THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

By Christina TM

Tony Stark idly played with the stole draped around his shoulders as he listened to the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduce him. Graduated at seventeen. CEO of Stark Industries. Boy genius. And lest we forget, Iron Man.

"Class of 2009, Mr. Tony Stark."

Tony smiled and shook the president's hand as he took his spot at the podium. "Thank you," he said as the applause faded. "Thank you in advance for sitting through my speech. And congratulations on your accomplishment."

Tony adjusted his index cards. "Please stick to the cards, Tony," Pepper had begged as she handed him the speech before the ceremony.

"I've got one thing I want to say to you today: Don't waste your life."

Hundreds of tassels bobbed as the graduates looked at each other with perplexedly.

"I know that sounds strange to you," Tony continued. "You're twenty-one, twenty-two years old. You have a bachelor's degree from one of the most prestigious technological institutes on the planet. Can write your own ticket; do whatever you want. How could you be in a position to waste your life?

"You can. And I know this firsthand."

From behind him, Tony heard a faculty member whisper, "Kind of a downer commencement address."

"I spent almost a decade and a half of my life making things that blow up," Tony said. "I was called a patriot and a hero, and I believed it. I truly believed that what I was doing kept our military safer, and I would defy anyone to tell me otherwise.

"About a year ago, someone told me otherwise."

There was not a sound in the crowded auditorium. Tony took a steadying breath.

"I was…captured by…a terrorist group called the Ten Rings. They attacked my convoy and took me prisoner. I only survived because a fellow captive, a man named Yinsen, implanted an electromagnet in my chest to keep the shrapnel from traveling into my heart and lungs.

"The Ten Rings wanted me to build my latest missile, the Jericho, for their own purposes." Tony pointed to a gangly young man in the front row. "You. What's your degree in?"

The kid's eyes widened. "Um, aerospace engineering."

"You want to build rockets? Work at NASA?"

"Yeah."

"Imagine seeing those rockets in the hands of your enemies," Tony said. "That's what happened to me. I saw my life's work turned against me and turned against my country." He swallowed as the unpleasant images resurfaced in his mind. "I was there for three months. When I came back, I saw that I was part of a corrupt system that knew it was corrupt and didn't care. And I'd been unwittingly aiding it almost my entire life.

"I couldn't do that anymore. So I became Iron Man."

The worst part of the speech over, Tony relaxed a little. "I'm certainly not recommending any of you build suits of gold/titanium alloy—that's what it is, by the way. Not iron. But Gold/Titanium Alloy Man just didn't sound right." A small titter went through the crowd. "Not that I wouldn't mind the help." A louder laugh. "What I am recommending is that you decide, today, what your legacy is going to be. My legacy was a body count to rival all six seasons of 24 put together. I spent my first thirty-five years building it. Think about it. Thirty-five years. Should I live to be eighty years old, that is nearly half of my life that I can never get back.

"You," Tony affixed the class with a hard stare. "Have a clean slate. You have the opportunity right from the start to build for yourselves a legacy of doing good, of truly serving mankind with the tremendous gifts and talents that you have. Whatever you may do, do it in such a way that when you're gone, people will say that the world has changed for the better because you lived in it. Thank you."

The crowd burst into raucous applause and rose to its feet. Tony sat down in his chair, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

"That was a beautiful speech, Tony," Pepper said on the plane back to Malibu.

"Mm," Tony muttered noncommittally as he stirred from his doze on the couch. "Stuck to the cards and everything."

There was amusement in Pepper's voice when she replied, "That's not why it was a beautiful speech."

Tony opened his eyes and lifted his head to focus on Pepper.

The elegant redhead sat in the chair at the end of the couch. "It was a beautiful speech," she began, "because if one of those kids changes their lives after what you said today…not one day of your life has been a waste."

Tony felt a warm glow that had nothing to do with the arc reactor spread through his chest. He smiled, closed his eyes, and dropped his head back onto the pillow. "Thank you, Pepper."

Maybe she's right, Tony mused as he dropped off to sleep. Maybe if some good can come of it, the first half of my life wasn't a loss after all.