Tony Stark, at four year old, had a level of intelligence many ten times his age could barely even dream of. Tony Stark, at four years old, could take apart and improve computers and low to mid grade weaponry. He had the kind of rudimentary knowledge in calculus and physics that many only learned in high schools or colleges.
Tony Stark, at four years old, was the heir apparent of the largest weapons manufactures in the world.
Being Tony Stark, at any age but especially at four years old, was a dangerous thing.
Phil's eyes darted open at the sound of his phone's soft buzzing. He slipped a hand back under his pillow and silenced it before pulling it out. Pepper's name flashed brightly on the display. He pressed the answer button as he slipped out from under his two kid-shaped cats.
"Pepper?" he asked once he was out of the bed. He was already grabbing a pair of slacks, a dress shirt, and a suit jacket to put on before she even answered. Even if he hadn't heard her voice, Pepper calling him at 2:45 am on a weeknight (or any night) was cause for immediate alarm.
There was a long pause filled with shaky breathing before Pepper answered. "Howard's dead." she whispered shakily. "They...they're both dead. There was an accident."
Phil froze where he was, arm half into his suit jacket at this point. He blinked hard and took a moment to collect himself. "Where's Tony?" he asked.
"I...he was in the car with them. But...Phil, they can't find him!" she said.
Phil's grip on the phone tightened, his knuckles turning white. "Pepper...where are you?" he asked slowly, pulling his jacket on the rest of the way and grabbing one of his guns from the weapons drawer. That he had one at all spoke volumes to the sort of paranoia he'd grown to live with.
"Already here. Open the door?"
Phil ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket as he all but dashed to the front door. When he opened the door, Pepper was standing there, face tear stained and eyes bloodshot, her clothes wrinkled and her hair mussed. Phil immediately gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. "I will find him. I will make this okay somehow, I promise." he murmured into her hair.
-xxxx-
According to the preliminary reports Pepper had received, a not entirely sober Howard Stark had been driving his family home from a gala and had made a too sharp turn around a bend and lost control of his car. The vehicle had crashed through the protective dividers and had gone over the cliff. Howard and Maria Stark were believed to have died on impact. Their son, whose blood had been found at the scene, was no where to be found. It was assumed that he had survived the crash and had gotten out of the car and wandered away, likely delirious from the accident.
In addition, the family's butler, Jarvis, appeared to have suffered from a heart attack upon hearing the news. He was already dead by the time the paramedics arrived.
Both Clint and Natasha had frowned deeply at Pepper's report. Phil couldn't blame them. As reasonable as the report seemed from the outside, it all seemed too convenient from their standpoint.
Phil closed his eyes and rubbed his eyebrows. "Pepper, you're going to be taking a sabbatical. The loss of your boss has left you distraught and you're going to need a week to process it." he said.
Pepper's eyes narrowed, a bit of her normal fire returning. "NO. Phil, I'm not going to-"
"Jarvis was probably poisoned." Clint said seriously, interrupting her. "They might go after you too if they see you looking into it."
Pepper stilled and turned to stare at the nine year old boy. She opened her mouth then closed it before turning to stare at Phil. "Is he right? Is that...could that be true?"
Phil sighed softly. "Not just 'could.' It most likely is true. It's all too...quick to be normal. Especially considering who we're talking about. Assuming foul play before natural causes in a situation like this is usually the best bet." Phil stood up and went into the kitchen, returning minutes later with a new tray of drinks. "I'm going to need you to stay here for a little while. If you need to go anywhere this week, take Clint and/or Natasha with you. They make inconspicuous bodyguards." he said, offering her another cup of tea.
She took the cup from him slowly, staring up at him with something close to alarm or horror. After a moment, she blinked hard and seemed to gather herself back into the ultra competent executive assistant that she was. "Okay. What do I do now?"
"Help them check traffic and security systems. Natasha, call Sitwell and have him give you access to the satellites. I'm going to check out the scenes. Clint, come with." Phil said.
Natasha nodded and pulled out a small cell phone, dialing the number by heart since she refused to save any into the phone. Clint uncurled himself and hopped off the couch and took his place at Phil's side.
-xxxx-
Checking out the scene turned out to be surprisingly easy. They couldn't get near the actual actual crash site but pretending to be a small family that was checking out the commotion (with the two dozen other rubberneckers) got them as close as the dividers. Phil, changed into a T-shirt and slacks, took out a camera and started taking video images of the scene while Clint leaned against the dividers and stared down into the accident, taking in as much as he could.
There was a single set of footprints, barely visible but far too big to be those of a child, leading away from the accident. It stopped at a large tree a couple feet away from the wreckage. There was the glint of something metal in that same tree as well as in several trees further and further from the crash site. As if someone had used wire to rappel from tree to tree.
The path in the trees led out to the road. Which meant that whoever had taken Tony could be long gone.
Phil liked to think himself extraordinarily capable in his work. But three weeks later, they still hadn't found Tony. What he had managed to find, fortunately, was information tying Stark Industries Vice President, Obadiah Stane, to the deaths of the Starks and the disappearance of their son.
They hadn't even needed to pull out torture devices or threaten maximum security prison time (though Phil deeply deeply wanted to). It wasn't even as if Stane had been willing to talk. He wasn't. It was simply that, an hour into Stane's interrogation, minutes before things were about to get...rough, he had received a call from Natasha.
"You might want to get over to the docks on the east side of 70th. Something blew up." she said calmly, as if reporting a late lunch delivery.
"Many somethings blew up. Like seven somethings." Clint added in the background.
"Seven somethings blew up." she amended.
Phil pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned. That area was where they had managed to narrow their search. Having things blow up in the area was a bad sign.
Phil left Sitwell to deal with Stane and hightailed it over to the docks. As promised seven (well, twelve at this point) different warehouses were up in flames. Firefighters were on the scene trying to contain the damage, though the fire kept spreading. Phil cursed quietly at the sight. Just when he was about to run in, safety be damned, and try to find something, something, left of that smart little boy, he felt something hit his left hip.
He spun around but didn't see anything. When it happened again, hitting his right this time, Phil turned only his head in the direction it had come from. In a set of bushes a tiny hand wiggled out at him.
Phil clutched his chest, nearly dropping to his knees in the relief he felt. The force of weeks upon weeks of constant searching with little sleep was finally starting to really hit him. He made his way over to the bush and knelt down carefully, making sure that there was no one looking. "Are you okay?" he asked softly.
"Um...not really, but yeah." Said the bushes. Phil spread the bush open so that he could look inside. It took all of his energy to not cringe. Tony was sitting curled up there with a small battery attached to his chest by several wires. He was actually covered in wires, though Phil got the feeling that the majority of them had nothing to do with the battery in his chest. That thought caused him to pause.
He glanced at the (still growing, oh my god) fire and back to the boy. "Did you do that?" he asked.
"Will I get in trouble if I say yes?"
"Definitely not."
"...maybe. I mean, yeah, obviously. But it kinda got...out of hand?" Tony said. His voice was softer than normal, raspy even, which was concerning. Phil reached down and bundled the boy into his arms, careful not to jostle the battery.
"I'm going to take you home, okay?" he said quietly as he ushered Tony into his car. When he set Tony down in the back seat, carefully buckling the seat belt, the little boy frowned up at him.
"I don't have a home anymore. They said...you're here, so you know already and now I'm alone, so they're probably-" Phil put a hand under Tony's chin to close his mouth.
"You have Pepper. You have me. You have Clint and Natasha. You're not alone now and you will never be alone again. Okay?" he said, maintaining eye contact.
Tony blinked hard, pulling back the tears that had been welling up in his eyes. He nodded, solemn.
Finding Tony set off an alarming domino effect. No one had intended for Tony to live so no one had bothered to talk around their plans while he was nearby. Which meant that enough of SI's executive members were either arrested, pulled into questioning or resigned from their positions that Howard's will could actually be upheld without a fight.
Which meant that, in the event that Howard Stark died before his child became of age and his Vice President wasn't around to act as President in the boy's stead, the company was left in the hands of the one that had always been running it anyway.
Pepper Potts.
Trying to make sure that Tony even still had a business to inherit when he was older meant devoting even more of her time to work. Leaving Tony without his primary caretaker.
Which just left Phil.
Well, which left the Child Protective Services System really. But Clint and Natasha had stared at Fury who stared at Phil until he agreed that yes, leaving Tony with literally anyone else would likely end up with more dead bodies and destroyed buildings. Even trying to pull the whole 'lack of room in my apartment' card didn't work.
It just meant that when he came home from work one day, the day before he was meant to pick Tony up from the secure medical facility the FBI had placed him in, he found that the wall separating his apartment from the one next door had been taken out and Mrs. Graham had apparently won a trip to London as a prize to a contest she had never actually entered.
Convenient.