Hello readers,

I have a few words before you begin this story, my first venture into Marvel Fanfiction.

For starters, I don't own Iron Man.

Secondly, there are spoilers ahead, reader beware, this story is set at the end of Iron Man Three between Tony getting the reactor removed and declaring that he is Iron Man, it assumes a larger time gap.

Finally, before you start reading I want you to think back to your school years, and all of those prompts that maybe you never thought twice about afterwards, and I want you to think about what you would say now if you had to rewrite them.

Ditto Redeaux


he·ro

ˈhi(ə)rō/

noun

a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.

"a war hero"

another term for submarine sandwich.


"Hi everyone, my name is Harley Keener, and I'm in Mrs. Brown's fifth grade class. We wrote about heroes." He looked to his teacher and his class sitting in the audience for reassurance. Mrs. Brown nodded and he took a deep breath and looked down at his paper. "I called this paper My Hero, um it's by me, Harley Keener, I wrote it, but I guess you knew that already." He smiled balefully, doing his best to push down his nerves, "I know I'm not supposed to be reading my paper, but I'm going to read some of it, 'the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word hero as a noun, a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities, a person who is greatly admired, and the chief male character in a story, play, movie, e t c.' I think I was supposed to say that as etcetera." The teachers and other adults all laughed. "I didn't really know what to write about at first. A lot of students wrote about their dads, but he's not my hero, and I didn't really understand why until I talked to Mrs. Brown about it. I thought heroes were people like Thor and Captain America, but she really helped clear things up. We have a quote hanging in our classroom and it says: 'to the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world,' I don't remember who said that though." There were more chuckles, "I thought that was just an individual thing, but Mrs. Brown helped me realize that it's more than that, that our heroes don't have to mean something to the world, that it's really just about us. I picked Iron Man, but it's not because he's a super hero and he's saved the world, even though he did, it's because he's Tony Stark, and he's my friend. I think that's the most important part. I don't get to talk to him much anymore, he's really busy being a super hero for everyone else, and that's okay because I know he's a hero, he's my hero."