A month later, Tony learned about using vinegar on rust-stains, soap on mudstains, and salt on bloodstains. A few weeks after that, he learned how to duct-tape a basketball back together. Two months later, it was his third birthday, and his father taught him how to straighten out a fork with pliers. On his fourth birthday, he learned how to replace a tire on his bicycle. On his fifth, he learned how to restore a lawn mower back to its original condition (it was faster after he fixed it, even if the gardener claimed it was possessed by demons now). On his sixth, his father spent almost a whole day walking him through how to remove the dent he'd placed in the side of one of the cars and refinish the paint from the bramble scratches. He was sorry about that.

He didn't borrow a car again until almost a month later, and he managed to return it to the garage without a scratch. He was very proud of that, but his father didn't see it that way when the grumpy rich old lady that lived next door visited and complained about her side-swiped mailbox, even though Tony had fixed it as good as new without even bothering anyone about it.

"Your son is completely out of control, Mr. Stark," she'd snapped, and Tony felt once more that the 'don't speak unless spoken to by adults' rule was completely unfair because even though he was carefully not calling her an old hag, he was getting no credit for it. Granted, he was currently in the patch of cleaned out crawlspace and directly beneath her feet, so he'd have gotten yelled at for that anyway. "How do you expect to raise a gentleman like this, in your degenerate mess of a household?"

He heard the sound of his father lighting a cigar, and then his voice. "I don't expect to raise a gentleman. I expect to raise a man." Tony felt the floorboards bend slightly against his fingertips as his father stood up. "Mrs. Van Hoyt, mind your own damn business. Haven't you got some grandchildren to bother?"

"Well, I never," van Hoyt gasped, and stomped away.

That night, his father laid out more new rules. Rule 27: No going in the garage, period. Rule 18b: Do not (and I really mean it this time, son) go outside the house without Jarvis or one of the security people. Rule 29: If Jarvis, the security people, or his mother called him, he had to come. Rule 30: He was not to be alone outside of the house, understood? Rule 17 reiterated: And no driving the car. He had his bicycle if he wanted to enjoy himself.

It was stifling. There were people around all the time. Even in the secluded hallways, there were serious people with eagles on their shoulders. Most of them wouldn't talk to him. (Rule 31: Don't bother the security people.) There were people everywhere, and everyone was too worried and stern and busy to talk with him.

His mother's cat accidentally shredded a curtain when Tony was playing with her, and no one would teach him how to sew the gauzy material back together properly, so he spent almost a whole day in his room trying to make tiny stitches so it wouldn't unravel more, but it looked like Frankenstein when he hung it back up and the worst part was no one noticed how he'd just sat in his room all day, and then no one noticed that he'd fixed the curtain, or even that he'd broken it in the first place.

He hadn't seen his mother in over a month. She was in Italy and hadn't written to him, and he didn't know why. Was she mad at him for driving the car? Did she not want to come home because of all the busy worried nervous people? Was it because Dad kept yelling at the phone, and Aunt Peggy was visiting a lot but couldn't say more than a couple words to him although she did still pick him up and fly him through the air if she had a spare moment. He loved flying like that.

Then they took his electronics tutor away, an old German guy who answered all of Tony's questions and didn't treat him like an unnervingly clever gremlin like the others all did. Tony had screamed at that but it didn't do any good. Even Peggy wouldn't take his side. She just agreed with Howard that Dr. Mendel wasn't a good teacher for Tony. No one would tell him why because he was an amazing teacher and why was everyone being so stupid?

He ran away that Tuesday.

"Tony."

He wouldn't look at his father's face.

"Tony, look at me."

He looked up. His father looked upset and angry and maybe a little frightened, which wasn't a look Tony immediately recognized on his father's face. He'd seen it on Jarvis' face, and on Mother's, but not on his father. He bit his lip, and glanced away again. His father put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Tony sniffed, twitching his chin up slightly, wrinkling his nose and lips to get the tears to go away. "I'm fine."

"What you did was not acceptable. It was dangerous and could have gotten you killed."

He didn't understand. He was good at driving. He was big for his age and he could step on the pedals and see the road at the same time. He brought his spring-loaded walnut shooter, and that could knock a man out at ten paces. He'd done it before. He had plenty of money, plenty of food, and he'd even brought lots of warm clothes because he knew his mother would want him to bundle up. (Rule 10: Stay bundled up when it's cold).

The only thing that had scared him was that guy in the parking lot he'd sat in to eat his burger for lunch. He'd come right up to Tony and said, "Hey, you're little Tony Stark, aren't you? We've been looking all over for you." And Tony had reached out and locked all the doors, then started the car and drove away from the guy.

Even that wasn't as scary as when the police pulled him over and made him go back home. He didn't want to go back home where his father was yelling at people all the time and he had to sneak past the security guys to go anywhere interesting and he wasn't even allowed in the garage any more.

"You don't want to stay here any more, do you?" Howard said softly, and Tony looked up and shook his head.

"Can we go back to Maine? Where we went fishing last year? Or we could go stay with mom in Italy, she'd want us to come, can we please?"

His father shook his head slowly. "No."

"Why not?" he whined. "We went somewhere last year."

"Times have changed. It wouldn't be a good idea."

"WHY?" Tony yelled.

"Because it's not safe, you god damn brat!" Howard yelled back. "You're out of control and we can't keep you safe if you insist in being such a wild little -" He drew in a breath and sat back. Tony had his arms folded and was glaring right back at him, not crying even a little, and as soon as his father stopped talking, Tony started.

"It's not fair keeping me trapped like this. I'm so bored, Dad! There's no one to talk to and nothing to do since you took away Mr. Mendel and I WANT -" He broke off and stood up to storm off to his room -

- but his father grabbed his arm -

- and he was holding it so tight -

- it hurt -

"OW!" he yelled, but Howard just dragged him back to his seat and snapped at Tony to sit down and be quiet because this was important.

"You're going to boarding school."

"NO!"

"You're leaving in the morning. It's part way through the term, but I'm sure you'll make friends."

"NO!"

"Tony, this is the best -"

"NO!" he screamed. "NO, NO, NO!"

"Jarvis, take Tony to his room," Howard ordered, his voice hoarse.

He'd cried for a while, and stared at the red spots where his father had held his wrist too tightly. There was bruises starting in little rings like bracelets. He rubbed a finger across them and winced. Broken skin. He didn't know how to fix it.

He flopped back on his bed and drummed his feet on the mattress, but it didn't make him feel any better. He wrinkled his nose to make the tears go away, and stared at the ceiling. He would creep downstairs to find his father and ask him to let him stay. He knew he could be good. They could get more tutors, and he could ask Jarvis to take him to the park every day and he wouldn't get too bored that way. Maybe he could make friends with some of the other boys in the city, if the security people said he could.

Tony hopped off the bed and went to the door, then stopped and leaned against it, his head bumping the door. He didn't know how to fix this. His father wouldn't listen to him. He never listened to him. He didn't pay attention to him until he'd done something wrong...

He whirled around and kicked at his desk. The pencil cup on top wobbled, and he kicked again and again and again, until it crashed to the ground and broke into smithereens. He fell to his knees and gathered them up, piece by piece in his hands. There was a lot of powder, but he thought that it could be glued back together okay. He went to the wardrobe and dumped the lot into one of his handkerchiefs, and carefully opened the door to his room, glancing right and left for security people.

No one there.

He crept down the stairs and up behind his father while he was talking on the phone. "Peggy, I don't want to send him there, but Hydra has forced my hand. I can't keep him here. ... I know. ... Well, he'll understand someday. Yeah. I'll tell him. Watch your back, Pegs."

Howard turned around. "Tony?"

Tony held up the handkerchief full of shards. "I broke it," he explained quietly. "Can we fix it?"

His father stood over him. Too tall and too far away. He didn't smell like cologne. It had been a long day, and now his father just smelled like too much gin and sweat and tiredness. He didn't kneel down and inspect the shards. He just looked at the bruises speckling Tony's arm and drew back slightly. "I can't fix it. I've got... important things to do, Tony."

"This is important," the little boy insisted.

He could hear the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the front room and see his father swallow, his adam's apple bobbing up and down. "I know," Howard said finally. "Go to bed, Tony. Get some rest."

"I don't wanna go," Tony said, still holding the pencil cup shards out in front of him.

Howard nodded. "I know."

His son wrinkled his nose and upper lip and sniffed. "Captain America wouldn't send me away. I'd promise to be good, and he'd let me stay even if it was hard. He wouldn't just, just leave people he cared about."

His father sighed and knelt down, not touching him, even when Tony shuffled forward a step for a hug. "Steve would have. If it was the right thing to do. I'm sorry."

Tony sniffed again, then shook his head, out of words. He stared down at the shards of the pencil cup, then turned and wordlessly plodded away from his father, up the stairs, to his bed and cried for many long minutes before he finally fell asleep, still in the clothes he'd run away from home in, still holding a handkerchief wrapped around the shards of a broken pencil cup no one had the time to fix.

More to come, but a time skip is likely. (Also preoccupied with an AU, so it may be a while).