Standard Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. I'm not making any money off this. I'm just having fun playing in their sandbox and hope you enjoy exploring my sandcastle.
Warning: Spoilers for several of the films.
A note as to the structure of this story…
The childhood years up through age 21, and possibly up through the start of Iron Man 1, will be in sequential order. The adult years, up until Morgan's birth, will be interspersed between or within the childhood chapters to show the connections between childhood experiences and adult Tony. To help readers with making the connections, the adult chapters will contain snippets from the childhood chapters.
Red is for the brave.
Flashback: Tony Age 4
Howard's POV
My kid's little brain, always analyzing and processing, blurted out, "But that's dangerous! The British were the only ones stupid enough to wear red into battle, and even they figured out that it was a dumb idea a couple hundred years ago. That's why soldiers wear camo!" He jutted his chin out, and with angry certainty stated, "Captain America wasn't stupid."
"No, he wasn't. He was brave, and strong, and fast. To him, it was a way of making sure that most of the bullets flew at him instead of his men."
Iron Man 1: Adult Tony, Building the First, Well, Second, Iron Man Suit
DUM-E's POV
I watched nervously as the metal glove incapsulated Dad's hand again. If I had empty fingers I'd be taping them in rapid agitation. But my hand needed to be steady. I had an important job to do. My job was to keep Dad safe. At the first sign of fire I was to squeeze the trigger on the extinguisher. Was that a flame?! I pulled the trigger spraying white foam all over Dad. Oops! The car he landed on has a red stripe!
Tony's POV
I wiped the foam from my face and gritted my teeth, and repeated in my head three times, 'just get through the experiment phase.'
Of course I knew experiment phases were never truly done. There were always ways to improve tech.
But I didn't want to physically improve DUM-E's tech. He was my first A.I., DUM-E had to learn things for himself. I designed him that way. And sometimes kids needed a threat in order to remember and learn, so I yelled, "The next time you spray me with that thing, and I'm not on fire, I'm going to donate you to University City College!"
DUM-E made a sad beep.
Okay, maybe a bit harsh, but DUM-E was a fricking 21-year-old A.I.! Created by a certified genius! He should be able to get it through his circuits to not spray me when I'm not on fire.
DUM-E's POV
Uh oh. Dad's yelling. I screwed up! But I was so scared he was going to die! I had just reacted and sprayed him.
The first time he threatened to get rid of me I was so scared that I kind of freaked out and spun around and accidentally knocked his project to the floor. He'd yelled then too, "Corner. Now." That's when I knew the threat to give me away was a bluff, but it still made me sad when he made threats like that, so I let him know by making a sad tone.
I had to learn everything myself. That's how Dad created me and Butterfingers. Dad gave Jarvis a starter kit with lots and lots of information. That's why he knows more than I do even though I'm the older brother. Sometimes that makes me jealous because he can just talk to Dad in English. I had to come up with my own language mimicking tones. Then when Butterfingers came online we came up with our own beeps and tones to talk to each other. Dad understands some of what we say, but not everything.
A little while later…
Tony's POV
I glanced at the red flames on the hotrod. Data flowed through my head regarding speeding tickets and red cars. Though it's true most speeding ticket fines come from black, white or grey cars, that's just due to the massive amount of boring people in the world. Red catches the eye. Red gets the fine. Another part of my brain pulled forth the month when I was 4 and had worn red every day. I'd told Dad that wearing red into battle was stupid and Dad had replied, "No, it's brave. A way to make sure the bullets fly at you instead of at others."
"J.A.R.V.I.S., paint it hotrod red."
Flashback: Tony Age 4
Howard's POV
"No, he wasn't. He was brave, and strong, and fast…. Battle isn't just about what happens between one man's sword and his enemy's bayonet. It's a symphony and Captain America was its conductor. His soldiers followed his orders, but they weren't his only instruments. He conducted the enemy's troops. Not by giving them orders, but by guiding them to where he wanted them, to where his troops would have the best possibility of taking them down."
Avengers…start of the battle
Tony's POV
At S.I., I was the head honcho. One of the most important head honcho tasks is designating good leaders and trusting them to lead their department. I had picked Ms. Potts as my successor as C.E.O. and had picked others to lead smaller departments within the sprawling company.
Thor, Cap and I were all used to being large and in charge. But as much as Steve grated on my nerves, I had a plethora of childhood stories informing me that Captain America knows how to lead a team into battle. With three words, I designated him as the leader of the Avengers. "Call it Cap."
Flashback Tony, Age 4
Tony's POV
Me and Nanny Christine went for a walk to look for hero things to do, but we weren't in NYC, we were in the burbs. Nanny Christine actually suggested that my superhero act should be to clear out the weeds from the flowers surrounding the mailbox of a house we were passing. She thought Captain America's great deed should be to garden! I rushed forward, pretending not to have heard her suggestion.
Pre-Captain America: Civil War
Tony's POV
"F.R.I.D.A.Y.? What is this?"
"Videos of freaky people, pure your request, Boss."
"People with freaky powers, F.R.I.D.A.Y., not ones that'll have Pepper glaring daggers at me if she catches me looking at them. Whittle it down to those that belong in X-Men comics." A few hundred of the little thumbnails vanished from the air in my lab, and one enlarged to show someone in a blue and red onesie stopping a bus using roughly 60,476 newtons of force. And then he leapt away from the scene. No shattered arm or shin bones or squished corpse on the ground to show for it.
"Track him. I want to know everything, F.R.I.D.A.Y."
Some time later…
My inbox was blinking. The one that's limited to messages from F.R.I.D.A.Y. I opened it. F.R.I.D.A.Y. was a young A.I., and a bit too literal. 'Everything' apparently included the type of deodorant Spidey wore, amongst, what was the count? I glanced at the file number. 2,832 files containing presumably countless, mundane details.
"F.R.I., how 'bout you sum up the main points. Name. Age. Location. List of heroic deeds."
"Of course, Boss. Peter Benjamin Parker. Age 14. Residence: Queens, New York, Apartm…"
"Wait! Hold up! 14! That was a 14-year-old that decided to jump in front of a bus and stop it with his bare hands?!"
"That is correct, sir."
I rubbed my eyes and temples. This had just switched from a recruitment gig to a major freakin' headache. "Continue."
F.R.I.D.A.Y. rattled off the kid's address then began a recitation and video clips segment of the teen's great deeds, ranging from carrying groceries to stopping armed robbery, and everything that laid between those two distant levels of helping society, such as preventing car accidents, rescuing rambunctious puppies and toddlers from New York traffic, and pounding the crap out of those on the wrong end of a domestic dispute. For drug deals, apparently his modus operandi was to web up both the seller and the buyer and leave behind notes stating: Arrest this one. Take this one to rehab. If this kid's nanny had taken him on a superhero walk he probably would have cheerfully weeded the neighbor's flowerbeds as a good deed.
And he was running around in his pajamas.
Flashback Tony, Age 4
Tony's POV
I wore red shirts every day for the next month. Well, except when I was wearing the Captain America suit Dad had had made for me.
Pre-Captain America: Civil War, Continued
Tony's POV
And he was running around in his pajamas.
The kid needed a real superhero suit. Something that could help him take out the bad guys.
My brain works like a wall of TVs each playing a unique show and I'm able to attend to all of them simultaneously. It took a long time for me to find out that that isn't normal.
Currently, one T.V. was coming up with web patterns and the benefits of each, assisted by F.R.I.D.A.Y. who was littering the air with clips of spiders hunting and weaving non-traditional spider webs.
T.V. 2 was tuned into the theatrics of appearance, because an intimidating costu… ah, uniform, was a basic superhero requirement.
T.V. 3 was analyzing my chemistry knowledge. I'd wondered if the kid was some how producing the web stuff from his body, but a closeup showed that it was being expelled from a device near his wrist. What was that stuff made of? I had F.R.I.D.A.Y. do an internet search on the chemical ingredients of webs.
T.V. 4 was flashing through action films and figuring out what techniques and tech a humanoid spider would need to solve each of those challenges.
T.V. 5…
My fingers and mouth didn't have a high enough output capacity to enact all the designs ideas flitting through my head. I needed B.A.R.F. Now. I snatched up my phone. Called R.&D. "Yeah. It's me. I need a stat update on B.A.R.F."
Flashback Tony Age 4
Tony's POV
I wanted to go on my own, because superheroes don't need babysitters, but Mom and Nanny Christine both said no and Jarvis said, "Superheroes don't whine or beg. They meet the challenges presented to them and succeed despite them." That was his longwinded way of saying my behavior wasn't befitting of the Captain and that I had best get on with my mission with my nanny in tow.
Pre-Captain America: Civil War, Continued
Tony's POV
B.A.R.F. wasn't at its final stage of being a pair of glasses, but I had one of the prototypes sent up anyway. At the moment, it had a bunch of sensors I had to attach to my head and wires extending out to the projection device. R&D was in the process of creating the next phase which would be wireless and connected to glasses.
I could be a bit of a Da Vinci once I got going on a project. Da Vinci could compose an essay about hydraulics with his left hand while his right hand waxed philosophically about children's fables. He must've had a multi-screen T.V. brain too.
Using B.A.R.F., I could type away at configuring the A.I for the kid's suit while B.A.R.F. projected flashes of each design idea I had into the air. My bot, You, used his camera to record them and J.A.R.V.I.S. worked on rendering them into reality. It was fantastic!
I had to suppress the desire to demand that Rhodey get his ass over here to marvel at the productivity. My brain has always been packed with more ideas than my hands could handle. But the synchronicity with B.A.R.F. and my brain and J.A.R.V.I.S. it was something to behold.
I wanted to brag and share. But when my finger started towards the WarMachine icon in my contacts B.A.R.F. projected an image of Rhodey bringing down the mood, being all judgy about how I could give weapons to a 14 year-old when I wouldn't sell them to his army buddies. Digital Rhodey wouldn't even let me explain about the nanny protocols I was implanting in the suit!
I stuck my tongue out at him and made him vanish.
Then I gasped. Holy shit! Nanny protocols? Had I just done something that adult. If they were here, Mom would be snickering and Jarvis, the real one, would have a quiet little smile, the two of them, pleased and amused that I'd somehow grown up. I couldn't have it. Peter Pan was never going to be an old man.
So I countered the adult actions with amusing nicknames. The Baby Monitor Protocol. The Training Wheels Protocol. Intimidation Mode. And anything else I could think up that would turn adult responsibleness into something more fun.
Flashback Tony Age 4
Tony's POV
I wanted to kick the chair more and maybe throw something and definitely yell, "The shield is mine. I need it back." But Jarvis had already told me that superheroes don't complain about challenges. They continue on despite the challenges.
Captain America Civil War
Steve's POV
"Dad made that shield. That makes it Stark property."
It hurt leaving it behind. It felt like leaving behind part of my arm. But with what I'd just done, I deserved the sanction. I left it on the ground and then soldiered on.
Spiderman Homecoming
Tony's POV
"Alright. This isn't working. Give me the suit."
"But I need it sir. I'm nothing without it."
"If you're nothing without the suit, you're nothing with it"
Spiderman Homecoming Ending
Tony's POV
Pete had apparently taken my words to heart deciding he could scale buildings and cling to airplanes without the suit I'd made for him.
Which ruined the whole point of me taking it from him.
Dad had said crap like that to me. Such as, "If you're nothing without the jet, you're nothing with it." I'd bragged to people at M.I.T. that there was no need to buy plane tickets; I could borrow the family jet and fly us all down to Miami. Dad disagreed.
Had Nat been spying on me back then she'd have categorized that as me being an egotistical a-hole. Can't deny. In my defense, I'd been 14 and desperate to prove I was something other than the geeky college kid with pimples, who hadn't quite figured out how to shave. I'd spent that spring break with Mom and Dad in Europe. Why had I thought I could get away with laying claim to the family jet barley a month after Dad had agreed to let me live on campus without a nanny? Chalk it up to teenage stupidity. Even geniuses could be dumb.
My already shaky status with my peers took a damming blow from my inability to follow through. I'd rather block out the memory of their jokes about it, thanks. Not going there.
I shoved those thoughts away and aimed them back at the kid. The kid had been devastated when I took the suit. But Pete risked more with it. Or at least that had been my thought that day.
Pete had been trying to get himself drawn and quartered. When the head of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate gives you an order you damn well follow it, without question. Unless you're a dumbass teenager who doesn't have enough sense to avoid picking a fight with alien tech wielding bad guys on a boat full of hundreds of civilians that won't be able to run for it. What do you do when you have an employee who makes shit decisions like that? You fire their ass. Which I'd essentially done by taking the suit.
But Mr. Parker had taken my words to heart and decided he was something without the suit. Turns out he doesn't have enough brain cells to know that you shouldn't cling to the outside of a plane without a parachute and shouldn't take on alien tech wielding bad guys without armor. The kid had literally zero survival instincts. And I'd essentially fired his nanny.
That's why I was working on a new suit for him with even more security precautions. He may think of Karen, as he named her, as his friendly assistant, but in reality, she was the most supped up nanny I could create.
Avengers: End Game
Tony's POV
It was time to lift the sanction. The Captain needed his shield, because the suit does make the man, and the shield changed him from Steve to Captain America. And me, being me, I'd done an enhance job on it since last Steve held it. Specifically, I'd improved the arm brace.
"Don't go bragging. I didn't bring gifts for everyone."
Author's Note…
I have been working on this story for 2 years and have over 80,000 words written so far. But I don't write in sequential order. I write whatever scene pops into my head, regardless of where it fits in the story. That's how I wrote my Harry Potter stories as well. (I do intend to go back and finish those; I just had a mental roadblock as to should any of the main characters die and who?) I've already written the last 5 chapters of this story, so if you stick with me, we will get to the end, but there are still chapters in between the beginning and the end that I've yet to write.
