Heyo! Just a warning that this is a very short chapter. It's an introduction, really. Not quite a prologue, but not quite a first chapter due to it's length. Don't worry! I should have the next chapter up some time today to make up for it!
Anyway, I'm Aidan! Nice to meet y'all!
Unfortunately, Marvel and all of its wonders do not belong to me, it's merely a world my imagination likes to dabble in.
Please read and review! Not my first rodeo, but my first in a very long time, and my first under this account. Also my first fanfiction that isn't Harry Potter...
Enough rambling, I hope you enjoy!
-Aidan
"You should have been a boy." The words rang out clear and matter of fact over the work-place that four-year-old Antonia wasn't often allowed to see. "If you had been a boy, I could have shared all of this with you. This entire empire would have been yours someday.
"But father.."
"Not now, Antonia. You do not interrupt when your betters are speaking. And who are your betters, dear?"
She looked down at her perfectly shiny, unscuffed mary-janes. "Elders, men, and people smarter than me."
"Good girl," Howard answered off-handedly before continuing. "Now. As it is. Daddy is going to give you the chance to prove myself, and the world, wrong. That means, Miss Antonia Edwina Stark, that you will be allowed in my shop."
Her eyes flashed up in confusion. One of her daddy's biggest rules was not to even go near the door to his work space. Howard quirked an eyebrow at her, waiting for a retort that never came. She forced her eyes back down to her shoes, signaling that she would listen quietly, like a good girl. She heard her father move away to one of his tables and pick something up, and allowed her eyes to dance around the room, alighting on tools, partially finished projects, and a few finished but discarded ideas.
"Toni," Howard started, "I want to share this with you. I do. But I need to know that even though you are a girl, and even though girls are flighty, emotional beings, you will be able to lead all of this someday. That means that you will have to prove your mind worthy. Nothing small will do. Your creation must be life-altering. You must prove yourself just as good as a son of Howard Stark should be."
Those words rung in Antonia's mind. "You must prove yourself just as good as a son of Howard Stark should be." "As good as a son of Howard Stark should be." "A son of Howard Stark."
"I will, papa," she promised. "I'll be the best son you ever wanted."
Howard frowned at her, already starting to doubt his judgement because of her perceived take on the words. "I'll leave you to it, then. Don't hurt yourself on the tools."
Toni ran her fingertips along the edge of one of the tables. Her mind was whizzing through possibilities, most of which had to do with the thick volume weighing heavily against her back in the schoolbag that was slung across her shoulders. Anatomy. It was her current favorite subject, and she had made her way through enough books on the topic to know more than most doctors could remember off-handedly. She was a genius, there was no doubt about that. But to be a true son of Howard Stark… Toni picked up a pen and notepad and began a list of what she would need to start. She would become the son Howard wished her to be, and that project would be her saving grace.
The little girl thought carefully, sitting atop a stool at one of the tables, chewing the end of her pen thoughtfully while her legs swung happily. 'I can't change my chromosomes,' she thought to herself. 'But I can change my outward appearance.' Her mind flew through the perceived differences between a boy and a girl. Sketches began to fill her page of the physicalities of the two genders, many of those drawings overlaying each other so that she could study the subtle differences. "A suit!" she exclaimed to herself. 'A suit to cover a girl's body to make them look like a boy,' was scrawled across the page. She glanced through her notes so far and her mouth twitched into a smile at the notes on chromosomes at the beginning. As a girl, it was her two X chromosomes that presented a problem. This suit wouldn't change her chromosomes, but it would change people's perception of which she possessed.
Her hand moved carefully across the top of a new page, giving it a clean, neatly written title. 'The Y Suit.'