1Tony had always been a vivid dreamer.
His world was a brick house with no door. It was a trap – an escape room from which the smartest man in the universe – which Tony didn't claim to be – couldn't escape. Sometimes, others could be trapped with him.
"Where are we going?" Tony's mother asked, laughing. He just tugged her by the hand again, and ran down a hallway that did not end.
A door would slam, a bad dream turned nightmare, and now the walls closed in. "Where are we going?" Natasha Romanoff asked, eyes bright green and just as amused. Tony slammed into her when the roof collapsed, but there was nothing to be done for either of them.
The dreams held the same essence every time. All the puzzles, equations, problems he couldn't solve – an exit that never existed. Inevitably, he'd find himself staring into an ever-present mirror – there you are, his lonely reflection said, round eyes and messy hair and all Tony, go ahead – stare at all the ties and locks that keep you here.
Tony rapped his knuckles on a rain-soaked car window. The sound was sharp, but his mother wasn't startled. "Please?" he requested, very polite and earnest.
Maria obligingly rolled down the window. There were tear tracks on her cheeks, matching the rivulets trailing down the glass of the windshield. Tony's eyes followed them quietly, back and forth and glinting under the pale lighting, until he had something to say.
"Scooch," he requested. Maria paused – she did this a lot, parsing Tony's words when he was far too holistic and unexpressive with them – and shuffled over to the passenger's seat, improbably stripped of all her usual grace.
Tony plopped himself behind the wheel, dripping rain everywhere, and wiggled his fingers at her as a request for the keys. Maria's eyes were framed by pretty, crisp red lines, scrutinizing him; she handed them over.
The engine roared and he peeled off the driveway in an unnecessary hurry, tires squealing erratically, just because he knew it would exasperate her.
"Where are we going?" Tony's mother asked. He wiggled his brows at her, and Maria let a small smile play at her lips, because she was exasperated.
In the great countdown of life, Tony never knew what number it was, the day he was living.
"Pepper," he asked, in one of those moments where she made him forget everything about himself that wasn't wrapped in her, "what're you afraid of?"
Pepper twisted, laid her head on his scarred heart. "Nothing," she declared.
It sounded so final and confident. "Really?"
"Really."
"I'm scared of everything."
"I know. I'm a practical woman, Tony."
"How literally do you mean that, right this moment?"
Pepper's lips pulled up a little; his heartbeat spasmed for a second. Tony would spend several lifetimes chasing that smile. "Impermanence," she murmured, "it's not fun to dream about forever when it doesn't exist."
"Pep-"
She kissed him. His skin must have visibly lit up under her touch. "I've lost a lot. I'll lose more." Pepper straightened and gently eased out of his arms, making him feel the loss rather harshly. "In a little bit, Morgan will come jump on the bed, and we'll pretend to wake up. We'll have breakfast and you'll feed your alpaca. Tomorrow we can do it again. All I want from you is that you stay as long as you can."
Tony gaped after her – she settled again, this time burying her face in the crook of his neck, and closed her eyes. He was left playing with the hair she'd spilled across his chest, goldin the morning light and blended in with her freckles; all Tony's genius could come up with was a chant of impermanence, impermanence, impermanence, and a sudden sense of impending doom, because his moment was over.
Blindly, Tony pawed around for his phone. He dusted off a file he'd created back when he'd watched his girlfriend take control of Iron Man in a rather unique way, glowing red from inside out with a shredded gauntlet wrapped around her arm.
By the time the door squeaked open, he'd picked out the color. Morgan jumped on the bed, Tony and Pepper pretended to wake up. They had breakfast and Tony fed their alpaca. By the time the afternoon rolled around, he was running tests on a new helmet interface.
Tony had decided he didn't want kids long before he met Harley Keener, but that kid was definitely a validation of his feelings on the matter. He'd never discussed it with Pepper – she was the sort of person who would just know, anyway – but the only good thing he'd wrought from his extensively documented daddy issues was a kind of instinctive certainty. It told him, staring at a pint-sized, snarky mechanic-to-be, I can't ever ruin something like that.
"Hold me, kid. Hold me."
Hugging Peter had sounded like a shout, like screaming laughter and a crowd's cheer – it had sounded like 'I win'. Snapping his fingers, hearing Pepper and his kid doing their best to comfort him in his final moments, promising him his victory; it was like watching the party from the sidelines, all the people he loved singing their own anthem – it had sounded like 'they win'.
To the victor go the spoils. Tony had made damn sure of that.
Tony picked fights because he was morally outraged, because he was self-righteous, because he was angry, and because he could; not in that order. It meant there was a specific type of person he picked fights with, and to his chagrin, it was the exact type of person Tony saw in the bathroom mirror every morning.
Occasionally, instead of falling for Tony's bait, Howard tried to take better charge of the situation.
"Tell me something, son," Howard said, and Tony didn't think his tone had much in the way of emotional inflection, "where are we going?"
Tony had just been trying to have a vicious argument about why he should be allowed to stay in Malibu for the summer; he hadn't been angling for a heart-to-heart. "Y'know, I can usually keep up with you no problem, but you're gonna have to dumb that down for me, just this once."
"Where do you see this going?" his father clarified, uncharacteristically patient. Tony blinked. "Do you have an endgame?"
Not dying of boredom in New York for two months. "Getting out of this conversation alive," he chanced instead.
"And how do you plan to do that?" Howard prompted. "Pissing me off so much I let you out of my sight before I say something I regret?"
"That'd be nice." Tony was really pushing his father's limits. Luckily, today, they seemed extra flexible. Howard's only reaction was a twitching eye. "I know why you want me in New York, you know."
Howard stiffened. His father was good at keeping his secrets, but Tony was better at sniffing them out. In this specific instance, Tony hadn't sniffed anything out, necessarily, but he knew his own father – he was far too insistent about the New York trip to not have ulterior motives, and he would never have this much tolerance for Tony's rebellion if he wasn't feeling uneasy about it.
All of which left a business-related problem to blame for Tony's upcoming summer. It made him extra callous in this particular argument.
"You're smart. You're strong." Howard granted, studying him with a gaze that was calculating, analytical. "So don't get angry. Because you could raze the world if you wanted to."
He stood and left Tony in stunned silence for a record length of two seconds. "So we're still leaving for New York?"
"Yes," Howard replied without missing a beat. "I hope you're packed on time, because you'll lose car privileges for a month otherwise."
In the end, Rhodey smiled at him – Tony didn't have enough in him to think about what it meant, but maybe, he imagined, his best friend knew not to bring sadness to this place, where Tony was dying to keep another one of his weapons out of someone else's hands. Maybe, he hoped, they'd both figured out that one thing at the top of Tony's priority list, and Rhodey was finally okay with it.
Tall, blonde and righteous; a fine summation of everything put on this earth specifically to aggravate me.
Tony was loopy enough from expensive drugs, cheap shawarma, and a possible concussion that he couldn't be certain he hadn't said that out loud. Either way, Steve sported his habitually stoic, earnestly concerned Captain America expression in response. Tony had known the guy for all of twenty-four hours and he could paint that look with his eyes closed. He had never painted anything before in his life.
(Definitely the drugs.)
"It's messing with my head, how not-imaginary you are," Tony greeted him before the guy could open his mouth. "I seriously met two self-proclaimed gods today, but it's that moral righteousness that's killing me. Just tone it down."
"They actually don't call themselves gods," Steve replied thoughtfully. He was leaning against the doorway in Tony's hospital room, a visit surely prompted by Natasha sniffing around Tony's whereabouts. "Well, Loki might've, but I don't know that he really believed it."
"Beg pardon? You don't think he believed it? Were the two of us fighting two entirely distinct figures straight off Norse mythology today?" Tony slapped the bed beside him, thinking about how eager Clint had been to leave their company, shaken by the day's events, and about how quietly happy Bruce had been, to have a place to stay in Stark Tower. "Hey, now we know Thor exists, do you think we're gonna end up fighting Osiris, or Juno, or one of those other guys, the ones who wear white dresses all day long?"
"You're especially talkative right now, and that's saying something," Steve noted politely. "I take it you're on the good stuff?"
"Yeah, it's what I get for 'playing fast and loose' with 'my life'."
"That so? They must've changed the definition of negative reinforcement in this century."
"Don't tell me you have a sense of humor too," Tony groaned, sitting up a little fast, which provoked an aborted motion on Steve's part. He'd reached forward as though he intended to grab Tony. "Were you about to hold me like a fainting Victorian lady? I'll warn you, I'm taken. You do not want to fight Pepper over my honor, she doesn't take prisoners."
"My sense of humor is probably not as fine-tuned as yours," Steve said, and Tony was not imagining the mirth in his eyes. (Is everything a joke to you?) "You have a wife?"
"God no, don't insult her," Tony said without thinking, and was rewarded with a confused glaze in Steve's eyes, who probably thought he was facing yet another thing he didn't understand in this century. "She's my girlfriend. Couple steps behind. I believe the equivalent, where you're from, was asking the lady's father whether you were allowed to know her name."
Steve nodded once, square and determined. Jeez. "Right."
"Relax," Tony advised, mouth running away from him a little, "things will start making sense with time."
Tony was terrible at giving advice. Luckily, Steve seemed the type that would be terrible at receiving it, too. Tony even thought the man's shoulders loosened a little. "So where is she?" he asked, taking the liberty of sitting at Tony's bedside.
"In DC, until New York gets the all-clear. Are you gonna stay long?" he asked bluntly.
Steve expertly ignored him. Tony could already tell that would get annoying fast. "You didn't tell her you're in the hospital."
"Elementary, my dear Captain," Tony replied automatically, laying back down with a childish huff. He had the vague thought that he would be embarrassed about his behavior when the drugs wore off. "This is a first world hospital visit, let's not make a fuss. Hold up, was Conan Doyle born when you crashed your plane?"
"Yes, Tony," Steve said patiently. "That's not a Conan Doyle quote."
"It's not? Wait, don't answer that, I don't care."
"I used to have a newspaper cutout of his obituary," Steve commented, and Tony wasn't too out of it to note the faraway note in his tone of voice. "Bucky – uh, this friend of mine who I went to war with –" Tony made a mental note to take the poor guy to the Smithsonian – "he snuck in A Study in Scarlet when he enlisted."
"That's- morbid," Tony said. "And cool; they had fangirls in the thirties too. My favorite Holmes is The Final Problem," he added, apropos of nothing.
"I could've guessed that," Steve conceded, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Listen, Tony, I didn't just come here to check on you. I wanted to apologize."
"I think I liked Stark better," Tony said. "What am I apologizing for?"
"I'm apologizing," Steve stressed, brows furrowed in a clear effort to intensify the Captain in Captain America. "It shouldn't have taken me so long, but for what it's worth, I see it now. I was wrong. When I told you you weren't a hero."
"Dear god. This is terrible, but you've gotta realize – you forgot the violins for this scene."
Steve rolled his eyes. "I didn't forget, I just can't play the violin," he deadpanned.
"Apology accepted," Tony said abruptly, because if Steve Rogers showed off any more of his sass, in his current condition, Tony might just become tongue-tied. "Let's not talk about it anymore."
"What you did-"
"Oh no, you don't," Tony interrupted. "I am not about to get a personal rousing speech. Get out of my room, Rogers, I'm serious."
Steve seemed to chew on it for a minute before sighing. He nodded and stood up. "Alright."
("Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me," Steve Rogers had said, tongue firmly in cheek, and the last person Tony had taken an order from was his father, but from that moment on, he tuned his ears and straightened his spine every time Captain America walked by. The measure of a man, it turned out, was not what the product of Tony's bereaved, petty, overdeveloped mind conjured up – he was very rarely surprised into silence.)
"For the record –" Tony said before Steve could take two steps, voice carefully devoid of emotion – "it's not a competition or anything, but I just want you to know – I figured out I was wrong even before I said- it. Before I said the thing I said." Steve cracked the second smile Tony had seen on his face thus far, hopefully taking that as Tony's own apology.
("We are not soldiers," Tony bit out, and hoped, by surprising him back, they'd found some common ground. Tony refused to see a friend as a cog in someone's machine, just a tool with an expiration date; Steve believed in higher purpose, and was willing to be a giant tool himself. They made it work.)
"I'll see you, Stark," Steve said, a hard clap on Tony's shoulder that made him wince and think soldiers,with an exasperation he usually reserved for Rhodey's army buddies.
"Have a splendid one, old chum," Tony told his retreating back.
(We won.)
Tony wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, all alone, at the only bowling alley in the city open at two in the morning.
"You need a bodyguard," his father had told him, "especially if you plan on keeping up your inverted night-day schedule. You're not allowed to go out after ten without a babysitter anymore."
The very same day, at exactly ten-oh-one, Tony snuck out of the house, feeling purposefully bored and defiant. It seemed stupid now - incurring Howard's anger for such a pointless, lonely trip. So he set about doing what he did best: finding a way to make his father go apoplectic without technically ignoring his instructions.
There were three people in the alley. A neon-haired woman, possibly asleep behind the counter, a curly-haired young man occupying one of the plastic chairs, and Tony himself. Tony zeroed in on the guy – he was stretched out in his seat, not snoring like the upcoming employee of the month, but staring blankly into the distance. It made for a pitiful sight.
Tony sat down a couple of seats away, and went surprisingly unnoticed. He took the opportunity to scrutinize him further. Boring jeans, sweat-stained hoodie, beat-up sneakers. In need of a haircut and a shave. Bags under his eyes and a morose expression on his face. The cheeks and the baby browns made him look years younger than the scruff, too.
He was also wearing a name tag, and for the life of him, Tony could not figure out why. He glanced at it - Harold Hogan. That was some terrible alliteration.
The thing was, Tony was always feeling bored and defiant. He pondered Hogan for a little while, and then whistled, two sharp, shrill notes that made the girl behind the counter slip down on her elbows.
"Hey, Happy," Tony called out, watching him start upwards. "Yeah, you," he added as Hogan looked at him, and reached out to pull at the man's sleeve, "you have a job?"
Dragged to a new seat by Tony's side, Hogan stared down at where Tony's hand was still holding onto his arm, and then up at Tony himself. He definitely recognized Tony Stark, which made this less fun; but how boring could he be, with a name like Harold?
"Yes, sir," he replied, feeble and nervous. Tony was pretty sure the guy was older than him, so being referred to as sir was uncanny.
"Perfect, I'll give you a new one."
He recoiled, but Tony held fast. "I was lying, I don't have a job. I just didn't want you to think less of me."
"Even better," Tony said cheerfully. "Appreciate the honesty. I'll quadruple whatever you say your non-existent salary is, so use your imagination wisely."
Hogan's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "If you don't mind me asking, sir, what's the job?"
"Bodyguard. Too many kidnapping and assassination attempts."
"Am I hallucinating?"
"No."
"No?"
"No. It really is two am and I really am offering you a job in a rundown bowling alley."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'm also getting bored now."
"I'll take it," Hogan said quickly, nodding as if to himself. "I'll take the job."
"Great, first shift starts right now. We'll find a less deserted place to hang out. What's your name, by the way?" Tony added as an afterthought, pointedly and ironically staring at his name tag.
Hogan scrambled to catch the jacket Tony threw at him in the meantime, and risked a glance up at his face. "Happy Hogan."
Tony burst out laughing and hoped this one passed his father's background checks.
Tony had spent a good chunk of his life alone. Not just alone, but lonely, as well. In an Afghan cave where he was held prisoner, he was surprisingly neither – he had a wise old prisoner of war for company, who Tony had apparently met in the context of one of his excuses to get wasted.
"You are a talented engineer," the man noted, one of many equally cold, damp nights. "It is not my field of expertise," he admitted, "but I can tell."
"Yeah?" Tony replied emotionlessly, unenthused by the topic of choice. "You see a lot of it at work?"
"My allotted share," Yinsin confirmed noncommittally. Tony's head snapped up to stare. "Come now. Surely by now you know – people who end up here have seen more than the average man."
Tony twitched abruptly, grasped violently at the cable coming out of his chest. By now, Yinsin had learned to identify it as a nervous tick instead of a medical concern. "Did I take something from you?"
"And what is the purpose of that question, hmm? Will it make you feel any better if I say no, or any worse if I say yes?"
"No," Tony said quietly.
"You took nothing from me, Stark," Yinsin explained calmly. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. But that does not make you evil."
"Just an enabler."
"Yes," Yinsin agreed. "Luckily, you appear to have had your eyes opened. So what will you do with them?"
"My eyes or my weapons?" he uttered, a phrase always on the tip of his tongue, lately. Yinsin gazed at him with pity. He had said something about legacy.
Tony tore his weapons apart and built himself a new heart.
"That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes," Yinsin noted, but Tony wasn't so sure he wanted to live that long.
Tony stared at the tools of destruction he had stamped his own name on, the debris of his fruitful labor that Tony had dismantled himself. For some reason, it occurred to him then – it had been his father's name too. Tony wasn't quite sure how, but somewhere along the way, he had become a giant standing on a titan's shoulders.
"Do we know if she had any family?" Tony asked, and hoped for some miraculous answer. Not for Natasha – not for some imaginary people that he didn't know – but for himself.
("Where are we going, Tony?" Natasha asked, smirking, the day the new Avengers moved into the compound. Natasha Romanoff was the only person to whom Tony revealed the location of the good liquor cabinet, and she took the secret to her grave.)
Strike three, Nat whispered in his brain. She'd given Tony the tools to build the most dangerous weapon in the universe.
