When he was three years old Anthony Peterson Stark was kidnapped, taken from his parents and never seen again. It was a normal Wednesday; the sun was bright and glistened through the windows.
Pete as Tony and Pepper had taken to calling their son had been woken up. His curly brown hair was bushy and unkempt from sleep and he looked like a miniature Tony as he shuffled across the room towards the kitchen table, yawning and scrunching up his nose before sitting down and playing with his food. Throwing a piece of breakfast at his Dad when he made a comment on how 'adorable' that was.
This of course soon turned into an all out waffle war over breakfast with Pepper standing in the background protesting half-heartedly about waste.
Pete was a cute boy at 3. His looks were mostly from Tony with Curly brown hair and Brown eyes, however he did seem to have inherited some softness in his features from Pepper. Pete was a bright and bubbly three year old and of course was very smart for his age, he could already read and loved nothing more than playing with Tony's robots in his lab DUM-E and U.
Pete when asked what he wanted to do on the nice day had once again begged and begged to watch 'Robots' a film about a young robot inventor named Rodney that Tony was considering actually building himself just so that he could slowly murder it.
While Tony found the film when he first watched it amusing, this had quickly transitioned to slightly annoying and then of course to straight up the bane of his existence after about the 14th time of watching it with his son. Pete for some reason only wanted to watch the movie with his dad not his mum and Pepper while at first feeling slightly hurt had long ago along with Rhodes and Happy found hilarity in the situation and made sure to mention the movie a lot around Pete just to see the look of horror dawn on Tony's face.
It was due to this that when Pepper made the comment of them getting some fresh air on the nice and sunny day Tony made no protest and they helped Pete get dressed ready to feed the ducks in central park.
Tony and Pepper were sat curled up on a bench enjoying the day, talking and casting a watchful glance over Pete who was giggling as he threw pieces of bread into the water
That was the last moment of peace Tony and Pepper would soon recall having with their child.
No one truly knew what had happened that day, Tony would later spend hours upon hours scouring through the internet using J.A.R.V. to analyse footage through cameras and phones and satellites.
But suddenly in that moment huge explosions broke through the tranquil peace of their day and Tony and Pepper whirled around to find Pete gone, disappeared with no trace.
The days and weeks after that were an endless torment of panic, research, meeting with police and operations but Anthony Peterson Stark was never seen again. Later Pepper and Tony would despair over files found of Obadiah Stane's involvement in the now reported kidnapping. The parents found slight hope in the temporary lead however Pete's kidnapper's were dead with his trail cold. Newscasters for years would comment on the status of the missing child who many speculated to be dead although Pepper and Tony still claimed they could feel he was alive out there somewhere.
One Month after Pete's disappearance Tony set the Milk Bottle command in JARVIS' software where any DNA of a Male, unidentified and potentially close to Pet's age would have all blood, fingerprint and DNA samples available run through JARVIS' system if possible. And so began the steady search through millions of potential candidates.