Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers

Midnight, the Stars, and You

"There are two paths on this road of life, Tony, only two paths!"

"Two? Why only two."

"We are only allowed two; there is a clear contrast between black and white, good and evil."

"But can't there be a grey area, why do the two roads have to contrast each other?"

"Because son, we are the grey area, roads are roads, but humans… our tendency to cut clear into a third unprecedented path is uncanny."

"But if we are the grey area what difference does it make choosing a predisposed path, if we can make our own?"

Exactly.

"These Spirits will be the death of me!"

"Dad?"

"Anthony, there are certain things Starks' are predisposed for: genius and alcoholism."

"I… don't understand."

"In the XY group of our family, there has always been genius and drunkenness. They seem to go hand in hand, ever since the first great, great, great, great, great, great, multiplied exponentially, grand Stark.

"I tried to resist the sirens call, but these Spirits… they will be the death of me… and you if you're not careful."

"I'll be careful dad."

Famous last words.

"Mr. Stark, fancy seeing you here… following in the footsteps of yo' ol' man I reckon?"

Silence.

"As smart as you is yo' ain' never been able to resis' the bottle."

An abundance of silence. No words would be able to describe the trueness of the declaration.

"I give ya' mmh, ten more yea's. Reckon by then it ain' even matter if you is drunk or not-

The difference would be too microscopic to understand within the naked eye.

Ten years later

The streets of New York smelt like smog and smoke. The smog covered the sky thickly as it outlined the clear path between city life and the factories that produced the smog. The smog acted like a shield, a protective cover, no one could see through it, no one could see below it. A symbiotic relationship between the inhabitants of New York -the ones who were willing to sacrifice the delicate tissue in their lungs for the protective cover- and the smog.

There lay a man, a handsome man, on a piece of cardboard. His face was barely recognizable to the people who once knew him, at the ripe young age of thirty-four, he looked sixty. His face was dirty with smog, filth, and the thoughts of a failed man. He held a bottle of scotch in that brown paper bag, his only companion in the streets of New York on this late hour. If you could imagine the filth of his clothes- similar to the condition of the dumpster in the back alley to the right- you would imagine that the flies wouldn't want to rest on him in fear of getting dirty.

It was once a nice suit, and expensive suit, the suit you wore to cocktail parties, the one that held the secret pockets on the inside for a pen or a flask. Possibly both.

But the man, the handsome man, with the guilt and filth covered face, sat very still holding the bottle of scotch with the last ounce of liquid. He tipped it back, it would have to do for tonight, because the night would be cold and he would be warm. But when the sun rose over the city and the smog protected him from the worst of rays, he would stand up again, fold his cardboard, and device a plan that would grant him access to another bottle for another night, when the sun set, and it was cold again. And he… he would be warm…

The feet's of pedestrians walked across his line of sight; he calculated the persons worth on the amount of dirt each individual allowed their shoes to accumulate, the more dirt, the more personality, however, it also meant the less care for their person. The less dirt, the less personality, which meant wealth, with more care for their person, but not their personality.

I suppose you could say- judging from the shoes on the man's feet- that he lacked all care for his person, but had a great deal of personality. For a person who arbitrarily remained inebriated 99% of the time, it was something to look forward to.

He was a man that lacked personality once, the call of the siren was too strong however, and like Odysseus he fell to their mighty songs, but unlike our great hero, he never had a crew to strap him to a pole and keep him with his wits about him. So, as time progressed, he developed a personality, and forgot to care for his person.

He shivered slightly as the cold of New York in the early stages of winter seeped in. Altogether, dawn 'til dusk he had counted 10,753 pairs of feet adding up to a grand total of 21,506 feet to fit those shoes.

He could separate them even further; describe (in his opinion) which one had personality and which lacked. You could not have one without the other, and you certainly could not have both or lack both for that matter.

But his head hurt, and he began to feel the first tendrils of fear creep up his spine, and he knew it was time for action.

Sobering up was worse than death.

The idea of letting go of his Spirit- not the holy kind mind you- but the physical kind, the one that kept him warm when physics dictated otherwise, was unthinkable.

So he stood up, stretched his arms wide and far and folded his makeshift bed.

He had plotted the course already in his head; all that he needed now was to execute it, as flawlessly as he had before in several thousand other occasions. He's been doing this for fourteen years; he should be good at it now.

So the plan went by, without so much as a hitch, and today on October 17th, 1959, our man has been able to obtain his Spirit once more.

That creak- pop sound will always be music to his ears, and even though he's always preferred his drink cold… beggars, in this case, can't be choosers.

So he found another place to rest, a quiet dome, where (nursing his Spirit slowly) he drifted off into an intoxicated sleep, or after a while of being bound to the Spirit's feet, a normal sleep.

For what was once abnormal, has become routine, and what was once routine, has become normal, and what has become normal, is now life.

And what was once life, is now abnormal.

"The end is near." He found himself saying, which surprised him. He hadn't heard his own voice in months, with no one to speak to there really was no reason to exert force.

However, as he looked up at the night sky, on another day, in the same city, he contemplated his mortality. He felt something within himself shut down, and he wondered if maybe a trip to the doctor would do him justice.

He opened that secret pocket and produced a 100 dollar bill. Having saved it for a rainy day, he let it go, and the wind immediately picked it up, like a greedy child.

"The end… is… near."

The brown-paper bag clad bottle rolled out of his hands and continued its path slowly to the main street.

His outstretched hand caught the heel of an unsuspecting woman, and she cursed, as she flew down unto her hands and knees in order to save her face from the fall.

"Filthy bum you and your-

She stopped immediately, frozen of the sight of the man on the ground, the curly brown hair shaped haphazardly across his still handsome face, those brown eyes, the ones that tasted like chocolate as you gazed upon them.

"Oh my God." Her mouth uttered as she recognized the face lying down on the floor, the face she had forgotten for the past five years, the one who left her in order to search for his Spirits, the man she had thought she loved long before she knew what true love was.

"Tony!"

A/N: Hello! I hope you enjoyed that prologue, a little love story set in the old 60's one of my favorite time periods, battling the 20's. I am, however, no expert in the 60's and there won't be much use for my expertise (or lack thereof).

R&R, tell me what ya' think, should I continue? Would it pike your interest?