Guilt For Dreaming

Chapter 11: Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend

The Ancient One frowned – she’d been so sure that she was catching up to that vividly flickering spark of Potential, so close. And yet. On the very night that she’d been preparing to finalise months’ worth of work on that location matrix; the numerous crystalline mandalas that had already led her to New York now no longer suitable for the fine detail work required… That oh-so-finicky framework that she needed to use when trying to pin-point the exact soul in a few square miles that contained millions very nearly complete…

The blackout struck.

The chaos that came with it was immediate and apparent on more than just the boring five-dimensional physical plane. The event was a locus; one of those dreaded nodes in the streams of causality. An entanglement of the quantum realm and the other mythological dimensions. It was the sort of thing that the young-ones with all their technobabble induced excitement over the strange new, amusingly far from (and yet alarmingly close to) the truth post-war sciences of S-matrix theory, liked to imagine they’d invented.

The Ancient One would have scoffed at their charmingly youthful excitement and naivety, if the reflected chaos that rippled out from the ever-shifting Mandala (back at the inner sanctum at Karma-Taj) hadn’t been dire enough to raise a general alert that led to all three of the lesser sanctums battening down the hatches – to borrow another military term.

The great barriers surrounding Earth, her home, and hub of mystical energies across the multiverse, shuddered. The Shadow King’s recent incursion, manipulating the tears in that damaged, yet terrifyingly powerful, young mutant’s psyche had left the ineffable barriers weakened. Proof that nothing was fool proof. Especially given that the malevolent entity was still very much at large somewhere within her domain. Hot on the heels of the chaos caused by that near disaster, taking advantage of the damage to the barriers that Farouk had wrought, something else got in.

The Ancient One hoped, hopelessly, that it wasn’t an Old One. That wish wasn’t to be. Whilst it wasn’t Shuma-Gorath itself, the malevolent eldritch abomination had sent one of its emissaries to try and wheedle its foul way through the hairline cracks that Farouk’s destructive rampage had caused.

Taking advantage of New York’s collective unease, the great mental jolt caused when millions of people simultaneously suffered the same nightmare – Nightmare slipped his way past the great transduction barriers.

In the emergency that followed there hadn’t been time to stop for breath, let alone to salvage the tattered remnants of the spell work that had been frustratingly close to completion. As it was, Master Drumm had been left severely shaken by the mental attack, pushed inexorably closer to the darkness that the Ancient One saw clouding his future. Not to mention, one very young Stephen Strange had been beset with nightmares for months; his sensitive untrained psyche a useful anchor for Nightmare. The disquieting link was palpable even after the malevolent entity’s physical form had been expelled – at least until the Ancient One had finally tracked down the anthropomorphic personification and banished it firmly back into the realms of conjecture. That work to rescue one lone Potential had taken her months, ruefully she wondered in hindsight if it had even been worth it. There had been something troubling brewing on the West Coast too - a relic had vanished from the archives. Something dark brewing in the great expanse of Los Angeles being the closest any of her Masters of the Mystic Arts could come to locating the now missing Staff of One, let alone identifying the now palpable sense of… well, evil that seemed to permeate that whole section of the West Coast in the aftermath.

By the time The Ancient One managed to get back to the business that had been at hand, the spark had vanished back into obscurity again. Even taking the hammer to a nut approach that was using the great Mandala, with its ever-shifting susurrations, hadn’t enabled her to work out just where that oh-so disquieting little flicker of oil-slick power had vanished to. One thing was for sure though, The Ancient One thought, as she let herself give into the juvenile temptation to dash the delicate locating matrices into millions of tiny glowing shards of mystical energy. The Potential wasn’t in New York anymore.   

For a moment she’d thought she’d caught up with the spark in Tibet of all places, something buzzing and electric and altogether obfuscating in the high plateau of the world attracting her to the ex-Karma-Taj site. But there hadn’t been anything of note at the old thoroughly ascetic Tibetan Monastery she’d found herself in when she stepped out of the hastily created vortex of mystical energy. The Ancient One had merely found the usual collection of Buddhist monks, and Western backpackers out looking to “find themselves” by briefly flirting with someone else’s belief system. A young tourist, in the unremarkable uniform of worn-out hiking boots, tourist tie-dyed trousers and scruffy t-shirt, with a rather noticeable nose, had briefly given her a sardonic look as she’d hurried through the religious sanctuary, but her harried appearance had otherwise gone unremarked and unnoticed.

~~~~~~~~

Justin gazed up in wonder at the really really big building that was his new school. It was even fancier than Westchester! Westchester had all weird curly bits on the walls, but Eton’s weird curly bits were curlier, and crumblier, and all the statues staring down scarily looked really really old.

Tugging at the high, tight collar of his scratchy new uniform (a horrible black suit, that was nothing like what the awesome and weird suits that Tony got last year were like) Justin peered around with eager curiosity at the green grass and all the other kids, already running around on the welcoming lawn. They looked so strange all wearing the same clothes. Like all of the li’l magpies who’d all peered down at him from the phone wire outside their new, his parents said it was old, and had always been their house all along, but it was new to Justin, and big and cold, and he didn’t like it. So there, it was new.

“Master Hammer! There you are! Well, come along boy, we need to get you settled in.”

~~~~~~~

Ben relaxed back down onto the mat, this was holy ground. Not a one of them, not even the most deranged amongst them, like the Kurgan, would violate that sanctuary. It was too important amongst their kind.

Ben didn’t think he’d shown much visible sign of reaction, but one could never be too careful. The thrumming presence, that he was aware only he could sense, did not lessen. There was no obvious commotion going on at the entrance to this section of the monastery, though there were several dozen monks between the main hall and the private quarters deeper in the complex. Not to mention the busy practice halls between the residential and public areas at that. Ben subtly warmed up cold muscles that had long since gone stiff in the classical meditation pose that he’d adopted hours ago that morning. Though since he was in the shared meditation courtyard he had to do so subtly.

Slowing his breathing down again, aware that he was just one western tourist among many, Ben made sure to show no tell, no reaction to the frustratingly ever-present thrum. The source was not going away. They weren’t getting any closer either, thank the gods, but…

The tense situation reminded Ben of a different sort of cat and mouse game he’d been forced to play on Tony’s behalf in Hong Kong on the way over. The British territory was a relatively safe entry point into the greater bulk of China, and thus a hub of international trade for corporations on both sides of the capitalist/communist divide that still split the world in two. Even though there were dozens of ancient, and far easier, routes into the areas of this massive nation that Ben had a particular interest in revisiting still in use. Especially considering the massive span of the continent. Ben had decided to use the official channels for this matter. Ben had dug out an old standby identity – Richard ‘Dicky’ Denisof. A shell of a person, one of a multitude that Ben relied on to deal with his finances around the world.

(Oh, the paperwork was as thorough as Ben’s habitual paranoia demanded. The identity, like all his numerous personas was good enough to become permanent if need be. Birth certificates, passports, parents, schooling, university, CV, dental records, medical history, siblings, blurry photos to prove it all. All legitimate. Not to mention the old school friends ready to swear blind that young Dicky had enjoyed custard roly-poly on a Wednesday alongside the rest of them, and loathed rugby and the old fag system with a passion.)

Denisof had the background to impress the fools at the top of the corporate world. Harrow, Oxford, Harvard Law, he had it all, and Ben had the ruthlessness to take advantage of the old-boy’s network to give Arc Tech a boost.

As a result of the week of meetings in Hong Kong, Arc Tech was given a solid leg up into the competitive, but not yet noticed in the West, tech industry that was quietly blossoming in China, Korea, and Japan. Arc Tech was on the verge of collaborating with Sony on one of the mega-corporation’s latest forays into the photography industry.

Ben had no idea how Tony came up with the ideas, but the latest doozy was a camera lens that shifted its depth of field depending on the electrical current that was passed through it. Tony had bemoaned, at length, about how insanely bulky the current generating circuitry needed to be in this benighted decade (Tony’s words, not Ben’s) but Ben had seen how revolutionary the tech could be. He’d aimed his pitch accordingly.

It had worked too.

The humming presence that he’d been constantly aware of receded. Ben released the breath that he’d subconsciously been holding. No one new had entered the courtyard. Sanctuary was still sanctuary – for now at least. The other presence likely hadn’t even sensed him given Ben’s ridiculous range and his habit of reigning himself in so that his presence was quiet, contained and still. Sometimes there were advantages to being as old as dirt.

~~~~~~~

Maria had insisted that she accompany Tony to the UK when the time came, after the pair bade their goodbyes to the Carbonell family. They left Catalonia with fond ties that Tony really hadn’t been expecting to form, especially given their initial frosty welcome. The farewells were heartfelt, and most importantly accompanied by a care package full to the brim with Catalan delicacies (and a recipe for Tony’s favourite Pa amb tomaquet thrown in – Tony’s family cookbook now padded out with dozens of extra pages in Catalan, Spanish, Italian, and Sicilian).

The journey was relatively uneventful, leaving Maria and Tony with nearly a week to kill before term started. The pair took advantage of the time to see the sights in London together, Maria adding to Tony’s already overflowing wardrobe with a few select choices of her own from the more expensive department stores. She dragged him all over the high-end areas of the city. Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty, and Fortnum & Mason knew the pair by sight by the end of the impromptu alone-time. (And Tony dreaded to think what his mother had bought in Sotheby’s and the numerous other auction houses and galleries that littered the expensive neighbourhoods in London that they were sticking to.)

 Of course, Tony couldn’t help but notice the deprivation that mirrored New York’s current situation, oh in some ways it wasn’t as bad, not caused by decades of central government misuse, but in others it was worse. The infamous 3-day weeks were mostly over, but the seemingly never-ending strikes, be it rail, garbage collection, teachers, factory workers…  Well, for all that Tony was all for protecting workers, they were visibly taking their toll. Garbage was visibly piled all over the place – or at least in the grimier, less posh areas.

The sites that Tony had initially taken to be more burnt out husks to claim insurance, turned out to be old bomb sites from the Second World War. They were still cleaning up. Oh, there weren’t many sites left, and apparently the latest hole in seedy, disreputable Soho’s street had been caused by builder’s attempting to put in a basement, and coming across an old previously unexploded Schneider rocket… But still.

The horror of the grey concrete slabs of brutalist architecture that clearly followed obvious scar lines across the ancient city had Tony wincing. He’d always scoffed when the modernist architect he’d hired to help with Stark Tower (Johnson? Rogers?) had bemoaned that the 60s government had tried to finish off the job that the Blitz had started… But seeing the brand-new, but already deeply horrible results of the recent attempts at “redevelopment” was rather saddening.

Even the Barbican, deeply upper middle class (or well upper class by Tony’s estimates), establishment that it was, a purposefully grim construction of concrete and steel. (Maria dragged Tony there to see an old friend in the penthouse of one of the posh brutalist tower blocks, the grand old Catalan lady who owned the flat had much to say on the plans to build a new theatre in the upper-class estate. Though the custard filled xuixos she served up almost made up for the sheer boredom of that particular afternoon.) Tony with all his appreciation for the marvellous forms that concrete could be teased into; his old house on Malibu itself consisting of numerous cantilevers and curves, found it difficult to appreciate the joy of the material in the face of the what, and why, it had replaced.  

Still, nascent ideas about civic architecture and the evils thereof aside, Tony was only grateful that his mother hadn’t taken it into her head to drag him down to Savile Row. He’d endured enough fitting sessions to last a lifetime, he didn’t want to have to put up with it whilst he was still bloody growing. Despite the horrors of prolonged clothes shopping, the food hall in Selfridges was nice – Tony much preferred their low-key basement to Harrods’ far more overtly flashy fair. The quiet wealth Selfridges indulged in somehow less insulting than the gilt and flash of it’s rival store.

His last day of indolence came, and with it another new Bowie album. The LP mysteriously showed up at the lobby of the opulent London hotel they were staying in (The Ritz, just next to the appropriately named Green Park). Once back inside their expansive suite Tony gave into his curiosity and pulled the parcel marked “Rough Trade” open. Inside the shipping sleeve was a note from Ben, promising that he would appear at Cambridge to be Tony’s assigned “chaperone.” The inverted commas Ben’s own addition to the words, neatly slotted around his usual almost illegible scrawl (seriously, it was like doctors’ handwriting, and almost as indecipherable to anyone else as the shorthand that Tony still caught himself using on occasion).

Removing the brown paper obscuring the record’s jacket, Tony almost sobbed in pained irony when he recognised it as the one that held that awful upbeat peppy song that had been everywhere when the 2012 Olympics were being broadcast.

The stark black and white image of the album artwork made a surprising container for the song that had been inescapable that year. Full of the hateful peppy cheerfulness of the international competition, a painful contrast to the jagged shards of his self in the aftermath of New York, and the Chitauri… And the nuke.

Still, painful as that part of his life had been, it was better than what happened later. In the aftermath of Sokovia, after the months of soul-destroying clean-up in that beleaguered nation, Iron Man himself helping to dig out the dead from the rubble. Tony had holed himself up in the corner of The States that had been about as far as he could get from anyone related to the disaster of his life without booking a flight, and thus leaving a trace. The sheer weirdness of the goings on in Deer Meadow, Washington, and that weird neighbouring town… (Twin Pines? Something about logging at any rate.) and the way the law enforcement had so vehemently denied that any of it had even happened. It had nearly been enough to drive him mad(er). Though at least Tony was unlikely to run across any of the strange jazzy music he’d encountered in that tiny town.

Tony semi-reluctantly placed the LP on the deck and leaned back on the bed to listen, reasoning to himself that even when Bowie had led him down dark paths in the past it had always been cathartic. Despite his misgivings Tony was pleasantly surprised by the first two tracks, nothing overly sentimental there. If he’d caught the meaning of one of the songs rather difficult to interpret lyrics correctly it was about the drudgery of day to day existence and how most people slept their lives away.

The painfully familiar plaintiff guitar wail of the eponymous title track came on and Tony listened with a wary ear, expecting the jagged shards he associated with the song, wrongly or not, to resurface. To his surprise for all that the song was hopeful, the imagery summoned was bleak and not at all like the peppy little anthem he remembered so spitefully. Huh. Sounded like a bit of a cut job had happened there then… Reassured that Bowie wasn’t suddenly going to descend into outright soppy idiocy on him, Tony lay flat on his back, bunched the hotel pillows under his head to get comfortable, and prepared to listen.

Tony mulled over his decision to go to Cambridge. He’d accepted their offer, it was a little late to be having second thoughts now. Much as they really were surfacing with a vengeance, with only a handful of hours between him and his upcoming life of academia. He’d even briefly considered both Sunnydale (for the nostalgia; its proximity to Malibu Point) and Seacouver (miles from anywhere Howard owned, and one of the US’s key metallurgical research cities), before dismissing both daydreams out of hand. Maria was due to take him up to the college in the morning, Tony was pretty much locked into this turn of events now. Temporarily reassured that his decision was… Decided, Tony settled back down to focus on the music.

The track, Blackout, briefly jolted Tony into full awareness, the darkness of the lyrics in the first two verses, strongly reminded Tony of the latter days of the Avengers.

“Too, too high a price, to drink rotting wine from your hands (your fearful hands)”

The unexpected association with betrayal, and red, and cut-glass pain swept out of the speakers. The cold furious anger that rushed down his spine surprised Tony with its vehemence. He was quickly coming to realise that now, without Wanda’s invasive meddling, Tony was furious about the way that the, the Scavengers had been treating him for all those years.

Landlord. Bankroll. Sugar Daddy. Consultant. But one of the team? No never that. He’d been tech support at best. The annoying uncle they all had to put up with every Christmas because he always gave everyone the best toys. But never a member of their little ‘family’. It had been bearable at first, he and Bruce had been a separate little unit from the rest of them for so long. Their own little partnership within the larger group, until Bruce and Natashalie‘s altogether unexpected feelings had surfaced. Tony hadn’t resented them their happiness, all but pushing Bruce into her arms, happy to see his Science Bro coming out of his protective shell.

Perhaps he’d betrayed Bruce first…

Tony blinked, he knew he was projecting onto the song, the lyrics obscure and nonsensical, “Panthers are steaming, stalking, screaming…” Yet with this new unfamiliar rage curling in his belly Tony found he couldn’t help it, oh Tony hadn’t been some naïve victim. To say so would be to insult his own intelligence and everyone else who’d been involved in their farce. He’d walked into the self-described explosive chemical mixture of the Avengers with his eyes wide open following their first disastrous meeting on the Helicarrier. Tony had been well-aware that as clashing personalities went, their so-called team was a disaster waiting to happen. And yet, he’d given them a chance. The way they’d worked so well together as a unit in combat against the Chitauri giving Tony that most deadly of emotions, hope.

False hope that is. He’d fooled himself into ignoring all the warning signs that had been there since the beginning, Caps’ derision, Nat’s disastrous inaccurate assessment and contempt, Clint’s blind loyalty to however was holding his leash that particular week, not to mention Thor’s tendency towards dangerous violence that even Jane hadn’t managed to train out of him. Hell, even Bruce’s tendency to up and vanish when the going got tough was well-documented.

Tony should have left after Sokovia, and the worst-case scenario had played itself out. The team had fallen to in-fighting and strife, and they’d all done their best to blame each other, and especially Tony, for the chaos the mind stone and that pair of Hydra trained assassins had wrought. To make the burning 20/20 of hindsight even worse, Tony had somehow believed them. Despite all the evidence that proved Ultron had not arisen from anything that Tony had written. The international courts had even dismissed the case against him out of hand, there was no way that the innocuous programming written into the fledgling Ultron AI could possibly have amounted to the murder bot that had tried to wipe them all out. The only commonality between his code and the monster the Mind Stone had berthed had been a shared name.

Hell, he’d tried to leave. Yet, everything had gotten so twisted up towards the end, where good was bad, and bad was good. Right was wrong and wrong was right and might was right. In hindsight Wanda’s sticky influence was obvious all over his later extreme self-effacing efforts to make everything easier on the Avengers. She must have gotten her whammy back on him during the so-called Civil War, perhaps even earlier.

Ignoring that seething personal mess, even now, years later, Tony still agreed with the underlying principles behind the Accords. No matter how much Thunderbolt Ross had attempted to twist their purpose in the US. They’d needed to have that seat at the table to mitigate the demands of some of the more extreme members of the UN, who’d admittedly had every right to be furious with Enhanced individuals at the time.

(Tony felt sickened over the trend that had emerged after he’d tried to distance himself from them; of the Avengers storming into sovereign states uninvited. Usually leaving behind a trail of destruction, before patting each other on the back and declaring whatever they’d been attempting to do a ‘job well done’ and leaving. Stark Industries had ended up picking up the relief bill again, it had been the right thing to do, regardless of Tony’s complete lack of involvement with their innumerable disasters.)

Despite the dark political storm from which they’d emerged, the accords were designed primarily to help enhanced individuals. Help them find support, legal protections, and enshrine their human rights. The accords were always designed to help, in the face of extremists from all quarters baying for blood in response to the Avenger’s very public bad behaviour. Behaviour that endangered (and tragically frequently killed) countless civilians, and routinely caused millions worth of property damage for what should have been the most minor of tasks. It didn’t help that the world was still reeling over the very public airing of all of SHIELDs dirty laundry. Well initially, eventually, disgusting as it was, the horrors carried out against Enhanced Individuals contained in SHIELDs archive were a boon to try and soften the harsh attitudes that eventually gave rise to the Accords. Tony had never been sure if he should thank Agent Coulson, or hit him for his involvement in those horrors, the information had been so useful, yet utterly repellent.   

With T’Chaka’s backing, and the support of the socialists in the European Union and Scandinavia that so terrified Ross, the first draft of The Accords that was ready to be signed and handed over to Enhanced Individuals to debate amongst themselves had primarily been a force for good. Oh, in a rough and ready sort of way of course, none of the proposed laws were enforceable until everything was ratified, and Tony had been very careful to make sure that in the very tenets of the document it was stated that Enhanced individuals had to have a seat at the table, and veto power to any proposed laws. Not to mention constant reminders about the UNs own basic statement of human rights, with particular emphasis on the right to education, freedom, and bodily integrity, reiterated at dozens of key points throughout the document.

Upon being presented with that first draft, Rogers had stormed his way across the world, railing against ‘agendas’ and ‘governments’ and ‘control’. Raging incoherently about matters he clearly didn’t understand like some idiotic troll dug out of one the darkest corners of the internet who thought a term as hilariously outdated as ‘cuck’ was still a valid insult. Tony still couldn’t believe how naïve Rogers had proven about the sheer inertia of international politics.

The man had somehow been convinced that by signing up to that initial declaration of intent, that they’d immediately be subject to a set of imaginary punitive rules that would dictate their every action. It was as if the hundreds of countries that had signed up for the international agreement were all secretly Hydra. Now admittedly, Thunderbolt Ross had somehow gotten himself appointed as the official US representative for the accords at the UN, and subsequently had done his damndest to give the fools every impression that this was indeed the case. Foolishly Tony hadn’t believed his ridiculous ‘I am in charge of all of this’ schtick would work; the Accords had been one of the key things that cropped up on the political section of the news for years, alongside the equally slow moving G20 summits, and the Paris Climate Accords. 

And yet somehow, despite Rwanda’s loud and well documented insistence upon making sure that there were provisions in place to protect Enhanced individuals from ethnic documentation, and the risk of genocide, or being used as an international mercenary force… And the resultant massive diplomatic row with France that lasted for months as they made aspersions about just who was to blame for the recent genocide that Rwanda were still recovering from as a nation…

…Despite the huge amount of furore that every decision had caused, with talk show hosts on everything from Graham Norton, and Cohen, to the Late Late Show making jokes about it all… With Norway (the country that shamed the world with their debates about whether lifetime imprisonment, with daily breaks to play football with his guard, was too inhumane a sentence for the man who had massacred the children of the country’s ruling elite) piping in that they would side with the Enhanced Individual’s rights to personhood, fulfilment, and bodily integrity, with a pointed look at Ross which had had Fox News making threats against the little nation for months. …Somehow the idiots had bought into Thaddeus Ross’s charade hook, line, and sinker.

Rogers had managed to rage his way across the world, killing dozens of civilians and members of law enforcement in sovereign territories where he had absolutely no right to be. Not, no right to be as an individual citizen, but no right to be acting as Captain America.

Over the course of one long idiotic weekend, in one fell swoop the damned fool had managed to undo all the hard work that T’Chaka, Norway, Tony, Rwanda, and anyone else on the UN international council set up to deal with the Accords, who saw the severe risks to personhood that the Accords potentially posed if mishandled… He undid all their hard work, proving in an instant that all the worst fears being spewed by representatives like Thunderbolt Ross were valid.

The harsh clauses of an earlier nastier draft (one that Tony had hoped so dearly that he’d headed off at the pass) were hastily enacted upon the active Enhanced members of society, and idiots like Scott Lang were swept up in the great political machine as the US, Germany, and Nigeria succumbed to outrage over the Avengers’ idiotic actions. After all, the clauses that Tony, T’Chaka and anyone with even a smidgen of compassion had been campaigning for all those years, had yet to even be enacted. The accords were not finished yet, unratified, unenforceable. Replacement clauses laid down to head off the more ridiculous punitive suggestions were still in a completely up in the air ‘to be decided upon further debate with the individuals themselves’ state.

The earlier draft thankfully wasn’t anywhere near as draconian as the document that the Accords had been hastily drawn up to replace, the SRA. The Superhero Registration Act was a truly evil piece of legislature worthy of the atrocities carried out by the Nazis and Kenpeitai. It called for mandatory re-education, imprisonment, and depending on how ‘useful to science and mankind’ the individual’s enhancement was, vivisection of anyone found to be enhanced.

Tony had gotten a hold of a copy of the SRA and had nearly vomited when he saw the brutality laid out in harsh black and white, it was worse than anything the industrial evil of the Nazi war machine had carried out, worse even than the infamous Unit 731. Worse still, it was being called for by Tony’s own country. Not some distant foreign evil, like those damned Huns, or the Nips as Howard had occasionally called them when he got angry and forgot himself, but that country that prided itself on being the world’s greatest and finest democracy; the United States of America.

The accords had been a reaction to that great festering evil, an attempt to step in and come up with some much-needed legislature to head off the era of might is right that had clearly been looming around the next corner. At some point either the Avengers were going to fuck up on a catastrophic level that made the near miss at Sokovia look like a picnic, or worse, escalation, as Vision had termed it. Someone new was going to come along, who no one could possibly deal with. And that was only if individual world governments didn’t decide that enough was enough, and in reaction to the Avengers rampaging their way around the globe on a weekly basis, declare that it was illegal to be an enhanced individual full stop. On pain of death. There had already been mutterings.

There needed to be proactive protections in place, mutual protection to ensure that the scared and frightened masses didn’t react as scared and frightened humans were so wont to behave throughout history; and try to wipe out that which was different. Rogers had nearly undone all that hard work.             

Frankly Lang didn’t know how lucky he was that Tony had managed to swing things so that he didn’t end up frozen in one of SHIELD’s crates, ready to be vivisected ‘for science’ at a moment’s notice. Whilst the effective community service orders, or rather the probationary trainee period, of the newer kinder draft weren’t in effect, thankfully the pre-existing international treaties between the US and the EU prevented certain parties in America from throwing the literal book at the man. Though Tony had been furious when he found out that Pym Industries had been caught up in the international furore, oh not on behalf of Hank, or the corporation – but the thousands of employees who suddenly found themselves jobless in the aftermath.

The track ended, a wailed “V2 Schnieder…” ceding to tonal instrumentals, if the soundscapes summoned up could be called instrumentals. Tony realised that he’d clenched his fist so hard that he’d drawn blood, the four red crescents in his palm ached, especially since one of them overlapped with the only just healed scar tissue from the juice bar. The instrumentals proved to be a mini revelation, calming down Tony’s enraged heartbeat and giving him the space to just breathe, and try not to turn over the dying days of the Avengers quite so obsessively.

The music harkened back to the bleak atmosphere of the album Low without quite tipping into the desolate isolation of the previous album. The beautiful serene bleakness of the summoned realm was somehow reassuring after that unexpected anger, Tony honestly couldn’t put a finger on what it was about the rushing wind and strange atonal noises that calmed him, but something there did.

If he ever got to meet Pepper, he swore he’d never tease her over her taste in ambient music ever again. Tony felt like an ass. There was something to be mined here, the forever-present calculations and schematics that took up a good proportion of Tony’s conscious thoughts at any given time turning to the kind of peaceful purpose that he usually had to put effort into reaching.

As ever, Tony’s mind spun onto the ideas and schematics that absorbed so much of his waking life. Contemplating, and then dismissing an idea derived from his own designs for Hawkass’s arrows. The shifting winds of the music putting him of a mind to applying the heat seeking tech he’d already miniaturised for Katniss into far more benign search and rescue tech, capable of weaselling out people buried under rubble. Useful in areas where the solid weight of a human digging down would do more harm than good. The idea was a good one – and likely something Arc tech could use, and yet, many of the basic principles it was founded upon hadn’t yet been established. Did Tony have the right to commercialise other people’s work like that? When they hadn’t even come up with it?

 Realising that he’d reached the end of the album Tony sighed, and began the short ritual of safely stowing away the disc, as he mulled the possibilities over in his mind. Tony was aware that international trade wasn’t quite what he remembered, not now. He was contemplating taking advantage of that fact – perhaps he could start up a firm that his father wouldn’t be able to get wind of on this side of the Atlantic.

~~~~~~~

Maria was so proud of her son. She beamed down at her bambino as he wriggled uncomfortably. Suppressing the urge to smile at his obvious “I don’t want to be seen with my mom” attitude. Maria had to say that he looked adorable in the new suit she’d bought him from Harrods.

She hadn’t quite believed the state of her bambino’s wardrobe when he’d returned from the school - all strangely tailored suits, and uncomfortable looking denim trousers.

Maria had managed to hold herself back from replacing his entire wardrobe with decent Italian-made suits whilst they were home in Sicily. But the not so under the breath comments from her father’s family in Barcelona had pushed her towards adding several additions of her own to her darling’s… Ridiculous wardrobe. As a result, her bambino had several Italian and Catalan made suits, and some off the rack wear from the department stores in London and Barcelona. Maria quietly hoped that her son would take the hint and start diluting the more exotic items.

Maria hadn’t resorted to throwing out her son’s strange choices of clothing, that brand of disapproving bad parenting was more dear Howard’s style. Though if Tony showed signs of still favouring the awful things during his next vacation, Maria might have to take steps.  

 She gazed around the tiny ‘city’ that was to be her son’s home for the next several years. It was so ridiculously… English. There were people cycling everywhere. Men in suits bicycling their way around the city, full of tiny medieval lanes that were so like, and yet utterly unlike the familiar medieval lanes in Sicily’s numerous hilly villages.

It looked boring. Boring and safe. Maria approved, may you live in interesting times indeed. Her life had been nothing but interesting ever since she’d had the misfortune to meet Howard in Los Alamos all those years ago. Maria was under no illusions that any son of hers wouldn’t lead an interesting life, interesting was the fate of her entire family. But this place might just hold off the inevitable, much as she was so happy that her son had finally met his extended family. Maria did not want him mixing with the family when the Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra were so close to outright war.

Yes, Maria was happy that her son was going to be stuck in this dull, depressingly English, city for the foreseeable future.

~~~~~~~~

In the centre of the medieval heart of the city Tony embarrassedly squirmed as his mom hugged him tightly, she’d been affectionate all day. No that was unfair. But for want of a better word, Maria was being clingy.

“Make sure you phone me Tony, and no more of your half-hearted ‘I tried Mom’ lies like during the blackout. I don’t care if the phones were down, you should have let me know you were safe bambino!”

“Yes Mom…”                                                             

Squirming as she planted a gentle kiss on his forehead and trying not to look like he was appreciating the loving gesture too much, Tony hugged his mom one last time and hurried across the street to the imposing façade of the college that was to be his home for the next few years. Tony made it to the medieval wooden gate still feeling his mother’s beady eyes on his back as he made it safely to his new home.

~~~~~~~

Ana smiled softly at her husband, darling Edwin was fretting, he kept shooting worried glances at the phone. He’d been doing so all day long.

She wasn’t sure what he expected to happen between the time Maria and Tony left their hotel and getting to Cambridge – but he was a worrywart. It was part of the reason she loved him so much.

Ana discreetly adjusted the hang of her headscarf, if asked, she always said that they made her feel like one of the 50s starlets – like Katherine Hepburn or Marilyn. Though of course, they’d had their own hair underneath their scarfs. Ana shot her husband a fond, if long suffering smile as she dumped his dinner on their kitchen table. That in itself was a sign of how distracted he was, Edwin never let her cook these days, and even before her …illness, Edwin cooked more often than not, complaining that she used too much salt and lard in her versions of the dishes he loved.

Edwin ate the meal without comment, obviously not tasting it at all (which was probably a good thing come to think of it, Ana had thought the original British recipe for beef and ale stew could do with some spicing up and had… Improvised, dropping in a hefty amount of paprika into the pot alongside the butter and onions at the beginning. Not to mention all that cumin that her new chemotherapy altered taste buds had demanded.)

The phone finally rang as they were preparing to go to bed that evening, Ana listened with half an ear to Edwin’s half of the conversation, relaxing in relief as some of the new lines that were now permanently etched into her husband’s face eased a little.

Their darling boy had made it safely to Cambridge.

~~~~~ ^O^ ~~~~~

Justin squirmed in the grasp of the older boy,

“Come on Fag – you’ve got to pay your dues.”

“I-I-I dun-“

“Aw, is the little yank missing his doughnuts? Come on doughnut-boy, you’ve got to work for your privileges here. Work hard enough and you’ll earn a fag of your own in a few years.”

Justin sniffled, he wished he’d begged harder to be allowed to go to school nearer Tony. His friend. Not this weird cold and mean place that Daddy kept insisting would make a proper Englishman of him. Justin didn’t wanna be English if it meant he’d be mean and nasty like the older boys.

Justin already regretted trying to follow Tony’s example, he’d been so proud when he came top of his class. The letter he’d happily posted to Tony’s new col-cu-school had been full of news, that the food at Eton was better than at Westchester, but weird and most of the desserts were made with strange tasting custard. And had funny names; like jam roly poly, arctic roll, Battenberg, Eton Mess, and spotted dick. That there were no Ty’s or Krelboynes or Mr Smythes to be mean and biting and frightening.

Then, as soon as he’d settled in, the whispers and hastily swallowed names that his year mates’ bit-back suddenly clicked into place and made sense. The reason no one in his class had dared touch him, was that they weren’t sure which of the older boys would claim him as their Fag. No one wanted to cross James “Buster” Braddock, even though Justin knew (in the same way that everyone knew not to let themselves stay alone in a room alone with Master Rochdale) that the Braddocks were suddenly poor, and James probably wouldn’t be at the school anymore soon.

~~~~~~~~

Tony approached the Porter’s Lodge with his heart in his throat, it wasn’t that he hadn’t done this before, but somehow, he cared more this time. Undergraduate first-impression nerves a more pressing sensation than the mild jitters he’d felt entering the esteemed university with a few degrees already securely under his belt.

Tony noticed that for once the doorway was the exact right size, he didn’t have to duck to get through the small door built into the huge and warped ancient wooden gate that barred the way, but an adult most certainly would have to. (Tony somehow doubted that the huge outer gate would be able to open if anyone tried, the warped and bleached appearance of the wood made Tony think the thing would crumble to so much dust.)

Tony carefully stepped up, and into the entrance gate. To his left, three steep stone stairs led up to the entry to the little side-room built into the medieval gateway. The stairs were heavily rutted down to a slide-like groove by centuries of feet scuffling over them. Tony carefully picked his way up the slippery looking stone and entered the tiny room – the Porter’s Lodge. Disappointingly there was no one inside the cubbyhole bedecked chamber. The Porter’s Lodge smelled of old paper, wood polish and tobacco. With a distinct whiff of dog about the place. Tony peered around at the ancient wooden shelving, double checking that he hadn’t missed someone, and giving it up as a bad job, had to stretch onto his toes to reach up to the counter and ring the bell.

Still grumbling internally about the world not catering to the vertically challenged members of the population, Tony almost missed the look of patronising “lost child” that flitted across the Porter’s face,

“Hi. I’m Tony Stark – here to sign in as an undergraduate and collect my keys.”

Tony almost allowed himself to turn the statement into a question but caught himself before the infuriating questioning inflection entered his voice. No, he had to appear self-confident. Without Ben here to smooth the way (where was the erstwhile man?) Tony couldn’t afford to let the Porter feel a moment of doubt that he was supposed to be there.

After a surprisingly matter-of-fact checking of Tony’s ID (in this case his passport) against a list, the Porter, wearing the traditional bowler hat and penguin suit, passed over a set of keys. He explained that one set were for the rooms/windows, and another key for the numerous gates around the college, but that the Porter’s own master keys would override all locks – and that certain gates were firmly locked to past 1am so he’d need to keep his gate keys with him if he wanted to spend any late nights out. The look the porter shot him at this part of the info dump gave Tony no illusions as to his expectations of Tony’s lack of nightly activities.

Tony hurried through the medieval courts towards the staircase that was apparently his home for the year. He passed centuries old brick and sandstone accommodation blocks, the vastly oversized college chapel, the ancient hall (effectively the cafeteria), and numerous pleasant enclosed gardens. The gardens ranged in design from beautifully kept lawns with almost cartoon-like chequers mown into them (which, from experience, Tony knew students weren’t allowed to walk on), to far more thoughtful spaces apparently created during the Georgians’ and Victorians’ imperialistic zeitgeist to explore the world and bring back all of the plants they could fit in the ship with them. 

Finally, after what felt like an age, but in reality, couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes, Tony realised that “New Court” (built in the 1500s) was on the other side of the main road, that ran outside of the college. Not that this meant that Tony would have to leave the college grounds to get there, he had his pick of either a private subway that ran underneath the road, or entering L-staircase, hoofing it up to the 5^th floor, and using the enclosed bridge that crossed over an alleyway and took him out on the other side at M-staircase.

Tony chose the subway, noting again that the ancient stonework was worn smooth and shiny in places, the stairs looking more like a slide than a set of steps. The underground walk was short, and surreally tiled in the sort of tacky but expensive blue and white patterning that Tony associated with knock-off Ming vases and people with more money than sense. (Tony recognised the irony of his opinion, but there was a reason he didn’t voice it out loud.) He was grateful for the wheeled trolley that the Porter had provided him with – but even more grateful when a pair of students helped him to shove his trunk up the stairs on the other side of the subway. Working out with Ben or not, Tony was painfully aware that he weighed much less than his luggage.

The literally medieval accommodations in Tony’s staircase (P-block) were as homey as they were claustrophobic. The walls were covered in ancient wainscoting, but where the faux-ancient designs back at the mansion were oppressive with their dark wood staining trying to emulate old wood, here the ancient oak had bleached with centuries of sunlight and wear into a pleasant worn brown patina that turned silvery in direct light. The faded oak warm rather than intimidating. Yet again, the stairs were ancient enough that there was a channel ground into the centre of them. Tony could tell that he’d never get any use out of the In/Out sliding signs next to his name A.E.Stark painted onto the wall in a flowing cursive script at the base of the stairwell, since he couldn’t actually reach them. At least he could reach the lock on the door.

Tony unlocked the outer door and trekked his way up to the fourth floor (or the fifth, since the first floor was labelled “ground” not 1^st), and his room. Or rather rooms – since Ben was supposed to be in the adjoining room next door. After checking that Tony was safely ensconced inside his room, his two temporary able-bodied helpers both excused themselves. Presumably returning to their duty of helping other Freshers; who had been trickling in all day from their conversation.

Tony noticed that, unlike the six rooms to a floor set-up on the lower levels, here on the top floor, in what was effectively the attic, there were only four. One of those four was a Fellow’s office. Tony was quietly pleased that he’d only have to avoid one person in the evenings.  

The room wasn’t as tiny as Tony had feared, it had a surprisingly sensible layout despite the ancient medieval stonework that was literally two feet thick, with windows that were charmingly quaint. Initially that is, until Tony realised that alongside the aesthetically pleasing way the dozens of tiny metal-encased panes of not-quite-flat glass warped the light outside, that only two of the dozens of tiny 4”x2” panes that made up the window actually opened to let in a breeze. That would be unpleasant come summer.

Still, Tony had his own bed, own desk, plenty of shelves, and a small sitting area with a cheap looking coffee table next to an uncomfortable looking chair that had probably been a designer-brand when it was new. Though now, upholstered in hard-wearing coarse brown fabric, that was nevertheless scuffed and stained by the room’s numerous inhabitants, the coffee table corner looked sad indeed.

There were two doors in the room, the one leading into the corridor outside – and the shared bathroom, showers and ‘gyp’ that everyone on the corridor used communally, and the door that led to the adjoining room. Well, technically there were three doors. Tony had been surprised to find that behind the first door that his key unlocked, there was in fact a second door directly behind it. There had been a moment of puzzlement, until Tony spotted the rather large ‘spyhole’ the size of a letterbox way above his head.

Ah. Tony vaguely remembered that some of the other colleges had had this sort of thing last time, having the inner door shut meant do not disturb, or was it the outer? Tony couldn’t really remember. He’d enjoyed the modern post-doc accommodation out near Wolfson, and visits to other colleges in those PhD days usually passed in a haze of perfectly legal under-21 drinking, and sex.

~~~~~~~

As soon as the big boys left, looking satisfied that James was treating his new Fag the right way, and showing the ‘yank’ the ropes Justin got the surprise of his life.

“Sorry about that, Justin was it?”

“-Wha?”

“I’ve got to put on a good show for the others. Uphold the old reputation and all that. Between you and me I hate it, but… Well. So long as we’re alone, you can call me James. And forget about the chores. Well, most of them. It’d be suspicious if you didn’t go down to the laundry room with all the other firsties.”

“Wh-Wh-Why?”

“Long held tradition I’m afraid.”

James’s face twisted into a sneer, it reminded Justin of Mr Smythe. Scary, but… It’d taken him most of the year… But not aimed at him. Justin hoped anyway.

“Look. You keep up this farce, and, apart from the laundry I won’t make you do fag duties ok?”

“Uh.”

“Just look suitably cowed and quiver your lips like you’re scared every now and again. And we’re golden.”

~~~~~~~~

Howard couldn’t quite believe the numbers that greeted his eyes.

Howard had just gotten back to the mansion, from his usual utterly fruitless search for Steve’s body – the blackout nonsense, and the boy’s kidnapping meant that he’d left late, and returned late. (The damned boat had almost gotten trapped in the sea ice as a result.) He’d been dealing with the hateful business of paperwork all afternoon. No rest for the wicked after all. And Howard had been extremely wicked indeed in his day. (Howard winced at the memory of just how often Ed had reported back that his gift had been greeted with a slap.)

Tony’s little hobby, Arc Technologies was already in profit. Albeit the boy was still insistent on the hippy crap and was plugging 75% of it straight back into the NGO branch of the company – providing water purification plants to third world countries and all that similar never-ending monetary blackhole that came with trying to do good.

That wasn’t even including the funds that came from the Starkbucks franchise. The coffee chain, of all things, was closely linked to the side of the firm that was deep in negotiations with international utilities companies, all trying to hash out exclusive rights to access the filter technology on a more industrial scale. Why the hell had his son decided to go into catering? Starkbucks branded water filters were already making an impact globally, as all those NGOs and charities handed out free goodwill publicity.

Still. Arc Film had rapidly shot to the top of the photographer’s toolkit as a must-have product. The company had begun branching into lenses, with the help of Canon and Leica – a first getting those two companies to cooperate. Howard felt his incredulity rise; how on earth had the boy managed that? An unfamiliar and long-missing warmth suffused his chest. And just who was this Denisof, Tony’s business manager?

The next branch of the firm close to opening up product manufacture was… Video games? Why on earth was his son trying to get into arcades? AT Games was deep in negotiations with Sega, Encom, IBM, and Namco for something related to motors, for reasons that Howard wasn’t in the mood to fathom. The amount of money involved was far higher than Howard would have expected for something so… Frivolous.

Despite Howard’s misgivings about the boy’s ridiculous charitable endeavours, his son was proving to have a surprising knack for business. Perhaps Howard would be able to focus on reigning in Obadiah after all – he’d been pushing for deals with countries that weren’t allies of the US for months now. Something Howard hadn’t felt able to condone, even with the steady business that the increasingly frigid Cold War was bringing in, though Obadiah did have a valid point. Business wasn’t what it was. But… If the boy proved he could stand on his own two feet after all, perhaps Howard wouldn’t have to break his admittedly twisted moral code in order to give his only son a safe future.

~~~~~~~

Tony made his cautious way towards Hall (effectively the cafeteria), and hopefully some form of supper as evening approached. A round jovial looking man genially waddled over, he was all bushy hair and moustache – putting Tony strongly in mind of the walrus from Alice in Wonderland.

There was a brief sparkle of that shade of whiteish blue that, despite himself, Tony forever associated with arc reactors and safety, but otherwise his third eye had proven blessedly unobtrusive over the chaos of the day. (Well, that or Tony had gotten far better at not reacting to the bizarre and strange sights that tended to flutter around.)

“Oh, young Mr Stark!”

A pudgy paw grasped Tony’s own hand and shook vigorously and enthusiastically,

“Professor Marcus Simeon, Norse History. I’m to be your tutor for your career here.”

Huh. Tony wasn’t too surprised – he remembered that tutors at Cambridge generally had very little to do with their supposed mentees academic lives, they were meant to look after welfare, but this usually amounted to a awkwardly sipping a cup of tea once per term.

“We’re so sorry! Your mentor, guardian? Ben Adams phoned ahead, he won’t be in the country until the academics begins next week. We meant to catch you as soon as you signed in but…” the already flushed man turned a deeper shade of puce, “it’s been a busy day.”

Dammit, Tony thought to himself. Wondering just what he’d have to do to explain away Ben’s absence. The erstwhile idiot had been one of the key clauses in Tony’s being able to come here.

~~~~~~~

Ben trekked down the barely-there path, little more than an animal track really, towards the nearest hub of ‘civilisation’. He’d spent a charming summer reacquainting himself with the tenets of the ancient Buddhist faith, and the ancient living conditions that the monks willingly subjected themselves to.

Ben was dearly looking forward to getting back to running water, truly one of the marvels of the modern age. (Behind the mask of Ben, he reminisced about the hot baths that the Romans, and the Minoans had loved so much.) Ben considered the time up on the plateau of the world well-spent, he had a new appreciation for the hustle and bustle of life, and the antsy need to walk into the wilderness and disappear had faded, sated for the time being.

He’d trekked all the way up there to try and find that accursed monastery with all the Inducers – or Sorcerers as they were apparently calling themselves these days. Once Ben had gotten to the site of that venerable mystic teaching place however, there was nothing to be seen. Not even a hint that the foundations had been there once upon a time. If he hadn’t been blessed cursed with the perfect recollection that all his race shared, Ben would have been certain that he was in the wrong place.

Eventually he found a wizened old monk, who wasn’t sworn to silence, willing to relate what happened when the Chinese annexed the country.

Apparently, the strange old monastery had quite literally vanished overnight. Evaporating like so much mist.

The bald, and mostly toothless old man had cackled loudly at this, the soldiers had all been very upset at that lack of temple to ransack. The neighbouring Buddhist monastery, an order that believed in frugality being the path to enlightenment, had very little to steal. And though the ramifications for the people, and village that lived to serve the magical monastery had been harsh, the very fact that they’d managed to cock a snook at the invaders had been payment enough. 

Still, salted and yak buttered tea, and getting back in touch with his ancient-self aside. Ben had pretty much wasted his summer happily in the thin air, and simple living that the region pretty much forced upon its denizens.

Continuing the well-worn groove of trudging across continents Ben contemplated just how late he was going to be to his appointment at St. Cedd’s. He’d meant to leave three weeks ago, but one thing had led to another. There’d been that unwanted tell-tale buzz. And then, once he’d made sure he’d well and truly lost that potential threat, a squadron’s worth of Chinese Soldiers to avoid – themselves chasing the source of the buzz that he’d been avoiding so studiously. Young idiot, thinking that he could stroll into one of the most isolated and politically contested regions of the planet unaccosted just because he was ‘unkillable’.

Still, Ben would get there when he got there. As it had been since time immemorial.

~~~~~~~

Tony shuffled awkwardly into place, in the front row of the group photo. Avoiding other people’s feet, and seemingly non-existent third eye entities, whilst trying to not look like he was avoiding things no one else could see. The haze of blue around Simeon was also around many of the other staff members, which, Tony was trying to not admit was very reassuring indeed.

The students were a more mixed bag of floating chittering creatures, and flashes of colour. Some that peaceful blue, others the yellow that Tony associated with Obie and mistrust, and others still flashing quite literally in all the colours of the spectrum, and beyond into colours that Tony quite literally didn’t have a name for. He’d never seen them before, if this Sight could be called seeing in the traditional sense.

Eventually Tony managed to filter out the worst of it, though due to his close, enforced, proximity, he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation going on directly behind and above his head. Trapped as he was, as the awkward sideways shuffle into the narrow stands continued all around him,

“Aw – did you hear? The new college Master labelled his dog as a ‘cat’ on the forms, so although dogs aren’t allowed as pets. He’s got one.”

The first voice absolutely lived up to every queer stereotype that Tony had encountered and embraced it knowingly. Tony liked the voice already.

“Huh. Old Carruthers would never have stood for that.”

The second voice was Old Money. Like the first, but unlike the first there were no friendly overtones to be found. Tony found himself wishing that the first voice would get a clue and tread with caution,

“How would you know?”

“Oh my older brother came here back in the day… Oh I say what’s that child doing here? Why on earth is there a little fag here? Did our young dog-loving Master make a mistake? Or is he the Master’s son?”

Tony shrunk in his seat. It wasn’t his fault that Simeon had grabbed him and forced him to sit front and centre “lest we lose you in the crowd!”

“You know… There’s two things I don’t like about you Sutton. Your face. So why don’t you be a dear and shut both of them?”

Tony turned and watched the source of the first voice, Tintin Jr dealing with the would-be snob with poorly disguised glee. Tintin was coming out with the type of one-liners that Tony wouldn’t have hesitated to use if he was still his adult-self. As it was… Well, those sorts of taunts were unwise when you came up to less than half the mass of your opposition.

Tony grimaced as the cameraman fussed with his ridiculous camera for a solid twenty minutes before he was seemingly satisfied with his shot. The entire new influx of students to St. Cedd’s had all signed the Matriculation contract in the hall, before being marched out to the crumbling gothic stairs that fronted the chapel where a set of stands had been erected.

Of course, Ben was still nowhere to be seen. The room next to Tony’s remained stubbornly empty.

~~~~~~~

Justin bit back tears as the blister that had slowly been growing on his palm the whole week burst, the suddy water burned as it got into the painful sore. But he couldn’t stop - James wanted his uniform to shine in the morning, and Justin had only just finished cleaning the older boy’s sheets.

Justin knew he had it good. That’s what made it worse. Tim’s boss had thrashed him until he could barely walk the next day, and Tim had still had to do all of William’s laundry, and help clean the dormitory.

At least Justin only had to do washing. It wasn’t so bad. And, and, James wasn’t so bad. He’d never hit him, or made him do any of the really horrible jobs like clean the toilets. Or try and hide the secret beer… Or that other job that no one talked about.

But… Wincing again as the pain in his hand flared up, Justin wished he’d never been sent to this horrible school. Even the nice people were mean.

~~~~~~~

Tony didn’t know what to do with himself that evening. Term proper, and thus teaching, hadn’t started yet. And the mad dash around the city in order to sign up for courses and to collect the pre-term paperwork was due to start the next morning. In theory he could have gone to one of the numerous ‘Ents’ that were being laid on for the freshers’ benefit. However, since most of them involved alcohol (the legal limit in the UK being 18… Sometimes 16 with provisions like adult supervision), Tony was probably going to be automatically excluded from entering anyway. Not that he actually wanted to join in. Nevertheless, knowing that it wasn’t even an option rankled.

Eventually Tony found himself in the near empty SCR (Senior Common Room– as opposed to the JCR; Junior Common Room, which was currently housing a ‘pub quiz’ and ‘Getting to Know You’ bop – whatever that was.)  To his surprise there was a clunky colour TV set in the corner of the otherwise deserted space.

After a cursory flick through the available channels (All three of them.) Tony watched the news with a sinking feeling, now that he was out in the real-world as it were, no longer caught in a protective bubble that shielded him from the realities of the world by well-meaning adults… Well, the news story about the “Mutant Problem” was a hell of an eye-opener. Far more so than the sparse textbooks, full of euphemistic terms, and large spaces of nothing, that Tony had managed to find so far. It was yet another confirmation that something here was way to the left of the world he’d … Well, left.

Tony genuinely didn’t remember anything about mutants at all from his previous life, he didn’t think that even he had been oblivious enough not to have at least heard of them before. Yet, ever since that White House story, and the inexplicable presence of the Maximoffs forty years too early, and ten years too late, Tony had been wracking his brain trying to work out if he’d missed anything in either his previous life, or the things the adults weren’t telling the children in this one.

The news piece wasn’t really news piece per say, more the results of the Trask Trials with an expose on an old story tacked on to make up airtime. Some leaked documents from the trial, revealing Trask’s hand in unethical human experimentation on mutants had jolted a new interest in the public consciousness.

The old conspiracy theories (new to Tony) about the mutant involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis were being rehashed on the political debate show playing on the small screen in the corner of the tiny SCR. Not to mention the one thing he had encountered already, the stadium landing on the White House.

Of course, being a powerful corporate head, an American patriot at that, who was supposedly actively contributing to the US’s international military relations with his firms’ products, it came as no surprise to Tony to hear that Trask had managed to get off on all charges. Whilst Tony himself had never been on trial for anything serious (he was ashamed to admit that he himself had used and abused his indispensable status with the US military machine in his time) Tony recognised the grease in the machine all too well.  

Tony just knew that this ‘Mutant Problem’ wasn’t the only difference between this brave new world that he found himself living in and the one he had left behind. He dubiously supposed that, assuming Doom was telling the truth, without Thanos to introduce the Infinity Gems to Earth something had to trigger the …and Tony hated to use this term, but… If the news piece was to be believed many of these so-called powers defied a logical explanation, rise of supers. It seemed that whatever had triggered the change had happened earlier in this world than the one he knew and loathed.

~~~~~~~

On the way back to his room Tony discovered a quick note from Ben in his pigeonhole at the p’lodge,

Hi Tony,

Sorry, my transport back from the plateaus of the Himalaya’s was unavoidably delayed. I expect you to keep up with your dance training in the meantime. Laps around college in the morning are still mandatory.

Arc Tech’s negotiations with Encom and Namco are… Progressing. Damned ritualised politeness aside, I’ll tell you all about that meeting when I get back.

See you when I see you,

Ben.

Tony was deeply suspicious of the note, but… it was Ben’s handwriting all right. And it was certainly Ben’s sarcasm… And Ben’s alternate identity as Denisof talking too.

~~~~~~~

Whilst running all over town, signing up at his departments for his courses, Tony took the time to check in on his finances. Since, Ben or no, he’d have to be mostly self-sufficient during this era. Which was more than fine with him.

Over the course of a very terse conversation with first the bank clerk, and then the bank manager, involving his passport, and a written affidavit by Howard granting Tony permission to access – well, not his trust fund, but a current account that had been set up to draw a monthly living allowance from his trust fund. Tony quickly found that he had a lot more cash to splash then he’d ever had during his time at MIT.

The news honestly surprised him. The first time around Howard had barely opened his purse strings enough to pay for the university fees. Well, the amount of cash he was allowed was broadly speaking the same this time around too actually. However, given the heavy subsidies the British government currently still paid into their university system in the 70s (sadly no more in the future Tony had come from), and the little fact that Trinity College literally had more money than they knew what to do with (so every year they dumped it on the other colleges at the university), meaning that they in turn heavily subsidised both their room and board… Well between the grants and bursaries that kept fees for even foreign students relatively affordable, Tony could more than make food and rent each term.

Similarly, unlike at MIT, with the responsibilities Tony already owed SI and thus the toing and froing back and forth between campus and the business district of the city, at Cambridge Tony really didn’t need much in the way of transportation. The small city was walk-able, though admittedly most people cycled.

By the end of the meeting Tony estimated that Howard had overestimated his costs by a whole $1,000USD per month. Pretty much the exact opposite of his previous situation at college – which had been a shortfall of $750 per month. And given that this was the 1970s, and pre a whole hell of a lot of inflation. $1000 was a truly huge amount of excess. Even with the exchange rates. Tony ended up setting it up with the bank manager to have a current order in place to channel most of the excess money into a separate savings account.

Apart from reflexively hiding it from Howard, Tony literally didn’t know what to do with the cash; given that his usual relaxation techniques involved either an engineering binge, or a drinking binge, or often, both at the same time. Tony had no intention of taking up the drinking again, however, he didn’t yet have access to the graduate-level lab space that he really needed to be able to let go and just… Engineer. The undergraduate labs, excellent as they were for their main purpose of teaching, just weren’t equipped to deal with the stuff that Tony usually got up to. Well, that was Tony’s excuse. The other (main) reason was his (justified) paranoia about his designs getting out into the world forty years too early.

Tony needed to hire another lawyer, preferably one well versed in British patent-law, perhaps the cash could be funnelled that way, one with an eye to expanding officially into mainland Europe, and eventually Asia without the current need for deals with his competitors. Actually building something out there, instead of just signing partnerships with firms already well-established in those regions. He cursed the paranoia that meant Landman and Zach were out of touch for the time being, Tony could do with an international conference call right about now to clarify a few things, and of course check in on Arc Tech’s progress. If the information Ben had passed on was at all accurate, then Starkbucks at least had turned its first profit – albeit a tiny one that had been immediately plugged back into helping the farmers produce their coffee in an ecologically sound manner that puzzled and frustrated the pen pushers. 

Tony had also spotted more than a few high-street shops in London carrying the new Arc Film cameras. With their new multipurpose adjustable depth of field lenses - made using a liquid film that could be adjusted on the go depending on need. So, presumably, business on that end was booming – though whether that translated to healthy growth or not was another matter.

On top of that, Tony was desperate to hear news about the coffee and water-filters side of things. On the basis of the filters alone the fledgling company had already been contacted by numerous far larger corporations – usually utilities companies – looking to do a takeover. It seemed that the water filter design had far more applications than the hazy daydream of coffee and clean water at CO₂ neutrality goal that Tony had initially envisioned.

Hell, he’d been leaning on Pepper for this sort of business expertise for decades now, it was hardly Tony’s fault that some of his corporate acumen had gotten a little rusty given that the world was usually at stake whilst he was avoiding board meetings. The knowledge that his outlook had become woefully naïve was frustrating. At times Tony fancied that he could feel that seven-year-old that he quite literally embodied creeping up on his way of thinking, and this felt like the aftermath of just one such incident.

Thankfully, though, as ever, Tony was working on surrounding himself with not just good – but truly exceptional people. Genius or not, success/failure in the world often relied on the people you surrounded yourself with. And Tony was not about to let himself fall into another Obadiah Stane-esque pit of wilful ignorance and loathing this time around.

Tony had drafts ready to go, detailing the closed-box systems and contracts should the utilities firms agree to the specifics. Mostly focused on, should the filters pass all the necessary safety checks, that the companies leasing them were not to crack open the casings containing them, under pain of losing the right to rent the filters from Arc Tech. Which, given the drastic cut in energy required to clean up refuse water that the filters provided, would likely prove a death-knell to the company in question. Especially given the numerous clauses about what would happen should the technology for the filters be copied in any way, before the free-to-use term came into being. Once Tony’s charitable causes finally had a leg up, Tony was only all too happy to help stop the world from falling into the ruination that had been threatening even before Thanos showed up. 

Of course, Tony reflected, the huge differences between London in Tony’s era, and London in the 1970s only highlighted the huge gulf of time between the current time and Tony’s loose forecast for when, or rather if Thanos, or if Doom was to be believed, someone equally as bad but different, showed up.

The familiar glass metropolis coupled with imperialistic European architecture that Tony remembered of the city was gone, or rather strangely changed. London in the 1970s had proved an uncomfortable mirror to New York’s degradation. Only, instead of decades of Central Government underfunding the city, London’s desperate state, away from the well to do neighbourhoods that Tony and his mother had stuck to, had been entirely down to post-war damages, burnt out sites hit by the Blitz… and the still ongoing attempts to replace the old Victorian era architecture with fashionable Brutalist concrete structures. The garbage on the streets due to union strikes and the remaining ramifications of the oil crisis were another matter. The UK had supposedly been hit less hard than the US by the trade war with the middle east due to the discovery of North Sea Oil and Gas… but, well most of the West was suffering in the huge global downturn that meant that the likes of Reagan and Thatcher were due to get into power any day now.

Still, London’s past, or rather present, only served to highlight just how little Cambridge had changed in the years between this time, and what Tony thought of as “his time” in the city in the early 90s. The only real difference that Tony had noticed, apart from the obvious changes in the fashions the students were wearing… Was the technology behind Cambridge’s infamous anti-car traffic control system. The one-way nonsense wasn’t yet reinforced by the rising bollards that had periodically lifted cars a metre into the air as they tried to sneak into the centre of the city directly behind buses, and other public transport that carried the correct transponders. Instead beleaguered police officers had been roped in to become the city’s rather ineffective transport police.

The strange timelessness of Cambridge was a pleasant relief, a temporary reprieve from the ever-present awareness that the clock to doomsday was ticking down somewhere.

~~~~~~~

Ben turned up just in time to accompany Tony to his first real lecture, having conveniently managed to miss all the bureaucratic box ticking and form filling. If the professors lecturing in the relatively small halls noticed the new addition who had missed all the ‘this is how to use the Departmental library’ and ‘these are the hours you are/aren’t allowed into the ‘labs’ talks, none of them said anything. Tony guessed that they’d all been warned beforehand that they’d have a child genius and the accompanying chaperone sitting their courses.

To Tony’s surprise Ben seemed interested in the contents of the mathematics lectures, making his own notes alongside everyone else in the relatively small room that made up the Mathematics Department’s first year undergrad lecture hall. The surprisingly modern buildings reminded Tony strongly of a videogame. What with their obsessively high levels of symmetry and perfect lawns that sloped up directly onto the roof.

In contrast to his behaviour during the ‘hard science’ section of Tony’s courses, Ben quietly laughed his way through the Philosophy and Ethics classes. But never loudly enough to earn the ire of the lecturer, only Tony, given that he was the only person in the room close enough to hear the quiet derisive chuckles.

~~~~~

Tony tried out two routes to the Mathematics department, before deciding that, embarrassing or not, he really needed to buy a bike. Ben’s smug ‘I told you so’ grin didn’t help with the frustration.

The first route to the department had looked like it should be quicker, in a roundabout, no one else will be going this way, kind of way. A quick cut along the famous King’s Parade in front of, you guessed it, King’s College. Infamous communist haunt, and home of the Cambridge Five. A spy ring consisting of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and John Cainrcross. (And come to think of it, Tony didn’t think they’d all been outed yet…) 

Continue straight down Trumpington, ignoring the space where Corpus’s infamous hideous alien cricket clock should have been, to Silver Street, past St Catharine’s and Queen’s College and their infamous rivalry. Remembering the mythical, and most likely untrue tale about the Mathematical Bridge that didn’t used to have any bolts holding it together. Until that is, curious students took it to pieces to find out how it worked.

Then walking past his old haunts at Darwin College (a small, pleasant grad college where Tony had whiled away many a fun evening with a willing companion, spending their time overlooking the waterways that backed into the Cam, before retiring to more… strenuous activity.)  Hoofing it up Sidgwick Avenue, home to the weird little priest factory Ridley Hall, and opposite it, the Sidgwick Site. Home to most of the university’s arts departments. Not to mention Newnham College, another place that Tony remembered fondly from his first time here. The women of Newnham had always been incredibly intelligent, outspoken and outgoing - probably something to do with the college’s history.

On officially opening in 1871, to staunch opposition from the male academics that populated the university, a mob of students, and worse teaching staff, had formed outside of the college’s main gate and burned an effigy of a female student. Of course, the college had been around since before 1871, and it took decades for the women who studied the same subjects as their male peers at Cambridge to be acknowledged with the degree they’d actually earnt…

The squeeze between Selwyn College and the fat trees that took up most of the sidewalk on Sidgwick, before the long straight walk up Grange Road.  Which took Tony past several dozen accommodation sites, like Selwyn’s ugly Cripps Court (there were dozens of Cripps Courts in Cambridge, the donor had apparently given a lot of money to a lot of colleges), and the bizarre octagonal rooms of one of Cat’s accommodation blocks; St Chad’s. (Octagonal rooms, that Tony remembered had walls that weren’t quite long enough to push the full length of a bed up against. Such that you were forced to have the bed occupying the centre of the small space.)

Past the brick modernist bulk of the newly opened this year Robinson College (and didn’t that little piece of weird just make Tony feel positively ancient.)  Tony had to admit that the interminable length of Grange Road, once everything ceded to suburbia and sports fields was a welcome relief after the uncomfortable march down memory lane.

No, the damned alternative route hadn’t been any shorter, on Tony’s short legs the walk had taken nearly 40 minutes, with Ben smugly not saying ‘I told you so’ the whole way. Of course, it really hadn’t helped that this less touristy end of the city was filled with old haunts. This end of the town tended to be where all the science students ended up after all. Tony kept getting ambushed by wistful fond memories of hanging out with his Astronomy buddies all over this side of town. Come to think of it, the Institute of Astronomy was just around the corner from the Mathematics Department, and the squat brutalist bulk of Churchill college. Far enough away from the light pollution of the city proper to try and get clear images of the night sky.

The other, Tony had to admit it, more populated, and quicker route was to take a shortcut through the cobbled lanes and claustrophobically looming gothic-medieval architecture that made up The Backs. On his short stumpy little legs walking down Sidney Street past the entrance to Trinity College, Tit Hall and Clare, and then cutting up Grange Road, only ended up shaving off a couple of minutes from his journey, given how crowded the narrow medieval lanes in this apart of the city inevitably got when absolutely everyone was trying to get to their next lecture. The crowded lane, studiously ignoring the place where Tit Hall’s modernist library should have been standing, and the difficulty Tony had in avoiding the much faster push bikes when the dreaded bell-ring sounded somewhere behind him made the journey much much more unpleasant than it should have been.

Tony got around this by cutting through Clare College, and on occasion Trinity when he thought he could get away with it, but… It was frustrating, once he was past the bottleneck of The Backs the journey was much more pleasant, with a quick walk past the grand faux-roman structure of the University Library and up… The boring suburban half of Grange Road.

Still, it was not an easy walk when you barely came up to most people’s stomachs. The need for a bicycle was inevitable.

By the end of the week the journey time was down to eight minutes from the college gates up near Parker’s Piece. The lack of stress was almost enough to make up for the sheer indignity of the fact that he had to ride carefully in Ben’s wake, like a miniature copy, on a bike that was roughly half the size of anyone else’s. Still it was a far better fate than the side car, wagon, or tandem – all of which Ben had seriously threatened. At least Tony thought he’d been serious, it was difficult to tell.

~~~~~

Tony’s set up at Cambridge turned out to be nothing like his time at MIT, Ben’s assistance aside, the amount of “welfare” Cambridge already had in the 70s was rather ahead of its time, albeit woefully staffed. (Academics did not make for appropriate psychological welfare staff, they lacked the training for one thing, and well, like Bruce, the vast majority also lacked the temperament for it.) Then again, given that they were already contemplating installing a fibre-optic network, perhaps that erratically practiced long-view take on things wasn’t so surprising. Whilst the level of welfare was surprisingly similar to MIT’s, it attempted to focus on very different ideas of well-being to the prestigious institution in Massachusetts. Namely half-assed forays into the students’ mental well-being rather than any interest in their physical health.

Tony had weekly appointments with his “Director of Studies” (the college’s resident Geology doctor) and his “Tutor”; the overly familiar Marcus Simeon. The DoS’s job was to keep him on track academically, the Tutor, to keep him happy. Apparently, these meetings were usually once-per-term deals, but since he was so “young” they’d made an exception in his case.

Tony had to sit through painfully awkward sessions with each of them once a week. It was hell, treading the minefield that was the tightrope knife-edge dance of ‘normal’ child behaviour and Tony’s own bitingly sarcastic personality, honed by decades of adulthood. His third eye visions, whilst not an active hinderance to daily interactions anymore, thank gods, weren’t any help either. Despite Tony’s not so secret wish that they’d give him the cues that his sketchy read on body language still didn’t always pick up on. (Seriously what was up with the visions of fire and hares anyway?)

Simeon was personable enough, perhaps too personable. Tony was rarely able to get a word in edge-wise. The man was often so caught up in relating embarrassing tales about the numerous institutions he’d worked for during the long course of his career, that he frequently forgot to listen to Tony. Their meetings usually consisted of Tony drinking too sweet tea and trying not to look too understanding about some of the more adult aspects of the anecdotes that were being related. Thankfully, with Ben sitting in, the utterly useless meetings were usually cut short before they could drag on for too long. 

As far as teaching hours were concerned the university piled them on, as well as the lectures – at least three a week per course. The number of courses taken at any one time varied wildly depending on the overarching subject you were there to read (Tony was currently signed up for 12 courses). There were also weekly ‘supervisions’ that usually consisted of  two/three students per teaching staff, per course taken. Classes – termed practicals, as well as larger group classes that were a weird mid-way between lecture and a more hands-on teaching style.

Tony’s decision to choose one of the lesser known, but more ancient, colleges at Cambridge; St. Cedd’s was for a multitude of reasons. Not least of which was the ancient college’s snobbish, but highly protective stance when it came to the privacy of both their students and staff. Tony had heard all about the eccentricities of Chronotis, and the way that the college put up with the man as much out of a sense of traditional, ‘well, he’s always been there’, as the fact that he had once brought the college some prestige with his revolutionary historical ideas. Hypotheses regarding the novel idea that the skeletons with wide hips that carried bows and swords just might be female – ideas which were then vindicated when the shockingly basic new chromosome tests were finally grudgingly carried out. The college would happily put up with nearly anything so long as you gave them enough back in return.

Taking the long-view about his plans for his time at Cambridge, there were also a host of options of room location available, or at least there would be in future. There were rooms all over the city; as well as the picturesque ones available in the medieval heart of the town, there was also more modern housing that was conveniently midway between town and the science departments that Tony was interested in; Mathematics and Physics. Which, for some unknown reason were out in West Cambridge, seemingly miles from anything useful. Given that it wasn’t yet the 00s, most of the science subjects were still taught in the centre of town. Though of course that would all change soon; Mathematics was already effectively in West Cambridge.

Tony was surprised by the subtly different atmosphere at the University of Cambridge to the competitive one he’d remembered last time he studied there. Though that may have had something to do with the fact that at that point he was already well-known as MIT’s golden child, at least some of that competitive tone had to have come from the friendly rivalry between the two institutions.

Tony mistrusted the apparently welcoming atmosphere at the Mathematics department. Everyone was being too nice it was giving him hives. People had never been this nice to him unless they wanted something.

Tony found himself begrudgingly approving of the Mathematics department’s rather… eccentric take on encouraging academic cooperation and endeavour. The buildings at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences were a modernist’s dream, you could casually stroll up a gentle slope onto the roof from the gardens if you wanted. However, it was the interior that truly impressed Tony’s inner mad scientist. Every single flat surface in the place was fair game if an idea came. There were dry wipe pens everywhere. And he meant everywhere – the bathrooms included.

These were his kind of people.

Even Tony’s fellow undergrads didn’t seem to carry the same, well below the surface, nervous tittering resentment and fear that he’d become accustomed to at MIT in the eighties. Instead whenever he piped up in his small lecture hall both his fellow students, and the Professor listened intently. As if Tony’s contribution was important. Oh, there were a few snickering holdouts, there always were. But they weren’t a significant minority, and nowhere near a majority.

At MIT being a nerd was cool, at least if you were a certain type of charismatic nerd. Even MIT had had its hierarchies tainted by the fear of appearing too smart that pervaded everything in an academic world where sport and money had twisted everything. At Cambridge that type of rot hadn’t managed to gain a foothold. Being a nerd was normal, almost everyone was some variation of eccentric. Literature nerds, linguists, divinity experts, and history buffs all rubbed shoulders side by side with some of the brightest scientific minds in academia. It made for an interesting boiling pot, theologians at dinner at Hall often loudly proclaiming that nothing was more important than the study of divinity, to loud guffaws from the engineering set.

If anything, some of the Professors were too covetous of Tony’s time and attention. Old ‘No-sigh-I-don’t-like-pop-art-I-have-a-Field’s-medal’ Lichtenstein for one, often tried to turn the last five minutes of his lectures, that were supposed to be open to student questions/discussion, into “What does young Mr Stark think?” suck-up sessions. Fortunately, Ben usually took it upon himself to derail them utterly. Though he’d occasionally sit back with a smug grin on his face and let the scenario proceed – daring Tony all the while to fix it for himself.

Tony gradually came to realise that in part, the reason he was being left alone, or fawned over, was that the student body seemed to view him as some sort of trophy. A mascot. Cambridge was well used to child genii, the ancient institution liked to foster them, and its own reputation for taking in any student that was smart enough. (Regardless of the actual truth of the matter. That it really helped your chances if you were, wealthy, white, went to one of the ‘right’ schools, and male.)

Occasional embarrassing incidents of brown-nosing aside, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. There was a particular group of guys in his classes that Tony learnt to avoid like the plague. They never threatened… But his internal danger radar, already sharp long before high school ended, and further honed after years of being an Out Superhero would ping crazily whenever they were near. He’d caught them sending him uninterpretable looks more than once. It was unnerving.

Oh, Tony didn’t have many friends in his undergrad class, the apparent age gap was too profound for that, and the actual age gap even greater, but he found common ground with his fellow misfits – the small group of female students in multiple fields, that in the 70s were overwhelmingly male. (Not helped of course by Cambridge’s shamefully still extant, in this recent but admittedly backwards decade, 1 in 10 quota system for the proportion of female to male students.)

Cambridge’s brand of academic rot came from the fact that the institution was ancient and slow to change, reliant on selecting the bulk of its student body from a school system that was deeply divided by class. That ancient evil, that still divided Britain. The accents that Tony was surrounded by on a daily basis were overwhelmingly plummy and nasal, the sort of voice that could cram three extra syllables into the word ‘hello’ and possessed no chin.

It was perhaps predictable that Tony’s three best friends at Cambridge formed a mismatched little group. He met the three in a disparate set of scenarios, only realising after they’d been hanging around together for most of a term, that he was the one who’d brought them all together.  Ben had grinned mockingly at him when Tony had had that stunned realisation.

~~~~~~~

The first member of the trio of Cambridge first years that Tony befriended, was an incredibly privileged young man who Tony quite literally bumped into in the corridors of New Hall at St Cedd’s. He was quite possibly the most closeted gay man Tony had ever met, old, old money (and Tony had long experience of how the Old Money made damned sure you were self-aware that you were New money), posh, slight, and short, with no muscle tone to speak of. It was Tintin – the kid that had so amused him at the Matriculation photo.

Tintin, like his namesake, was blonde with cherubic curls fighting valiantly against his relatively short hairstyle, a round face, small upturned nose, pale milky skin, and clear blue eyes (so like Steve’s and yet not). He was a sworn in member of the Conservative party, a true blue through and through, the right-wing boy (Tony knew he was technically younger-in-body than him, but he didn’t think he’d ever been this young) was already a member of the infamous Pitt Club in the first week of term. His name was James, but he introduced himself with a jovial,

“Please, call me Reggie. My middle name is Reginald. Only mommy calls me James. And there’s three other James’s at Cedd’s in our year already.”

Tony had liked him despite himself, they’d met during a mutual lull in Cambridge’s so-called “Freshers’ Week”. (More like Fresher’s Three Days.) Tony really wasn’t sure it could be called a Fresher’s week when most of the time was spent running from one end of town to the other signing up for courses at numerous departments. Often with allotted timeslots 5-minutes apart, and 3 miles distant (with the ban on undergrads owning cars very much in place even in the weirdness of the past). Not to mention hours of filling in administrative paperwork. Though of course Tony’s opinion was coloured by the fact that he hadn’t touched a drop of the alcohol that had been so freely available at the numerous ‘Ents’ that had been organised to welcome the new influx of Freshers.

Tony had been surprised about how hands-off Cambridge was with the students on this, most universities held the student’s hands through the process, with plenty of signage and lots of communication about how to sign up to other important things such as doctors’ and dentists’ practices and the like. Cambridge just posted a great big list that apparently applied to all new students, and you had to be clever enough to pick out which details were relevant to you.

Tony wasn’t sure if he appreciated the amount of trust in his intelligence that this approach showed, or if he thought it was slightly callous dumping quite so much on these children’s heads to sort out in the three days before the actual business of teaching began. Despite the fact that the majority of the new intake were technically, legally adults. To Tony they were children, youths trying too hard to be independent and grown-up, and making all the same mistakes that children make when they’re first stepping out into the world.

Tony had quite literally run into Reggie coming out of the corridor bathroom, the taller boy had been wearing nothing but the horrible light ‘Cambridge-blue’ and monogrammed towel wrapped around his waist, water dripping from his pale blonde curls sticking to his long neck.

“Oh! Sorry!”

“Oh no please, excuse me.”

Gods, the guy was the real-life version of all those awful stereotypical gay-men that had been the only representation of the LGBTQA community on TV for much of the 90s, the screaming queers that he remembered flinching at on those awful sitcoms Rhodey had made him watch whenever they’d hung out. From that uncomfortable era where you were never sure if you were supposed to be laughing with the characters or laughing at them because they were gay. Gods he’d have to live through all of that all over again…

Maybe that’s why so much of the 90s had been lost to that coke-binge, even his no.1 man had been insane that decade, he couldn’t believe his (admittedly holey) memories of Rhodey watching them with every sign of enjoyment, what had those shows been called again? Chums, Biers? Sex and Will? No, Tony was muddling things up he knew it. Tony thought there might have been a perpetually drunk middle-aged woman inexplicably hanging around with a bunch of fashionable twenty-somethings’, but the name of the sitcom utterly escaped him.

Eh, either way, Tony was looking forward to corrupting this one. He’d start off gentle, introduce him to Queen and the wonders of Freddy Mercury (hey if his closeted-self had appreciated Queen in the early 80s this guy would, right?), maybe ease the way with some Bolan, then move on to the crypto-homo-rockers, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie. Of course, now that he and Justin were separated by hundreds of miles, Tony no longer had access to the vast majority of the LPs that he wanted to show the young man. Damn.

Tony couldn’t wait to introduce him to Hedwig and the Angry Inch when it finally happened. He’d been blackmailed into seeing that show as part of a publicity thing for SI by a vengeful Pepper, he couldn’t remember what he’d done to incur her wrath, but he’d owed her. Tony had been thoroughly surprised when he’d loved it. Tony probably should have taken the hint about new musical genres to be mined given how heavily he remembered the terrible trio featuring in that particular stage play, but eh, he’d found out for himself now. 

Over the course of a charming indolent afternoon tea at Fitzbillies, “this fabulous quaint little place I found, really you must come and see it” the first of many they’d shared at the ancient eatery, Tony learnt that Reggie was studying Arc&Anth (Archaeology and Anthropology). The Tintin-esque blonde really was the epitome of poor little rich boy slumming it at Cambridge. Tony privately thought the only way he’d manage to become more stereotypical was if he instead chose the infamous Land Economy course, and took up rowing, or perhaps if Reggie decided to start carting an oversized teddy-bear about with him everywhere a la Brideshead (or the technically decades from fame, Grayson Perry).

~~~~~~~~

The second member of their trio, and Tony’s other St Cedd’s college-based Cambridge friend, couldn’t be more different to the pair of privileged young white boys who’d claimed the third floor of Staircase P as their own, she’d been a pleasant surprise in more ways than one.

Molly Fitzgerald; Tony remembered the name as a being attached to an utterly brilliant political speaker and lawyer specialising in international law. Whilst not a child prodigy like he was, apparently her status as a woman at the newly-co-ed college, and worse an Irishwoman studying in England at the height of The Troubles marked her out as an outcast. Tony didn’t learn much about her home-life during that first meeting, but he got the impression that her father was incredibly proud of his brilliant daughter’s education, though she didn’t like to talk about it very much.

Tony had heard of her work, largely thanks to Maya’s and Sal’s influence during their long, pretentious chats about just how they intended to change the world. He’d known she’d been to Cambridge a few years before he had in the original timeline, but with everything that had been going on he hadn’t put two and two together.

St Cedd’s College was one of the many that had gone co-ed in recent years. They’d fully opened their doors to female students in 1973, a somewhat shamefully late date, but sadly not an unusual one in this ancient, and inertia ridden, institution.

Tony had been shocked when he’d bumped into Molly at Hall, but not for who she was. At first, he hadn’t recognised her, only recognised that there was another student sat inside the natural bubble of isolation that came with being an outsider. His third eye intrusively flashing symbolism at him that Tony was in no mood to try and interpret really hadn’t helped with the recognition either. (What was up with the nearly dead tree anyway? Seriously why had everything gone from weird, to really disturbingly weird??)

 The recognition came much later in that awkward introductory conversation, Molly Fitzgerald, reading Law (In Britain of all places because of some shenanigans regarding Cambridge’s exchange systems, and wasn’t that a familiar excuse?), already with an eye to taking things into international Law. Molly was enamoured with the new and interesting directions of just how she intended to extend the reach of the international bill of universal human rights. The gleam that lit up her face when she waxed lyrical about the progress that had been made in the past few years by giving numerous countries back their independence spoke volumes to her motives.

Once the conversation had gotten flowing, Molly had stared at Tony in unwarranted awe, obviously mindful of the fact that he was apparently seven. Which had of course triggered Tony’s need to overcompensate for his intellect, the surge of guilt at that undeserved recognition making him babble loudly about all sorts of inane bullshit. That is until Reggie swooped in and came to Tony’s rescue, enthusiastically introducing himself to Tony’s new friend and inviting the pair of them to a JCR meeting being held by St Cedd’s Christian Society. Tony and Molly had looked at each other in utter dread then, until Reggie revealed that he only wanted to go for the free food St Cedd’s Christian Society was offering as a bribe for turning up.

The sheer insanity of that evening – and getting through all that atheistic Church of England moralizing with their dignities intact ended up making the trio nearly inseparable. Leaving the little meeting room that the St.CCSoc had booked for the evening to make their cheese toastie bribes, all three of them looked at each other. And burst into nearly hysterical laughter.

~~~~~~~

Molly cemented her place as his friend when she’d come across Tony having a quiet anxiety attack in a hidden corner of the college. Whilst such things had become far more infrequent of late, to Tony’s chagrin and frustration they still very much just happened sometimes. And the afternoon Molly found him, crouched behind the arch of the staircase at the bottom of P-block was just one of those days.

Instead of flitting about in a panic, of trying to soothe him with trite nonsense and oh so ‘helpful’ advice… Molly had matter-of-factly sat down under the staircase overhang right next to him, but outside of Tony’s bubble of don’t-touch-me personal space and ungrudgingly been there.

When Tony had calmed down enough to notice what she’d done, he was embarrassed, and grateful, and didn’t know how to begin to express the guilty turmoil that he’d just wasted gods knew how much of her time by being an utter flake. Of course, the fact that the attack had been triggered by looking up at the too-blue sky, a sky that was so reminiscent of the air after Thanos’ finger click and being utterly incapable of working out how to voice that in any way hadn’t helped.

Molly had surprised him, by giving Tony a look that didn’t speak of pity, or sympathy or worse derision – but merely a knowing sort of tiredness.

“So, my Pa used to get these awful flashbacks.”

Tony hadn’t been expecting that,

“He was in a militant branch of the IRA.” To Tony’s incredulous surprise she spat as she said it, “The fool.”

“Wait what? But aren’t they fighting to free Northern Ireland from the Brits?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But.”

“I – My brother died in one of their freedom bombs.”

“Oh. Oh I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, it was five years ago. Ages. Side’s, not your fault, nothing to do with you. Nah, my idiot Pa, he tried to split with them then. They weren’t having that, traitor to the cause they said.” Her voice took on a sing-song edge, “Collusion is not an illusion”

“Gods.”

“He moved us from Dushaghlin right up to the other side of the border. I hated it. Middle of Unionist territory. Quiet little place but none of the beauty of the countryside, everything’s grey up there, and the accents are all harsh and wrong. Pretty much a neutral town though. Not unionist or nationalist. Couldn’t be further from the troubles, and the Derry bombings. Didn’t do them any good either way, you see. Place is a shitehole.”

Tony tried to work out what emotions were playing across her face, but all he could see was a horribly familiar resigned numbness.

“There was a murder. Different branch of the Provisional IRA from the one my dad was in. He had nothing to do with it. But… The guy they hit, he was just a dentist, hadn’t gotten involved with the unionists… But he was a Protestant. And that was enough for them.”

Molly swallowed with some difficulty,

“When the police went ‘round the town trying to narrow down suspects, well, see. We were new in town. And it soon came out that Da- that he was an IRA man.”

Molly saw the look on Tony’s face,

“Oh don’t look like that. He’s not in jail if that’s what you’re thinking. I used to get it you know, why he was so angry? Bloody Sunday. It-”

Her fist clenched.

“It was awful, the British had no right. Not after they’d already oppressed Ireland for generations and gotten away with genocide. The fucking feckers!”

Tony risked taking her hand in his own, feeling that she needed it.

“But. That dentist. He had nothing to do with anything. He fixed people’s dodgy teeth for a living. He had nothing to do with the damned UVF or any of it.”

 Molly angrily dashed her tears away before they could fall,

“Just – I dunno. When he came back, after they’d worked out he hadn’ done it - after the arrest, they’d done something to him, the British Army. And he came back, different again, like the bad old days when I was a kid. He’d go into these panics, and if there was a loud noise, he’d think he was somewhere else, try to push me to the ground like he was expectin’ something terrible to happen.”

Molly heaved in an explosive snort, sucking back the tears by force of anger,

“He had to convince me to leave him alone up there. All by himself. With his shellshock and his flashbacks and the Protestants. So yeah, I get it. Justs as I don’t get what either side is even fightin’ for anymore. Not after living up in Loyalist country – there’s just as many who don’t want to join Ireland as don’t want to be British – and no one wants to keep fightin’ anymore. But the killings keep on happening. And Ireland is just caught up in it all. And it just keeps getting’ worse.”

Tony wasn’t sure if a hug would be welcomed, he settled for squeezing her hand,

“So’s yeah, if sittin’ still with you will make you feel better? Well I’m not selfless, it’ll make me feel better and all.”

~~~~~~~

Tony was even more surprised when he ran into the third and final member of the trio, an old friend from what he’d come to think of as his old-life, Amara Perera. He spotted her in the front row of one of the first-year physics lectures he’d snuck into the back of. Tony hadn’t been sure if he should attempt to strike up a conversation with her or not. They’d never met, and he was a creepy little child genius in a class full of adults as far as she was concerned.

Tony should have realised that he was underestimating her, he’d always managed to do that, he thought ruefully.

She sought him out after the lecture, of course she would. She was one of only a handful of women in the room, and to top it off, she was one of only two non-white people. She’d probably seek out another odd duck. Even if Tony was only included in that group of oddities by virtue of age, not race or gender.   

Certified genius or not, Amara had had to battle against both her family’s expectations for her, as their youngest daughter, and the establishment’s expectations for women. Even more so women of colour. Amara had been forced to enter Cambridge at the standard entry-age, even though Tony knew her genius in her field was damned near unrivalled. Amara was a solid 11 years older than Tony and had already been well-established in her career of academia when he’d met her the first time around, so long ago; a lifetime and a universe ago now. Tony had been completely stunned when he spotted her, ended up spending more time watching her pay attention than listen to the lecturer. 

Their conversation after the lecture was even more dazzling than Tony had come to expect from his one-time flame. If the excitement that made her flush a deep red, that was vividly noticeable on her very round brown cheeks, as she discussed the advances made in understanding how chirality effected drugs in recent years was anything to go by, she was probably still destined for great things.

If Amara found it as weird as Tony did, that there was no apparent triggering reason for their burgeoning friendship, she didn’t show it. Amara was even more brilliant than Tony remembered her being, her personality sparkling and vibrant. Not yet worn down by decades of being purposefully overlooked for research funding, career prospects, and promotions. The fire that Tony was so enamoured with, that urge to help the world, and do what’s right was still recognisable. Burning as strongly as it ever had.

Falling back into friendship with her was one of the easiest decisions that Tony had ever made. Though it helped that the blue Tony associated with trust shone as strongly from her… aura. (Okay, dammit he was learning the terminology even though he hated it.)

~~~~~~~

Ben finally deigned to fully carry out his assigned job a full week after the controlled chaos of Fresher’s Three Days was over. Tony had already settled into the overfull schedule that the university expected from the STEM students and gotten used to his infuriating mentor’s snorts in his Philosophy Lectures (really thinly disguised ethics lessons). Not to mention the knack of staying awake and aware during the smaller group lessons pencilled in six days a week. With Sunday, not as a rest day, but the day to catch up on chores and the book work needed to keep up with the lectures. It was a difficult balance to reach, even for Tony, who was well-used to weeks’ long engineering benders.

Tony was still grouchy over the fact that he’d spent Fresher’s “Week” running from one end of the city to the other, signing himself up to doctors’ offices, dentists, as well as the all-important sign-up dates for their courses and the sheer awkwardness of the Matriculation day photos at St Cedd’s. Tony’s front row position in that huge group photo, uncomfortably sandwiched between the Professors due to his diminutive height, would come back to haunt him, he was sure of it.

Tony had spent much of the time without Ben’s “chaperoning” covering for his mentor in all things sneaky, intonating to numerous concerned professors, doctors and students that his assigned adult was just around the corner. By way of payback, Ben had declared that Tony would have half of the first term free from their more strenuous brand of physical training – though of course Tony was expected to keep up with both the running and the M-word side of things, such as they were. It was as close to an apology as Tony was likely to get, so he took it. Though not before Ben commented that he expected no drop off in Tony’s skill level, especially since Tony now had first-hand experience now of just how important being able to handle yourself in a fight was. (Tony had wondered how Ben would react to the Blackout incident over the summer, he really shouldn’t have been surprised when the infuriating man’s reaction… was a complete non-reaction.)

Tony accepted the non-apology with grace, though not without his own mild form of payback.

Tony side-eyed Ben’s look of dismay expectantly, making little effort to conceal his own poorly hidden glee.

The Gyp room was a disaster of a space. There was the sink, the fridge, and a tiny two-ring, antique even by this era’s standards, camping stove stood balanced precariously on the grotty work surface.

Not that Tony had noticed. Despite the leaps and bounds of progress Tony had made over the course of the summer thanks to Maria’s careful guidance, he was still a novice in the realm of cookery. And besides, the college had made it quite clear that they didn’t want their resident child prodigy burning the place down because he couldn’t reach the stove-top.

Tony had entered the Gyp only as a means to stake out his shelf in the shared fridge, and to sidle out of Reggie’s way as they awkwardly passed each other in the passage towards their shared showers/toilet cubicles.

Therefore, the distinct lack of facilities in the tiny, airless, box of a room had completely passed Tony by.

Tony sniggered as Ben muttered despairingly,

“Not even an oven.”

Reggie interjected with his own jocular form of commiseration,

“Or a decent hob. I say, poor show on the college’s part hey?”

Running a hand down his face Ben looked downright ancient for a moment, before shuddering and seeming to pull himself back together. Tony personally thought it was a bit of an overreaction but…

“Yes.” A sigh, “I should have expected this really. After all Cambridge is old enough that the old-ways still hold sway here.”

“Old Ways?”

Reggie asked the question, though Tony suspected he knew the answer already he made a point of looking like he was paying attention to the response,

“Yes. You were either rich enough to afford the fully catered multi-course meals that the college cooks provided, or you were too poor to attend the university. The lack of private cooking facilities for your servants,” at this Ben sneered derisively, “was intended as gentle encouragement to act like a civilised man and join your fellows at Hall to eat, drink, and make merry. Of course, the 20^th Century World Wars, and the rise of the red brick universities supposedly did for that attitude, but the infrastructure remains.”

Tony wondered about that turn of phrase but let it be, Ben was looking downright morose after that little speech. Even Reggie, who’d only known Tony for a couple of weeks, and had only just met Ben seemed taken aback by it. 

To Tony’s chagrin Ben whipped up an …interesting concoction with apparent ease, despite the state of the facilities. To make matters even worse, he and Reggie rapidly decided that they were friends. Almost immediately they were trading tales of posh public boarding-school life, and what it was like to have family in the military. Reggie seemed very impressed by the things that Ben wasn’t saying – seeming to understand the unspoken language of what Ben couldn’t say far better than Tony did. (Tony guessed it was because they were both British.)

The one pot meal was edible, and probably better than the fare at Westchester, but… The flavour combinations were utterly alien, even to Tony’s internationally travelled palate. Still, it was nice that his friends got on, right?

~~~~~~~

Tony glared down at the stupid rock in frustration. He didn’t think he was any closer to achieving the glowy dusty bullshit that Ben had requested of him, months ago.

To make matters worse, beyond Ben telling Tony to concentrate on the idea of walls/shields/barriers for at least a few minutes per meditation session, Ben was outright refusing to offer any tutelage on the whole magic front.

Res. Nada. Niente. Nothing. Nihil. Nic. Tipota. Meiyou. Asgje. Ekkert. Dim byd.

Tony couldn’t believe that after all his oblique warnings about eldritch beings out to eat his soul that Ben was being remarkably laisez fair about the whole scenario, especially given how damned weird his third eye visions had gotten. (Hares? What the hell was up with the hares?)

Tony glared down at the stupid rock.

Any minute now Tony was going to start spouting off such gems as, ‘not all who wander are lost’, or ‘wingardium leviosanot leviosa. Hell, Tony had turned around to Ben and rattled off the line about miserable dunderheads in a fit of pique, but the line was subtle enough that Ben’s arched brow in response was only in disbelief as he sipped at his insipid tea.

Still glowering, all attempts at meditation forgotten Tony started to mutter another infamous chant, something in him wanting to ward off the feeling of creeping dread that built a little more every time he failed to get past the hurdle that the damned stupid rock represented,

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it had gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Tony huffed out a cynical bark of a laugh at his own stupidity, if anything was liable to summon an eldritch abomination from a demon dimension it was something quoted from the same twisted brain that thought all-knowing prescient God-Emperors were the same thing as giant omnipotent disgusting sandworms mixed in with holy Jihads. Trust the m-word to bring out his inner, secret, disgustingly wants to be something more than human, ego.

Tony shook himself out of his foul mood, brought on by a combination of boredom, and frustration – the university work, even at an institution as world-renowned as this one for being tough and stringently demanding of its students was … Well it was boring. This was highlighted by the way Tony’s brain was currently obsessing over his activities in the early-90s, the awkward fumble from his MIT years to trying and failing to be a productive member of society. Then the sudden rise that came with his unexpected promotion to CEO that resulted from his parents’ …untimely death.

Giving up on the magic for the time being, recognising that the spin of his thoughts had gone dark on him – Tony got back to the job of mentally cataloguing the patents that he was planning on releasing. Releasing, but not via Arc Tech. Tony needed viable alternatives to the Arc Reactors, he intended to trickle in the green energy. He needed to take the softly-softly approach so as not to attract the ire of the numerous international powers that relied on oil, and the powerful lobbying of the oil corporations. It was infuriating but introducing viable highly-efficient solar power was a gentle first step on the way to arc reactors. Hopefully a stepping stone on the way to more efficient cold fusion drives with their powerful, arc-reactor backed-up, magnetic containment fields. The powerful and above all clean sources of energy were so necessary for the long-game that Tony was only just beginning to realise he’d been subconsciously putting together for months.

Nasa, Hubble and the International Space Station were all well and good. But Tony intended to get early warnings if anything like the Chitauri ever came knocking on their door again. Portals were not the only method of travel. The Starkanium laced arcs Tony was planning, and, much as Tony hated to admit it to himself, the Wizards like Strange and Wong would hopefully be proof against the portals. Something in Starkanium was inimical to magic, or at least that’s the conclusion they’d been hesitantly beginning to reach before that last desperate gambit. No, Tony intended to build a base, several bases. Mars, Ganymede, the Asteroid Belt. (Quite apart from its magnetosphere, Ganymede would be a handy spot to keep an eye on Titan too.)

If anything came knocking, Earth would be prepared to answer.

Tony hoped that first contact this time would be mutually beneficial. But he was preparing for another incident like the Chitauri.

~~~~~

That evening Tony dug out the stash of ludes that had been niggling away at the back of his mind ever since Peter had given them to him. Popping open the top of the bottle Tony stared down at the 717 stamped pills contained within for a long moment. Deciding ‘to hell with it’ Tony pulled one out, snapped it in half, and swallowed the small portion he’d allowed himself dry.

The now familiar urge to sleep came and went, and then Tony was staring in blissful reverie at the play of light through the warped panes that made up his window.

It was a better way to spend the evening than wondering just why even university level work was a chore. The peaceful here and now, I am me and I am here sensation that the drug provided, usually anathema to a mind as future focused as his was, was as ever, strangely pleasurable.

A much-welcomed distraction from his worries for the future of the world, and just what would happen when, inevitably, something happened (probably Rogers). Something that would trigger the old worries that had been pushing the world to the brink of disaster even before Thanos came along and ended everything.

Nah, Tony grinned up at the ceiling, all that stuff was for future-him to worry about.

~~~~~~~

Tony had been resentful of Ben’s constant presence, no, not resentful, fearful that the man’s constant supervision would prove a hurdle too far for the very few people indeed that would be willing to hang around a prepubescent during their university days. He needn’t have worried. Tony’s little group of weirdos had gravitated together regardless, and if anything, Ben’s presence seemed to ease some of the inevitable abrasions, not worsen them.

Ben’s quietly sarcastic humour may have initially clashed with Amara’s sense of what did/didn’t constitute a rude interaction… And if Tony was being honest with himself, Molly’s too from the initial, alarming way her expression had drawn close, gone thunderous and dark in the face of him sniping back at her muttered under her breath comments about British Army stooges. But… Somehow Ben managed to charm his way into their good graces.

Well, with Molly there was no somehow about it. They’d been sat together in the JCR, enjoying each other’s company, talking about how outrageous it was that Rosalind Franklin had effectively been written out of the history books like so many important women before her, with Reggie contributing that far too many pop-artists had been written out of existence purely because of their gender.

In fact, he had a whole list, each name was accompanied by an enthusiastic description of their style and merits – Pauline Boty, Marjorie Strider, Rosalyn Drexler, Idelle Weber, Sturtevant, Sister Mary Corita Kent, Evelyne Axell, Marta Minujin, and of course Marisol. The woman who had apparently given Warhol his whole ‘say nothing’ schtick and yet who’d been shamefully pushed aside and ignored where Warhol’s star had only continued to rise.

When Ben had asked why on earth Reggie had such an apparently comprehensive list of female pop-artists rattling around in his brain, Reggie had flushed bright pink, the heat rushing upwards to the tips of his ears, and embarrassedly replied that,

“Well… They’re cheap. And I like the artwork.”

The quartet had happily been minding their own business, when a boorish blonde idiot, all of 6’4 and nearly as wide across demanded,

“What the fuck is the help doing in here?”

It seemed that someone hadn’t gotten the memo that the college had gone co-ed.

Unnoticed behind the classist and sexist bigot, who was quaking with misspent rage, Ben calmly and quietly stood up and clamped a hand down on the junction between the man’s neck and shoulder – such as it was. (The man apparently had no neck he was so ridiculously bullish.)

With apparent ease that made a mockery of the size difference between the man-mountain and the skinny looking Ben, Ben turned the idiot around. Once Ben was sure he had his full attention he sneered at him down the length of his nose,

“What do you think you’re doing young man?”

 “What do you care? She’s only the help. They’re not supposed to be in here when students ar-”

“I care because a student of this college is being verbally abused by… “Ben sneered and raked his gaze pointedly up the hulk that was still looming, “A throwback from the Cro-Magnon era.”

A puzzled blink was the only sign that the fool had heard Ben’s sentence. Where they’d previously been quietly braying at some joke or other in the corner, the idiot’s friends were looking distinctly embarrassed that they’d been seen in his company.

“What’s a skinny streak of piss like you doing in here anyway? You like jailbait old chap?”

Tony stared wide-eyed up at the coldly furious gleam in Ben’s eye.

“I’m here to protect the students in this room from coming to any harm.”

“Indeed? Well I’m not doing any harm. And I’m a student.”

The smug ‘so there!’ was written loudly across the broad face, the idiot made a move, grabbing at Molly’s upper arm. Molly gasped in pain as the club-like hand clenched violently, that seemed to be the signal that Ben had been waiting for.

Tony didn’t quite see what happened next, one moment the beefy jock was obviously on the verge of doing something unpleasant. The next he was on the floor, grasping for breath, as his… well, probably not friends, jeered at him mockingly from the pool table in the corner.

Ben leant down and whispered, just loudly enough for Tony to catch the words,

“Who dares wins.”

Tony wasn’t sure what about the phrase was so familiar, something military? Tony was ashamed to admit he’d leaned heavily on Rhodey for most of his interactions with them for SI back in the day. Apparently, the muscle-headed idiot knew what it meant, he paled dramatically.

“Don’t you dare threaten another student. I’ll be watching.” Ben raised his voice, “And that goes for your friends too! I catch you bullying anyone, and you’ll be sent down!”

Tony knew what that threat meant, being expelled from the university. He grinned evilly down at the still gasping meathead from his position on the sofa. The guy’s not-friends were still braying nasally at him from their corner, though their previously showy laughter had taken on that nervous tittering edge in the face of Ben’s obvious rage.

Ben grinned, apparently completely ignoring the scene behind him, as the not-friends berated their embarrassing companion, and said in a voice designed to carry,

“Could have been worse, I could have told the idiot that he’s got a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. “

The shocked mocking laughter coming from the corner, and the sudden look of confusion on the face that had clearly been hit with a ball once too often said it all.

~~~~~~~

Edwin was pleased to see that the reports from Ben, and the staff at St Cedd’s were glowing. Their boy was doing them proud. He’d made friends too, which Edwin had to admit was a relief, and quite a weight off his mind. Though Ben was less than polite about their treatment at the institution. It seemed that Tony had fallen in with his fellow ‘outlaws’ as Ben put it. Much of the rest of the letter was taken up with a rant about the racism and sexism that Ben had rather harshly from the sounds of it, put a stop to several times.

Edwin only wished that he could join him in his task of keeping an eye on Tony and his newfound friends, but it was physically impossible, and besides, Ana needed him. Edwin sighed wistfully. The world was so grey these days. Ana said that the chemo made her feel more unwell than the cancer had, and that the enforced time off because of it was completely maddening. Edwin was painfully aware that only a couple of years ago Ana would likely be told that since it was cancer, it was all in her head, and she should go to anger therapy to try and treat it… So… Edwin was counting their lucky stars, but he sympathised with his darling wife’s restlessness. Edwin knew too well the feeling of uselessness.

Edwin was doing his utmost to ease the difficult time, case in point, he’d set-up their old LP player in the tiny kitchen cum dining room so that his darling could listen to their old favourites in the relative warmth of the space near the stove. Ana had always coped with chilly weather better than he had, but these days she claimed that the cold cut straight through her. And Autumn had long since settled into the harsh winters that came with living in New York state.

At the moment a copy of one of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s albums was spinning away in the corner. Her bluesy-rock harkening back to a better decade, when the world was gently hopeful, despite the hardships that everyone still faced. Tharpe had been a mainstay favourite of theirs since the bad old days of the 1930s,

“Didn’t it rain children…”

The homey cheerful tone set by the music complimented Edwin’s self-appointed task. His darling’s taste buds had seemingly reacted to the new medical regime. Ana currently found Paprikash, and many other staples they’d previously enjoyed completely repellent. The dinner he was preparing had many small alterations carried out to it, to hopefully appeal to Ana’s waning appetite. 

Whilst apple torte – with its rich buttery pastry was out – Edwin made a mean stewed pear. And the little shop that Edwin bought their groceries from had had a glut of them lately. Smiling softly at his darling wife, wrapped up in her elegantly patterned headscarf against the frigid Autumn weather, Edwin dunked the pears into the mixture of soft cider, cinnamon and cloves that he’d prepared earlier.

Ana was reading Ben’s missive, whilst tapping along to the rhythmic music, the bony new lines of her shoulders as close to relaxed as Edwin had seen them all day. Edwin hated this waiting game, hated what the chemo was visibly doing whilst they waited to find out if it was working, and hated that they couldn’t spend what time they potentially had remaining to them with their… Their son. Edwin had to admit to himself that it helped greatly to hear that their boy was doing so well. He got back on with the cooking, the fragrant broth for the pears now hot enough for his purposes,

“Ana darling?”

“Yes dear?”

“What do you think Tony would like to receive for Christmas?”

Ana smiled, the tendons standing out in her newly thin neck as she did so,

“Probably another record dear.”

“But Bowie hasn’t got anything due – I checked with S-“

“No, not yet more Bowie. How about we introduce him to the old classics? The Blues? Rock? Jazz? Duke Ellington? John Coltrane? King Curtis?”

Ana paused to think about it for a moment and then said musingly,

“Perhaps we shouldn’t drop him straight in the jazz. But the R&B men perhaps, as they renamed the blues? Which artist though? Muddy Waters? Victoria Spivey? Jimmy Witherspoon? Howlin’ Wolf? Nina Simone?”

Ana’s eyes wrinkled up fondly, her newly translucent skin crinkling delicately,

“From the way he’s been lapping up every album he’s been given so far I’m sure he’ll appreciate a new genre to enjoy.” 

Edwin smiled in fond reminiscence back at his frail wife, the shared pleasure of music had always been a source of joy for the two of them.

Howard had always teased Edwin for liking the ‘slave music’ as he’d so tastelessly referred to it, only deferring and calling it ‘colored music’ (as if that was any better) when Edwin had tersely pointed out that Howard happily slept with enough women of colour to make his objections hypocritical in the extreme. Ana and he had shared a love of band-music and jazz, in an era when black music simply wasn’t played in the ‘reputable’ music halls in the US. They’d both been saddened when they’d come over to the country and realised that they’d have to search high and low to find the music they so adored.

Howard’s teasing had taken on a different tone, when in the British R&B boom of the 60s, blues and jazz were suddenly what the next, altogether too young, generation were all listening to, making tasteless jokes about cradle-robbing. Ana had found their youthful enthusiasm joyous, Edwin had been of the pleased opinion that they had good taste. But it was a damned shame that it had taken Chris Barber, and the British Invasion for most people in this great, but altogether strange country, to recognise what was in their own backyard.

Then again Edwin had been completely horrified with his own encounter with the legally enshrined racial divide in this vast country. It must have been, oh, the mid-50s, when Howard had had unavoidable business down south of the Rust Belt… The legal segregation that Edwin had been confronted with that day in the South made his blood boil. Worse, he’d been powerless to do anything about it, uncomfortable as it made him, he was an unwilling ‘beneficiary’ of a foul system that was enforced with extreme violence.

Back then Edwin had still been hopeful that he’d be able to return to his home country someday. From the correspondence Edwin indulged in with those members of the old regiment that had been sympathetic to Edwin’s plight, he was well aware that in old Blighty there were plenty of bigots alright. But it wasn’t enshrined in law.

Quite the opposite in fact, that sort of separation had been thrown asunder when the government had all but begged people from the Commonwealth nations to come and bolster the much-depleted population after the War. People from India, the young new nation Pakistan born out of the Empire’s bloody folly, Bangladesh, the innumerable Commonwealth nations in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. People from across the globe were begged to come over and make a new life in the UK, and they did.

Sadly, shamefully, the greeting they were met with from the local population was often less than welcoming, Edwin had been… tired and appalled by the reports from his old regimental chums of the sort of violence, and tasteless “No Dogs, No Coloured, No Irish” that had apparently infected small-businesses around the country.

But in its own, vanishingly small way, it was still heartening to hear that there hadn’t been anything near the scale of what he’d witnessed in The South. Though Edwin had to wonder about his fellow countrymen sometimes. It was as though the moral outrage as the foul realities of, and the subsequent banning of slavery in 1807, and further in 1833, hadn’t happened yet. Some of the letters he received from back home painted a vivid picture of how well (not well at all) the less salubrious members of society had greeted the new arrivals to their ‘fair land’.

Yes, Edwin thought, there was hope yet. Every town in the small nation apparently had at least one ‘curry house’ and Chinese takeaway. The restaurants popping up alongside the more familiar fish and chip shops and pubs, vindaloos and chow mein becoming the norm. That next generation with their enthusiastic love for the music that Howard so denigrated… Well, Edwin knew from experience that music, and food were the great levellers, perhaps if people were willing to share their respective cultures, soon more things would soon change for the better.

After all the Civil Rights movement over here had achieved so very much in a scant few years. Edwin had dearly wanted to become an active ally to the cause, but to his perpetual shame he’d had been terrified to try and join in that fight for fear of reprisals; his own tricky immigrant status possibly getting the very people he wanted to support into hot water. Nixon and his ilk were ruthless about politically crippling his opponents, by making aspects of their very culture illegal.  

Edwin mused some more on the vagaries of army life. The pros and cons of both nations that he thought of as home, one way or the other. There was a damned good reason Dum Dum Dugan (Edwin often wondered why no one called that man out for nicknaming himself after the deadly, and banned, hollow point bullets that the Imperialistic forces had taken great pleasure in using against the native populations that they were subjugating in the 19^th century… But he’d never quite worked up the courage to ask.) had chosen to remain in the US even though with everything he’d done for the British army during and after the war, he could have remained in Britain as an acknowledged hero. Fed up as he was of the British Isles class-based hypocrisy, Edwin had to agree that the Boston MA raised Brit had made the right choice. Though if Edwin had been given the chance at the dual citizenship Dugan owned, he’d have jumped on it.

 Despite Edwin’s own misgivings about the state of old Blighty, he also remembered that alongside the other British members of the Howling Commandos; Private Percival ‘Pinky’ Pinkerton (again where did that boy come up with his nickname?), and Brigadier (now Lord) James Montgomery Falsworth. That the German member Eric Koenig, and Private Gabe Jones had both chosen to naturalise in the UK after the war. Gabe Jones remarking to Edwin at the time that he had a better chance to make something of himself in a country where the colour of his skin didn’t automatically bar him from using the same bathroom as his squadmates.    

He really should try and get back in touch with the Commandos… Edwin was sure that Falsworth would love to dote on -

“Edwin? Edwin. EDWIN!”

“Yes dear?”

Psizzle!

Glancing down at the noise Edwin realised that the pears had boiled over. He yelped, and hastily mopped up the mess, waving off Ana’s attempts to help with the increasingly sodden tea towel in the process.

“Sorry dear, wool-gathering.”

Ana’s response was a typically arch,

“Clearly.”

Smiling gently at Ana, Edwin realised with a start that he’d drifted off down dark avenues, avenues that really had nothing to do with (hopefully) good food and good music.

“Sorry I never replied, did I? I think it sounds like a wonderful idea darling. I’m sure Tony will love whatever you choose.”

~~~~~~~~

Tony was exhausted when he got in that evening. It was the first day of Week 3 of Michaelmas term, a Thursday, due to Cambridge's ancient calendar choices... Already he was getting fed up of the work. It didn't help that he’d spent a frustrating morning at the Mathematics department trying desperately to remember precisely when certain latter-day 20^th century theorems became common-knowledge. The frustrations of the morning were followed by a truly irritating afternoon with a smugly grinning Ben who did absolutely nothing to help, whilst Tony tried to work out just where the CompSci labs that he’d signed up for actually were. Well, Tony was fed up. It had been a relief when Ben had disappeared before dinner, the man had been infuriating that afternoon.

Tony was horrified to find Ben sat in his room with a face like thunder. Next to him on Tony’s bed was a small mountain’s worth of pills. Specifically, the 717s that Tony had been quietly popping every weekend, and if Tony was being honest with himself, increasingly often, every evening, laid out all around Ben. Disappointment all but dripped from his words,

“When were you going to tell me about this little development?”

Tony gulped, fear and rage boiling up inside him into a hot potent mess of emotion. Despite his own furious question, Ben didn’t let him get a word in,

“Ludes? Really? How could you be so stupid? Do you have any idea? If it had been hash or booze I might have let it pass, but skipping straight to the hard hallucinogenic drugs? Tony. I thought you knew better. At the very least wait until your brain has stopped growing, for fuck’s sake! “

Ben tailed off, worked the top off the large bottle, and started swallowing its contents. He literally tipped the bottle up as if the contents were water. To Tony’s creeping horror, that gradually increased to outright terror as Ben. Kept. Going. The man proceeded to eat Tony’s entire lude stash. Ben scooped up the handfuls that had already been laid out on the bed and pretty much inhaled them too. 

There… Well, given the size of the bottle that Peter had thrust into Tony’s hands – there were hundreds of pills. With a steady hand, and a coldly furious gaze, Ben systematically and rapidly, worked his way through all of them.

“Ben, Ben? What are you doing? Are you mad??”

Reality kicked in, and Tony unfroze, he rushed over and tried to wrest the bottle from Ben’s hands. Infuriatingly Ben merely held the bottle out of Tony’s reach and carried on eating.

In desperation Tony tried to climb up Ben’s legs to grab the damned hateful stuff. But, the man who’d been training him for all these months was better than him, larger than he was, and was obviously still in practice, unlike Tony. He calmly turned, as if he hadn’t just eaten enough Ludes to kill a whole roomful of men, and said,

“I’m showing you just how dangerous these drugs are Tony.”