This is a tribute to darth_stitch over on Ao3, whose series 'Two Boys from Brooklyn' -among others- introduced me to the hilarious and adorable 'count buckula' tag.

Fairytale Romance

Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier.

Once upon a time, in a small Wallachian village overshadowed by a castle, there lived a girl. She worked hard to care for her parents and siblings, baking bread and making cheese. She was considered beautiful, for though her hair was brown, her skin was fair and her eyes as green as emeralds. She was also kind, gentle and true, and many wished to marry her, but she would have none of them for her heart was given to a soldier in the service of the boyar.

However it was a harsh time, a time of war against the Ottomans, and the girl had caught the eye of the boyar who owned the castle that overshadowed the village where she dwelled.

On day the boyar decided he could wait no longer and summoned the girl to his castle.

"Girl," he told her, "I would have you as my own. I will dress you in silks and gold and your sons shall be my heirs; what say you?"

"My lord," the girl said softly, "you honour me, but I beg of you not to set aside your wife for me. I am nothing but a farmer's daughter and I am promised to a soldier; I am not worthy of you."

The boyar was unaccustomed to being denied and his anger was great, but he allowed the girl to leave. He had been called to war by his prince and would take his soldiers with him; there would be time enough to punish the girl for her impudence when he returned.

So the boyar went to war with darkness in his heart and the soldier who loved the girl served him honourably and well. However the prince of Wallachia called upon Darkness to secure his victory against the Ottomans and Darkness answered him. The boyar saw this and realised that he too could call upon the Darkness, and resolved to do so that he punish the girl who had spurned him.

The war ended with the son of the prince assuming the throne in his father's stead, honouring all who had fought for him. The soldier was afforded particular honour, for he had distinguished himself with his strength, honour and skill. His boyar also rewarded him, placing him in command of his forces, for he did not realise that this soldier was the beloved of the girl who had refused him. Then the new prince returned to the capital and the boyar and his soldiers went home.

Upon returning the boyar went at once to a deep, dark cave beneath the mountains and called upon the Darkness there, crying,

"Darkness that my prince called upon, answer me! I would make a deal, for I have been wronged!"

The Darkness answered him, "Boyar, who has wronged you? Tell me and I will devour them, for a price."

The Boyar said, "Darkness, the woman I desire above all others has refused me for a simple peasant! I want her to suffer and die for her presumption!"

The Darkness laughed and asked the boyar, "Who is this woman?"

The boyar said, "She bakes bread and makes cheese in the village beneath my castle."

The Darkness laughed again and said: "Bring the first bread and the last cheese she has made to the last boggy hole tomorrow and she will not live another day."

So the next morning the boyar sent a servant to buy the first loaf of bread the girl had baked that morning and the last cheese she had made, then he took them down into the caves and set them down beside the dark, muddy pool at the very bottom of the cave. He left them there and returned to the castle, pleased with his vengeance.

Meanwhile the soldier had proposed to his beloved and she had accepted him, delighted that he still lived and had been so greatly honoured by the new prince after the war. But when evening came a swarm of bats like living shadows poured from the caves and attacked the girl, carrying her off before her beloved's eyes.

The soldier recognised the Darkness that had stolen his beloved away and ran after it, taking up arms that he might win her back. He battled his way into the depths of the mountain, but he was too late: the Darkness had taken his beloved and she lay cold and near death in the mud.

Enraged, the soldier confronted the Darkness: "Who are you, to take from me my beloved and bride-to-be? Return her to me!"

The Darkness laughed at him and said: "By first bread and last cheese this girl is mine: your own boyar gave her to me for refusing his advances, to suffer at my hands and perish. Her death will nourish me and her soul shall be forever mine!"

"You cannot have her!" The soldier said at once, though he was shocked by the betrayal of the lord he had served so faithfully all his life. "Take me instead! Only spare her!" He set aside his weapons and bowed his head, awaiting the Darkness's reply.

The Darkness was well pleased by such an offer, for the soldier was far darker and more corruptible a soul than the girl in his grasp, so he breathed life back into her and fell upon the soldier, devouring him utterly and leaving only his armour and weapons behind.

The girl awoke at once, saw the scattered armour and knew immediately that her beloved had given his life for her. She at once turned upon the Darkness:

"Return to me my beloved!"

The Darkness was most entertained by her presumption, so he answered her:

"I cannot: there is nothing left of his body to return to life. He died that you might live again, though your boyar gifted you to me by your first bread and last cheese."

"What of his soul?" The girl pleaded.

"His soul remains; he offered it in the place of your own and it is mine forever!"

The girl faced the Darkness without fear and asked, "Is there truly no way my soldier can be returned to life? For there is nothing I would not suffer to see him live again."

The Darkness at once saw a chance to gain a greater grip upon the world and steal even more lives, so it answered truthfully:

"There is a way I might secure his return: if I were to relinquish him he would be reborn into the world, though where or when that might be cannot be foreseen. He would not remember you until he set eyes upon you again, but he would truly be himself and never love another."

The girl protested, "But such a rebirth might take decades, or centuries! And the world is large; we might never meet! That is no bargain at all, for my life is short and I will soon be dead!"

"Ah, but that can be remedied, little girl," the Darkness wheedled her. "You will not die until you have found your soldier again, no matter how many lifetimes it takes for your lover to return to you."

The girl was no fool, so she asked, "What would such a thing cost me, oh Darkness? For all things have a price and what you offer me is costly indeed."

"Clever girl," the Darkness praised her. "It would be costly indeed, save that you have plenty of time available to you in which to pay. My price is that the lives of all whom you kill throughout your life shall be mine to feast upon and that you shall serve the heirs and successors of the boyar who betrayed you for me until your soldier finds and weds you. You shall also pay me in pain: the bindings that hold your soul in place shall burn like silver spikes through your shoulders for as long as you live."

The girl considered this and deemed it a price worth paying. "What must I do then?" she asked.

"Go up to the castle," the Darkness told her, "and fetch the boyar's heir, so that I might bind you to his service." He did not tell her that she was already greatly changed simply by having been restored to life, nor of the curse he had laid upon her the moment she agreed to his terms. He knew the girl was kind-hearted and gentle and would never kill if she could avoid it, so sought to force her hand.

The girl walked up to the top of the caves in the darkness, in which she could see as clearly as though it were daylight, and made her way up to the castle where the boyar was sleeping. The gatekeeper saw her approach and was afraid, for her skin was as pale as a corpse and her hair as white as bone. He barred the door in the gates against her, thinking her a spectre.

"Gatekeeper, let me in!" She called out, knocking on the door. "You know me; you have bought bread and cheese from me every day since I was a child! Please, let me in, for my beloved has been murdered!"

The gatekeeper recognised her voice but hesitated to open the door, instead opening a small hatch so he could get a better look at who stood without. But as soon as he looked upon her he fell down dead, his life stolen by the curse the Darkness had laid upon the girl's eyes, which now burned an inhuman gold.

The girl did not know what had happened, so she called out loudly and banged on the door, hoping to attract attention so that someone would let her in and discover what had befallen the gatekeeper. A sentry was soon roused, who hearing her voice thought nothing of opening the door and letting her in. He did not fall down dead, as his attention was all for the fallen gatekeeper and sounding the alarm when he discovered the man was dead. Meanwhile the girl entered the castle, seeking the boyar's young son. In her haste she did not notice the deaths of the servants and soldiers whose eyes briefly met hers, for they fell dead without a sound. It was not until she reached the boyar's suite and the boyar himself opened the door only to drop dead that she realised that something had been done to her.

"My lady!" She called to the boyar's wife. "Please, fetch me a mirror, so that I might look upon myself! I fear something terrible has been done to me!"

The boyar's wife was afraid, seeing her husband lying dead, so did not look upon the girl and threw the round silver mirror from the bedside table at her, which she caught easily. The girl looked upon herself and saw her golden eyes, pale skin and white hair and knew that the Darkness had marked her as its own. She also realised that it must have been her eyes to slay the boyar and the gatekeeper, because the sentry had not looked at her and had lived. So the girl turned her eyes to the floor, stepped over the boyar's body and explained to the dead man's wife all that had befallen her that night.

The boyar's wife was then even more afraid, but she did not dare oppose the girl in fear of being killed. Instead she woke her young son, blindfolded him and gave him to the girl so she could leave with him. Then, once the girl had left, she swiftly packed a few belongings, took her baby daughter and ordered the surviving servants and soldiers to take her away from the castle at once, so that she could appeal to the prince for aid against the monster her husband had called up. Upon hearing what the boyar had done and how their commander was dead, all the inhabitants of the castle and all of the villagers swiftly gathered all they could carry and fled into the night, fearing for their lives.

Meanwhile the girl carried the young boy who was now the new boyar down to the bottom of the caves, talking to him all the while of what had befallen her, how her beloved had sacrificed himself for her and how she had sworn to serve until the promise of the Darkness was fulfilled. She also told him of the curse, and how he must never, ever look her in the eyes. The young boyar believed the girl and, while he was afraid, he admired her courage and the selflessness of her soldier beloved. So when they reached the boggy hole at the bottom of the caves he agreed both to be bound to the girl and to bind his own heir to her once that heir was old enough.

So the Darkness bound the girl to the young boyar and both screamed in agony, for the girl felt as though great metal spikes had pierced her shoulders, sinking deep into her lungs, while the young boyar felt as though cold metal vines were wrapped around his heart. Both fell to the ground insensible and the Darkness left them there, sinking into the hole and under the ground to rest. It was now replete of pain and death and did not need to rouse itself in order to feed, so it settled down to sleep.

The next morning the girl and the young boyar left the caves to find the castle and village deserted save for some of the livestock, so they took up residence in one of the houses. The girl made bread and taught the young boyar to milk the goats. She also learned that animals were exempt from the power of her gaze, which was a small relief: as she told the young boyar, it would have been most inconvenient for her to have slain all the chickens.

A month after the deaths of the soldier and the boyar, the prince arrived at the castle with a small contingent of his men.

Ingeras knows he is a child, but he is still a prince. His men revere him for being the son of Vlad Draculea, the man who damned himself to save them from the Ottomans. Ingeras also knows that his father is not truly dead –those bats that still stalk him are not natural– but he does not speak of it.

However the story that has come to him from a recently dead boyar's wife and her shaken soldiers suggests that there is considerably more out there than just vampires to worry about; as if the potential return of the armies of the Ottoman Empire were not difficult enough.

The men have taken to referring to the girl as a Moroi, but Ingeras' personal tutor has confided that she sounds rather more like a gorgon of Greek mythology than any local entity. That despite repelling Mehmed's forces some power from the south-west may still have managed to invade their beloved nation is not hopeful, but Ingeras knows his father follows him still. This girl, whatever she is, is young and new to her power. His father has slain armies; a boyar and half-a-dozen soldiers and servants do not really compare.

Upon arriving at the deserted village and castle Ingeras finds the young boyar –only a year or so younger than the prince himself– watching over a dozen goats and twice that many chickens in a field overlooking the road. Their guide is overjoyed to find the young lord still living, but everyone's mood plummets as the boyar tells the tale of how his father called upon evil out of petty spite and in doing so slew his own commander, damned his line until the wrongs done were righted and bound themselves to a being capable of slaying with a glance.

"Where is she?" Ingeras asks the boyar, Petru.

"Ileana?" Petru asks. "She's making cheese."

"Cheese?"

Petru nods solemnly. "She bakes bread and makes cheese; she always has. She's teaching me how in exchange for hunting lessons." He looks sad. "My lord father used her bread and cheese to get the devil to target her, but she hasn't stopped making it. She says the Darkness has stolen enough from her without giving it more victories."

"Does she eat then?" Ingeras asks as delicately as possible.

Petru blinks. "Of course she eats! She cooks too!"

Ingeras decides then that whatever this Ileana might have become, she is not undead. Cursed certainly, quite horrendously cursed, but still living. Meeting the girl in person only strengthens his resolve; he will have to keep a close eye on the situation, but maybe he can have Petru marry one of his female cousins and ensure that way that the boy's unnatural servant will not make trouble for his eventual descendants.

He knows his father will be keeping an eye on Pale Ileana as well, though he does wonder what he will make of her. Her beloved Iacov was a soldier who gained a personal commendation from Vlad Draculea for his courage and battle prowess against the Ottomans; he would even have been permitted to marry into the House of Draculesti had he not already given his heart to the girl he had since died for.

Ingeras resolves to keep an eye out for the reborn Iacov; the return of such a gifted and loyal soldier should not be permitted to go to waste.

It is far too easy for Ileana to lose track of time: she continues as she always has, baking bread and making cheese, the only change being that she does so in the cool cellars of the boyar's castle rather than in her parents' cottage. She also helps with the cleaning in the boyar's private rooms, the necessity of keeping her gaze firmly averted helping the returned servants to ignore her presence. Her grief numbs her, then her isolation makes it easier for her not to care. It is only when she realises that her current master is in fact Petru's great-grandson that she begins to draw herself out of her shell and quietly requests permission to travel. Serve she may have to, but it will be easier to find her beloved Iacov if she travels. He is after all a soldier right down to his soul for all that he has no love of war, so she will only find him by seeking out places where battles are being fought.

Her soldier may well have been born, lived and died twice over by now, while she whiled away the years in drudgery and service. It is a worrying thought. She hadn't even attempted to look yet!

Mihai is very happy to have his family's unnerving and ageless attendant far, far away from his new wife and infant son and gives Ileana permission to leave his lands and travel as far as she wishes for a full decade, after which she unfortunately must return for the binding of his heir. Ileana bakes bread on the morning of her departure, takes the first loaf and the latest of her cheeses down into the depths of the mountain and leaves them by the boggy hole.

She has not heard from The Darkness in nearly a century, but she knows full well it is still there. The pain in her shoulders persists, fading and spiking according to her movements, and for all her care people still manage to catch her eye every now and then. Parents in the village make a point of keeping their children well away from her and Ileana cannot blame them.

By the time she returns Ileana has learned five new languages, killed a large number of people –mostly on purpose and in self defence– and has learned a great many new ways of making bread. However she has not found Iacov.

It is more than four hundred years before she sees him again.

When Howard Stark was twenty years old, newly exploded onto the world stage and with more money than he had ever realised existed at his disposal, he went on a tour of southern Europe. He visited old castles, admired roman remains and was actually quite impressed by the feats of engineering accomplished by craftsmen of eras past. However what got him plastered across the front pages of the American newspapers was his purchase of an entire Romanian castle dating back to the twelfth century, which he had taken down, shipped back to the States and rebuilt in the Appalachians. The billionaire industrialist never mentioned the sour, aging boyar who had lived alone in the building with a pale, silent housekeeper, nor the ritual that had been a condition of him buying the castle for himself.

Now suffering a feeling of aching constriction around his heart every time he over-exerted himself, Howard Stark realised that he didn't understand women and never wanted to try; instead he dubbed the pale girl 'Anna' and shipped her back to the States along with his new castle. He didn't want to know what had been done to him –it wasn't remotely scientific– but it gnawed at him anyway. So he threw himself into his work after ensuring Anna had all the appropriate paperwork and full access to his accounts. She was now officially in charge of ensuring his homes were well-maintained and his laboratories well-supplied, which she did with grace and aplomb.

It wasn't until he was called into a police station over a mugging gone wrong a few months later that Howard found out about Anna's eyes, as she wore heavily tinted glasses at all times. The industrialist had believed her to be an albino and while initially eager to experiment, her assertion that their lethal effect only worked on people –'souled beings' she had said specifically– led to him dropping the subject very quickly. However he did design a whole range of shades for her in a variety of colours and styles, so as to ring the changes. The movie-star look was very popular, so nobody questioned it. Nor did they notice that Anna's shades were made of highly durable materials and actually locked around the back of her head so they wouldn't fall off.

That the commercial designs with normal temple cables were massively popular and sold like hot cakes was a bonus. It brought in more money, not that he needed it but income was income.

The following year Howard hired Edwin Jarvis to be his butler, as after the man's dishonourable discharge from the British army and marriage to the girl he'd technically committed treason for he needed something to do and he was an old friend. Unfortunately Howard really couldn't think of a sensible reason he could use to explain to Jarvis why he had an apparently-seventeen-year-old managing everything in his life not directly related to his business. 'She came with the castle' didn't really tell the whole story, but the truth just stuck in his craw: he was a modern man, a true believer in the power of science! Whatever had happened, there had to be a scientific explanation somewhere! Was it a chemical concoction perhaps that had changed her, or possibly a form of hypnotism to kill with a glance?

Howard couldn't face telling his friend the truth, that he had basically purchased a haunted castle and that the disturbingly-corporeal ghost had followed him home. So he stuck with the 'she came with the castle' explanation, which was sort-of true, and made sure Anna knew that all personal interaction with guests and other servants was to be handled by Jarvis. She was in charge of the financial side, of course, and of security –the recent HYDRA scare had persuaded Howard that unscientific or not, killer eyes were a useful trait– as well as assisting him in the labs. Anna was quite unnervingly resistant to all manner of different kinds of physical damage and recovered very quickly, so Howard had made very quick progress in certain areas now he had an indestructible assistant he could call on.

She never complained, which was actually creepier that the near-indestructibility. However Howard could put up with creepy when it came with knowledge of every European language in existence, half the Asian ones and a dozen or more African dialects. That modern cosmetics meant her pale skin could be softened to a more human shade and her hair dyed to reduce her visibility was what prompted Howard to find a way of applying tiny, flexible tinted lenses directly to her eyeballs. They darkened her irises to black and while Howard was sure they didn't need to be quite that strong, he was reluctant to fiddle because over-strong was better than accidentally dead.

By the time Howard joined the Strategic Scientific Reserve, Anna had been following him around as his secretary-interpreter for six months, her disguise making her blend in with the other women working for him. Well, sort-of blend: without all the white harshness and the aviator sunglasses, Howard could see that Anna was unexpectedly gorgeous in a starlet kind of way. It was good for his ego really, and highly amusing to see everyone dismiss her as his bit-on-the-side right up until he called on her to translate things for him.

Her ability to fade into the background was also very handy, as it meant she heard things he could use to get ahead in business. No matter how much he loved science, to keep doing science he needed money and that meant being a successful businessman.

After meeting Erskine at the Modern Marvels of Tomorrow Exhibition –which Anna did not attend as she was managing everything else for him– Howard realised that the gentle German might be the key to finding out what exactly had been done to Anna. So he cultivated the connection, leaving his assistant to all but run Stark Industries for him while he helped Erskine in the SSR and contributed to the war effort. Seeing Steve Rogers transformed from a five-foot weakling to a six-foot superhuman further convinced Howard that science could explain Anna's condition, though Erskine's death right afterwards at the hands of HYDRA infiltrators was a bitter blow: he'd lost both a friend and a scientific opportunity.

As the war in Europe escalated Howard went to the front in Italy to personally provide improvements and scientific assistance to the military. He did seriously consider taking Anna along, but the fact remained that while on the front he couldn't stay on top of running Stark Industries back in the States, which had to continue smoothly due to all the military contracts. So Howard very reluctantly left Anna behind, hoping that his promise to ensure she could visit every last veterans' association on the planet after the war was over would keep her from being too angry with him for delaying her search for her 'long lost beloved'. Howard wasn't sure he believed in reincarnation, but the fact remained that Anna believed and despite technically being his servant she was very much a power to be reckoned with.

So Anna stayed behind, which Howard rather regretted by the time the war was over. She'd have been a wonderful foil to Agent Carter and would certainly have kept the Howling Commandoes on their toes. Her language skills would have seriously benefitted them too…

Howard, in his heart of hearts, mostly missed her for her cooking skills, perfect memory and usefulness as a lab assistant, in that order. That girl could make the best cheese sandwich ever.

James 'Bucky' Barnes had never wanted to be a soldier. He didn't like the idea of killing people; all he wanted to do was find work he enjoyed and a pretty girl to settle down with. But then he met Stevie, who despite being a scrawny little punk didn't know when to back down from a fight, then the war happened and he got drafted.

Basic was actually pretty fun: lots of new people to talk to, new skills to learn that he turned out to have a real knack for and getting promoted to sergeant for having more good sense than anybody else in the unit if you could overlook his cheerful willingness to follow crazy orders and make them actually work. He still wasn't looking forward to killing people though.

Unfortunately, as Bucky found out when he arrived in Europe, he was good at killing people. Genuinely, undeniably, terrifyingly good. He could do more with a sniper rifle than anybody else on their side of the Alps –and possibly on the other side as well– was a natural woodsman despite being a Brooklyn boy, picked up languages quickly and made excellent tactical decisions under pressure. He did enjoy being a soldier despite the getting shot at, awful rations and having to sleep in awkward places, but he still didn't like the killing people bit. He could do it but he would have been much happier if he'd never had to pick up a weapon in his life.

Bucky also got a kick out of utterly bamboozling the entire unit by being fluent in Romanian and being able to mimic to perfection Agent Carter's cut-glass English accent. He didn't tell anyone about his Grandma Mina, who was even more English than Carter could ever hope to be despite living in the States for the past thirty years, or about how his parents Mike and Dot Barnes should actually be called Mircea Draculesti and Dorina Basarab, but had changed their names upon emigrating so as not to attract attention. Grandpa Vlad still insisted on calling Bucky 'Iacov', and seemed to find something about him highly amusing for reasons the old bat refused to get into.

[Vlad Draculea cannot believe that little Ileana's Iacov is actually his grandson now and is eagerly looking forward to their meeting. It is bound to be hilarious.]

After the end of the war, Anna takes a year to find suitable replacements for all the positions she occupies both in Stark Industries and in running Howard's household, then vanishes completely. Howard doesn't see or hear from her again for twenty-five years.

Arnim Zola never realises quite how many fortuitous coincidences go into making the Asset into the success that it is. Yes, the serum that gives Sergeant Barnes superhuman strength, resilience, speed and recovery time is a factor, but it is not even half the story. His heritage plays a part: he has a far greater capacity to recover from near-fatal damage than any ordinary mortal and Zola's serum, weak and flawed though it is, has plenty to work with. Without both the serum and his vampiric heritage the violent brainwashing techniques HYDRA employs would have reduced him to a drooling vegetable in under a month.

But Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is more than just Iacov Draculesti, grandson of the Impaler. If it were only the serum and his heritage working for him, his mind would have healed as the almost blank slate his handlers wanted, clean for them to write upon as they wished. But Iacov Draculesti was cursed to live over and over again and his soul remembered every lifetime, as Jeames, Diego, Kuba, Giacomo, Yakov, Seamus, Jaako, Sjaak, Kapel and Iakov who he was first. Those memories were not written in his mind, so when his brain heals and renews itself they imprint themselves upon the forming tissue, leaving echoes of past lives only unconsciously remembered.

The Asset speaks Russian, Italian, Spanish, Scots Gaelic, Dutch, Chinese, Finnish and Old German on various separate occasions, which somehow does not get questioned. His flexible and unpredictable fighting style is credited to his HYDRA trainers, though in all honesty they aren't too sure how it happened either. His ability to survive in any terrain and move like a ghost through both wilderness and urban environments is considered merely a sign of Zola's skill rather than an indicator of unknown factors at work.

That there is nothing the Asset cannot do with a blade or gun and that he can ride a horse as easily as he can hotwire a car also goes unnoticed. In fact, the only 'glitch' which does get both noticed and commented on is that any attempt at physical intimacy with the Asset will get a person's head twisted clean off, no matter if the person trying to approach it is a fellow asset, a guard, a handler or a boss. It's like some demented reflex that the Asset barely seems aware of; it is left alone because most of the bosses find it funny. The Red Room loses three prospective operatives to that reflex in a single month before they amend their protocols to make an exception for their Zimniy Soldat.

The Asset is kept in Russia until the fall of the USSR, at which point he is shipped to America and placed under the authority of Alexander Pierce.

Howard Stark is fifty two, happily married and expecting the birth of his child any day when he wanders out of his laboratory to find Anna baking in the attached kitchenette as though she's never left. It honestly terrifies him, because she doesn't look a day older than she did back in forty-six and he'd put her out of his mind so successfully he'd started to believe she'd never really existed. But there she is, pale and young as ever, and he knows right then that he can never tell anyone that this women is one and the same with the classy dame who ran Stark Industries for him during the War. He just can't.

So he tells her that her name is Elena now; that she is 'Anna's daughter' and that she will be responsible for his son's upbringing and safety. Then he flees back into his laboratory and throws himself back into his work.

Maria isn't really sure what to think of the silent, efficient and distant Elena who Howard has hired out of the blue to help her and later care for the baby. She's very young and Howard claims she's the daughter of a former colleague, but if it wasn't abundantly clear that her husband can barely look at the woman Maria would suspect he was having an affair. Or maybe Howard suspects that Elena is actually his daughter, which considering her young age is perfectly possible.

Anthony Stark grows up surrounded by science and nurtured on a diet of fresh, healthy foods and gory fairytales. Of course he doesn't believe any of those stories, but they're incredibly inspirational and very exciting. His father mostly ignores him and that hurts, but at least he has Elena, his nanny, to turn to.

Then Tony turns ten, discovers that fairytales can be all too real and decides that his father is a bastard for not warning him sooner. He wants to blame Elena too, but he can tell she loves him like a son so he can't hold onto his anger for more than a few days. So instead he starts looking into ways to loosen the bindings on her and free her from the curses tying her down. The constant ache in his chest just spurs him onward.

Fairytales have a surprising amount in common with programming language; Tony is soon hooked on the implications for creating artificial intelligence. Dum-E is proof of concept and far smarter than most people ever realise.

Tony hates his fifteenth birthday because that is when his father decides he no longer needs a nanny, since he's going to MIT this year. He immediately demands that Elena be his driver instead; he never regrets it, because damn can that lady drive! It takes him three months to create a whole new drive and control system that enables her new vehicle to respond to her superior reflexes in real-time and by then Tony is a dedicated speed-freak.

It's intriguing really how Elena sails smoothly underneath everyone's radar despite constantly being around Tony Stark, who is always at the centre of media attention. Maybe it's because she's always walking just far enough behind him to be out of frame when the paparazzi are staking him, or how she manages to slide out of sight despite having stark white hair and wearing shades all the time. Tony isn't sure Stane even realises she exists, which is pretty cool actually and why he hasn't given the game away yet. Obie's fun, but Elena's special. He doesn't have to share Elena with anyone.

It's Elena who teaches him to pick locks, demonstrates domestic-terrorist chemistry to him in one of the labs and introduces him to alcohol. It's his best possible sixteenth birthday present, along with being taller than her at long last.

Tony is seventeen when he graduates from MIT, but his real achievement that year is working out a way to subvert the binding on her. Of course it requires a trip down some disgusting and dangerous caves out the back of the creepy castle his father brought back from Romania, but he can do that. He's done spelunking before.

The entity Elena calls 'the Darkness' is by far the creepiest, trickiest and most devious being he's ever had to hammer out a contract with, but he has Elena's first loaf of the day and a very nice goat's cheese she made last week which gets him off to a good start. He eventually manages to arrange an exchange with the shadowy being: as long as Tony is alive and in pain, any kind of pain, Elena is not bound to obey either the Darkness or either of the Starks. Tony also gets confirmation that her honey bun, whoever and wherever he is, is immune to her basilisk stare; that's the good news.

The bad news is that right after sharing the good news with Elena she bawls him out for being so stupidly reckless, then hunts down Howard and reads him the riot act for not letting her join him on the continent during World War Two. Tony discovers then that the most recent incarnation of his nanny's darling Iacov was none other than James 'Bucky' Barnes and that Elena –no, her name is Ileana– is furious that Howard kept her away from him. She storms out of the mansion that same evening and vanishes; Tony starts designing a facial recognition alert programme using old wartime photographs of the late Sergeant Barnes so he can help Ileana find her sweetie next time he shows up among the living.

He also hacks into Howard's accounts and transfers over a suitably-sized bonus to her for putting up with his dad's bullshit for so long.

Tony then throws himself into life in the public eye, because putting up a mask and getting constantly misunderstood by everyone hurts but Ileana has earned a little me-time. He knows she'll come back; she's the only person he knows would never truly abandon him.

That he gets letters from her every few months is a reassurance he likes to think he doesn't need, but secretly really appreciates. That right after his father's death she shows up back at the house and stays until his twenty-first birthday is all the confirmation he needs, even though she leaves again right afterwards.

HYDRA has no idea who or what is picking off their agents in the United States, but they would very much like it to stop. It is all very well to say 'Cut off one head, two more will take its place' but when the people dying are the recruiters it makes things more than a little difficult.

A big part of why Tony likes Pepper is that she reminds him of Ileana. He tries not to think about the old saying that states that men marry women who remind them of their mothers, because it's embarrassing. Despite looking young enough to be his daughter Ileana's still his mother-figure and she's really the most kickass women on the face of the earth.

His facial recognition programme is up and running now, fully integrated into JARVIS's servers and with a special alert feature that connects directly to Ileana's Starkphone.

Ileana drops right off the grid at the beginning of 2009 and doesn't reappear until almost a year later, by which point Tony has an Arc Reactor in his chest and has become slightly obsessed with building Iron Man Suits. She drags him out of his laboratory and off to a ranch in the middle of nowhere for a horse riding holiday, which Tony actually enjoys despite complaining the entire time. He discovers that Ileana has a wickedly irreverent sense of humour and loves to laugh, neither of which he's really seen before.

Designing a 'clockwork horse' for her is a fun challenge, though he's not quite decided on the best way to make it fly yet. Fairytales are really far too much fun.

Mike Barnes isn't quite sure what to think of the apparently-teenage girl his father brought home last night, but she and his father are arguing in Old Romanian and the girl is utterly unafraid so he thinks this might be a good thing. He's not seen anybody poke his father in the chest like that since his mother finally died of old age a decade ago and the infamous Impaler can't seem to decide if he's infuriated or delighted by the girl's irreverence.

That she flickers like moths around the edges much like his father flutters like bats suggests that this is a very old friend indeed. He's never seen a vampire so religiously attached to vintage sunglasses before though.

Tony had intended from the very beginning to have a suite for Ileana in Stark Tower, but getting it past Pepper was very, very tricky. Mostly because Pepper has no idea who Ileana is –she's Tony's special secret after all– which meant creating a whole swathe of suites for potential future guests to disguise Ileana's personal suite.

The only person who knows is JARVIS and Tony has devised a special secrecy code so that Pepper can never get the AI to tell her about the immortal he inherited from Howard. JARVIS has never actually met Ileana, but he's vaguely aware of her existence because Tony talks about her sometimes in private. Inheriting Howard's old SHIELD files was interesting because sometimes there are glimpses of Ileana in the background; thoroughly disguised of course, but still there.

Tony has exactly two photographs of Ileana: one of the two of them sitting on the bonnet of the car he designed for her and another of her without her sunglasses that was taken with a remote control. That photo is posed very formally and looks about sixty years old due to being in black and white and Ileana wearing forties clothing, but it's the only image Tony's ever seen of her without her sunglasses and he loves that picture dearly. The original is in a vault somewhere, but he has a copy in his workshop alongside the other one, camouflaged amongst the rest of his clutter.

Keeping those photos off the internet is something he does out of respect; he has no idea how much longer Ileana's going to be around and she has enough going on without being hounded by SHIELD wanting to offer her a job or assholes like Ross wanting to use her 'for the good of America'. She's always taken good care of him, so he will take good care of her.

Needing to rebuild Stark Tower after the whole Loki mess just gives him a whole new opportunity to create a place Ileana can feel at home in.

Waking up in Tennessee after having his Malibu Mansion bombed by the Mandarin is a wonderful moment for Tony, because despite everyone believing him dead there is a letter with his name on it lying on top of his ruined armour. He may not have been awake for it, but Ileana was there when he needed her the most.

Which means all he has to do now is make her proud of him.

Ileana was on her ranch mucking out the stables when her Starkphone made a noise she'd never heard before. It was a triumphant fanfare, followed by a recording of a much younger Tony saying,

"Am I a genius or what?"

Shaking her head at the silliness, Ileana tugged off her gloves and pulled her phone out of her pocket then stopped dead.

The program open is one Tony installed nearly twenty years ago on her first prototype phone and has been automatically transferred over to each of her successive ones; a program she'd never actually seen in use before. She knew what it was; Tony had told her about it with that cautious enthusiasm he got when he was incredibly proud of himself yet was afraid he might have overstepped a boundary or ten. It was called 'Manhunt' and was keyed in to the face of James 'Bucky' Barnes, the latest incarnation of her missing Iacov.

Tony had explained that Manhunt worked by tapping into every last wireless network it came into contact with, leaving facial recognition software embedded in them so that if a sufficiently close match was made a signal would be sent to her phone showing her where and when the match had taken place. According to her Starkphone there were matches popping up one after the other, all in exactly the same place: one of the new SHIELD Helicarriers.

Ileana had always suspected that Manhunt's programming was fundamentally viral and this confirmed it, but she was too busy stripping off her overalls and pulling on one of the Kevlar reinforced formal dress suits Tony had made for her to really care. Her phone in her pocket, still happily pinging away as it tracked her Iacov's movements, Ileana the Pale took to the air in a flurry of death's head hawk moths.

Washington DC wasn't all that far away.

The Asset (Bucky?) [Iacov, pay attention to your grandfather] was leaving the Smithsonian when a repetitive pinging sound (sonar?) caught his attention. Glancing sideways, it (he) [why is he laughing?] noticed a young woman in office wear with white hair braided around her head (she looks like a fine dame) [always respect women, my son: they make life worth living] and wearing large, concealing sunglasses (shades). Her phone was making that irritating and persistent sound; it grated on the Asset's (That's not a name) [Bucky isn't a proper name!] nerves, making the fingers of his metal hand twitch. Then the woman looked up, slid down her sunglasses and looked right at him.

Gold eyes, bright as fire and wild as a tiger met his own and everything went sideways inside his head.

Data overload / What is The Mission? / Who / Where / Loss of Function / Handler?

[Wasn't I falling out of the rigging a moment ago?]

(Did someone get the plates off that truck that just ran me over?)

[We are betrayed!]

(It's so cold…)

[Ileana? Beloved… Ileana!]

The Asset crumples. Ileana catches him.