned, six long rows of wooden tables arranged in parallel underneath the perpendicular raised platform and table where the teachers sat surveying the students below them.

The slop that passed for food at the canteen left something to be desired, despite the fact that Tony really wasn’t a fussy eater. Years as Iron Man, and Tony Stark, engineering genius who often forgot to eat were it not for the strange algae-based meal-equivalent smoothies JARVIS insisted he drink, still didn’t prepare him for the stew full of unknowable lumps that he didn’t want to think too hard about. The slop appeared to be primarily comprised of gristle, turnip, and grease. He steadily worked his way through the meal made up of turnip and meat full of mysterious tubes that would put hair on his chest, if the hair already on the meat was anything to judge by, with the steady yet rapid pace of one too used to being denied meals, and rushed out of the room as soon as permission was given for the students to leave.

When he got back to his room Hammer was already there, no wonder he’d had no familiar faces at dinner. Tony pulled a face at that disturbing thought, Hammer as a familiar face, albeit a hated one. He almost caught himself wondering about just why the other boy was locked away in their room when he should have been eating, Tony suspiciously eyed the layout of his belongings on his side of the room, however the precisely chaotic layout complete with traps taught to him by Nat hadn’t actually changed. He caught a glimpse of puffy red-eyes before he forced himself to get on with things and ignore the evil little spawn.

Tony went about his evening routine, brushing his teeth and unpacking the last of the items he’d brought with him. The other boy wanted to talk to him despite his best efforts. Tony did his best not to be overtly rude to the other boy, but he just kept chattering on oblivious to Tony’s increasing discomfort.

“How was your first day?”

Tony had a mouthful of toothpaste at that awkwardly timed question.

“Do you like our room?”

Tony had been about to leave the room to find the communal bathroom on their corridor, and he’d been forced to nod hastily before retreating in embarrassed silence.

“What do you think of the bed?”

Tony had just about managed to settle under the covers and had been about to shut his eyes and attempt to actually sleep.

“The food here’s horrible isn’t it?”

Tony had been on the verge of dozing off at that one.

“Leekie is weird.”

The lights were out, and Tony desperately wanted the other boy to Shut. Up.

“Tony do you like-“

Tony turned an affixed Hammer with a glare that would have seared a hole through Cap’s shield. Despite the darkness Hammer seemed to feel the intensity of it. Good.

“I’m tired. I think I want to go to sleep now. Good Night.”

“Oh, oh, Okay. Goodnight Tony. I hope your first day was okay. I know my first day was awful, Mr Leekie –“

Whatever Hammer had been about to say next was cut off by Tony giving up and slamming the door of their shared washroom. The tiny room held a sink and a mirror and not much else, but it was a welcome reprieve from the communal bathing and toilets that would comprise his time here.

Tony leaned against the sink, stared at his too short reflection and mused to himself, well, that wasn’t completely terrible. Tony ended up lingering in the small room until he was sure that Hammer had finally gone to sleep, before he slipped back into the main room and under his sheets.

~~~~~~~

As soon as school rules allowed Tony was out of his room the following morning and in the head teacher’s office. He’d taken care not to wake Justin, not wanting a repeat of the previous evening’s interminable game of twenty questions.

“I want to move rooms.”

Mrs Kowalski looked taken aback,

“Whyever would you want to do that? I thought there was a lot of chemistry between you and Justin.”

“Yeah well there’s a lot of chemistry in Chernobyl.” Tony muttered bitterly in response, for once uncaring about the scientific inaccuracy of the statement. He was sure Brucie-Bear would have raised an eyebrow at him about that one.

Mrs Kowalski blinked,

“What?”

Tony pointedly didn’t say, ‘Oh sorry hasn’t happened yet.’ Instead he settled for mumbling out, “Nothing” before hurriedly beating out a retreat from her office. In a distant sort of a way he was aware that he was the problem, not Hammer. After all the other boy was six, he’d probably merely been trying to be friendly, in the infuriating manner of children everywhere. For gods sake, he’d been able to put up with Harley for all of those years, cohabiting with Hammer who apparently had yet learnt how to manipulate should be easy in comparison right?

Tony uneasily made his way down to the canteen, dreading what the morning would bring.

~~~~~~~

At breakfast Tony attempted small talk, a social skill he’d never been any good at. It was why he always dropped obscure pop-culture references left, right and centre. It generally wasn’t good form to dazzle other people with science, the only other topic he felt comfortable with, and so he dazzled them with the more acceptable cultural references.

He turned to Hammer, who unfortunately seemed to be all too happy to have someone to sit with, Tony had tried to make himself inconspicuous but the other boy had sought him out veering unerringly towards his spot in the corner.

“So what did you think of Baldermort?”

Tony could have kicked himself, even in the present day people would have struggled with that reference, let alone now in the seventies. Hammer turned an utterly puzzled face to him.

“What?”

“Leekie?”

“Oh!” Hammer seemed to brighten at that, “He’s alright I suppose, but it’s his fault I’m in the special class.“

Tony double-took,

“What?!?”

“You know? The krelboynes?” At Tony’s continuing blank look, Hammer rolled his eyes and clarified as if the strange slang was the most obvious thing in the world, “For the nerds and the dweebs?”

“Oh.”

Understanding dawned like a mushroom cloud, bright and terrifying with fucktons of fallout. Christ, Tony hadn’t really considered the degree of hazing he’d be in for as a small-for-his-age (alright, just downright small, he was short, he got it) child-genius in a society where smart was shunned.

Tony stared unseeing at the grey unappetising goop the school canteen deemed to be porridge, puzzling over how to navigate the social minefield that was a school hierarchy without screwing up his plans to get out of here as quickly as possible. Before too long his six-year-old’s appetite raised it’s head and he got back to eating. It wasn’t a moment too soon, just as he got to the bottom of the bowl the bell tolled and the canteen started clearing out as the mass of students headed to their classes.

Tony followed Hammer’s lead with a sinking heart, he sincerely hoped that what Hammer was implying about the social system at the school wasn’t accurate. But in that at least Tony was willing to concede that his future business rival had always been a canny judge, or at least he had been, will be. Gods the tenses of his situation were getting confusing.

~~~~~~~

Tony found himself inspecting the classroom with distaste; it was filled with the evidence of a disconcerting mixture of woefully old-fashioned and painfully modern teaching ideals. The neat rows of individual desk/chair combos all facing the teacher’s large mahogany desk harkened back to Tony’s memories of a rather authoritarian approaches to discipline and teaching, and yet… The walls were covered in childish drawings, with large displays about Egyptians and Trigonometry taking up a large proportion of the content.

As well as the expected old-fashioned equipment, there were surprising areas to the large room, at the back of the room in a discrete corner a carpeted area littered with cushions surrounding an adult sized chair standing throne-like in the centre told that this school still believed in the rather old-fashioned idea of story time. The opposite back corner contained what looked suspiciously like a play area more suited for a kindergarten, complete with a large tray full of sand.

The teacher was standing at the front of the class, clearly waiting for the students to file in. The thin ascetic man was clearly keeping an eye out for Tony, his eyes lit up as soon as he spotted him, he gestured authoritatively for Tony to stand with him at the front of the room as the rest of the children filed inside.

“We’ve got a latecomer joining us today class, allow me to introduce Anthony Stark.”

The man looked at the class expectantly. They all droned out resentfully,

“Hello Anthony.”

“Tony, I’m Mr Smythe and I’ll be your teacher for the duration of your career here.”

Tony resisted the urge to glare up at the thin man in the ill-fitting tweed jacket; did he really have to make a big deal of this?

“Well? Introduce yourself Anthony.”

Tony decided to roll with it, he’d faced the press when they were hungry for blood, how hard could this be?

“Hi. I’m Tony, as Mr Smythe over there may have already mentioned it once or twice.”

There were a couple of quiet nervous chuckles from the very back of the classroom. Tony tried to remember if corporal punishment was still allowed at schools. He had a sinking feeling that it was. Luckily Smythe seemed oblivious to the sarcasm in Tony’s voice.

“Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? Likes, dislikes…”

“I like Black Sabbath, ACDC and Engineering, I dislike,” Tony tried to think of the seventies equivalent of Justin Bieber and gave up, “ uh, Abba?” His choice in band didn’t earn the laughter he’d been hoping for, but rather one or two glares from his audience. Oops. Tony carefully side-eyed Smythe, running through the risk-benefit ratios in his head, and finding the outcome acceptable, he smoothly let out, “And overbearing authority figures.”

Smythe narrowed his eyes at Tony, Tony knew that he’d just about gotten away with it, this time.

Tony’s first class at Westchester Academy for Privileged Boys was painful, Mr Smythe wasn’t a bad sort, he obviously cared that his students learnt whilst he was trying to teach them. And despite Tony’s fears, he didn’t seem all that inclined to use the cane that had loomed like a treacherous iceberg in the fog of Tony’s early memories. However he wasn’t prepared for Tony’s particular brand of genius, let alone the foreknowledge that he’d brought with him to the seventies.

Within twenty minutes of the first lesson of the day starting Tony ended up bored out of his skull. He’d started out dutifully copying down the painfully simple mathematics Smythe was apparently teaching to the gifted students in Tony’s year group, but his attention had wandered as soon as he realised just how basic the problems were. It seemed that despite the tests he’d taken yesterday he was being taught the same inane drivel as all of the other children in his year group – though perhaps at an accelerated rate.

Pretty soon Tony’s notebook had been filled with his jottings, still in the encrypted language that he and JARVIS, and later FRIDAY had shared. He’d been trying to make progress on his servo/actuator problem he’d been having with his plans for a discrete repulsor gauntlet, but the escapades of the squirrels in the trees outside of the classroom window had distracted Tony. The distraction had escalated when watching one squirrel make a laws-of-physics defying jump to the neighbouring tree, which had gotten Tony wondering yet again about the different rules of physics that seemed to govern Asgardian and later Xandar’s science.

After a few minutes of fruitless fiddling with beautiful, yet ultimately uselessly elegant formulae to try and narrow down whether or not the apparent physical constants of the universe really were different when Asgardians were around to mess with them. Tony had ended up compiling a matrix to compare and contrast the data that he had to try and brute force his way to a solution, it wasn’t pretty, since he didn’t have access to definitive data one way or another so he was stuck using approximations. But it was a way to pass the time that probably wouldn’t result in him accidentally inventing someone else’s patent thirty odd years early.

Tony was horribly aware that he’d gotten lucky with the schematics that he’d drawn in Leekie’s office, he didn’t think he’d included anything world-changing in the detailed designs for that coffee-maker. Or at least he hoped that he hadn’t One could never tell when ideas for weapons of mass destruction of unrivalled destructive power popped up alongside designs for more efficient rechargeable motors, software ideas, and a possible way to make something throb and pulse. Likely meaning he’d have Pepper filing the patent on the world’s most satisfying custom rabbit, whilst simultaneously hiding away the schematics for a weapon with the destructive power of a nuclear bomb, and a new gaming engine to wow the nerds out there.

It wasn’t that Tony wasn’t trying to blend in, fit in as well as someone with 40-odd years of future scientific knowledge crammed into his head could, but well the lesson really was insultingly basic, and the teacher seemed to have an uncanny knack for spotting when someone wasn’t giving him their entire attention. As such Smythe immediately tried to call Tony out on it.

Of course Tony didn’t respond kindly to being treated that way, and the entire situation escalated rapidly,

“Well Mr Stark can you answer the question?”

“Uh. Sorry, what?”

Mr Smythe sighed theatrically,

“The question on the board. Really Tony, daydreaming already? It’s your first day. Do at least try to make an effort. Do you want to be dropped down a grade?”

The man let that last question hang in the air like a threat. Tony was unimpressed; he’d been threatened by children with a better grasp of scale. The man had already wasted what he thought of as his trump card on an incident this petty, it meant that Tony could probably damned near get away with murder.

“Oh,” Tony hastily decided not to call the man on it, he wasn’t actively trying to make enemies here. He glanced at the math problem scratched on the chalkboard in a scrawl nearly as illegible as his own, “Sure.”

“Come and give it a go then.” Mr Smythe smiled nastily gesturing that Tony should take the chalk. He was smiling that special teacher’s smile, reserved for teachers and spouses, the one that says, “I know you’re in trouble, you know you’re in trouble, let’s see you dig your way out of this one ey sonny boy?”

Tony walked up to the front of the class full of desks, gave the math problem a cursory check and dutifully filled in the answer. Before pausing, and correcting the problem so that you’d get the correct numerical answer no matter what the inputs were. He passed the chalk back over and turned to go back to his seat.

“Wait a minute boy, did I say you could sit back down?”

“No.” Mr Smythe glared stonily, “Sir.”

Snide Smythe turned and started reading through Tony’s answer. Tony hadn’t bothered to show any of his working, merely jotted the solution to the algebraic formulae down on the blackboard before hastily scribbling a more efficient line of equations underneath in revision.

It wasn’t lost on Tony that half of the class was staring nastily at Smythe, and the other half at Tony. It seemed that this little incident was to be their entertainment for the morning, and depending on how this panned out he was probably going to be infamous one way or the other.

It took a moment, but Smythe finally seemed to understand what he was looking at. He paled and looked down at Tony in mild disbelief.

“Tony?”

“Yes Mr Smythe?”

“How easy did you find that problem?”

“I dunno.”

Smythe glared,

“Pretty easy?” Tony tried out for size.

Smythe’s next words left him reeling, the lanky man coolly instructed, not a hint of emotion in his voice to give Tony a clue as to his motive,

“Tony collect your books and wait outside in the corridor please. You’re disrupting my lesson.”

Tony shot the man a nasty glare before he stomped outside.

~~~~~~~

Tony waited in the corridor anxiously, he hadn’t meant to provoke Smythe, really he hadn’t. Tony wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, not get himself in trouble on the very first day.

Dammit. This was no way to prove that he was responsible.

Fortunately for Tony’s state of mind Cheeky Leekie strode by at that moment, and double took comically as he spotted him.

He stared down at Tony quizzically, Tony stared blankly back, letting none of his embarrassment show in his steady gaze. Leekie immediately knocked on the classroom door, and entered before a reply could be heard.

Tony stared at the closed door, sweat beading on the back of his neck.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but was probably only a few minutes Leekie came back out of the classroom Smythe in tow.

“What do you mean he was disrupting your lesson?”

“Well he wasn’t paying attention.”

“Tony?”

“Yesir?”

“What were you doing to earn Mr Smythe’s ire?”

Tony desperately tried to read the situation, he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on here but it wasn’t going at all how he’d thought it would.

“Well I was watching the squirrels…” Tony tailed off when he realised that Leekie was thumbing through his little foolscap schoolbook, full of the schematics and notes about Asgardians that Tony had been compiling earlier.

“Yes?”

“And then I answered the question on the board.”

“And?”

“And then I got sent outside.”

Shamefully Tony felt his face flush, never show them your belly, Stark Men are made of Iron. He repeated the mantra in his head waiting for his fate to befall him.

To his shock Leekie sent Smythe a cool look.

“Mr Smythe, you were warned that your treatment of the upper years would not be tolerated with the younger children. The only reason you were given the advanced grade 1 class was due to your experience with more advanced topics. You were supposed to be teaching the children to enjoy learning. We talked about this.”

Smythe was glaring daggers, alternating his target between Leekie and Tony, clearly not quite sure who to blame for this dressing down. Tony was taken aback by the show of internal school politics.

“I’ll be taking this incident to Mrs Kowalski, Harold.”

Smythe was looking at Leekie aghast.

“Surely not?”

Leekie ignored the question,

“Get back to teaching your class.” He started strolling away from Smythe’s classroom in clear dismissal. Leekie looked back clearly surprised, in a softer tone of voice he said “Come on Tony, we’ve got work to do.”

~~~~~~~

The rest of the morning passed in a whirlwind of paperwork. After a quick discussion in the principal’s office, during which Mrs Kowalski stared down worriedly at him the whole time, Leekie had produced the end of year exams for grade 1 and made Tony sit them.

Of course Tony found the papers pathetically simplistic, advanced class or not. Leekie sent him off for recess, as soon as the papers were filled out with a reminder to go straight back to Mrs Kowalski’s office after the lunch break rather than to go to class.

He was around the corner from the canteen when the gang cornered him. It wasn’t exactly a secluded spot. However there weren’t any teachers around that Tony could see.

Tony had been at the school for nearly a full day, he was honestly surprised that this little gang hadn’t cornered him sooner. He’d been expecting it. It was almost a relief that the long-awaited confrontation was finally going to take place.

The only pseudo-ally Tony had acquired thus far amongst his group of “peers” was Justin Fucking Hammer of all people. Tony had to violently push down his visceral gut reaction of revulsion towards the boy with every interaction. He knew it was unfair, hell if he was being honest with himself he always had, it wasn’t Hamm-Justin’s fault that he’d been as poorly socialised as Tony himself had been.

Tony had been horrified the evening before, when he’d managed to push down the automatic visceral hatred and actually look at the boy he shared his room with.

Justin genuinely wanted to be his friend, and he’d been crying. In their room. Alone. There was no guile or malice there. The boy really wanted to be friends with him. The shame that flushed through him ran hot and strong.

He knew with the rationality that distance bought him that Justin had only been trying to help him all those years ago. On an emotional level, he still hated Hammer with the fury of a thousand suns, Ty had always encouraged the enmity between them, Tony knew it was just another of Ty’s methods of isolating him. He knew it. Yet the majority of him didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. Still railed against the very idea that Ty had been doing anything more than taking care of him, correcting his behaviour when he’d been bad for them, stopping Tony from doing anything that would bring shame.

Tony wouldn’t, couldn’t, forgive the way Hammer had revealed the truth of Ty’s relationship with Tony to the whole world. Hamm-Justin’s shouts about abuse, beatings and coercion flashed through his mind unbidden. Even decades later the utter humiliation of that reveal in front of Obie, the world’s press, Hammer trying to rip his too-large sunglasses off his face, face burning with remembered shame Tony forced down the memories.

He really needed to focus on the here and now, before this little situation got too far out of hand.

The gang, and that’s precisely what they were a gang, was almost entirely comprised of boys in the older years. Their bodies nearing adulthood, though their mental and social development still had a long-way to go.

They were the type of young men, that if they had been born to a lower social order, people would have called them criminals and thugs, and likely would have taken a different route home, let alone cross the street, to avoid them.

As it was these young men were the so-called cream of society. They’d risen to the top by dint of birthright, and status. Tony tried not to let his disgust show, they liked to say that cream floated to the top, well so does the scum (and he’d know, he himself was scum).

Live in the type of property these boy’s fathers rented out and you were near automatically labelled a criminal, but own the slums people lived in and it made you a member of the Great and the Good and got you invited to the type of party that only the elite could afford. Tony had spent much of his life undermining bastards like this, using the Maria Stark foundation, and SI’s own cash to raise the areas they’d once slum-lorded over up.

His lip curled.

The other boys, perhaps sensing the danger they were in looked nervous, they’d lost the excited jittery edge they’d had moments before, and now just looked nervous.

The leader of the pack was made of sterner stuff than his lackeys, malice clear in his eyes. The well-built young blonde sauntered towards Tony, overpowering ego clear in every line of his body. He swaggered over and loomed in what he probably thought was an intimidating manner.

Being fair to the boy it might have been, but Tony had never been a tall-man, and he’d been loomed over by the very best. At most the boy in front of him looked like an overeager youngster trying to prove his worth a few years too early. Tony really wasn’t impressed.

He glared up at the idiot attempting to, what, give him neck ache? Tony scoffed out-loud, the older boy looked worried by this, this clearly wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.

Tony grinned board-meeting grin no.6 up at them – the Patrick Bateman edition, a mix of slick city shark and pure psychopathic glee. His eyes lit up with unholy fire, if anyone with the right eyes to see were to look at him in that moment they’d think him a man with a demon on his shoulder, only instead of the usual angel on the other there’d just be another demon, egging the other one on.

“Hi, I’m Tony Stark. And you are?”

He offered his hand.

The butch boy in front of him was clearly terminally stupid, instead of backing up, as the rest of his ridiculously large gang were not so subtly doing he grinned maliciously and reached out, clearly intending to do some small evil with his newly acquired testosterone fuelled strength.

The powerful electric jolt that froze all of the muscles in his arm into immobility as soon as he touched Tony’s palm put paid to that little idea.

Whilst Tony was still struggling with the servo-issue in his repulsor plan, he wasn’t stupid. He’d managed to hastily throw together a far more effective version of the little electric-shock delivering devices that he’d used to protect his trunk at this awful place the first time around. Forty odd years of experience meant he now knew how to lock the offending party’s muscles into place without the risk of death that came with the so-called nonlethal tasers overused by the police in his era, as well as how to miniaturise the device enough that it fit nicely into the band of his wristwatch. It really had been child’s-play.

The lackeys had varying responses to seeing their leader double over clutching desperately at his right arm, which had spasmed into an immobile claw.

Half of the group evaporated into the larger population of the playground in the way that mobs denied entertainment tend to. The other half immediately took threatening moves forward. Tony swallowed and tried not to look nervous. Showing weakness would only attract more trouble.

Fortunately, the leader’s obvious distress had drawn it’s own crowd, in the Brownian motion of the mob, the geeks, dweebs, freaks, loners and basically anyone who wasn’t in the in-crowd had drifted subtly closer as the incident began to play out.

After all there wasn’t much to do for entertainment around here, and seeing someone, anyone who wasn’t them get it from the pack was worth watching. Of course it was even more entertaining when the loathed bullies became the bullied themselves.

The large pack of senior-year students was beginning to look rather small in the face of the eerily quiet children surrounding them. Tony knew that his position rested on a knife-edge, events could still tip in their favour far too readily for his peace of mind.

Fortunately he knew how to play a crowd. Knew how to do threatening, even without the suit he had plenty of experience there. Without letting go of the stricken pack-leader Tony sauntered half a step-forward wicked grin clear on his lips.

Half of the pack again melted away.

There were only six of them now as opposed to the braying mob numbering in the thirties when they’d cornered him. The rest of the onlookers were still eerily quiet, clearly waiting to see which way the incident would turn before taking sides.

Tony knew viscerally that the loser would at the very least end up in the nurses office.

The, well, presumably the second in command stepped forward menacingly. He was clearly a jock, his broad shoulders and football jersey spoke of that clear enough. Where the leader of the gang was actually slyly intelligent in that malicious low-level rodenty way that all bullies of his sort had to be, his second was a wall of pure muscle.

Tony tried not to let the nerves show, he was performing to the crowd now, his natural environment. At least this audience wasn’t actively baying for his blood. Not this time.

For all that he was literally carrying several tricks up his sleeve Tony was painfully aware that he couldn’t afford to let the situation play out like this for much longer. He was six, the other boy had the body of a military man. Hell, he probably was a military cadet.

Tony grinned another selection from his catalogue of shark’s grins, this one no.13: The Trickster – “Isn’t this a laugh?” variant. He wanted to unnerve the opponent without alienating the audience, a tricky balance to pull-off. Fortunately he was an old hand at this game.

He took another confident half a step forward, posture radiating that he had not a care in the world. The remainder of the gang of older-boys were all looking nervous, they clearly weren’t the brains of the group, they’d all melted away when the tide had begun to turn against them.

Tony raised an eyebrow sardonically at the second-in-command.

“Well?”

“Huh?”

“What do you want?”

Though clearly nervous, things really weren’t meant to go this way his opponent responded in a horribly unshakeable fashion.

“To teach you your place you little fag!”

Again Tony smiled unnervingly.

“Is that so?” he mused, “Ok then.” Tony spread his arms in a show of nonchalance. “Teach me.”

The older boy lashed out with his fists, Tony released the stricken leader, confident that his arm would need at least another twenty minutes before it unclenched from it’s claw, and ducked under the clumsy swing.

For all that Tony lacked strength and bulk he didn’t lack for speed, or training.

He nimbly climbed the mountain of a boy in front of him and deftly jammed the electric shock device at the target - the nerve cluster that Ana had taught him about, making the mountain of a boy yowl in pain as everything from the shoulder down spasmed. As well as his arm the entire right side of the boy’s torso was contorted inwards giving him the temporary impression of having suffered a permanent life altering injury.

Tony jumped down from his perch on the other’s shoulders and looked questioningly at the pitiful remains of the gang ranged in front of him. They all backed away slowly, as the playground proto-mob slowly began to jeer.

He smiled in triumph, he hadn’t even had to attempt to use any of his actual skills to do that. He’d be able to pass that off, truthfully, as something his butler’s wife had taught him combined with his own cleverness.

It was a win-win situation as far as he was concerned. He’d marked himself out as too much effort for the hazers, but not-actually-scary to his peers. Or at least he hoped he’d managed to walk that line.

~~~~~~~~

The combined furore of getting kicked out of Sly Smythe’s class on his first day with the way he’d utterly trounced the so-called popular kids had the kids in his year shooting him a mixture of admiring and fearful looks.

Tony had a feeling that rumours were running rampant, he suspected the gossip would have it that he’d beaten up 12 guys and a dog by the evening.

Unfortunately for all that he’d been sent out to get lunch he was supposed to report in to Mrs Kowalski as soon as he managed to get himself something to eat.

He dutifully joined the end of the queue and accepted the mysterious slop masquerading as food before trudging off in the direction of her office.

To his surprise, and mounting horror, Mrs Kowalski looked almost happy to see him there rather than upset. He had a sinking feeling that he knew which way this meeting was going.

From the cool look Smythe kept giving him over her shoulder Tony really began to hope that he wouldn’t be forced to take anymore classes under the man’s tutelage. Perhaps the probable direction of the upcoming discussion wouldn’t be so awful after all.

Leekie rushed in a few minutes later, apologising for being late.

“So sorry, there was a bit of an incident in the corridor – young Misters Cord and Taggert were causing quite a commotion – I sent the boys to the nurse’s office.”

“Now that we’re all here.” Smythe said archly.

Leekie either didn’t notice or chose to ignore the tone of voice,

“Yes, let’s get started.”

Smythe sneered down at Tony, affecting an aloof air that didn’t quite mask his – what contempt? Tony didn’t think so, he’d have been comparing the man to Snape but he didn’t read any specific irrational hatred there. If he had to guess he’d say it was closer to misanthropy, the man seemed to genuinely dislike everyone around him. Including the staff members that he should have counted as peers. Smythe shot Mrs Kowalski a look that Tony had trouble interpreting, before seeming to decide he had to start the session. Heaving a put upon sigh the skinny man asked,

“Well Anthony? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Tony looked up at the teacher in genuine puzzlement. He hadn’t really been doing much wrong. Not really. He felt a little like Harry Potter in that first potions lesson for a moment (What? He’d read the books – he was comfortable enough in his manliness to admit that out loud. In fact he’d done so, to Pepper’s consternation when all of that fuss about teaching black magic had been doing the rounds in the press. He’d even been given tickets to the film premiers on the basis of that very public backing, the only part of the films he’d enjoyed was Alan Rickman’s portrayal of the aforementioned Professor, somehow the novels had a (hah) spark of magic that the film adaptations lacked.) Painfully aware that he’d spaced out for a moment there Tony dragged his thoughts back to the present, only to find Smythe downright glaring at him. Oops.

“Uh – sorry. Well. Um. I answered the question on the board? I’m sorry I got distracted by the squirrels.” Tony tried. When that didn’t seem to soften Smythe’s harsh look he continued, “Only they were so. Well I was trying to work out if they were breaking Einstein’s law’s of conservation. It was obvious the old models of thermodynamics weren’t going to do much there – the estimates of Gibb’s Free Energy values I was getting were ridiculous. So I swapped to the four-dimensional model. And….”

He trailed off at the incredulous looks he was receiving. Damn. It looked like he’d gone too far, of course that was the highly edited sequence of events that he’d thought he’d be safe in sharing. Since all of that had happened within the first couple of minutes and he’d moved onto Asgardian and Xandu physical traits, but still, he hadn’t done anything that was beyond current scientific knowledge there. What was the problem?

Tony found himself glancing between the three adults nervously, trying to find some clue about how he should be behaving. Mrs Kowalski was looking between her three visitors clearly trying to get a read on the situation. Tony found himself rethinking his opinion of her, she was clearly smart enough to let things play out a little before she made a snap judgement. Hah, unlike a certain “Captain” of his acquaintance. It was down to Smythe and Leekie then. Both men seemed taken aback. Where Smythe looked grudgingly thoughtful, Leekie was fidgeting with suppressed energy.

“Am I in trouble?”

It slipped out, he hadn’t meant to say anything so childish, and yet, sat there, in the small child-sized chair, being loomed at by three adults. Well. He hadn’t felt so small in years.

Smythe opened his mouth, but Leekie got in first,

“No! No Anthony no, of course not. In fact, Mr Smythe was remiss in failing to explain just why he removed you from his class during first period.”

Smythe seemed to be on the verge of interrupting,

“Wasn’t he?” Leekie gritted out, in that unique manner that adult’s use when trying not to show to children that they are in fact having an argument.

Smythe glared daggers but said,

“Yes.” And to the man’s credit, the next sentence was unprompted, “And I apologise. I meant to follow you out shortly so I could take you to Mr Leekie’s office, but young Mr Tobias had an accident with the paste.” Smythe’s face twisted in remembered displeasure.

Tony looked unbelieving between the two of them. He almost said ‘And you couldn’t have told me that earlier???’ But stopped himself, whilst he’d have gotten away with far worse as Tony Fucking Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. For now he was stuck in the role of young Anthony Stark, son of Howard, the weapons manufacturer. Yet to prove himself to be anyone of worth, hah, that’s if he’d ever proven to be of value to anyone beyond what he could bankroll.

“Yes, well now that that’s out of the way.” Mrs Kowalski’s saccharine tones cut through the silence, “Let’s discuss moving you up a grade shall we?”

~~~~~~~

Hammer was yammering at him excitedly when he got into their shared room much later that afternoon, incessantly asking questions about how he knew the answer to the question Smythe had given him, did he get in trouble, how he’d managed to beat up Ed Cord, was he a soldier, could he teach Justi-Hammer how to do that?

Tony shot his old rival a hateful glare and slammed the washroom door in his face.

~~~~~~~~

By the end of the first week any dubious progress that Tony had made with his defeat of Cord on the social front was undone by his academic progress. The speed at which he climbed through the grades alienated all of his would-be peers. By the end of the first week Tony had been bumped up by four grades. The pattern of moving up nearly a grade-a-day would have continued but Mrs Kowalski had put her foot down. She’d declared the entire situation ridiculous, and wouldn’t allow any more class changes until the official aptitude test results and IQ scores came in.

Being fair to the woman it was clear that she meant well. From what he’d overheard of the furiously whispered discussion she’d been having with Leekie she’d been attempting to preserve his childhood. Ironic really. No one had cared enough to do that for him the first time around, and now that he was actually an adult people kept crawling out of the woodwork, trying to hold him back to keep him safe. The irony was astounding. Tony had to admit, the circumstances were pretty unusual, even though he’d been a genius the first time around and moved up through the educational system at a ridiculous rate he hadn’t actually tested out of education within the first month of arriving at the school. Which he was at a distinct risk of doing this time around.

The situation was unfortunate, but for now Tony had no say in the matter. According to Leekie the official Mensa testing and IQ adjudicators would be around at the end of the month, which had been the event that he and Mrs Kowalski had ended up compromising on.

Since Tony’s presence in any class had turned out to be unnecessarily disruptive, though not through any malice on his part, more due to the sheer, slightly aggressive, disbelief from the teachers that he could possibly answer the questions that they set him to trip him up when they caught his attention wandering. Tony had ended up morosely filling out the school’s internal exams under the watchful gaze of Creepy Leekie. At least at this rate he’d probably be able to test out of the school system fairly soon even with all of the coddling he was suddenly receiving.

Tony hadn’t been able to bear the heartbroken looks Hammer had been shooting him ever since he’d been bumped up that first class, Tony was horribly aware that the other boy had been looking forward to finally having someone else to talk to. Truth be told Tony was relieved that he’d been able to dodge that bullet. He still couldn’t bring himself to look the boy in the eye, let alone hold a civil conversation with him.

It was taking all of his experience at managing to sleep in a cave surrounded by people who’s idea of an entertaining hobby was to make him wish he were dead night after night to manage to shut his eyes every evening next to Justin Fucking Hammer.

Tony blearily rubbed his eyes as he hastily filled out what felt like the millionth test paper. If Leekie kept his word he’d be able to jump up to whatever grade he managed to pass the exam for, though of course Leekie wasn’t exactly aware that Tony had prior experience in that arena.

Still the other man hadn’t struck him as stupid, despite the ridiculous things he’d done to his hair, he was probably well aware that Tony’s result would get Mrs Kowalski’s hackles raised again and seemed prepared to face her. He’d certainly stared down Mr Smythe readily enough that first day, and Tony still inwardly thought that the skinny man was an ass who liked throwing his power around far too much for someone who was supposed to be educating children. But he hadn’t had the misfortune of having to deal with him again, so in all he thought it was a win.

He refocused on the eighth grade test paper in front of him and got on with answering the inane questions. The sooner he got this done the sooner he could get out of here.

~~~~~~~

Fortunately midway through the second week of his time at the school Tony had relief from the tedious boredom of sitting in Freaky Leekie’s office day after day in the form of an extracurricular activity for him, and him alone. Jarvis had organised for Tony to have a private “personal safety” tutor teach him at the school twice a week, after lesson-hours were over. His beloved butler had gone behind Howard’s back, paying for the man out of his own pocket.

He’d told Tony that the man was an old friend of his and Peggy’s from their time setting up SSR/SHIELD offices in England, apparently he was an ex-SAS officer, name redacted from all of his old files, including the SHIELD ones. Tony was to check for the code phrase upon meeting him to verify his identity.

Jarvis had Okayed it all with the school by pointing out that Tony was a kidnapping risk, being the son of one of America’s major weapons manufacturers. Tony had kissed the man when he’d told him the plan. The school, and therefore the wider world, thought that the man was merely teaching Tony how to escape from dangerous situations, when in reality he was going to be teaching him some of his own skills.

So it was a surprise when the man actually turned up, he was tall, lanky and beaky. The first thing Tony noticed about him was his nose, it dominated the man’s whole face. Front on it was roughly proportional, straight and thin with large nostrils, but from the side it dominated the man’s whole profile. Intelligent green-gold eyes peered down at him from above that nose; Tony had the uncomfortable feeling he was being closely assessed.

Tony belatedly remembered to check for the code phrase, the man winked, actually winked at him.

“The significant owl hoots in the night.”

“Hooray hooray for the spinsters sister’s daughter. Nice to meet you Tony Stark.”

He drawled in a deep English baritone, sticking out a strong, long-fingered hand for him to shake. Somehow there was nothing patronising in the action, unlike the behaviour of the majority of the adult’s he’d met since he’d awoken in this time zone.

Tony gripped the other man’s hand, noting how it both dwarfed his ridiculously, and the strange pattern of calluses on the palm, so different to patterns that he himself had borne for most of his life from the metalworking that he’d carried out in his shop.

“Couldn’t you find something easier to remember, like I dunno, swordfish?”

He grumbled in a bid to cover up his momentary surprise. From the way the older man ignored the comment Tony had the uncomfortable feeling that the attempt hadn’t worked.

“My name is Ben Adams, please call me Ben. Let’s check what level you’re at, and then we can work out between us what style I think suits you the best, and whether I should be teaching you.”  

“Wait what, what do you mean if you should be teaching me?”

“Well, in the unlikely event that I don’t know the discipline in question, we’ll have to find someone else who does. I may be one of the best martial arts teachers in the business, but I’m also self-confident enough to give referrals when I have to.”

The next few hours were one of the hardest training sessions of Tony’s life, and he was including the sparring sessions with Nat that had ended in fractured bones in that list. He ran laps, demonstrated safe falling, and attempted to defend himself from a far larger and stronger opponent who knew what he was doing, unlike that oaf he’d encountered on the playground. He ended up on the crash mats again and again and again.

Ben made him demonstrate the dance-katas Ana had taught him, clucking his tongue whenever Tony made a move he particularly disapproved of. Unpleasantly the most difficult trial was saved to last, Ben taught him a series of fluid moves that he was expected to repeat perfectly, every mistake in posture and position was corrected. He was made to hold each pose for a minute before dropping it, restarting the routine from scratch with every error, and there were a lot of errors.

Suffice it to say by the end of the first half of the session Tony was sore and more than a little grouchy.

“Well…” Ben drawled out, Tony looked up at him from his position sprawled out on the mats, “You aren’t the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Tony held his breath in trepidation, this didn’t sound good.

“There’s obviously something tripping you up, you keep second guessing your own actions. You’re far too up in your own head Kid.”

Tony opened his mouth to say something but was cut off

“I mean if I didn’t know better,” there was a strange tone to his voice that implied the opposite to that statement was true, Ben’s tone dropped to a far darker, threatening growl, old, old eyes stared down at Tony out of a young face, “I’d say you were fighting a combination of being somehow unfamiliar with your own body, and trying to unlearn decades of discipline and training.”

Ben levelled Tony with a shrewd look, his expression brightening, the feeling of being assessed by a being far older and more powerful than himself left suddenly, leaving Tony reeling at the abrupt shift.

“But that’s impossible right? I mean you’re what – five, six?”

Tony nodded rapidly in relief, before realising that there was a question in all of that,

“Uh – six, sir, I mean Ben.”

“See? That there, you had to think about your answer. No six year old should have to sit there working out how old they are.”

Ben’s gaze sharpened as he uttered the next sentence, “In fact most six year olds can tell you down to the week how old they are.”

Ben levelled him with a piercing glare, green-gold eyes seeming to cut through him like a laser.

“So Tony. How old are you, really?”

Tony didn’t know how to reply to that question. It was true he didn’t actually know how old his body currently was, it just wasn’t something that seemed important enough to keep track of. Something in him insisted that he should keep his status a secret, and it wasn’t just the fear of being locked in a padded room into a permanent self-hug suit. Pressing as that concern was. Ben seemed to take his hesitance as confirmation.

“Fine, don’t answer me, well, at least you’re not a Black Sky, that’s something to be grateful for.”

Tony caught himself just in time, he’d almost blurted out, ‘What like Elektra?’ But fortunately he’d managed to keep quiet. Whilst he wasn’t sure if she’d even be born with all of the changes to history that he’d apparently made there was no way he was going to give up her secret like that.

Tony realised he’d been silent for too long, which Ben had apparently taken as not just confirmation but a confession that his theory was true.

“Look Kid, don’t worry about it. We’ve all got secrets we don’t want told. I won’t tell if you won’t ok?”

Tony nodded.

“Now back to the business of me teaching you how to fight. I assume you already know quite a lot of theory? At least up here?”

Tony refocused on the here and now in time to see Ben tapping his temple in demonstration.

“That move you keep doing with your hands for instance – pointing your palm out like that. Bloody useless move if you ask me, but your body clearly doesn’t seem to think so.”

Tony resisted the urge to flinch. He was too used to fighting in the amour, even now, after a decade’s worth of unarmed combat training with some of the best fighters in the world, arguably the galaxy.

“So – we’re going to be doing a bit of re-education.”

Ben looked as if he’d just caught himself saying something distasteful, expression blackening. Tony decided to ignore it,

“Is that what we’re going to call it?” Tony sighed out. Ben’s expression sharpened.

“Who taught you?”

“Uh – well Ana and Jarvis.”

“No, not that shite you just showed me. The stuff you were trying not to show me. Who taught you?”

“My driver?”

It was a truth.

Ben huffed, and knelt on his haunches.

“Look Kid, you and I both know – “

“Okay. Okokok. But you wont believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Ninja superspy, acrobat superspy, super soldier, demigod, not actually a medical doctor, plain old soldier, a king, a thief, an android…”

Tony trailed off at the raised eyebrow, it wasn’t as he’d initially thought disbelief, but annoyance. A sign of a rapidly fraying temper.

“Specifics. I need specifics.”

“Won’t help.”

“Try me.”

Something in Ben’s voice made Tony’s shaky control snap, he spitefully spat out a list of names that he knew there was no way on earth the other man would recognise, not here and now nearly 40 years too early.

“The Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain Am-America, Thor, The Hulk, Warmachine, The Black Panther, Ant-Man, Vision, Loki, Daredevil, Elektra, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Mr Fantastic, The Thing, The Flaming Torch, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Starlord, Drax the Destroyer.”

Tony immediately regretted the outburst; like Captain Taggart he wanted an Omega 13 device to enable him to clap his own hands over his mouth. Ben’s response surprised him, not outright disbelief or concern for his sanity but actual consideration.

Ben heaved a frustrated huff, large nostrils flaring with the force of his exhale.

“Fine. Okay. I see your point, I only recognised about 5 of those names, and I’m pretty sure the deity I’m thinking of isn’t the one you are, given that last I saw of him an angry mob had burned down his temple with him locked inside then strung up the charred remains of his corpse for all the world to see.”

Tony gaped up at him.

“What? You think I don’t know things?” Ben shot at him, completely misinterpreting the reason for Tony’s expression, “The Widow programme has been around for decades, everyone’s heard of Captain Bloody America, the foolhardy idiot boyscout. “ The invective was spat as though Ben wanted to use something stronger, “Thor, and the Black Panther – both obscure legends that have more than a little basis in fact. I’ve walked through Wakanda a few times, even lived there once or twice. And of course I’ve met Gamora.”

Tony resisted the urge to ask just how the hell Ben had met Gamora, let alone when Ben had had the time to do all of that, he looked like a young man. But Tony himself was proof that looks could be deceiving. Just as Ben had said that he wouldn’t press too much Tony supposed that he owed the other man in turn.

“Ever meet anyone called Stick?”

Tony stared up at him blankly.

“What?”

“Hah! Nothing nothing, don’t worry.”

Ben smiled wickedly, rubbing the palms of his hands together a vicious spark in his eyes.

“Right then. Now that we’ve got the introductions over and done with.”

Before he’d finished the sentence Ben lashed out with his leg, forcing Tony to jump back or be knocked down. Tony glared up at him, Ben was looking down at him expression aloof, only the sparkle of humour in his ever-changing eyes gave away that the attack was meant to teach. Tony huffed out a breath and dropped into the Wushu stance that he’d picked up from the instructor that had given both himself and Happy self-defence lessons for years.

Ben raised an assessing brow, before dropping back into his own defensive stance, one that Tony didn’t recognise from any discipline, even vaguely. Tony got the feeling that Ben at least was going to be the one teacher who wouldn’t try to hold him back, if anything he might try to push him too hard. He was almost looking forward to it.

~~~~~~~

Tony was relieved when he got back to the room he shared with Hammer that evening to find the other boy already curled up in bed facing the wall and breathing deeply. He didn’t think he’d have been able to put up a polite front to the little shit’s questioning after the utter disaster that his meeting with Ben had been.

He still couldn’t quite believe that he’d told Ben what he had. The other man had riled and poked and aggravated until it had all just spilled out of him in a torrent of what he’d thought had been nastily specific and therefore utterly useless information. Unfortunately the other man did actually have some clue about the wider-universe, somehow. It should have been impossible, and yet he’d stood there with such a look of understanding in his old, old eyes.

Tony angrily worked his way through his evening ablutions before throwing himself down onto the lumpen school mattress and drifting off into an exhausted sleep.

~~~~~~~

It had only taken Tony four days to whizz through all of the internal exams that the school possessed. And even then he’d have probably gotten through them in half that time, but Geeky Leekie had kept insisting that he take breaks and rest his eyes.

As a result Tony was awkwardly spending his days holed up in the school library reading whatever caught his fancy.

At first the librarian had been suspicious, but the explanatory note from both Leekie and Mrs Kowalski had mollified her. It helped that Leekie had turned up a couple of hours into his first lonely morning there to check in on him, the man’s loud outrage that he hadn’t been allowed access to books that were “at your level” had quickly persuaded the librarian that giving him free reign was the path of least resistance given how much shushing she’d been forced to do at the earnest man.

Tony had started off browsing the classics, he’d not reread them in years. Tony had whiled away a pleasant day rereading the greek classics, and Plato’s rather unromantic ideas about The Origin of Love. However the next morning he’d come across a painfully familiar tome that had him on the verge of a flashback, it was the Compendium of Roman History from which he and Ty had chosen their pompous nicknames for each other all those years ago. He’d almost toppled over the trolley of books for shelving in his haste to get away from the thing.

Tony had avoided that section of the library from then on, instead sticking to relearning just what contemporary science actually was in the 1970s. It was mind-numbingly dull, but at least it didn’t bring back memories he’d rather remained buried, and it would help him not to irrevocably alter the course of human history for the worse.

The scientific tomes only highlighted the loneliness of his situation, apart from Hammer, who still insisted on sitting with him during recess for who-knew-what-reason that Tony couldn’t fathom the rest of the student population was giving him a wide berth. It was clear by now that Tony had overdone it when he’d stood up to the hazing gang, he might have gotten away with it if he’d been in any one class for long enough to attempt to befriend people, but at the rate he’d moved up the grades before being hidden away in here like an embarrassment. Well. That was never going to happen.

After the third day of the mind-numbing boredom of rereading topics that he already knew inside out and in more detail than these pathetic books could ever match, even the university level texts for the older students, Tony had had enough. He thought that he’d been unusually patient with that project, but then again, when he did seriously start in on a project he usually didn’t stop until he’d at the very least finished the first prototype or theory.

Tony rubbed at his tired eyes and started wandering through the stacks, for a school library it was surprisingly thorough. He thought he spotted a copy of Farenheit 451, hadn’t a school actually banned that one around this time? He almost reached for it when he recognised what section he was in and froze.

Fiction.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Fantasy.

Swords and Spells.

Magic.

He should really try and find something about magic, and well ok, whilst Tolkein probably didn’t have it at all right, he’d based his ideas off of folkore hadn’t he?

Tony’s mind started whirring through the possibilities, memories of the snippets of conversation he’d had with Doom, Loki and Strange playing in his mind. Hrmph. Doom. Gods he hated that man. The next time he saw him, and he was under no illusions that there wouldn’t be a next time, he was going to tell him just how much. Arrogant bastard.

Tony pulled himself back on track. Ok. Whilst Tony accepted that many scientific models weren’t complete enough to explain magic in it’s entirety, not after he’d witnessed things that not only broke the laws of physics but gleefully tore them apart, stole their clothes, and mailed their shit covered remains back to their mourning spouse, he was constantly frustrated by how vague the explanations he got from practitioners were.

Perhaps he’d be able to find a book with some sort of theory.

Where had Strange said he trained again? Tibet right? And yet Loki had been all about runes where Strange had been all about mysticism and chakras. Hadn’t Loki and Strange had that argument about who had more right to call themselves surpreme? With Loki saying something scathing about how Invoking other people’s power hardly counted? Hrmm. And where did Doom fit into all of this, the sneaky bastard didn’t subscribe to either school did he? He always explained everything as if it was science, even when it really was the absolutely ridiculous mindfuckery that came with magic. And what about Wanda? Her infinity stone granted probability powers were clearly magic, and yet she never so much as muttered an incantation.

The librarian raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips at the frenzied activity, as Tony frantically searched the stacks, piling books on the desk in the corner that he’d claimed as his. (Good vantage point of the two exits, far enough from the Librarian that she couldn’t snoop at what he was reading, but close enough to her that none of the other students could actually do anything to him.)

Tony ransacked the myths section, folklore, history, fairytales, folksongs, ancient history, anything that he thought might contain a snippet of a clue. By the time he was satisfied that he had enough information to get started the table was nigh on groaning under the weight. Covered in precarious piles of books.

Since he couldn’t get along with any of the so-called magical theories that the mages he’d known had espoused he was going to have to get started on one his own.

Pulling over an empty foolscap notepad and the closest book: The Pre-Celtic Peoples of Britain and their culture, Tony got started.

~~~~~~~

Tony was alarmed by the thoughtful expression on Ben’s face, given what had happened last session he felt that he had every right to feel wary.

“The discipline I want to teach you is so old it doesn’t have a name.”

Tony was tempted to scoff at the transparent attempt to impress him, but something in Ben’s tone stopped him.

“Now, brace yourself I know you’ll find this suggestion odd.”

Tony started up at Ben disbelievingly, the man had somehow wrangled a significant proportion of his secrets out of him in the space of a few short hours, and he expected an exercise suggestion to surprise him?

“I also want to teach you how to use a sword. Now unfortunately we’ll need to wait a little while for the practice swords to get here, I didn’t expect to be teaching you anything about using a blade.”

“Wha-?”

Despite the long run-up the other man had taken Tony found himself gaping stupidly up at Ben, he peered up at the old eyes in the young face, a paradox that matched the face he saw in the mirror every morning, the older man was perfectly serious.

“And I want you to take up fencing as your option sport here.”

“Fenci- But won’t that be confusing? Isn’t fencing all about scoring points?”

“Exactly. I want to see how you cope with the confusion, give you a new level of cognitive dissonance to work through. If you can do it for this, then perhaps you’ll be able to integrate what you already know with what I’ll be teaching you. There’ll be hope for you yet.”

“Okay Inigo.”

Ben shot him a look before they got on with the hand to hand techniques, they spent a couple of hours working on getting Tony used to his own body before moving onto very slowly going through moves that Ben described as the “basics”. Tony had to admit that he was impressed. He didn’t recognise the style at all, not even in the vague sense of “oh that’s the one everyone at SHIELD uses, or that’s the one Rhodey uses, and that’s the damned silly one that martial arts guy we fired tried to make me do.” It didn’t seem to be based in anything that he’d come across, though being fair Tony knew that he was no expert. Hand to hand had never been his area of expertise, it was why he’d built and stuck to the suit after all.

However he hadn’t been lying about his multitude of teachers, and Tony could tell that some of these downright dirty fighting moves he was being carefully walked through would be damned effective in future when he was tall enough to actually face adults. From the looks of it Ben was part of the “anything is a weapon” school of thought, Tony approved.

Not that Ben hadn’t accounted for his current stature, a lot of the moves relied on using the other person’s momentum against them – cleverly positioning yourself so that you could flip the other person with surprisingly little effort.

Tony only hoped that this time around the extra effort he was putting in would make him a less attractive target in the future, he’d always hated the assumption that separating him from the suit would render him useless.

~~~~~~~~

Tony was relieved when the appointment for the external IQ tests finally came around. The progress he was making in the library towards putting together his own magical theory from the multiple ridiculously separate folklores and myths of the world was painfully slow, and he’d been in need of a break for the past week.

Tony thought that there might be some underlying universal law there, but damned if he could see what it actually was through all of the mystical mumbo-jumbo. Tony had somewhat telling memories of Loki and Strange bickering over “Strange’s ritual-bound underdeveloped nonsense” as Loki had put it, and Strange puffing up in indignation, before he’d backed away from the argument.

If anything Tony would have been tempted to compare the ridiculous sets of rules without any logical explanation akin to the methodology behind the biological sciences. When Tony had quietly started picking up his medical degrees he’d been horrified at the sheer amount of “this does this because” vague hand-wavey explanations that had had no real explanation at all. Though he’d taken pains never to say so out loud, he was quietly of the opinion that the so-called wet sciences weren’t real science at all, but a sadistic form of torture dreamt up by bored professors and grad students. It would certainly explain all of the dubiously run experiments that had given science such a bad rep in the 60s. Of course Tony had never dared to mention this theory to Brucie-bear or Helen. He’d valued his skin too much.

Tony was beginning to wonder if he was facing a similar situation with magic, that the information contained within the tomes and passed from magician to magician only scratched the surface of what was really going on utterly missing the fundamental principles that lay underneath the complex processes dancing on the surface. He’d certainly been relieved when Helen had walked him through her particular speciality, to find that there were people marrying the physical sciences with the biological – uniting the fundamental principles with the squishy mess that medicine forced all of it’s disciples to learn by rote.

Perhaps he was facing a similar situation here?

Whilst sorting through the knotty problem of trying to find out if there actually was a universal magical theory was akin to the kind of challenge that he relished in the scientific sphere, the vague and often conflicting information contained within the books he had access to was genuinely maddening. At least the biology hadn’t conflicted with itself, much. The change of pace supplied by the day of the test really was a welcome relief.

A man and a woman in bland grey suits were both waiting for him in Leekie’s office when he tentatively stuck his head around the door. Hell everything about the pair was bland, he’d have suspected them of being government suits, but they lacked the telltale bulge of a holster, or the gait.

The woman, a brunette, smiled down at him nervously clearly unused to dealing with children she held out her hand for him to shake. Which he did, cautiously. The man, a blonde with cold blue-green eyes that reminded him of Stev- Tony forced himself to look away, instead meeting Leekie’s worried gaze.

“Ah Tony – you’re here! Good. Good. We’ll get started soon.”

“Yes” Said the blonde, “If you’ll just hand over any calculators, watches etc. on your person we’ll begin.”

Tony shot the man a look, he knew it was unfair, but well, he disliked him already.

“I’m not giving you my watch.”

Leekie gave Tony an upset look,

“Tony? Don’t you want to know where you’ll be placed?”

“Sure. But he’s not getting his hands on my watch. He might break it.”

Tony played the petulant child for all that he was worth, he could not risk anyone spotting the tech he’d already integrated into the thing, glorified joke zapper or not. It didn’t help that Tony had used the lessons he’d learnt when he’d re-engineered Nat’s Widow’s Stings for her to great effect. Her Widow’s Bite had already been at the cutting edge of taser tech before he’d gotten his hands on them, and that had been in the 21^st century.

He could see that that rather pathetic argument wasn’t going to wash with the adults, he whispered out fearfully,

“My dad made it for me.”

Before allowing his eyes to water with the force of the pent up emotions his current insane situation had him in. Save it, use it; take it out when it’s useful. But cage it, keep it back, control it, don’t let the beast control you. Ironically he’d learnt that coping method from Bruce and Natasha – he’d wondered if they’d realised how similar their approaches to their emotions were? He somehow doubted it. Still, it seemed to have worked, Leekie was looking taken aback, Tony felt mildly guilty, but he couldn’t afford to let the tech out of his sight, who knew what would happen if it got out there?

“Ok. How about a compromise?” The adjudicators were looking incredulous, as if they couldn’t believe that Leekie would stoop to negotiating with a child, rather than just giving him a belt around the ear.

Tony looked up at Leekie through damp eyes,

“We’ll leave it here on my desk. You’ll be able to see it at all times, however it’s face will be pointed at the wall, and you won’t be able to read it. Is that ok?”

The question seemed rhetorical, more like Leekie was stating to the adjudicators that this was how it was going to go down. Tony felt his respect for the man grow, grudgingly.

Mild dilemma dealt with the adjudicators got on with the boring business of stating the rules, time limits, blah, blah, blah. Tony managed to listen with half an ear, which he felt was an achievement given how dull their explanations had been.

After all of that build-up Tony found the official IQ testing session utterly underwhelming. He’d at least hoped for difficult puzzles to work through, but he filled out the examination paper with very little difficulty. If anything he’d been suspicious that he’d been given an “easy” paper because he looked like a child, but from the incredulous expressions on the adjudicators faces that wasn’t the case. Huh.

Fortunately for Tony’s sanity there were 3D puzzles to play with as he waited, these were more difficult than the ones that lined Leekie’s office, but not significantly so. He’d ended up twiddling his thumbs as the woman sealed up the test papers in envelopes, whilst her colleague had stared at him agape, leaving Tony fidgeting uncomfortably.

The small group dispersed from Leekie’s office, and Tony slunk off to the canteen to face the silences and the stares from the other students.

~~~~~~~

Tony edged his way cautiously into the exercise salle, he didn’t want Ben to surprise attack him the way he had last time. Tony was brought up short by the sight inside, he eyed the large medieval looking weapon with utter disbelief, he didn’t think he’d be able to lift the bloody thing now. As an adult it would have been easy enough but he was a tiny sproglet, and the sword was taller than he was. Ben caught the look Tony was shooting at the massive sword he was casually twirling in the middle of the hall and smirked.

“If I had my way I’d be training you every day rather than twice a week, but for now this will have to do. We’ll alternate the sessions, first half swordplay, second half unarmed and vice versa.”

Tony just stared up at the beaky man questioningly.

“Oh don’t look at me like that, eventually you will be using broadswords, bastards, katanas, everything so you won’t get caught out against an opponent using an unfamiliar style. For now however…”

Ben trailed off, moving over to a chest that Tony hadn’t spotted. Tony backed off wearily, he still didn’t trust the older man, for all that he trusted Jarvis’s judgement. Ben seemed to be thinking about something, mind a million miles away, eyes distant before he lifted whatever it was out of the chest.

The sword he lifted out was unfamiliarly shaped; whilst the blade was straight the cutting edges had a strange pear-shaped curve. It vaguely reminded him of the silly glowing blue sword that Frodo had hefted around; Rhodey had loved those films for some reason. Tony had only really liked the “They’re taking the Hobbit’s to Isengard” meme that he’d hacked Rhodey’s then-Nokia to play a midi-version of.

“I want you to run laps around the school grounds every day for now.”

Tony gaped again, this time in annoyed disbelief.

“For the first week, one lap a day, the second week two laps, the third week three laps.” Ben grinned evilly, “Well, you get the idea.”

Tony stared at him in sullen silence, for once every inch the six year old he resembled. Ben continued, unaware of, or rather, uncaring of the glare he was on the receiving end of.

“We’ll start you off with this basic short sword, at the moment I’m not sure you’d be able to lift anything with a decent length to it.”

“Ok then Inigo, let’s get started.”

Ben noticed the nickname but said nothing; rather he perfunctorily handed over the strangely shaped sword. It was much shorter than the intimidating broadsword that he’d vanished somewhere, already twirling the matching twin in his left hand. Great. Not only was his teacher far more experienced at this than he was, he was clearly going to do this the hard way from the casual ambidexterity he was displaying.

Tony cautiously accepted the strange looking sword cautiously, not trusting Ben not to suddenly attack him. The other man merely raised his eyebrow.

“Well? How does it feel?”

Tony hefted the heavy thing, trying to get a feel for it. He examined the strange shape of the blade, noted the utter lack of any sort of guard.

“Feels more like a double-edged machete than a sword.”

“Hah!” Ben looked satisfied with his response, “Good. I thought you might notice that. Yes, fighting with these is closer to knife fighting than swordplay. Should give you an advantage against all sorts of opponents, you’ll be able to trip people up with this one. It’ll get you used to getting in close to your enemy, don’t let them use their longer reach against you.”

Tony would have said something sarcastic there, but, well, Ben had a valid point. He was a kid now, and he’d never be tall.

Ben had them go through a strange set of warm-ups that Tony had a nasty feeling would become second nature eventually, though for now they had him winded.

The swordplay lesson was surprisingly compelling, unlike the previous lessons he’d had with Ana and Jarvis an awful lot of what Ben was teaching him was utterly new. The stances and footwork required for swordplay were completely different to the kind of thing he’d picked up from Nat and Gamora about knife fighting.

Though of course Ben had noticed the knife-figthing techniques he’d almost fallen back on, raised an eyebrow, and seemed to decide to incorporate that into their lessons too. Well, Tony mused ruefully, at least those daggers probably wouldn’t ever be used against him now.

Tony had been surprised by how little martial-art finesse was actually incorporated into the techniques that Ben was teaching him, whilst a lot of the things he’d learnt over the years had been based in martial arts he’d also been taught by a hodge-podge of soldiers and fighters. Tony thought he could tell the difference between techniques based in artistry, and stuff purely designed to kill the other person as quickly as possible.

The techniques he was being walked through were deadly, no flair or excessive movement for the sake of aesthetics, just teaching the skill of how to stick the pointy end of the sword where the other person really hoped it wouldn’t go.

“So how old is this – uh, style?”

Ben merely gave him an enigmatic smile in response,

“Patience my young Padawan.” Tony muttered under his breath.

“I know that tone of voice, even though I don’t get the reference.”

“Oh you will Obi Wan, you will.”

The lesson seemed to be even more difficult after that.

During the warm-down Ben shot him a searching look, before coming out with yet another non sequitur that struck him for six.

“I think you should tell Ed.”

Tony didn’t pretend not to know what “it” Ben was referring to. He bought himself a moment by wiping down his face and neck with a towel before giving a half-hearted attempt at deflection,

“What. Who?”

“Ed. Edwin.”

Tony’s face must have shown his disbelief. He bit out,

“It would only upset him.”

Ben’s reply was rapid and far too knowing,

“Not knowing is hurting him far more, believe me.”

Ben’s response knocked the wind out of him in a way all of the physical exertion hadn’t quite managed. Tony shot out a biting reply, offense his only defence against the unexpected and unwanted emotional advice.

“Why? Have you told him your great secret Obi Wan?”

Ben shot him the same look he gave him every time Tony made a reference to something that he either didn’t recognise, or worse clearly did, and thought that Tony shouldn’t. He was staring into space again lost in his own mind, the taller man refocused on the here and now. Stared down at Tony, and seemed to come to a decision. Ben took a deep breath, released it through his nose and changed.

Tony stared in puzzled confusion at Ben’s stance, he’d suddenly, in the space of a breath, transformed. His stance, his gait, everything about the man screamed teenager. He swaggered around the room, everything about him broadcasting that he was an over-eager young idiot chomping at the bit to prove that he was an adult when in reality nothing was further from the truth.

In another moment Ben changed again, this time he read as an older middle-aged man, dignified and self-assured as only those used to having their opinions held in high regard could be. The rapid-fire changes were disconcerting. The next moment Ben had a competent no-nonsense military air that screamed eager young army recruit desperate to prove that he really was capable of following orders.

Tony rapidly grasped what Ben was alluding to, and felt stupid. He’d been strolling around for weeks now with the gait of a self-assured middle aged business tycoon, and a superhero to boot. Shit.

Ben changed again, this time everything about the man screamed that he was a child trapped in a grown-man’s body. Eyes narrowing in concentration Tony tried to spot and analyse just exactly what it was that Ben was doing differently with every transformation. The telltale headachy tingle that he was beginning to recognise as magic definitely wasn’t present, and Ben wasn’t exactly showing shape shifting abilities, no nothing so obvious.

Ben changed again, back to the competent twenty or thirty-something year old ex-military man. Tony blinked. This was going to take a while he could tell, but it was probably vital that he picked up the skill.

Tony’s lesson with Ben overran by a good hour that evening, pushing him out past evening curfew. He was grateful for the olive branch however, and practiced the springy childish gait Ben had showed him all the way back to his room.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was with no little fanfare that Tony was admitted to the senior high-school class. By this point he’d technically missed the first two months of the official term so had immediately been given a ton of paperwork to get through. Of course he managed to fill that out in record time, much to Leekie’s consternation.

Tony had heard terrifying things about the two teachers that ran the advanced college-prep classes, well as terrifying as school gossip would have it anyway. Rumour had it that Mr D’Eath had fought in both the second world war, and volunteered to join the conscripted soldiers in Vietnam. Apparently the man had come back wrong, broken, and with an unfortunate habit of staring into space silently for long stretches before coming back to the here and now in a rage. Tony had had flashes of an empty-eyed Christopher Walken at that piece of information. Mr D’Eath had apparently sat deathly (hah) quiet in the back corner of a lesson as the kids ran riot, before snapping and throwing a chair at a pupil’s head. Whilst the news was alarming, a teacher suffering from PTSD really wasn’t the worst thing Tony had thought would come up during his time at the pretentious private school.

Mr D’Eath’s co-teacher was a far more worrying prospect Ms Ramesh’s (Do you think she’s divorced? Tony had rolled his eyes at that one, the seventies really were a different planet) reputation had been exaggerated to nearly mythical proportions. Apparently the young asian woman was an evil shrew (Do you think she’s bitter because she hasn’t got a husband?) who loved nothing more than assigning truly spiteful amounts of homework (It’s cos she’s a damned alien, she love’s nothing more than torturing decent American boys with her stupid work). Tony personally thought her whole reputation was ridiculous, but he was willing to wait until he met her before he made his own judgement. Though he had to admit, he liked her already.

Tony had fuzzy memories that D’Eath had left the school with a veritable cloud over his head about a year before he’d been bumped up to the advanced college-prep class, as for Ms Ramesh, he didn’t think he’d ever come across her the first time around. He’d have probably remembered if he had, given how much of an oddity she seemed to be treated as by the students. He wondered what had happened to her.

After all of the build-up, anticipation and Leekie-induced paperwork, the actual first physical lesson with the senior advanced class turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. Fortunately, or not Tony mused, depended on your point of view, his first class with the seniors was helmed by Mr D’Eath, the man had coolly and quickly directed him to an empty seat at the end of the front row that was obviously supposed to be his and gotten on with his lesson plan.

As he sat down Tony spotted Edwin Cord smiling evilly at him from the row behind his and his heart sank. He should have realised that the other boy was the right age to be in the senior classes, and he definitely seemed the spiteful type.

Despite the tension making his shoulders clench uncomfortably nothing untoward happened during that first lesson. Whilst the other seniors eyed him with a mixture of suspicion, derision and curiosity no one actually did anything under D’Eath’s stern but distant gaze.

D’Eath’s teaching style was actually fairly interesting, though Tony did notice that he exhibited the same thousand yard stare that Ben sometimes displayed. Unfortunately the lesson itself was a rather dull set of numbers about American history. Something Tony had barely managed to remember for his exams the first time around, this time at least the facts and figures were mostly relevant to him. Though he’d never admitted it to anyone, even Rhodey, once he’d decided to become Iron Man he’d actually spent quite a while memorising the tactical details of past battles. Which in turn meant he’d actually absorbed quite a bit of this boring stuff by osmosis.

Tony was silently thanking his lucky stars for that, whilst he’d managed to general knowledge his way through the school’s internal exams, he wasn’t so sure it would be that easy when it came to sitting for actual qualifications. He swallowed when he realised that a year might actually be too short a time to get around to memorising all of the truly random shit that the education systems thought that kids needed to know. He would fly through the science and mathematics without breaking a sweat. Hell, he knew more about the classics and ancient history than he had any right to thanks to Ty- no he wouldn’t think about that, and he could just write something about the actual future for the English assignments. Ok. Okokok. He was fine. He could do this. A year was plenty of time. Right? After all, he’d coded Dum-E and U in far less than that. And he’d been off his head and drunk for most of that month.

Thankfully no one seemed to notice his mini panic attack during first period that day, and he’d hurried off to the first decent science class he was likely to have at Westchester Academy for Privileged Boys with remarkably little trouble.

Frankly that first science class was a massive disappointment. D’Eath proved to be a competent if dull science teacher. His history class had been far more interesting. The lesson had involved titrating manganese to check the concentration of some other solution with a tiny amount of inorganic chemistry theory about Redox’s that Tony could do in his sleep. Tony admitted to himself that he hadn’t paid as much attention to the class as he probably should have, but well, much as he knew that it made sense to know how to do things the old fashioned way – titration wasn’t a great method. It relied far too much on a steady hand and accurate readings from a rather crude set-up. That and whilst he’d forgotten more science than most people would ever know, he was aware that the molecular theories being taught in these lessons were fundamentally flawed in that lies-we-tell-to-children way that always made him livid, even though he couldn’t actually think of a better solution to the educational problem.

Still Tony was heartened when he spotted the far cleaner lab-space semi-hidden next door, he wasn’t entirely sure why the senior college prep class apparently didn’t have access to the room, given that they were supposedly the most scientifically knowledgeable set of students in the entire school. But he hoped he’d be able to finagle his way into gaining permission to use the space soon.

By the end of his first day in the senior year Tony had concluded that the only thing the advanced class was good for was the possibility of relatively easy access to a workshop with far more equipment than the cobbled together scraps and broken tools he’d managed to scrounge from Howard back at the house. Admittedly said scraps were often well in advance of current technological progress, but working equipment, and sources of materials, such as metals of guaranteed compositions really wasn’t to be sniffed at.

He strolled back towards the room that he still had the misfortune to share with Hammer deep in thought, Tony was this close to access to a space that was just about clean enough to produce those silicone wafers he’d pinched all of that equipment for. If he could only convince the school to let him have access that was.

He almost froze when he realised that he’d spent the day so focussed on not drawing unwanted attention to himself academically that he’d completely forgotten to maintain the childish stance that Ben had not-so-subtly shown him. An older student walked into his back and glared down at him as he shoved his way past. Tony hurried towards his room.

~~~~~~~

The next couple of days passed quietly, D’Eath proved himself more than capable of controlling a class of unruly teenagers, so despite the looks that Cord kept sending him nothing untoward actually happened at any point.

He was surprised when the hour of scheduled self-study on Wednesday afternoons was subjugated, Leekie arrived and dragged Tony away to a mixture of puzzled looks and malicious tittering from Tony’s new classmates. It turned out that whilst Tony was technically a member of the senior year, well, Leekie still thought that he should be subject to the same “welfare” sessions as his actual age mates. Leekie sat Tony down in the large, messy hall that made up the younger-years communal area and told him that it was the monthly letter writing day.

Tony had to admit that he was secretly relieved at this turn of events, he hadn’t been looking forward to fending for himself amongst the much larger teens with no adult supervision. From the irritatingly knowing look on Leekie’s face that had been the precise reason he’d been pulled from the “class”.

Tony realised that he had to be careful about how he addressed his monthly letters to his “family” on letter writing day, he pointedly chose not to repeat his behaviour of the first timeline, there was no point in writing to Howard. Tony wasn’t even sure if the old bastard had ever even read the hundreds of letters he’d sent begging to come home and promising to be good.

Instead Tony dutifully rattled off the same style of quick letter that he’d already been sending to Maria every week, on the off chance that she was sober enough to care, and spent the majority of the time composing a far more thoughtful note to “Auntie Ana and Uncle Edwin” addressed to their small house rather than the mansion. The majority of him was embarrassed by the phrasing, used by necessity, unless the kids had permission for pen pals they were only allowed to write to family, but a small part of him adored that he could call them family even if it was a pretence.

He had tried to persuade Ben to act as a go-between for them, but the older man had refused outright, stating that he was a teacher not a courier. Tony would have pressed the issue, but the hunted expression on the other man’s face had stopped him. For now Tony was stuck with using the official channels to contact the Jarvises, since the only letters the children were allowed to post without any form of adult intervention were to their parents.

~~~~~~~

Tony finally found out what that other lab-space was for during his first class with the infamous Ms Ramesh. She was in charge of the supervised open-study sessions that the advanced class were to take, as well as the advanced science, mathematics and English classes – that not all members of the class actually had the required grades to attend.

Unfortunately Tony’s first “open” lab session with Ms Ramesh was infuriating, though it really wasn’t the woman’s fault - actually Tony found that he rather appreciated her dry humour and witty teaching style. The problem lay with the equipment at the school, whilst it was excellent for a facility of its type it was still far below the standard that Tony was used to having easy access too. Hell much of it was well below the level of the items he’d managed to scrounge from Howard’s cast-offs.

Ms Ramesh seemed to spot Tony’s dismay almost immediately; as soon as she finished dealing with whatever the tall-blonde skinny kid had been vehemently complaining about she made a beeline for the lab-bay that Tony had been assigned to.

“Mr Stark – What seems to be the problem?”

“Uh – well, you see, um that is.”

Ms Ramesh raised an eyebrow at Tony’s stuttering attempt at an explanation and looked at him with an expression so reminiscent of Pepper’s whenever she was truly exasperated him that he was rendered momentarily speechless.

Tony took a breath and tried again,

“I was hoping to try and make some silicone wafers using the Czochralski Process to find out what different impurities would do to it’s semiconductor properties Ms Ramesh.”

He rattled out the explanation in one long gulp of words. To her credit Ms Ramesh seemed to follow his explanation.

“And you can’t see anything that would help you do that?”

“Well I’ve got a vat that should be able to produce the stable temperatures required Ms Ramesh, but I can’t see anything here that would keep it ticking over at the required temperatures safely.”

“Hmm. Well I can order in the silicon and impurity metals if you’re certain this is the self-guided project you wish to carry out this year Anthony.”

“It’s Tony.” He shot out near automatically, only remembering her position of authority over him when it was too late to be polite. He winced and peered up at her.

Thankfully unlike Smythe, and indeed most of the teachers at the school that he’d encountered as he’d made his rapid ascent through the grades Ms Ramesh seemed to take both his intelligence, and overall lack of demure politeness in her stride.

“Well Tony, I do have the authority to order the materials needed for student projects. Are you certain this is the field of study you wish to pursue this year? And may I take a look at the container in question? I think we have just the thing to keep your project running safely, but I’ll need to see the vat you intend to use to make sure.”

“S-sure. Uh I mean yes of course. I’ll go and get it now?”

“Yes, just let me give you a permission slip.”

Tony rushed through the school grounds, making the distance far more quickly than he’d have managed before Ben had set him his daily running task, grabbed the vat from the hated shared dorm room and hurried back to the lab. Ms Ramesh tutted approvingly at the vat when Tony presented it to her.

“Very well Tony. Write me a brief, give me your theory, hypothesis, and methodology. I expect no less than 3,000 words and you know I’m giving you a low wordcount there – this is just a proof that you have a viable project.”

“Yes Ms-“

“And –“ Ms Ramesh interrupted, “I’ll get on with ordering the materials your project requires. I’m very interested in seeing the results you get young Mr Stark. I haven’t had a student present me with such an interesting idea in years.”

The woman who had previously seemed so calm and distant cracked an enthusiastic grin at him before hurrying off to help a student who had managed to overheat the still he was working on. The distillation tube was whistling alarmingly.

Since Tony found the so-called Advanced College Prep Class for his new year group laughably easy, a fact that the teachers had noticed within a couple of days, he spent much of the next week drafting the proposal for his project.

Ms Ramesh had been quietly impressed by the academic tone of the hurriedly scribbled down proposal. Tony hadn’t the nerve to point out that he could have done it in his sleep, and had actually written the thing when he’d been supposed to be paying attention to D’Eath’s deathly boring classes on the more basic science required for college/university entry.

He’d been allowed to use the open-lab time the whole group shared to set up his small project in one of the more unusual unused bays in the lab. The benches in this corner were built into the heavy stone of the building itself, actually part of the masonry that made up the outer wall. Ms Ramesh had reckoned that between the expensive automated fire system fitted in the lab, the stone bench, and the careful repositioning of all of the flammable furniture so that it was as far from Tony’s superheated vat as possible, should be enough of a safety measure to stop the whole building from burning down.

As such the heavy drum for the Czochralski dip process was duly set up in a discreet corner to quiet approval of Ms Ramesh.

Tony found that he genuinely liked the quietly competent woman, she could shut up the entire (sometimes unruly) advanced college prep class with nothing more than a cold look, a feat that not even Mr D’Eath with his fearsome reputation for explosive outbursts could manage. For all that the petite woman, who’s fashion sense seemed to alternate between 70’s lapelled brown suits with the requisite flares and the traditional sari, looked a softy Tony could tell that she must have done something impressive to so cow the group of thirty or so hormonal teenagers that made up his fellow classmates.

Tony felt that he could come to genuinely enjoy the lessons with Ms Ramesh, whilst the science contained within her lessons was still somewhat rudimentary to his jaded eyes she didn’t try to stifle free-thought or interesting ideas. Yes the laws of physics were the laws of physics, however she encouraged the kind of problem solving approach that the Ivy League and other similar establishments would lap up. Tony could tell that the formidable woman had more than earned her coveted position teaching some of the “easiest” to teach children in the school.

Especially once the realisation had set in that she’d done so as an Indian woman, with a distinct Punjabi accent in the bad old days of seventies America.

~~~~~~~

During his perfectly legitimate, thanks to Ben, explorations of the school’s grounds Tony had been keeping an eye out for a spot that he could claim as his own. The school had large isolated grounds, as well as the tennis courts, and playing fields the school buildings were surrounded by plenty of greenery.

Despite this relative isolation Tony didn’t think there’d been any more kidnapping attempts there than at any other residence he’d ever stayed at. The security at these upstate schools was infamously tight. With the kind of money the parents were paying to put their boys through schooling here, the elitist establishment could afford high walls and expensive security, both staff and other more automated measures that weren’t commonplace in this era.

The dorms for the older boys were the closest to the lake, but still far away enough to discourage attempts to swim there unsupervised.

Things were finally settling down enough that Tony felt assured enough to indulge in a little bit of rule bending. It was a Saturday, so he had the afternoon to himself after the mandatory self-study session they’d all had that morning.

After much scouting around the school grounds Tony had decided that the large oak midway between the dorms and the far side of the lake was probably the best spot to attempt outdoor meditation sessions. It was in clear view of both the dorms and one of the security outhouses, but far away enough from both to discourage the casual onlooker from thinking of joining him.

He settled down cross-legged under the tree, the leaves a beautiful dappled orange. It was warm for autumn, but the weather would soon turn, and he’d be forced to try this indoors. He hoped Hamm-Justin wasn’t too light a sleeper.

Tony found it far easier to settle into the meditative state then on his previous attempts, the weight that had been lifted from his shoulders when it had finally been confirmed that the other shoe wasn’t going to drop, that this whole situation for better or for worse was his reality from now on had been huge. He was vaguely annoyed with himself that he hadn’t found, or rather, made the time to do this earlier. However he was trying now – and uneasy feelings about Doom’s little chat or no he’d decided that meditating regularly seemed to have more benefits than drawbacks. After all the practice had helped him to survive his time at the mansion when he’d thought that he was going mad.

Dropping down into a trance with ease Tony finally allowed himself to think on subjects that he hadn’t dared contemplate when he’d thought this whole situation was a trap. The near constant tick of schematics was somehow relaxed, he found himself redesigning the basic MRI, there had to be a way to play with the detail that nuclear magnetic resonance provided, without yanking all of the metal out of the patient’s body.

He almost laughed out loud when he realised how simple the solution was, delta radiation would do nicely.

Tony allowed the schematics to come as they would, whilst one weight had been lifted, another was beginning to settle, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to face the reality of it just yet.

The gentle sound of wind through the leaves of the tree, and the rustle of the grass had him contemplating the aerodynamics of most recent commercial jet that SI had produced. He mentally tweaked the numbers so that the plane was aerially unstable, more inline with the ridiculous manoeuvrability of a fighter jet than a 747.

Amused by the results, Tony readjusted the numbers to make the plane more comfortable for the passengers, before following through on that thought. He played with the alloys of the turbine blades, replacing the nickel-based superalloys with something lighter, a vibranium starkanium alloy core would help improve engine efficiency tenfold allowing him to replace the bulky fuelled jets with kid-glove versions of repulsor engines that were closer to hybrids than anything else (Tony had learnt his lesson about handing out that technology with the mess SHIELD had created with the Helicarriers). He continued pushing the running temperatures of the engines ever higher above the melting point of the metal by tweaking the internal cooling systems in the turbine blades. If he could just up the efficiency of the engines, the plane would be able to carry less fuel on board, and the passenger cabin could be enlarged giving the option of more legroom.

Tony had to admit he was still extremely leery of letting anyone get a hold of his repulsor tech after what SHIELD-cum-Hydra had attempted to do with it so he was unwilling to plug the incredibly efficient systems into anything commercial quite yet. Though he did concede that the global warming crisis that had been looming probably wouldn’t be quite so pressing if he actually started changing things like that for the better sooner rather than later.

Once he’d utterly redesigned the latest Starkjet he eventually bowed to the inevitable and turned his thoughts onto more serious matters. Somewhere out there a tiny Clint Barton had just turned one, elsewhere Nat was already several years into her red room indoctrination and vivisection, Tony was painfully aware that she was older than she looked, a side effect of the re-engineered version of the serum she’d been forcibly altered with, Bruce was currently subject to the tender mercies of his father, a man whose parenting style rivalled that of Tony’s own, and Cap was currently a Capsicle.

Many of the later additions to the Avengers team weren’t even born yet, though Tony was probably going to do his damndest to help Sokovia in every way possible. Tony honestly wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do anything to help Barnes even if he could find the man, but he’d have to keep an eye on the date if he was seriously going to contemplate this plan of action. Shamefully he didn’t know enough about Sam to even know if there was anything he should be looking out for. Tony caught himself with a mental start.

He wasn’t sure he had the right to try to change anything for any of them. Did he dare attempt to play god in the manner that he’d so often been accused of? Would his teammates want him to fundamentally alter the very events that made them themselves, or would they have wanted him to leave well enough alone?

What about Jessica, Tony knew that she at least would definitely want him to stop Kilgrave from ever crossing her path, and she wouldn’t care how he did it. That act would be undeniably of the good, but selfishly Tony would miss Jessica, she wouldn’t be Jessica without the experiences that made her into her beautifully cynical, sarcastic self. And what of Frank’s family? Or Matt’s accident? Tony knew that Daredevil wouldn’t give up the good fight, but would he even be able to fight without the enhanced senses his loss of sight had afforded him?

A few years ago the answer would have been obvious, the alternative unthinkable. However Tony was far more wary now, he’d had attempts to seriously genuinely selflessly (or so he’d thought) help people blow up in his face more than once, did he honestly want to be responsible for another Ultron?

Wincing at that thought Tony wondered if he even had the right to try to build himself another AI, what if they turned out like Ultron? JARVIS and FRIDAY could have been lucky flukes, the rest of the world had been predicting HAL’s, Skynet’s and GlaDos’s left right and centre, who was he to argue?

But wouldn’t Quill have honestly preferred to spend his childhood on Earth rather than living under the constant threat of being eaten by his captors? But if he hadn’t ended up on the other side of the galaxy what on earth would have happened to Xandar, or even Earth? But then again Thanos wasn’t around anymore to push events forward… What about Gamora, would her home planet be ok now without the Mad Titan there to destroy it? Or would something else step in to fill that power vacuum? Would Loki just continue falling into the void forever without Thanos there to catch him in the worst way imaginable?

Tony realised that he’d already irrevocably changed the timeline for billions of people, he’d already played god for better or for worse. Would it be madness to try to continue to do so? Tony was under no illusions that his moral compass hadn’t corroded with misuse long ago, needle rusted into immobility by decades of disuse.

He didn’t have the right to try and make a decision for any of them, much as he wished otherwise.

~~~~~~~

Whilst Tony had been given permission to set-up his Czochralski dip equipment in one corner of the lab, the conditions in here weren’t nearly as clean as he’d have liked. Hell he’d need a multi-million dollar cleanroom in order to be clean enough, but the secluded corner was still miles ahead of the dusty ex-squash court that he’d commandeered at the mansion.

With luck Tony would soon have access to the wafers that he needed to build himself some working servos that were small enough not to weigh as much as he did.

Whilst waiting for the drum to get up to the correct temperature Tony was impatiently inspecting every inch of the lab for equipment, tools and (unfortunately) dangers that he’d need to keep an eye-on. Despite the fact that this lab was only open to a very few advanced honours students, there were still causes for alarm, such as the black stain on the ceiling directly above the distillation set-up in the far corner. It seemed despite the narrowly avoided incident last week someone had turned the heat on without opening any of the valves if the scorch marks were anything to go by.

The lab technician was keeping a wary eye on him from across the floor space, under the guise of making up the chemical batches for classes. Tony sighed, he’d hoped that Ms Ramesh would be supervising every session. But she only sat in on every other, having to split her time between the two sessions reserved for the College Prep group. For all that this lab was owned by a very exclusive, extremely expensive private school, it was still a school lab. The suspicious, likely under qualified technician glowering at him with barely concealed contempt highlighted that issue. There was no way he’d be able to actually do anything useful here, he’d had free-er reign with the high-tech scraps he’d been making do with in his squash court-cum-lab.

Still Ms Ramesh had promised help, and this was only the control run of his test with supposedly pure-Si. He should be able to get results soon, whether or not they’d be of practical use was another matter.

It was just a happy bonus that the apparent complexity of the project seemed to impress the teachers in charge of college applications. D’Eath had been sending him appraising looks the other day instead of his usual blank stare, and Ms Ramesh had been quietly approving in their lessons.

Tony sighed, he should not be happy at the pitiful progress he’d made towards putting something, anything, useful together. He’d gotten so used to that damned automated manufacturing bay he’d installed in the Malibu house, that now that he truly had to do everything from absolute scratch he was driving himself insane with the wait.

~~~~~~~

Tony’s nightmares had become an issue, the soaring relief that there was no other shoe to drop had gradually faded away, leaving behind his usual broken shards and jagged edges.

It all came to a head a month into Michaelmas (the school’s snobbish and unnecessarily archaic name for Fall) term, Tony supposed he was lucky that he’d passed most of the first half of term before they started up again.

Of course Justin had noticed, how couldn’t he? Tony’s night terrors were often silent, he’d learnt a long time ago not to make a noise when pain happened, of whatever sort, however the newest set of world-ending troubles had managed to frighten sounds out of him.

“Tony?”

Justin’s worried voice was startlingly loud in the darkness, the boy was whispering, but he hadn’t yet learnt to be quiet when doing so. As such it was more the hissed whisper, where the person spoke at their usual volume somehow convinced that the rest of the room couldn’t hear them despite the fixed grins as they heard every “whispered” insult.

Once he’d recovered from the sensation of having his heart in his mouth Tony hissed back,

“Yeah Hammer?”

“Are- Are you alright?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Only, if you want I can go get Miss Kowalski.”

“No! No. Thank you.”

Tony turned his back on Hammer, unable to stomach the fact that he’d thanked the worm.

“Go back to sleep Justin, I’m sorry I woke you.”

“No Tony that’s not what I meant – I’m sorry, I was worrie-“

“Goodnight Justin.”

~~~~~~~

Tony still hadn’t found anyone acceptable to sit next to in the canteen, he’d been the new boy for a whole month and a half, you’d think the cooties, or whatever they’d called them in the seventies would have worn off by now.

He was avoiding Hammer. He hadn’t been able to look the little shit in the eye that morning, let alone accept the poor excuse for comfort that the other boy’s unwanted company provided at breakfast.

Hammer had clearly gotten the message and left Tony sitting by himself after one glance at his face, Tony had pretended not to notice the suspicious wetness in the other boy’s eyes as he stolidly worked his way through his plate of cold toast.

~~~~~~~

Despite the lack of attention Tony ended up paying in Mr D’Eath’s classes he was getting through the work at a pace that outstripped even that of the boy placed second in the class, Cord naturally.

He’d effectively tested out of everything up to and including freshman, sophomore and senior highschool level on the school’s internal exams within the space of a month. And even that had felt like painfully slow progress to his adult brain more used to working on complex energy solutions and aerodynamics equations whilst attempting to solve the Einstein-Rosen bridge problem at the same time.

Unfortunately the international qualifications that he’d elected to sign up for had set examination dates, there was no skipping ahead – at least until Summer term came around. Or at least that was the line the school was feeding him.

Tony had a feeling that they didn’t want to face the scandal of the Stark heir only attending their institution for half a term before leaving.

Luckily Mr D’Eath seemed to realise that it was a waste of time attempting to teach Tony anything scientific, Tony would usually spend the lessons sat in the back of the room, half paying attention for appearance’s sake (he was still more than capable of multitasking after all) whilst drawing up schematics. (Carefully vetted before he drew them out, mostly they were utterly mundane in nature, ways to make household appliances more efficient, cheaper to manufacture, less energy intensive.)

Thankfully the school was actually a far better institution than kid-Tony had given it credit for all those years ago. At the end of every lesson the schematics were locked away in a box, that only Tony and 1 staff member had the key for. Tony was due a visit by the school’s on-call patent attorney after Christmas. It was going to be a long wait. The law firm was employed to represent the students rather than the school or their parents. Whilst Tony had remembered this detail, there was a reason he’d been able to fund himself through the degrees at Cambridge that Howard hadn’t wanted him to take after all, he’d forgotten how geared towards the kids welfare the whole system had actually been.

~~~~~~~

Tony stared down at the sabotaged drum in dismay, there were unknowable lumps floating in the liquid Si mix, as well as a film of something oily floating on the surface, that had obviously been poured into the molten mix to contaminate it.

He felt like crying.

But no, Stark men are made of iron. Never show them weakness, strut.

Tony straightened his spine and went to fetch the technician who was theoretically in charge of the lab space.

It was frustrating, attempting to explain just how damaging the contaminants were to the delicate equipment, he just couldn’t make the man understand. His face had slowly closed off in belligerence as Tony had gotten more vehement about how bad the damage was.

Eventually Tony got upset enough that Ms Ramesh and Leekie were called in.

Fortunately for Tony’s continued sanity both Ms Ramesh and Leekie grasped the situation far more quickly than either of the staff members in the science lab.

Allowing some of the enraged panic to show through Tony decided to play the man for all that he was worth,

“Someone destroyed m- my D-D-Da-Dad’s equipemtn. He’s going to be so-s-so-so mad.”

Leekie, and Ms Ramesh both paled at that statement. Howard Stark’s ruthless business practices were near legendary. Even to a pair of schoolteachers.

Leekie seemed to come to some sort of decision,

“Don’t worry Tony, we’ll pay for a new one.”

Leekie glared daggers at the lab technician when the other man appeared to be about to open his mouth to object,

“Won’t we?”

Tony was swept away in Ms Ramesh’s competent wake the petite woman talking matter-of-factly in a way that he found comforting.

“Don’t worry young Mr Stark, I will personally see to the order. We may even be able to repair this vat, and then you’d have two set-ups at once. Which would give you the opportunity to broaden the scope of your project. Wouldn’t that be interesting?”

~~~~~~~

In the lead up to Halloween Hammer’s usual low-level irritant gratingness picked up a level. The kid was practically vibrating with excitement and it was only midway through October, there weren’t even any decorations up in the school. And yet Hammer’s sickeningly willing to spend money parents had somehow sent him a large “Care-Package” if a padded envelope full of tooth-rot could be called a care package full of Halloween candy.

The six year old had exercised the expected level of self-restraint and eaten the majority of the sugary purple and orange candies that very evening – resulting in an even more unpleasant night than usual for Tony, when on top of the usual nightmare induced insomnia, Hammer had woken him with loud retching noises into their shared sink.

In a surprise show of generosity, or perhaps chagrin, Hammer offered up his last bag of candy the next morning in the canteen; a huge bag of candy corn. Tony had been unwilling to accept the gift, but the crestfallen look on the other boy’s face had stayed his hand and he’d reluctantly accepted.

Tony felt vaguely guilty about the way the other boy’s face lit up at his none-too-graceful reception of the present-cum-peace offering.

The rest of the month passed in the usual whirl of martial arts training, swordplay and keeping his head down that passed for an academic career at Westchester Academy for Privileged Boys.

Whilst the bullies gave him a wide-berth during recess that didn’t prevent the constant attempts to put him down during classes from the rest of the advanced college-prep class, or do much to heal the cost in time and morale that the destruction of his dip-chamber had resulted in.

However Tony was grateful for the chance to settle back into a semi-comfortable routine of self-directed research. Admittedly it was the kind of boring work that SI had thrived in dumping on his lap, though this time it was even more mind-numbing than usual. Tony hadn’t remembered schoolwork being quite this mind-numbingly slow the first time around but he supposed he hadn’t already done it all the first time around.

~~~~~~~~~~

He settled himself into a lotus position, grateful that he was still in the flexible body of a child to whom this position came easily, and tried out the breathing exercises. His arms still ached lowly from the swordplay lesson he’d had with Ben earlier. Ben was a harsh taskmaster, but Tony had to admit he was learning quickly. The fencing classes that were due to start at the beginning of November were probably going to be a bit of a joke in comparison.

It was a warm night for this time of the year, the still air positively balmy.

Tony followed his usual routine of allowing his mind to drift where it would, his musings about Samhain and ancient religions had him pondering Norse mythology, and the inner workings of Einstein-Rosen bridges. He knew that the Bifrost had been repaired, to a certain value of repaired- the thing had been functional, but Odin had still been forced to expend a huge amount of Dark Energy every time he wished to send a citizen of his somewhere.

Although part of Tony regretted that he’d never gotten around to the promised work on the Bifrost, the greater part of him was extremely grateful that the control-freak Odin hadn’t had the opportunity to push his agenda onto the other “Realms” as the Asgardian’s called them.

Tony ran over the calculations for the Bifrost with a jaded eye, he knew that he and Jane Foster had perfected the numbers years ago. Of course being only mere mortals they hadn’t been allowed to go anywhere near the inner workings of the mythical rainbow bridge. In hindsight Tony was glad, he didn’t want to be the one responsible for giving a megalomaniac like Odin access to nearly absolute power with impunity.

Tony was horribly aware that it was nearly entirely Odin’s fault that “Midgard” as the jingoistic Asgardians insisted on calling it (Despite their own name for their home-planet essentially translating to Earth, as every world’s own name for their planet did) was a relative backwater in the galaxy. Ignored and shunned by equal measures, except as a source of human pets/slaves.

By rights Earth should have been at the centre of a trading hub, given that the planet was at the very hub of an interdimensional crossroads. However Odin’s rule with an iron fist, lacking the velvet glove, had meant that the Nine Realms as the bastard called them were relatively isolated from the galaxy at large, interdimensional “relations” instigated by those given permission to use Yggdrasil notwithstanding.  

Tony wanted to spit on the bastard’s grave, but he was still alive here and now, and he had to remind himself not to think about the evil idiot too hard in case he called down Heimdall’s unwanted attention.

Something about his thoughts regarding space-time must have triggered a reaction. Despite the fact that he’d run through similar internal debates time and again before there was something different that evening. Tony didn’t want to admit that he was buying into this mystical mumbo-jumbo, but the barriers between the worlds felt somehow thinner on this night. Even to a mind as new to all of this as his was.

Once again Tony was somehow aware of the turn of the earth. The sensation was exhilarating, and terrifying. He could see it all, to steal a phrase from Doctor Who, all that is, all that was, and all that ever could be. The sensation was utterly overwhelming, though in a very different way to the more familiar sensation of insignificance in the face of the wonder that was the universe, it was more that he was part of everything, and everything in turn was a part of him.

Tony peered blindly up at the sky, somehow seeing the great span of the galaxy far clearer mentally than he’d ever been able to with the naked eye. The milky way was breathtaking from this perspective, he could almost see that the sky was teeming with life, some planets pulsing almost as brightly as the reality bending energy emanating from the very stars.

Huh – the part of his mind that was forever looking at the world through an analytical lens noticed that the patterns emanating from the stars perfectly matched the recently confirmed gravitational wave theory that Einstein had been espousing. Whilst the shimmer surrounding the planets, well, there was a familiar pattern there, but Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to admit to it – even to himself… It looked eerily similar to the patterns Van Gogh had been so convinced lit up the night sky. Tony desperately hoped that he hadn’t just unlocked some form of synaesthesia – that would be an absolute bugger to work his way through.

Later when Tony attempted to verbalise the sensation to Ben he ended up tailing off into stunned silence, even the memory of this …breakthrough, if that’s what you could call this confusion, utterly awe inspiring. Despite the way that it brought up more questions than answers.