It's the Ides of March. Jarvis is seated in the Browning Theater, holding his wife's hand, totally engrossed in Julius Caesar. They see it every year on the Ides, the day of Caesar's death. It's a tradition. Anna looks radiant, and her husband wonders where the years have gone. He's gained wrinkles around his mouth and gray hair at his temples, but she looks exactly like she did the day she married him in a tiny Hungarian synagogue.

"Mr. Jarvis!" The insistent whisper breaks in on his blissful thoughts, and the butler looks up to find an usher motioning him outside. He follows, sensing that something is very wrong. His knuckles turn white from the force with which he clenches his fists, but he doesn't realize it.

"I'm—I have bad news." The policeman in the lobby is young, and he looks like he hasn't had to deliver many of these kinds of unwelcome messages. Jarvis's brain doesn't have time to register all the possibilities before the words crash in on him: "Howard and Maria Stark passed away in an automobile accident this afternoon."

Edwin can hardly breathe. Behind him, he hears a sharply-articulated Hebrew curseword, and he realizes that Anna has followed him out of the crowded theater. With effort, he forces himself to remember his training. It's been years since his days with Peggy Carter and even longer since his time in the army, but he breathes deeply and centers his thoughts on what must happen.

"Thank you for informing me. Mr. Stark entrusted me with a list of steps to be taken if such an eventuality occurred, but Master Tony is the first priority." He turns to his wife. "Anna, I'll go to him."

She nods, tears gleaming in her eyes. "I'll stay and begin the funeral arrangements." Edwin kisses his wife and starts toward the door, and as he does, he realizes that his entire life has changed.

Tony Stark is sound asleep in the dormitory of his preparatory school when Mr. Danvers, the housemaster, rouses him with a tap on the shoulder. The boy opens his eyes and swears. He hates Mr. Danvers.

"What do you want?"

"You have a visitor," says the man patiently. He doesn't get angry like he normally would, and Tony can't understand why.

"Who?" he asks, getting up and slipping his feet into his slippers.

"Mr. Jarvis," comes the answer, "your butler."

"Is he alone?"

"Yes."

The boy's heart starts to race, and he feels like he can hear his own blood moving through his body. There is no reason for Edwin Jarvis to be here alone at three in the morning, no reason except one.

"What happened?" He doesn't even need to ask. As soon as he sees Jarvis's eyes, he knows.

The butler's words only confirm the obvious. "You parents were involved in an automobile accident, Master Tony. They—they didn't make it. I'm so sorry." Tony sits down on the uncomfortable flowered sofa in the dormitory lobby, and Jarvis takes his place in the wing chair opposite. Mr. Danvers leaves them alone.

Tony Stark asks no questions. Those will come later. For now, he sits and stares at the carpet and counts the number of little squares in the green and brown pattern. He feels numb; he never knew before that numbness could hurt. After a few moments of blank, thick silence, Jarvis reaches over and grasps Tony's forearm. The boy doesn't react or say anything, but the touch is like a lifeline in the open sea.

"Master Tony, I've come to bring you home."

Jarvis drives back to the Stark mansion through the night. A plane would have been faster, but he wants to give his charge a few hours to compose himself before they both have to face the inevitable onslaught of people and tasks.

Tony doesn't speak until the third hour. "Did they suffer?" His voice is flat.

"No," the butler answers, relieved that he can honestly deny it. "It was instant, and," he turns his head to catch the boy's eyes, "it wasn't because your father was drunk. They don't know what happened. The police are investigating the car to find out if something malfunctioned."

"Ok," Tony answers.

"And," says Jarvis, clearing his throat to deliver the short but difficult speech he'd conjured up on his way to the school, " you'll never be alone. I'm—Anna and I are your guardians. I want you to remember that."

"So no different from usual, then," the boy replies with a short, sharp, unhappy laugh. "They were never there for me anyway. Now I can stop pretending they ever will be." There are plenty of things Jarvis want's to answer, but he doesn't say any of them. It's not the right time. The boy falls silent again, and they reach home just before dawn breaks.

As soon as they pull into the long driveway, Jarvis sees his wife, still wearing her theater dress from the night before, with her hair unpinned and her feet bare. Even from a distance, she looks tired and haggard, but she tries to smile.

"Oh, Tony," she says when they disembark, opening her arms and attempting to pull the boy in for a hug. Usually, he's unfailingly kind to Anna, but this time, he pushes past her and goes inside.

Jarvis hugs her instead, relishing a moment of comfort as her head presses against his chest. "I'm sorry, Darling. He's—"

"I understand," she murmurs quickly. "Remember, I lost my father."

"Of course," he answers, pulling away to pick up Tony's luggage and carry it inside.

When it's light outside, Tony finally falls asleep on top of his bedspread, with his slippers on. He's bone-weary, and when he wakes up, he doesn't feel any better. Mechanically, he dresses himself and combs his hair before making his way down the hall to the main part of the house.

The whole house seems to be filled with men in suits, filling out papers and asking questions of the staff. After a moment, he locates Jarvis in the crowd, and the butler comes over and takes his arm. "Come with me," he says. "Let's get some food in you."

"I don't want anything," Tony says, when they finally reach the calm oasis of the empty kitchen.

Jarvis takes a long look at him. "As your guardian, I'm making an executive decision. I don't want you to worry about all these details. I can handle them, and if i need your signature on anything, I'll prepare it and give it to you all at once this evening. Anna's going to take you to the lake."

Tony shakes his head vehemently. "My father—he would want me to be here and look over things."

Jarvis looks him in the eye. "You're not staying here, Anthony Stark."

Anger runs through Tony like a lightning strike. "You can't tell me what to do. My parents are dead, and this is my house now." His voice is raised; he doesn't care.

The butler rubs his red, tired eyes with the back of his hand. "Master Tony, I wish I had the time to talk this out with you right now, but I don't. As your guardian, I'm ordering you to leave, and I will enforce my decision."

The boy considers the feasibility of defying Jarvis, but the butler doesn't seem to be in a compromising mood, and Tony doesn't want to be bodily dragged out of the house. Jarvis still has a number of inches on him and a war record of doing things Tony isn't entirely sure about. He doesn't want to test the man's resolve.

"Fine," he spits out sullenly. "So glad you're my legal guardian." He regrets the sarcasm as soon as it's out of his mouth, but just then, Anna comes into the kitchen.

"Ready to go?" she asks.

"As ready as he's going to be," Jarvis answers, his voice weary. He hands his wife a full picnic hamper, and she takes it and motions to Tony. Dragging his feet, the boy follows the diminutive form of the butler's wife through the crowd of lawyers and reporters. She goes to the far garage, where she and Jarvis keep their elegant tan Cadillac.

Tony doesn't say anything, and Anna doesn't break the silence, except to say, as she's turning the key in the ignition, "Darling, my mother died when I was born, but I lost my father when I was older, during the war. I won't force you to talk, but if you want to, I'll listen." He doesn't speak because he wants to spite her, to spite everything in the horrible world that took his parents and left him with a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach and confusion about two people he both loved and hated.

After an hour of driving, they pull onto a dirt road that leads to Stark Lake. It's on the family property, so Tony knows they won't meet anyone else. He thinks about the men at his house and seethes at the fact that he's been dismissed like a child.

Anna pulls over and stops the car. "Here we are," she says, "and I've brought food for us. Edwin says a couple of hours should give him time to clear the house."

"I don't care about your _ picnic," says Tony, letting his feelings come out of his mouth as he stares hard at the dirt under his feet.

"Anthony Stark, look at me." The small woman takes his face in her hands and turns it toward her forcibly. "You've had a terrible loss and a shock, and I'm sorry. But that does not give you the right to be rude and ungrateful to Edwin and I or the rest of the household staff. Your father had faults, but one thing he never did was treat any of his employees badly. You would do well to follow his example."

Shocked by her unusual vehemence, Tony speaks from a mouth and throat that suddenly feel curiously dry. "I'm—sorry, Mrs. Jarvis." He adds, shyly, "You're not my employee anyway. You're—my guardian." He's tentative. Her husband has made his position on the matter clear, but Anna hasn't said it herself.

"Oh, come here." The boy finds himself guided over to the bench that sits in front of the lake and into the arms of his butler's wife. She hums softly and embraces him, stroking his hair comfortingly. Finally, he weeps, and the anger and bad temper come out in the tears. Sobs shake his body, but Anna doesn't let go.

"Darling," she says, "I'll always be Anna to you, and I'll be your guardian until the day I die." Tony presses his face into her small, bony shoulder. "You're nearly a man," she says, "but you'll always be my Tony." After a while, he sits up, and they stay, shoulder to shoulder, for a long time.

"Is Jarvis mad at me?" The boy turns to Anna.

She shakes her head. "He can't stay mad at you for two minutes. Couldn't stay mad at your father, either. I know—he can't replace your dad, but you've always been like a son to him."

Tony doesn't tell her that, as much as he aches inside, the person who perished on the road wasn't the person who feels like a father to him. Howard Stark had the name, but Edwin Jarvis feels like the real thing.

It's Father's Day, a day Tony Stark always spends alone on purpose. He sits in the middle of his lab, with JARVIS positioned to project old film onto the wall. "Show me my parents' funeral," he says.

He's long since reached the point where he can watch without feeling upset. There's regret for the years he missed with Howard and Maria Stark, but he's faced the fact that even if he'd had those years, they would no doubt have been punctuated by the same aching disappointment as the ones when they were alive.

No, the reason he's watching the tape is to catch the moment the cameraman focused his lens on him—the teenaged Tony Stark with his butler behind him, the man's hand on his shoulder. He remembers the feeling of that hand, the warm, solid pressure that kept him anchored to earth during one of the worst days of his life.

"Thanks, Jarvis," he breathes. "You were—a great dad."

"You're welcome, Sir," says his AI politely. Tony grins. Jarvis wouldn't have wanted just any computer to be named after him, but a computer as gentlemanly as JARVIS—that's something he would have loved.