Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one.

This is a re-write of something I posted a bit ago but thought it could do with a tweak. Turns out the tweak was a complete re-model. That was fun. I wanted to delve more into Tony's background, so many thanks to the various websites I used for reference. Apologies to Toyota. Taking in recent events, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity, I'm sure you understand.

I've made Tony 21 in this, and Pepper is 18, as is Rhodey. This is because I was writing under the impression that Tony was 21 when his parents died. Then I read he was 17 and I really didn't fancy re-re-writing this. I don't pretend to know anything about the comics as I was only little when I last read them. Everything I've written is either movie knowledge or through the interwebz.

Last thing, I promise – if you haven't had the pleasure of listening to the piece of music named below, I strongly suggest you do so. I hadn't listened to it for about a year, and I sobbed like a frigging baby after hearing it again. Especially whilst writing Tony's bit.

Edit: For some reason this deleted itself...I haven't changed anything.

Haarlemmermeer, Amsterdam, 1994

Virginia Potts stood in the middle of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, hand luggage at her feet, staring up at the departures board, where the word 'Delayed' was flashing at her in bright green lettering. Her flight to London had been scheduled to leave a half hour ago, and then the oh-so cheerful Dutch woman had announced over the tannoy that 'the 4:23am flight to London Heathrow has been delayed due to a technical problem', so here she was, glaring at the large black board, willing the flashing words to change to 'Boarding'. When she realised this wasn't going to work she sighed and made her way to the phone booths on the far wall. After spending a frustratingly long amount of time trying to figure out the international dialling sequence, she managed to get through to America.

"Hello?" a sleepy voice answered from the other end of the line.

"Hey, Carrie, it's Ginny." Virginia tucked the phone under her ear and against her shoulder so she could unzip her bag and withdraw her ticket.

"Ginny! Wow, what time is it there? I just got up – hey, wait a sec, shouldn't you be on a plane right now?" there was a gasp and the sound of the phone being adjusted. "You can't use cell phones on aeroplanes!"

Virginia held the phone away from her ear slightly and winced. "I don't have a cell phone; I'm still in the airport. My flight's been delayed for some reason, I was just calling because I'm probably going to miss my connecting flight in London, and seeing as how you're picking me up when I land, I thought you might like to know."

"Oh." Carrie said. "Well, do you have any idea what time you'll be getting here for?" Virginia heard the sound of rustling paper and assumed her friend was getting ready to jot information down.

"Not a clue." She sighed. "I'm going to go back to the information desk as soon as I hang up." She glanced at her tickets and made sure her passport was in easy reach.

"Well, ok, just call me when you get to London and we'll arrange pick up." Carrie said through a yawn, clicking a pen quickly.

"How about this," Virginia said, trying to stop her own yawn. "I'll make my own way to your house in case I haven't got time to call you between flights, but if I do have time, I'll call and we'll sort it out then."

Carrie made a thoughtful noise down the phone. "Well, it's going to take about an hour to get to Palm Beach and we'll be leaving at around 5pm, so you'll be cutting it real close."

Virginia sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Look, it only takes about twenty minutes' tops to get to Westchester from the airport so to get to your house won't take much longer. If worst comes to worst I'll rent a car and drive to the party myself."

"You sure?" Carrie seemed to brighten up at this. 'Typical' thought Virginia.

"Yeah, sure, you got the address?"

"You know, if you had a cell phone I could just SMS you the address." Carrie sighed and Virginia heard more rustling.

She leant heavily on the edge of the phone booth and held back her own exhale. "They'll soon go out of fashion; you won't catch me with one."

"Whatever, you got something to write this down with?"

After a few more transactions and a double checking of the address Carrie had given, Virginia made her way to the information desk to enquire about her flight. Turned out that the technical problem had been something to do with the fuelling system and the woman behind the desk told her that it would take about an hour to fuel properly but that the plane would be boarding in twenty minutes. Virginia thanked the woman and then asked if there was somewhere she could buy a drink. After receiving directions, she thanked the woman once again and set off to the staircase that would lead her to a shop.

She plodded around the deserted shop for a while; grateful that she had eaten a large breakfast before she left the hotel seeing as all that the airport had to offer was biscuits and yogurt. She picked herself a bottle of water and made her way to the checkout. The cashier was behind the desk, bringing in what appeared to be a delivery of newspapers. Virginia knew a little Dutch, enough to get her around Amsterdam for three days, but she really wanted to find out what was going on in the world. Luckily enough, the airport did cater for its English speaking tourists and had a very small stack of translated newspapers. With her purchases in hand, she made her way back downstairs and sat down just in front of the departures board. She noticed happily that her flight now read 'On Time'. Granted, it had a different departure time, but it was a victory none the less.

She took a sip of her water, tightened the lid and placed it in her duffle bag, before reaching for the paper. Death. Destruction. Sport. 'Well, this was a good idea' Virginia thought to herself as her inner geek turned to the business section. One sub heading jumped out at her before she had even looked at the page properly; TRAGEDY AT STARK INDUSTRIES – pg 17.

Stark...Stark...she had heard that name before. Intrigued, she turned back to the page the article had indicated. It wasn't a large article, it barely covered half the page, and even half of the entire article was made up of – ah yes, Howard Stark. She knew she recognized the name; they had studied his work on the Manhattan Project in History for one semester last year. Howard Stark was an inventor, a brilliant thinker and, most importantly to some, an extremely rich man. Or at least, he had been.

FALL OF A TITAN

By Andrew Finnegan

Yesterday afternoon, the funeral of Howard and Maria Stark took place at Marble Cemetery, New York, after a fatal car accident last week. The couple were driving back to their home in Long Island from one of the popular Oriental restaurants near Columbus Park, when it is thought that the brakes on their car, a 1993 Toyota Aristo, failed and the car crashed into the concrete lane divider. No one else was injured and there is no suspicion of foul play, however there will be an investigation into an apparent brake fault with some Toyota cars. It was rumoured that Stark's life-long friend and CFO, Obadiah Stane, would take over running of the company, but a statement released by the Board of Directors last night reveals that Stark's son, Anthony, 21, will succeed him as Chief Executive Officer. It is yet unknown whether Stane will petition this.

Stark Industrieswas founded by Isaac Stark Sr in the 19th century and-

"This is the boarding call for flight B65798 to London, England. Seats one through one-hundred please go to gate seven, thank you."

Virginia jolted as the man's voice boomed over the tannoy and she scrambled around for her belongings. She was seat number thirty-four. She crammed the paper into her bag and set off for gate seven.

The flight to London went without a problem; they even made it there ten minutes before they should have done. That didn't really aid Virginia though as she then had over an hour to wait for her next flight. She used the time to call Carrie and tell her not to wait as her flight wouldn't be getting anywhere near Miami until six. She got herself a decent (for an airport) meal, thinking that a graduation party would probably have more alcohol than food and then got on her last plane back to the USA.

'Never again' Virginia thought as she collected her baggage from the carousel, finally in Miami, 'never again will I agree to go to a party after being awake since 2am and flying over four thousand miles.' Now carrying a large suitcase (God bless whoever thought it a good idea to put wheels on the bottom of these things) as well as her duffel, she trudged to the Rent-A-Car desk and restrained herself from beating the smile off the far too cheerful man behind it.

"Good evening Miss, how can I help you?" he said perkily.

Virginia winced internally. "I need to rent a car." She said with as much of a 'well wasn't that obvious' tone as she could.

"Certainly." The chipper employee replied. He then proceeded to outline a lot of really boring and fairly irritating policies and procedures before asking her for some ID. Once he'd studiously examined her driver's licence, he handed over a brochure of the cars they had in.

"Most of our younger customers tend to go for the MR2, which is just-"

"No!" Virginia interrupted the man, who gave her an odd look. "No, I, uh...anything but a Toyota." She smiled stupidly and looked back at the brochure. "How about this Audi?"

Twenty minutes later, she was winging her way along the I-75 in a bright red Audi 80. It wasn't as cheap as she'd have liked, but seeing as her only other choices were Toyota's, a Dodge Ram or a Chevy Blazer, she felt this at least would both get her there safely and not make her look like she'd come straight from a Rodeo. She'd called Carrie's house from the Rent-A-Car desk to make sure she was heading straight to the party, and judging by the endless ringing she was greeted with, Carrie had indeed left. So here she was, hunched over the steering wheel watching for a sign indicating the direction of Fort Lauderdale, wondering if she could stay awake long enough to make it all the way to Palm Beach, let alone get through the party.

The phone rang for perhaps the eighteenth time in the last hour. Most of the calls were being handled by various members of staff Obadiah had hired for this specific purpose, and for that Tony was grateful, but a handful of calls were breaking through to the house's main phone line as the sheer volume of them completely swamped the staff. Tony just let it ring; gazing blankly at the open sheet music on the stand atop the piano he was currently seated at. It was still at the same page he'd left it on little less than a year ago, one of the hardest pieces in the book. His mother had been teaching him to play since he was five, and he was damn good at it, but he'd found over the past two or three years, especially since MIT, he'd had little time to indulge in such things. Things that didn't involve engines, mass amounts of alcohol, or scantily clad women.

He regretted that now.

He slowly removed the book from its stand and stood up to lift the seat of the piano bench. Placing the book in the space underneath, he took out a rather worn copy of Philip Glass scores and propped it gently into the cradle. His mother had told him frequently that the man was the reason God had invented pianos, and as such, Tony had been taught most of her favourite pieces before he'd even opened a learner's guide. He flipped carefully through the book until he got to Metamorphosis, and then stopped flipping at Two. He too favoured this particular piece. It was odd, it had the ability to both sadden and amuse you in one go. His mother had always said that this song, in her opinion, represented life. Its ups and downs, they dramatic way it switches from sad to almost excitable. She had told him once that no matter what the situation, he should always soldier on til the end, because just like the music, life can change for the better in a heartbeat. 'Take the good with the bad, Anthony, and it will always work out.'

In pianist terms, it was quite advanced, more so towards the middle and end, but Tony had long since mastered it. He had only really taken the book out through habit. His mother had always told him that no matter how good he got, he'd be a fool to attempt any piece without a score in front of him to reference.

He cracked his knuckles, glanced briefly at the sheet music to jog his memory, and began to play. As soon as his fingers hit the keys, it was as if a weight had been lifted slightly from his shoulders. Odd, he thought, given the rather poignant intro. He played flawlessly, as if he'd never stopped, not even taking a second glance at the book in front of him. He made it through the first set of faster notes, but on the second set he lost his count and faltered, the jumble of mismatched notes slamming through the perfect harmony like a sledgehammer. He tried again, but it seemed that lack of practise had the better of him. When, after a third attempt, he still could not crack it, he lost his temper, slamming the palm of his hand into the ivory and backhanding the book and its stand off the piano and across the floor. The metal stand clanged horribly across the solid pine floor and came to a stop against the cream leather of the couch at the other side of the room, but the book, worn with age, span away from Tony, its pages separating from the spine and dropping ominously to the floor, falling open at the same score he'd just attempted. The cover fluttered to a stop a foot away from it. Tony stared at the broken book and an immediate feeling of guilt washed over him.

And then the phone rang, and his last nerve snapped. He threw himself at the phone and wrenched it off its cradle.

"What? What do you people want from me?" he yelled down the receiver. Whoever it was remained silent, which only angered Tony more. "So now you shut up? When I want to be left alone I can't get a minute's peace, and now I've actually acknowledged one of you snivelling reporters who deem it totally appropriate to constantly disrupt my life, you clam up? Well how's this for a headline, leave me the fuck alone!" he slammed the phone back down, and then for good measure, picked it up and launched it at the wall, yanking it out from the wall connection in the process.

"Tony?" the voice made Tony spin around to come face to face with a tall black man, dressed in a smart blue shirt and jeans. "Shit, Tony, what did the phone do?"

"Not now Rhodey." Tony ran a hand through his hair and over his face, trying to clear his head.

"Come on, man." Rhodey walked up to him and leant against the arm of the couch, observing the wreckage. "I know it's hard for you, but your parents wouldn't have wanted you to stay cooped up all this time."

"Oh you know what they'd have wanted do you?" Tony said angrily. "So, they wanted to die and for me not to mourn, is that it?"

"Don't be stupid, it's natural to mourn them." Rhodey snapped back. He knew how to handle Tony, and tough love was the key to solving this. "I'm just saying they'd want you to go on as normal as quick as possible." He folded his arms across his chest as Tony remained silent. "Look, I'm going to a graduation party tonight in Palm Beach, I want you to come with me-"

"Rhodey, for fuck sake, you think I want to party right now?" Tony looked furious. "My parents just fucking died, I buried them this morning, would they want me to celebrate?" he turned on his heel and walked back over to the piano, perching on the bench and flipping the key cover down to lean his elbows on it, head in his hands.

"Maybe not, but they sure as hell wouldn't want you to be miserable." Rhodey said. "I've packed you a bag, it's in the car, and if you're not in ten minutes I'm dragging your sorry ass out myself." And with that, he headed out the door the way he had come.

Tony heard the faint click of the front doors closing and raised his head from his hands. He glanced over at the mess he had made and proceeded to retrieve the book stand, placing it back on top of the piano, and then the book itself and its cover. He studied the worn pages of the book, running his fingers over the slightly faded ink, savouring the slight smell that still lingered, that old type of smell that books sometimes carried, letting you know that they'd been used but well taken care of. Until now obviously. He placed the book and cover precariously on the stand.

"Take the good with the bad." He mumbled to himself, before turning and leaving the house.

TBC