Chapter 4 – Kids these days
…
Undisclosed location
A series of dark, dingy hallways echoed with the soft, quiet clink of dripping water, but this sound was soon drowned out by the stomp of booted footsteps and the scuff of dragged feet as two heavily armed but un-uniformed men dragged a bound and hooded figure between them.
Soon, the man's captors came upon a door guarded by two more men armed and dressed much like themselves, and after exchanging a flurry of words in a tongue the hooded man didn't speak, the heavy doors were opened with a groan of rusted hinges, and the man was dragged into the center of a room before being thrown to the damp stone floor.
Reflexively, the man tried to rise to his knees, but a heavy boot planted between his shoulder-blades forced him painfully back to the floor. However, before he could complain, he heard the click of a rifle being armed, and he remained silent.
For several moments, this silence extended to the entire room, as no-one, not captive nor captors, moved a muscle. However, despite being blinded by the hood being ground painfully into his cheek by the slimy stone floor, the man still felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise from some unseen, but disturbingly penetrating, gaze upon him.
After almost a minute, his straining ears finally caught the faint hint of rustling cloth, apparently from some gesture made by whatever person was in charge, because the prisoner's escorts seized him by his upper arms and dragged him roughly to his knees before ripping the cloth sack off his head.
The man's eyes burned from the sudden exposure to light after so long without, but thankfully, the room was dimly lit, so this faded quickly. Unfortunately, as he shook his head to sweep some of his chin-length hair out of his face, he realized this also meant he could see almost nothing of his captors.
However, as he studied the figure in front of him, he found himself feeling inexplicably grateful for this fact.
He was knelt before an ornate, ancient-looking wooden throne, which was partially shrouded in both darkness and the smoke of incense trailing from smoldering sticks placed in the mouths of stone dragons crouching on either side. Their faint red light was all that illuminated the figure in the throne, and all they allowed him to see were two heavily ringed, long-nailed hands slowly tapping on the arms of the throne.
The prisoner never said a word as he stared into the shadows where the seated figure's face should be, neither demanding answers nor begging for freedom.
This apparently pleased the figure.
"You have learned the value of silence," the figure observed, speaking in accented, overly enunciated English. A twitch of shadows might have been a grin. "This is good." Those bejeweled, claw-like hands grasped the arms of the throne as the figure stood, revealing flowing, ornate green robes that shrouded his form just as the shadows masked his face. However, as the figure began to descend the short steps at the foot of his throne, the prisoner suddenly saw stars as one of his guards smashed the butt of his rifle into the back of his skull.
"Eyes down," the guard hissed over the ringing in the prisoner's ears.
By the time the stone floor had stopped spinning and the splitting pain in his skull had receded to a sharp throb, along with the faint tickling sensation of blood running down the back of his neck, the robed figure had come to a halt in front of him. Rather than provoke the guard again, however, the prisoner kept his gaze on the ornate golden hem of the figure's robes, even when the figure slowly bent until he could feel his moist breath on the nape of his neck, and smell the cloying mixture of sour sweat and incense that clung to him like perfume.
"Do you know why you are here?" the figure asked in a scintillating voice.
The prisoner shook his head, prompting the figure to lean closer.
"Knowledge," he hissed into his ear.
The figure straightened and began slowly gliding away as he continued speaking.
"Yes, knowledge," the figure repeated, gently sliding his hand down the edge of what the prisoner could faintly make out as a table covered with hulking, shadowy shapes, though he was currently more interested in what he could make out about the figure now that his back was turned, but other than long, straight black hair, he couldn't tell much.
"More powerful than any weapon, is knowledge," the figure continued, still with his back turned. "Sweeter than the finest wine, more deadly than any poison. It can build empires, or fell kingdoms. With just a whisper, it can bring enlightenment … or madness."
The figure began to turn, and as the prisoner heard the creaking of leather from his guard's gloves on his rifle, he hastily dropped his gaze back to the floor.
"And you have knowledge that I need," the robed man whispered as he stared down at the prisoner. With one barked command, one of the soldiers stepped forward from the shadows and threw down a cardboard box, spilling its contents all over the stone floor.
The prisoner recognized his notebooks and diagrams, apparently stolen from his home when the soldiers broke in and kidnapped him.
Most of all, though, he recognized one diagram in particular. While it wasn't one he had made himself, he had spent more than a little time pouring over it in recent months as he tried to unlock the secrets it hinted at.
"Yes," the robed man intoned as he spotted where his gaze was directed. "I see that you know what I am talking about." He gently kicked that very diagram. Stepping in front of the prisoner, the figure dropped into a crouch once more, forcing the prisoner to stare almost straight down at the dank stone floor.
"You and I," the man whispered, "have a common enemy."
As the figure stood, the two guards seized the prisoner's arms in a bruising grip and dragged him to his feet as well, forcing him after the figure as he glided back towards the shadowy table. With only the subtlest of gestures from the robed man, however, one of the guards threw a switch, and the entire table was lit with a harsh, buzzing light.
The prisoner's eyes widened.
The table was filled with a few scraps of damaged, bullet-riddled red and gold armor sparsely filling in the outline of a man, and around them were hand-drawn diagrams of what looked like a crude mechanical suit. Nestled on top of these was a filthy, bulky black laptop, the screen of which was filled with lines of complex code, but overtop it all was a completed progress bar for a "Power sequence initialization."
"It would seem that our mutual friend is less than diligent in cleaning up after himself," the robed figure commented as he gently caressed the battered laptop. "He was once a guest of ours, you see. Though he parted ways in time, he left more than a few treasures behind in the process." The figure nodded towards the diagrams. "My disciples were even able to recover his first suit. Though it was eventually stolen from us, the diagrams we were able to draw from it remain."
The prisoner reached out with his bound hands and angled one of the diagrams so he could read it, his eyes gleaming with excitement as he did.
"So," the figure said, stepping back and spreading his hands, "that is what I offer you: these gifts, and the chance to finally strike back at the name that has ruined your own. What say you?"
The prisoner didn't hesitate as he turned from the table and raised his eyes to meet the robed man's gaze for the first time. The man's face glistened with stale sweat, and a prominent hooked nose gave his expression a severe, predatory cast, but the man's eyes … they were black as night, and just as cold, no matter the smile on the man's thin lips. They almost looked out of place on the man's human face, seeming more at home on some great, feral beast than on a man.
The prisoner shivered as he met those alien black orbs. However, he still refused to look away, making the man's lips twist into a pleased, if somewhat condescending expression, though his beast-like eyes remained unchanged, predatory and hungry.
"One condition," the prisoner finally answered in a thick Russian accent.
The guards in the room tightened their grips on their weapons, but the robed man simply raised one long-nailed finger to halt them as he gestured for his guest to continue.
The prisoner's grin bared metal-capped teeth. "I want my bird," Ivan Vanko told them.
Four years later
"At last," a figure wearing a white lab coat hissed victoriously as he stood hunched over his latest creation, "with this device, all the world shall be mine to command!" Throwing his head back, he let loose a loud, maniacal laugh, his black goggles hiding the deranged light gleaming in his eyes.
"A truly terrifying notion, that," a smooth, unimpressed female voice dryly commented through the speakers.
"Hey, there's no need to be rude, Jo," the pouting sixteen-year-old responded, moving his goggles to rest in his wild, messy black hair, exposing bright green eyes lined with exhaustion.
"Well, your mad-scientist laugh does seem to be coming along well, at least," his synthetic companion complimented.
"Good enough to scare Pepper, you think?" he asked with a grin, the dark circles around his eyes not detracting from their mirth.
"Combined with the plans for your 'Doomsday Devices' you keep 'accidentally' letting her find across the house, yes, I think it might just do the trick, cruel though it may be."
"Hey, I gotta keep her on her toes around here somehow," he defended with a laugh as he assembled the various components of his latest project. "Alright," he said to the room as he stepped away from the table, "test number fourteen about to commence."
Rolling up the sleeves of his lab coat revealed two thin, bracer-type devices shackled around his forearms, in the center of each of which was a small, glowing arc reactor that constantly flooded his body, and the creature inside him, with low levels of arc reactor energy. Because of these shackles, he was currently enjoying the longest uninterrupted period without an outburst he had ever known, as the devices' unique energy signature almost seemed to hypnotize the rabid beast and keep it asleep. On top of that, by blending the creature's weird-ass otherworldly power with arc reactor energy, he found himself able to draw upon and harness its energy more easily than he had ever managed before, and with fewer fried electronics and melted devices than he had once been so used to.
Not too shabby for tech he designed when he was thirteen.
As he slid the new, slightly bulkier silver gauntlet over the bracer, however, a certain VI fuddy-duddy of course decided to make himself known.
"Sir, if I might remind you, after your last incident, Mr. Stark has requested that you not test new technology without his presence, or failing that, without a bomb-disposal unit and a fire-fighting team on standby," Jarvis annoyingly pointed out.
Harry groaned as his gauntlet clicked into place over the bracer. "Oh, come on, that explosion was barely worth mentioning. And that car was hideous anyway, so really, that was me doing Tony a favor."
"Regardless, I am going to have to insist that this test be put on hold until Mr. Stark returns from his opening of the Stark Expo," Jarvis informed him. "Or I will be forced to send a message to Mr. Stark informing him of these events."
"You know, that's pretty tough talk for someone whose databases are just begging to be flooded with another few dozen terabytes of porn," Harry pointed out as he flexed his gauntlet to test its range of motion.
Jarvis went very quiet for a moment. "… you wouldn't … would you?" he asked nervously.
"Oh, I think we both know the answer to that," Harry answered with a grin.
"… And suddenly, I find my communications array has developed an unexplained malfunction," Jarvis quietly relented.
"That's what I thought," he snickered as he warmed up the gauntlet. "Alright," he repeated, turning towards a stack of basketball-sized rubber balls on the other side of the room as he raised his gauntlet. "Commencing test in three … two … one."
The gauntlet spat out some sparks before it sputtered and died.
"You know, I think that might just be your best work yet," his own traitorous VI commented.
"Oh, ha ha, Jo," he flatly replied as he disconnected the gauntlet and began disassembling it once again. "Hey, Dum-E," he called out to the … "helpful" robotic assistant in the workshop. "Can you bring me the soldering iron?"
The robotic arm on wheels whined happily at him before trundling towards the tool bench.
As he continued tinkering with the various components strewn across the table, Dum-E rolled up clutching … a hammer.
"… I guess that answers that question," he observed, taking the extremely non-soldering-iron-shaped hammer from mechanical nincompoop as it trilled proudly at him. "Why don't you clean up that table over there?" he suggested to the eager machine, pointing towards a table covered with the scattered bits and pieces of a previous project.
Dum-E gave him a cheerful affirmative beep before rolling away … in the exact opposite direction of the table.
"You know, I think he's actually getting better," Jo commented.
"Oh, without a doubt," he agreed wholeheartedly, walking over to grab the soldering iron himself.
After several more minutes of careful tinkering, during which Dum-E rolled over and started sweeping the floor around his feet, for some reason, he had the gauntlet reassembled and was once more in position to begin the test.
"Fifteenth time's the charm, is it?" Jo asked with an impressive amount of snark for a digital being.
"Don't make me turn off your anti-malware," he threatened as the gauntlet activated with a hum. "Okay, initializing test in three … two … one."
The gauntlet's hum reached a crescendo, and a ribbon of emerald light reached out and connected the gauntlet to one of the rubber balls.
"Connection successfully established," Harry interpreted, his exhausted eyes shining with excitement as the slowly undulating current of energy was successfully maintained, enveloping the ball in a faint green aura. "Beginning remote manipulation of subject."
Slowly and carefully, he raised his gauntlet, and to his delight, the ball followed suit, gently rotating in the field of energy.
"Initial manipulation successful," he stated with a delighted grin. "Beginning more advanced manipulation of target."
Flipping his palm upwards, he gently cupped his hand and pulled it towards him. Sure enough, the ribbon of energy reaching from his gauntlet to the ball retracted, and the ball was carefully pulled towards him. Turning his hand and pushing outwards, the ball floated back towards the far wall.
Time for another scientific observation, he thought.
"Awww yisssss," he declared instead, moving his hand left and right and watching the ball successfully move across the room to track his movements.
Suddenly, he clenched his fist and jerked it back to his torso, causing the ball to rocket towards him like a bullet from a gun. Just as it reached him, though, he snapped his gauntleted fist out in a punch, striking the ball and reversing the polarity of the stream all in one move.
The room echoed with an ear-ringing pop as the rubber ball struck the far wall and exploded with all the speed and force of cannon fire.
"Well, I'd say that trial looks like a success," he observed as he happily looked over his quietly humming gauntlet.
"Not from the ball's perspective," Jo pointed out as the room was filled with the oh so appetizing smell of melted rubber.
"Well, if you'd just let me use kittens like I wanted to …," he retorted with a grin as he crossed the room.
"You are a monster," Jo dryly informed him. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"Moving on to the next stage of the test," he explained from next to one of Tony's unnecessarily expensive cars.
"Oh, you cannot be serious."
"As a general rule, you're completely right," he happily replied. "Just this once, though … yeah."
"This … is an incredibly stupid idea," she diagnosed as he aimed the gauntlet at the car.
He paused thoughtfully. "Agreed," he consented. "But sometimes, you gotta go through with a few stupid ideas before you can know what the smart ones are."
"Does that even make sense?" Jo asked.
"Not even a little," the grinning teenager unrepentantly admitted as he activated the gauntlet and enveloped the car in the stream of emerald energy. "Okay, new subject is an Audi R8, weighing just under 4,000 pounds."
"And costing upwards of $180,000," Jarvis pointed out in a slightly nervous tone.
"It'll be fine, you worrywart," he assured the oddly anxious VI.
"Says the person who just murdered an innocent rubber ball," Jo pointed out.
"Hey! Whose side are you on?" he demanded indignantly.
"At the moment?" Jo asked in amusement.
"Ugh. Attempting remote manipulation," he declared, shaking his head at the fickleness of friends as he gently raised his gauntlet.
For a moment, the car remained stationary on the ground as the undulating ribbon of energy curved through the air to remain connected. However, that ribbon quickly grew brighter and started flowing faster and faster, until finally, the car relinquished its hold on land and lifted into the air.
"Whoo! Suck it, gravity!" Harry happily cheered as the two-ton mass of steel floated in the air at the end of what looked like a brilliant green bolt of lightning.
"This is most definitely not going to end well," Jo predicted as the car soared around the room.
"Pfft. No faith in me," he complained as he continued with his patently bad idea.
The entire room seemed to sit with bated breath as he floated the car to and fro, despite the fact that he was the only person there that actually breathed. Which was a rather unfortunate quality, when the dust kicked up by Dum-E's sweeping forced him into a sudden sneezing fit.
However, when he was finally able to fully open his eyes, he very thankfully found the car still floating untouched in the air, albeit disturbingly close to the ceiling.
He decided to end the test at that point. And so, with exceeding care, but also delight at how easy it was, he floated the two-ton car back towards the lineup of other vehicles.
"Okay," he said quietly as the car floated over its parking spot, but at completely the wrong angle. "Attempting fine-tuned remote manipulation."
As he felt various new servos activate in his gauntlet, he carefully moved his fingers into position. Then, with agonizing care, he gently moved his fingers to slowly spin the car in the air. Finally, as it was properly positioned, he began the final part of the test.
"Lowering subject," he informed the room, nervously swallowing.
Gently, ever so gently, he lowered his arm, bringing the very expensive vehicle closer and closer to the ground, until finally, with a faint squeal of rubber, the car was once again groundborn.
"Deactivating gauntlet," he declared with a relieved sigh as the ribbon of energy connecting his gauntlet to the car disappeared. "So … you were saying, Jo?" he asked smugly.
"Wait for it …," she answered expectantly.
"For what, the car to spontaneously explode?" he asked in bemusement.
"Hey, this is you we're talking about. That could actually happen," she pointed out with an audible grin.
In response, he simply threw his hands up in exasperation.
… and accidentally activated the gauntlet in the process.
He yelped and covered his head as the room was suddenly shaken with a massive, booming crash and clouds of powdered concrete and drywall roiled through the air.
Coughing his lungs clear, Harry waved his non-gauntleted hand through the air to clear it, but as he laid eyes on the source of the collision, he rather regretted this.
"And now, the phrase 'I rest my case' comes to mind," Jo laughed as he stared aghast at the expensive sports car embedded halfway through the ceiling.
As he stood there staring, Dum-E rolled up and joined him, giving a long, low whistle as it stared at the devastation.
"Dum-E … what have you done?" he asked the machine in mock horror.
The robotic arm jerked to face him as it belted out a series of confused and alarmed whines and beeps.
"Yep. You are so going to get it when Tony gets home," he informed his new patsy. "Enjoy being turned into a wine rack."
The panicked machine let out long, mournful beep that sounded suspiciously like "Nooooooo!"
Later that evening, another, even more expensive car pulled up to the elaborate Malibu mansion.
"Well, I think that opening was a huge success," Tony Stark boasted to Pepper as Happy opened their doors.
"Of course you do. It was about you, just like everything else," Pepper dryly pointed out.
"Exactly. Ergo, success," Tony confirmed, making Pepper roll her eyes as they walked towards the house.
"Do you think Harry's been alright here by himself?" Pepper asked in some amount of concern.
"Of course. After all, he's the one who wanted to stay. And he's, what, twelve by now? He's fine hanging around here by himself," Tony assured her.
"Very funny," Pepper commented before dragging them both to a halt before the doors. "Seriously though, Tony, don't you think it's a bit … concerning … that he doesn't really spend time with kids his own age? Or really anyone, in fact?"
"Hey, what am I, chopped liver?" Tony complained indignantly. "And what about how Happy's been giving him boxing lessons? Are you implying that just because Happy works for me, he's not a person? Because that's called 'classism,' Pepper, and I don't do it."
"You know what I mean," Pepper replied in exasperation. "With the whole home-schooling thing, he's not spending time with other teenagers, and he spends almost all his other time either in the workshop with you, or he just inexplicably disappears for hours on end. You're not worried about this?"
"Honestly? Not really," Tony replied candidly. "C'mon, we both knew he was never going to be hanging out at Chuck E. Cheese's or going to see the Rugrats on Ice."
"Yeah, especially given the fact that he's not six," Pepper pointed out with a flat look.
"The point is, with his mind, he was always going to be a bit of an outsider," Tony explained. "Especially with his mind."
Pepper sighed. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense, given the level of some of the stuff he's developed for the company," Pepper reluctantly agreed. "Like the smart phones and cell towers. Unparalleled coverage and quality for a fraction of the price. Not to mention the computers and tablets and such, and their unheard-of processing power and speed."
"Decent innovation, I guess," Tony halfheartedly complimented.
"That's one way of putting it," Pepper remarked with an amused look. "It's only made Stark Industries one of the biggest names in computer technology."
"Yeah, like I said: decent innovation," Tony repeated, somewhat defensively.
"Especially for someone who hasn't even graduated college, yet," Pepper pointed out, just to rub it in. "And now that I think about it, the engineers are currently looking over his designs for car and plane engines, aren't they?"
"Oh, he's already moved past undergrad college courses in his homeschooling," Tony mentioned, definitely not changing the subject. "Jarvis and I have him wrapping up some graduate school level courses at the moment."
"… Seriously?" Pepper asked in astonishment.
"I mean, that's not that impressive," Tony defended. "I graduated MIT at seventeen, after all, so he's not beating me by that much."
"You mean he already has college degrees?" Pepper asked, her eyes wide. "In what?"
"Oh, who knows," Tony airily responded. "It's not like I'm keeping track."
Pepper rolled her eyes at that very believable fact. "But why haven't you told me? In fact, why hasn't Harry?"
"Oh, he has no idea," Tony explained matter-of-factly.
Pepper opened and closed her mouth a few times as she tried to wrap her head around that statement. "He what?"
"Yeah, he's pretty much just writing whatever papers we ask and passing or testing out of any courses Jarvis and I lay out for him. We're just not mentioning what they're for or where they're coming from."
Pepper blinked in confusion. "But why? Why keep this a secret from him?"
"Because it's funny. Duh," Tony replied simply. "Plus, Happy and I have a bet going as to whether I can get him to earn a doctorate without him realizing."
Pepper narrowed her eyes at him. "A bet?"
"Yeah," Tony replied completely unashamedly. "Why? You want in? The minimum buy-in's 500, but I can get you some pretty good odds if you bet pro-doctorate. After all, he's already well on his way to a few master's degrees without noticing."
Pepper simply stared at him flatly.
"I'm starting to think that Harry's the mature one and that it's you who shouldn't be left to his own devices," she finally declared before turning and heading inside.
Of course, she was forced to change her tune once she caught sight of what was waiting for them inside.
Namely, the front half of a car erupting from the middle of what was once the living room floor.
"So … you were saying?" Tony asked Pepper with a smirk.
She sighed. "I was wrong. You two are apparently a perfect fit," she said wearily as she walked away.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry," Tony mused as he shook his head at the sports car cresting his living room floor before heading downstairs to the shop. There, he found Dum-E somehow appearing morose as it slowly worked its way with a broom through the rubble piled underneath the back end of the ceiling-car. Meanwhile, the slightly shorter-than-average teenager doubtless responsible stood hunched over a table liberally coated with scattered pages filled with equations and formulae, apparently working on yet another project.
Shocker.
"So, the opening of the Expo was a success. How was everything over here?" Tony asked the teenaged, and fairly destructive, workaholic.
"It was okay," Harry replied casually as he continued to work on his notes.
"Just okay?" Tony asked, stepping further into the room. "Nothing interesting happened?"
The silence of Harry apparently pausing to consider the question was somewhat broken by the clatter of a piece of rubble falling free from the broken ceiling around what was once one of Tony's favorite cars.
"Nope, nothing interesting at all," Harry very blatantly lied.
"Really? Well, that's good to know," Tony replied, turning to leave.
"Oh, hey, I almost forgot," he corrected, pausing and turning back halfway to the door, "Why is there a car parked in my ceiling?"
"Oh, that," Harry said, smacking his forehead in feigned dramatic realization. "Yeah, Dum-E did that."
Curiously, while this declaration was followed by rather frantic and emphatic gestures from aforementioned robotic assistant, the machine never made a sound.
"Did you mute Dum-E again?" Tony asked in amused exasperation.
"Of course not," Harry assured him. "Clearly, he is just so burdened by guilt that it has rendered him speechless, and thus should be taken as proof of his crime. Kind of like a reverse Telltale Heart kind of thing."
"Uh huh," Tony responded. "So your story is that a poorly made robot–"
Said robot made a mute gesture that seemed a mix of indignant and hurt, but he ignored it.
"–that only has a maximum lifting capacity of about forty pounds, somehow managed to throw a car weighing about four thousand pounds with enough force to embed it halfway through my ceiling."
Harry turned and studied Dum-E before turning back to Tony.
"Yes."
"Uh huh. And how are you proposing he managed it?" Tony asked.
"Steroids?" Harry suggested. "Or, the machine equivalent, I guess. Maybe … sterdroids?"
Tony lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, try again."
"Um … disgruntled valet?" Harry suggested hopefully.
"Meaning Happy," Tony interpreted.
"Yes. Happy must have done it," Harry accused.
"You were testing new tech again, weren't you."
"Of course I was. What, are you new here?"
Tony groaned. "Couldn't you wreck my cars by taking them out for a joyride like a normal teenager?" he asked.
"Well, all the evidence indicates 'no' … so I'm going to say 'no'," Harry responded. "Besides, this is only car number three, drama queen."
"Ugh. Where's that box?" Tony muttered to himself, looking around the shop.
"Oh, no. Uh uh. I'm not falling for that again. You're not getting me back in the 'Up for adoption' box," Harry declared emphatically.
"What? Nooo, we're just going for a car ride," Tony assured him with a clap on his shoulder, still clearly searching for the box.
"Would this car ride be taking us in the vicinity of the fire station? Or an orphanage?" Harry asked.
"… It might not," Tony hesitantly assured him.
"Yeaaah, I'm not going," Harry decided.
"Well, I gotta do something. I'm running out of cars, here!" Tony complained.
"Here's a suggestion: build a workshop that isn't your stupid garage, cheapskate," Harry suggested.
"Oh, you wanna talk 'cheap'? Guess whose account the money to replace my car is going to be coming out of?" Tony smugly asked.
"Damn it," Harry complained.
"Yeah, 'damn it'," Tony agreed with a victorious smirk. "Might even make a pretty reasonable dent in your cash supply, too," Tony continued nettling. "Speaking of, why is that? I mean, you should be absolutely rolling in dough from all the stuff you've designed for the company."
"Well, someone's got to be designing stuff for them, since you're constantly off Iron Manning all over the place," Harry muttered.
"Okay, 'Iron Manning' is not a real world," Tony declared. "You can't just turn any noun into a verb whenever you want to."
"Sure you can. This is English. None of its rules make sense," Harry argued.
Tony's eyes narrowed. "You're trying to change the subject, aren't you?"
"Maybe. Or perhaps my feelings about how asinine the rules of the English language are compared to those of virtually any other language simply trump my feelings about whatever else we were talking about," Harry offered.
"What we were talking about is what's been going on with the vast sums of money you've earned since you started supplying the company with designs like they were going out of style," Tony helpfully reminded him, not taking the bait.
"Oh, right. They've been going … places," Harry very informatively answered.
"For what?"
"… Things," Harry elaborated.
"Mm-hmm," Tony replied, staring at the shifty and, as usual, clearly sleep-deprived teenager. "And do these 'places' and 'things' have anything to do with where you keep disappearing to for hours at a time?"
"… They might."
Tony snorted. "You know, we're eventually going to have to talk about this secrecy business."
"Yeah, you're one to talk," Harry muttered under his breath, though he kept his voice low enough that Tony wouldn't be able to hear it.
"Especially since it almost seems like you're angling to supplant me as CEO of the company, the way you keep flooding our tech department with designs," he continued.
"Blegh! Don't even say something that horrible," Harry told him, visibly shuddering.
"What? You don't like the thought of being CEO?" Tony asked curiously.
"What, are you kidding? Stuck in some office making asinine decisions about who does what where all day every day?" Harry dry-heaved. "I'd rather run an ad praising Hammer Tech."
"Okay, that seems a bit excessive," Tony countered. "And besides, I'm CEO, and you don't see me strapped to a desk chair, do you?"
"Yeah, that's because you've got Pepper doing all the actual work," Harry pointed out. "I'm pretty sure normal CEOs actually have to, you know, CEO at some point."
"Hey, she doesn't do … all the CEO stuff," he argued halfheartedly. "I sign stuff, sometimes."
"Well, then I stand corrected," Harry amended in a totally not sarcastic voice.
Tony rolled his eyes at the teen. "Alright, you know what, let's just move on to your little do-it-yourself skylight." He eyed his formerly pristine ceiling. "Can you at least tell me something cool came out of it?"
Harry gave him an offended look.
"Oh, for– … yeah, yeah, all your designs are amazing, Mr. Sensitive," Tony condescendingly assured him.
"Damn right they are," Harry agreed with a triumphant nod, to which Tony rolled his eyes again.
"So come on, show me," Tony told him eagerly.
"… That's … not where I parked that," Happy commented in confusion as he stared at the half of a sports car that was apparently living its secret dream of being a coffee table.
"Harry," Pepper succinctly explained.
"Ah," Happy nodded in understanding. "Another one bites the dust, huh?"
"Apparently," Pepper tiredly agreed as she looked over the wreckage of the living room.
"You know, when I was a teenager, I would accidentally break lamps," Happy mentioned. "Once or twice, I got a dent in the family car."
"Your parents were clearly very lucky people," Pepper agreed, daydreaming about what it would be like to live a life where cars crashing through the floor were not normal occurrences.
Making the next car to be sent careening through the living room floor just an incredible example of terrible timing.
Sure enough, though, once the room stopped shaking and the high-pitched screaming stopped, the floor had indeed developed another car-shaped growth next to the first, only this time shaped like the mangled back end of a black Maserati Spyder.
"HARRY!" a furious Pepper shouted through the cracks in the floor.
"That wasn't me!" Harry yelled back. "It was–"
"Yes it was!" Tony yelled over him. "Bad Harry! You're grounded!"
"What?! You lying bastard! That was you!" Harry shouted back.
"Oof, bad language and false accusations? Double grounded!" Tony smugly declared.
"Oh, you want to see some bad language? Try watching the video I'll be posting on the internet of you waking up tomorrow morning to find that stupid goatee shaved off your stupid face!" Harry threatened.
Dead silence followed this proclamation.
"Even you wouldn't stoop that low," Tony tried to convince himself.
Even Pepper stopped her pained temple-rubbing to stare incredulously at the floor upon hearing that.
"… Fine, you're not grounded," Tony muttered with a clearly audible sulk. "Little brat."
"Ass," Harry muttered back in his customary response, though with a clear undertone of reluctant amusement.
Pepper groaned. "I need a drink," the perpetually overstressed woman muttered to herself as she turned and headed for the bar.
"Wait for me," the thankfully no long screaming Happy told her hoarsely as he climbed out from behind the couch and hurried after her.
"So how 'bout that? It actually was surprisingly easy to send a car through the ceiling," Tony observed with a dust-filled cough as he slipped the gauntlet off his arm, carefully minding the various wires still connecting it to Harry's shackles.
"Told ya'," Harry replied, disconnecting the gauntlet and setting it on the table to be further refined later.
"Yes, you have a very fine grasp of the flaws in your tech. Bravo," Tony responded, earning an indignant look from the teen. "Still don't know why you'd blow off the Expo to work this piece of junk, though."
Harry gave him a flat look. "Let's see, spend the evening watching you strut around telling everyone just how awesome you are, or actually get some work done. Yeah, that was a tough choice."
"It wasn't … all about me telling them how awesome I am," Tony defended.
Harry's unconvinced expression was made all the more potent by his exhaustion-darkened eyes. "Did you go with the 'never has a greater phoenix metaphor been personified in human history' line?"
Tony gave him an amusedly indignant look. "There were dancers, too," he replied instead.
"You mean your 'Ironettes'?" Harry asked. "Yeah, not interested."
Tony gasped and stared at him in horror. "Blasphemy!"
Harry simply rolled his eyes.
"Seriously, though," Tony continued as they started picking their way over the rubble to make their way upstairs. "I'm worried about you."
"Are you, now?" Harry asked in amusement, though while stifling a yawn.
"Of course. I mean, I adopt a kid, and after four years, he still isn't running around partying, or getting caught on camera with his pants off and a lampshade on his head, or taking cop cars for a joyride when they come to break things up? It's embarrassing. You're making me look bad," Tony complained.
"Trust me, you don't need my help to make yourself look bad," Harry assured him as they started climbing up the stairs.
"Hey. Respect your elders, boy," Tony ordered him.
"Will do, grandpa," Harry replied as they reached the main floor.
"Alright, you know what?" Tony started.
Harry did not, in fact, know what, and sadly, he never would, as Tony was suddenly interrupted by the doorbell ringing.
They both stared at the door in surprise at the unexpected intrusion, leaving a now slightly tipsy Pepper to reluctantly walk over and open it. However, the redheaded woman on the other side appeared slightly taken aback at being greeted with the sight of Pepper drinking straight from a bottle.
"Um … US marshal," the woman finally introduced herself.
In response, Pepper simply sighed and waved her in.
"Et tu, Brute?" Tony asked Pepper upon seeing her freely invite "the enemy" into his home.
Pepper simply took another swig from her bottle.
"Tony Stark?" the woman asked as she stepped up to Tony.
"Uh, no, sorry. He's not here," he said to her face.
She furrowed her brow in confusion as she stared at the person who was very clearly Tony Stark.
"I'm a Starkbot," the … man? … explained. "Top-of-the-line robotic decoy technology. So sorry."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Why don't you just tell her that her Tony Stark is in another castle while you're at it?"
"I'm sorry, I am not programmed to respond to that type of question. My code is limited to behavior modeling and simple interaction simulations," the possible Tonybot answered mechanically.
"You are hereby ordered to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow morning at 9:00 am," the marshal informed him, somehow unconvinced by Tony's incredible performance as she held out a subpoena.
"Uh, I don't really like being handed things," Tony replied in a slight break of character as he stared at the outstretched subpoena. He turned to Harry.
"Hey, don't look at me. I'm not jumping on that grenade for you," Harry told him, making a cross with his fingers as he stared at the subpoena like it was a demonic artifact.
The poor US marshal seemed a bit lost and more than a little judgy as she stared at the two of them, at least until a groaning Pepper stepped forward and took the subpoena herself.
Shaking her head, the woman turned to leave, only to pause and look at them questioningly upon spotting the car-riddled floor behind them.
"Remodeling," Harry explained. "Using cars seemed easier than renting a bulldozer."
This time, as the woman walked away, he distinctly heard her mutter under her breath, "Frickin' rich people."
As the door closed behind her, Tony gave Pepper a look of deep-seated betrayal.
"What?" she asked.
"That, what," Tony said, pointing at the subpoena. "What happened to you fending them off?"
"Four years, Tony," Pepper answered with a glare. "Four. Years. Since you declared yourself Iron Man and started flying all over the world in your stupid suit." Pepper prowled closer to the nervous-looking Tony as she continued. "I have been fending them off. I've been claiming scheduling conflicts. I've been throwing patent lawyers at them. I've been quoting Constitutional Amendments at them. I've been flat out bullshitting them and leading them in circles for four years! I've got nothing left! My well! Is! DRY!"
"Oh," Tony said simply. "Well, why didn't you say so?"
Harry eyed Pepper nervously, waiting for her to erupt, but after a few moments of staring at Tony with what looked like actual flames in her eyes, she simply turned away and started chugging from her bottle once again.
"It's not like you didn't know this would be coming eventually," a relieved Harry pointed out to Tony.
"Yeah, but it's going to be so annoying," he complained.
"And yet somehow, I suspect you'll live," Harry said.
"We'll live," Tony corrected him. "You're coming too."
"I most certainly am not," Harry countered. "Me, with my past, stepping into a courtroom? I'll probably burst into flame or something just crossing the threshold. Count me out. Besides, I have work to do."
"You can't just stay holed up in here forever," Tony argued.
"Challenge accepted," Harry happily retorted.
Tony sighed. "Fine. You can stay, but on one condition: you fix my damn floor, and when we get back, I am dragging you out of this house to have some fun, and I'm not going to hear one word of complaint when I do."
"Technically, that would be three conditions," the tired teen pointed out. "But before I accept, where and when will we be going?"
"The Monaco Grand Prix, and next week," Tony told him proudly. "And this isn't negotiable. Because this whole workaholic thing you've got going on? It's making me itchy. You're going to learn to have fun, or I swear to God, I'm shoving you in that box and dropping you off at the fire station myself."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You should write a parenting book. But fine, agreed."
"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to make sure Pepper is at least somewhat sober for the trip ahead of us."
Harry looked past him to see Pepper still firmly attached to her bottle. "Yeah, I think that ship has sailed."
Tony sighed. "Well then, I guess I'll have to go with Plan B instead."
"Which is?" Harry asked curiously.
Tony grinned. "Get her drunk enough that it's funny."
Later the next day
"I will serve this great nation at the pleasure of myself. And if there's one thing I've proven, it's that you can count on me to pleasure myself."
"Real classy, dude," Harry commented, using his new gauntlet to float a heavy piece of machinery into place while splitting his focus with a laptop screen that was currently playing the tail end of a fairly amusing and eminently Tony trial, where the government had attempted, rather fruitlessly, to force Tony to hand over his Iron Man suit. Of course, the self-proclaimed and exceedingly humble superhero was the source of only part of Harry's amusement. The rest was due to how obviously hungover Pepper was as she staggered out the courthouse after him, large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes and one hand perpetually rubbing the side of her clearly aching head.
"Isn't he, though?" a female voice asked in amusement as a dark figure welded the floating device to the rest of the machine. "Clear," she called out as she finished, allowing him to cease the stream of energy holding the massive device in place. It fully settled against the rest with only the faintest groan as gravity once again reasserted itself.
Harry looked over his gauntlet as the welder hopped down to the concrete floor. "It looks like I was right; this thing is going to be a huge benefit to us after all."
"I'll say," she agreed as she turned and looked across the rest of the large, open space of the warehouse-sized lab, which was currently filled with bulky, and occasionally just outright massive devices, most of which had been assembled by hand.
No mean feat, considering there was only two of them to split the labor.
"You think this one will work?" she asked him as he started shifting another piece of machinery with his gauntlet.
"Once it's finished, of course it will," he assured her as he settled the piece into place. "Why wouldn't it?"
"Because this will be, what, the thirty-fifth design?" she pointed out as she welded the new part into place. "That's a lot of failures."
"No it's not," he argued. "We've simply found thirty-four ways that won't work. But we only need to find one way to succeed."
She paused and stared at him. "Are you ripping off Thomas Edison right now?"
"I prefer the term 'paraphrasing'," he replied.
Shaking her head in amusement, she finished welding the connections together and hopped down, allowing him to release the component and deactivate his gauntlet.
"There," she said, wiping her hands. "That's the biggest part of the machine. Now comes the million or so small parts that need working on."
"Hooray," Harry very sarcastically celebrated as he picked up his tools and got to work. Not to be outdone, his companion walked over to a nearby table to discard her welding gear and grab her own tools. However, she paused as she glanced over a series of pages covered edge to edge in formulae and equations in Harry's tight, precise handwriting, which she remembered seeing him working on when she arrived.
"What is all this?" she asked holding up a page.
"Project Mirium," Harry replied, glancing over from where he knelt next to the enormous machine. "Stuff I'm working on for Tony. It's where most of the rest of my time is going."
"Important stuff, then," she interpreted, trying to make heads or tails of what she was reading.
"Frustrating, too," he answered. "I've been trying to figure it out for a couple years now. Just keep hitting one brick wall after another." He blew away a faint trail of smoke from the piece he was soldering. "It's kinda discouraging."
Setting the page down, she looked over at another table, this one absolutely overflowing with countless other designs and diagrams for half-finished projects. "And those?"
"Stuff I'm designing for Stark Industries," he explained, flicking a few switches on the part of the device he was working on to test how it was running. "They're getting pretty pushy about those, lately, given how a certain Tinman is a bit busy flying all over the place. But whatever. Got to make money to afford all this stuff somehow, right?"
This time, as his companion looked over the vast laboratory, and the enormous investment of both money and time it represented, she was filled with immense waves of guilt, which only increased as she saw Harry shift his goggles to rub at his blood-shot, exhausted eyes.
The fact that this was practically their default state nowadays simply made matters worse.
"When's the last time you slept, Harry?" she asked him quietly.
"Sleep is for the weak," he declared, replacing his goggles and shaking his head as he tried to focus his tired eyes on the piece he was soldering.
"And for the living," she argued.
He didn't respond.
Sighing, she stepped over and knelt down in front of him, gently placing her hands on his own as she lowered the soldering iron. "This has to stop, Harry. You're doing too much."
"No," he argued fiercely, tearing off his darkened goggles to more closely inspect his work. "I'm not doing enough."
"Harry–," she began.
"I made you a promise," he reminded her, almost glaring as he stared into her eyes. "I keep my promises."
"And that means you have to kill yourself?!" she demanded with a glare of her own. "Every time I get here, you've already been here for hours, and every time I leave, you look like you're still going to be here for hours to come. For years you've been doing this. It can't go on! I'm not going to let you kill yourself for this!"
For several tense seconds, they glared at each other, both unwilling to budge an inch. However, all at once, Harry's immense fatigue caught up with him, both physically and mentally, and he collapsed back until he was sitting on the cold concrete floor.
"I made you a promise," he repeated quietly, his head hanging low. "I need to keep it."
Gently, the taller girl wrapped him in her arms, resting her chin on his head and pressing his face into her warm chest. "I know, Harry," she said softly. "I can't tell you how much that means to me. I really can't." Cupping his cheeks, she leaned him backwards and looked deep into his eyes. "But I will not let you kill yourself over this," she repeated firmly. "You will keep your promise … but not today. And not tomorrow. We need to take our time with this, do it right." She gave a small, rueful smile. "After all, at this point, it's not like it'll make a huge difference if it takes us an extra year or two to pull this off. We're not exactly making much headway, after all, if we're being completely honest."
Sighing, he didn't argue as she pulled him back into the gentle, soothing embrace, her arms wrapping around his tired form like a soft, warm blanket as she gently ran her fingers through his hair, almost lulling him to sleep right there.
"So what do you want to do?" he tiredly mumbled against her shirt.
"I'm going to keep working on this," she told him. "And you are going to go home and sleep."
His first instinct was to protest that he had too much to do to sleep, but as his exhausted mind churned the idea over, he reluctantly came to realize that this was probably just proving her point: he was trying to do too much.
"After that," she continued, still softly stroking his messy hair, "you are going to focus on all the other stuff you've got going on for a while. And you are going to take. Your. Time." He could practically feel the intensity in her eyes on him as she emphasized that. "Clear your head. Relax. Take a break. I'll handle everything here. If and when things get more settled on your end, we can talk about this more then. But even when that happens, you're still not going to going to be just throwing yourself into this like you have been. I know why you're doing it, and it means so much to me, but I'm not going to lose my first and only real friend over this. I won't."
He sighed. "I'm sorry."
Rolling her eyes and smiling, she leaned back and gently bopped him on the forehead, because only he would apologize for something like this. "Now come on; time for you to go."
He snorted as she stood up and pulled him to his feet. "Oh, I see how it goes. You get me here just long enough to move all the heavy stuff, and then once you've got what you needed, you just kick me to the curb."
"Exactly. Now get out," she good-naturedly ordered, shoving his papers into his arms and shooing him towards the jump pad.
He stared at her in faux-irritation as he obediently headed for the pad. "You know, back in the day, no-one would have pushed me around like that without coming home to find themselves looted to the bedrock," he complained.
"Yes, yes, you're very intimidating, Spectre," she assured him in what he considered to be far too sarcastic of a tone. "Now go home and take a nap."
"You take a nap," maturely bit back as he activated the pad, teleporting back home to the Stark mansion.
The girl rolled her eyes and got back to work, a fond smile on her lips.
As a still slightly hungover Pepper followed Tony through the doors of the mansion later that afternoon, she cast a baleful glance at the bar.
"Never again," she promised with a groan.
"Probably again," Tony corrected.
However, before she could correct him (despite part of her reluctantly agreeing with him), she was distracted by what she saw further inside the house. Thankfully, this time, it wasn't wanton destruction, as even the previous wreckage of their living room had been successfully repaired while they were gone. Or at least, the floor had been. The once lavishly expensive furnishings, such as the coffee table and couches, were nowhere to be seen, and were presumably weighing down some garbage truck somewhere, which made her sigh regretfully, even if it wasn't exactly a surprise.
Rather than that, though, her attention was drawn to the passed-out form of Harry sprawled over the steps leading upstairs. With exasperation, she noted how his head was burrowed into a folder full of papers and drawings like it was a pillow, suggesting that he had, once again, fallen asleep on the way to his room.
"Well that's just embarrassing," Tony declared.
Pepper sighed. "You really need to have a talk with him about this kind of thing," she said.
"I did," he assured her. "I told him he was disgracing the Stark name with his behavior."
Pepper looked confused. "Wait, wha–"
"I mean, no underage drinking, no partying, no hooking up with girls, just work work work work work all day, every day. Shameful!"
Pepper groaned and rubbed her aching head, which she was starting to suspect wasn't due to her hangover. "Can you at least get him to bed, please? I'm going to go upstairs and take a shower."
"Sure thing, hon. Don't worry, I'll take care of this," he promised.
Pepper gave him a soft, grateful kiss before heading upstairs, carefully stepping around the unconscious teenager as she did.
After she left, Tony spent a couple moments looking at his lightly snoring adoptive son before heading off to grab something from what remained of the living room. Returning, he gently dropped a lamp shade over the teen's head.
"Much better," he decided, heading to his room and leaving the boy sprawled over the stairs.
Upstairs in his room, a shirtless Tony leaned against a dresser and stared into a mirror while listening to the gentle thrum of water as Pepper showered in the adjoining bathroom.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small, innocent-looking silver device. However, despite its innocuous appearance, he stared at it as if was a live viper.
Reluctantly, he pressed the tip of a finger to the device, suppressing a wince as it took a small sample of blood. However, any pain he felt was quickly overshadowed by the immense wave of sheer crippling despair he felt as read the display.
'Blood toxicity: 94%'
Looking up, he stared at his bare torso in the mirror, and the smooth, healthy-looking skin surrounding the arc reactor in his chest. However, as he pressed a button on the watch-like device on his wrist, this appearance changed drastically.
His chest was a dense, horrific network of blackened veins radiating outwards from the reactor, looking like something that would be more at home on a zombie than on an actual living human being. Turning his head, he winced as he saw that the corrupted, poisoned veins now reached all the way up the side of his neck to his cheek.
Sighing, he lowered his head and slammed his hand into the dresser.
"Damn it," he whispered, clutching the reactor that was, oh so ironically, both keeping him alive and killing him at the same time.
As he stared into the hopeless eyes meeting his own in the mirror, one thought rang clear in his mind:
I'm running out of time.
He heard the water shutting off in the bathroom, and with that, he stood up straight, bullheadedly shoving through the dense thicket of hopelessness and depression he was trapped in and once more putting on the lackadaisical, devil-may-care face of Tony Stark. With a push of a button on his holographic disguise projector, adapted from some of Harry's early tech, his transformation was complete.
As Pepper made her way out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and drying her hair, she was surprised by Tony stepping forward and pulling her into soft, warm kiss.
"Tony?" she asked in confusion. However, he simply cupped her face and gently pulled her back into the kiss. Gradually, she lost herself in the moment, no longer caring about how out of the blue this intimate display from Tony was. As such, she didn't say a word as he pulled back from the kiss and slowly unwrapped her towel, letting it drop to the floor as he simply stared deeply into her eyes, and she stared back into his.
She wrapped her arms tightly around him as he pulled her back into the kiss, molding her body against his own as he gently led her back to the bed.
He truly was running out of time. All of his money and all of his brains, and none of it made any difference. He was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it. The palladium from his reactor had been slowly poisoning his body ever since that day in the cave when he first put it in, and finally, after almost five years, his time was almost up.
However, he had no intention of spending his last days fruitlessly searching for solutions that he already knew weren't there to be found. He had spent years searching for a way to replace the palladium in his reactor, and all of his searching had turned up the same answer: that there was none.
But that didn't mean he simply had to sit quietly in a corner waiting for death to take him. His time may have been running out, but he was going to spend what little he had with those he cared about, like his ridiculous son currently snoring on the stairs, or this amazing, beautiful woman that he loved, and for some unfathomable reason, seemed to love him in return.
And so, as he drank in Pepper's touch, and was caressed by her soft, loving moans, he wasn't thinking about dying.
He was thinking about living.
And he was happy.
…
"… Oh, hey, did I mention I was making you CEO?"
…
"You WHAT?!"
Well, now he was thinking about dying.
Author's note: Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed the chapter :) A quick note about Tony's blood toxicity level, the reason he's not already dead from palladium poisoning is that the rate at which it rises in my story differs heavily from how it's portrayed in Iron Man 2, which I think is a good thing, since the movie indicated that his toxicity level rose at a rate of about 5% per day, which is just insane. At that rate, he would have died before ever making it out of the cave in Iron Man 1, since it would only take 20 days to reach 100% and kill him. Instead, my portrayal will be closer to the rate at which his toxicity level rose prior to the start of the movie, where it was only at 19% after something like a year since he first implanted the reactor in his chest in Iron Man 1. At that rate (~0.052% per day), it would take about five years and three+ months to reach 100% and kill him, which is roughly what I've shown (though that's honestly just a happy coincidence). And all of that is really just a very long and rambling way of saying that I have no life and have put WAY too much thought into this.