"Anyhow, now's the time to experiment... Things are on the up and up...
And all you have to do, girls and boys, is get a new approach, do some delving for a change –
God knows you've had a long rest."
- Sam Kootz
The Atlantic Ocean; July 9, 1941
Tony Stark was very young, very brilliant, and at the moment very bored.
"Do you realize what you've done?" Howard seethed, glowering down at his son with a glare that could cut through steel.
"I was just showing them my designs." Tony slouched lower on the couch, feeling the thrum of the airplane's engines beneath his heels. It was enough to get picked up from Rome by his father, who he hadn't been expecting to see until the end of the blasted war, but Howard had to come and smother him with luxury again.
"To the Fascists! In Rome!" Howard spat, eyes practically popping out of his head. "Who, may I add, are allied to the Germans!"
Tony rolled his eyes. "Not for long, they aren't. Mussolini's a downright fool, can't decide when and where he wants to invade. They'll be overrun soon."
With a heaving sigh Howard crossed his arms, bristling with rage. "If by 'soon' you mean in three years then yes, by all means. But the British are too busy tangling themselves up in Africa to be of much good on the continent. So while you were busy flying yourself to Rome in one of my aircraft, showing off your nasty bit of tinkering, I had to clean up the wreckage you left behind."
"What wreckage? I didn't shoot anything down." He had been sorely tempted to, though. It had been his first time flying without Howard breathing down his neck, spitting out needless comments about things Tony already knew. Flying was exhilarating, swooping over enemy territory with only his wits and his skills about him. And a case full of designs, that is.
"And your foolish inventions!" Howard began to pace, shaking a finger in the air. "What on earth were you thinking?"
"What about them?" Tony perked up slightly. His father had never complimented him on anything before, and he would continue that pattern until he was dead in the grave. Maybe his headstone would bear the everlasting phrase: Tony, stop that. That's rubbish. You missed something here. You'll never be as good at mechanics as me. Blah, blah, blah.
But if Howard had anything to say about his designs, that meant they must be worth something.
"War machines?" Howard tore a loose sheet from the wooden crate, swinging it around in Tony's face. The clean lines depicted the sculpted form of an angular plane, with aerodynamic wings and a mass of machinery hunched in the thing's stomach. A smooth glass plate stretched across the cockpit, with an exploded view on the side detailing every part of the inner workings. It all fit in rather neatly – a tricky bit of machinery Tony had spent far too long puzzling out. The plane was one of the things the Fascists had seemed interested in.
"Do you know who else makes machines like these? Countries that are at war! The bloody Germans!" Howard spat, then tore the paper in half. Tony leaped to his feet as the shreds of paper drifted to the ground.
"Maybe the Germans have got good ideas every once and a while! If you'd just look at them –" He protested, a sick feeling curdling in his stomach.
Howard's eyes hardened to stone and he lifted another page of paper from the crate. It displayed a view of the circuit board for the plane, covered in Tony's scrawling script that explained every wire. Without blinking his father shredded the second paper vehemently. Anger spiked in Tony's veins, washing his vision in red, but he balled his fists and held his tongue.
"This is treason," Howard growled. "You're not satisfied with what I do for you? All the parts you want, all the technical expertise you could ever need. Your tutor tells me you're failing math. Math? How can you stir up these wild fantasies if you can't even manage calculus?"
"I went to the Fascists because they think that young people can actually change things!" Tony exploded, looking his father dead in the eye. "Unlike the rest of you lot, who are happy with your ugly clunking chunks of metal that putter through the air. I wanted to –"
Howard held up a hand, silencing him. "This is a matter of pride, isn't it? You just wanted someone to croon about you and tell you how special you are. When did you become so selfish?"
Tony was stunned into silence. Each word fell like a blow against his chest. Howard had been cruel before, of course, but now he was positively furious.
"The Fascists were very willing to make a deal for your freedom once they figured out just who you were. I had to give the Italians insight onto the German Cherry Stone project to get you back. You know what that is?"
"No, but give me a radio and I'll find out for you in a few minutes." Tony cracked a grin that fell limp with Howard's scathing glare.
"A rocket launcher! With rockets they are going to launch at the British population!" Howard boomed, his voice echoing in the enclosed space of the plane. Tony sat back on the couch, already puzzling over a mass of calculations.
"Really? What are they using for propulsion? From Berlin to London, say? They'd still be short on range, even by my inventions' standards." Tony noted, smirking as Howard's face turned crimson with anger.
"Is this some kind of joke to you? Because of your hubris you just sealed the graves of hundreds, maybe thousands of people. My son!" Howard roared, and Tony shrank back in his seat.
"What do you want me to say, that I'm sorry?" Tony muttered. "Maybe if you would take me seriously for once this whole thing wouldn't have happened!"
The blow came faster than Tony could anticipate, a ringing concussion against his cheekbone that sent his sprawling against the arm of the couch. Howard's rage was cold now, burning fire masked by a tightly neutral expression and trembling fists. "I don't expect you to understand this, but you can tip the scales of the war. Mind you don't do anything so utterly stupid next time." With a scowl Howard turned and stalked out of the cabin, shutting the doors to the cockpit behind him with a slam.
Groaning, Tony raised a hand to his eye – it was already starting to swell. "This'll be quite the story to tell mom," he grumbled, reaching for the crate. Howard had toppled it in his exit, and the leafs of paper were scattered across the floor. More than one had a black bootprint smearing the ink, and plenty were torn beyond repair. Thankfully Howard had gotten all of the designs back in exchange for that stupid rocket launcher; the Italians had seemed quite keen on a few of the blueprints.
Tony was the opposite of a Fascist, and as far away from a Kraut as you could be, but he meant what he said with the Axis having some alright ideas. The German machines were marvelous, capable of so much more than the flex-less rigidity of Allied craft. Tony had studied up on their tanks and planes for ages before sketching up his plans for five or so machinations, making sure he knew exactly which parts did what. Rendered in metal, the machines were quite beautiful, and even more deadly.
He meant what he said about his father, as well. Howard had never seen beyond Tony's shortcomings, always profuse and readily available to weaponize. The Fascists, as jumbled in the head as they were, at least seemed to think that Tony could be worth something, which was a hell of a lot more than Howard had ever seen in him.
With a sigh Tony rocked back on his heels and picked up a few scraps of his plane designs, trying to fit the torn paper together as best he could. They were ruined, one stamped with what smelled to be shoe polish. When did his father get to be such a square? Who even shined the bottoms of their shoes, anyways?
Digging deep into the bottom of the crate, Tony fished out a small package of crisp, brown paper, undamaged from the flight to Rome and the hasty trip back. He breathed a sigh of relief, his nerves settling, as his fingers danced over the twine keeping the parcel together. It had been his last-ditch resort if the idiot Fascists wouldn't listen to him, plans he'd been fostering in secret since he had learned to knit two gears together. And they were safe, thank his lucky stars.
Stars that beamed just outside of his window, he noticed as he pressed his nose against the glass, leaving a smudge against the plastic. The Atlantic Ocean roiled far beneath the plane's wings as they drew ever nearer to Washington, D.C. Home meant his workshop and Jarvis, but it also meant his mother.
A knot of guilt burned in Tony's stomach as he watched the ocean speed by beneath him. He had expected the anger from his father, but his mother's disappointment still made him as guilty as ever. These days she seemed nothing but disappointed, though – surely she had gotten used to it. All tender words and a wry frown she couldn't quite twist out of her perpetual smile.
A stony silence filled the plane, and it didn't help that Howard sat mere yards away from Tony. Just to spite him Tony walked over to the minibar and searched for the most expensive-looking liquor he could. A dusty brandy bottle sat cradled in the corner, a faded ribbon tied loosely around its neck. From his experience with Howard's liquor Tony assumed it was worth a fortune and a half. He twisted the bottle open and poured a glass up to the brim with the amber liquid, then took a strong swig, spluttering it out a second later. The stuff tasted like everything foul in the world and burned every inch of his mouth until his tongue tingled unpleasantly. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Tony left the almost-full glass on the counter. Howard would blow a gasket – if he had any left to blow, given his rage against his son moments earlier. Tony's run-in with the Italians had left him pretty livid.
He had turned away from the bar when he noticed a cardboard box shoved behind the bar, heavily taped with bent corners from turbulence. A faint and familiar jangling echoed from its contents, the sound of mechanical parts that made Tony's heart leap. Finally, something he could do while he waited for landing.
Tearing the tape off with a frenzied sort of excitement, Tony pulled out a collection of partly assembled limbs, slender bones built up with a mass of mechanical muscle that operated the contraption's structure. Thin bands like ribs formed human-esque limbs, filling out the space of the thing's body. Tony pulled out a rolling set of mechanical eyeballs, with crude bulbs concealed in the irises to illuminate the contraption's eyes in a nod to reality. It was rather bandy-limbed and skinny, shaped into a rough rectangle, but clearly some sort of bartender bot Howard had never installed.
Hours bled together as Tony slowly screwed the contraption together, nestling gears into meshes and coiling delicate turns of wire that pressed deeply into their fittings. The head screwed on backwards and refused to budge, requiring liberal amounts of oil and muscle power to position in the right way. Soon Tony's hands were slick with grease and his spiffy-looking suit was stained with blackened fingerprints. His father would explode when he saw the mess on his posh carpet, but Tony didn't care. He had long since disregarded Howard's opinion in practically everything. Then why am I building his filthy contraption?
After a long while Tony stood the figure upright, positioning its foppish-looking bowler hat on its head with a sharp click! Its hexagonal power cells were empty, as expected, and Tony didn't want to bring down the plane while charging the foolish thing. It was rather ugly, with a disturbingly bright smile and hollow-looking eyes. Even its mechanics were sloppy – German-made, he assumed. Or perhaps Italian, from what he'd learned about Fascist intellectual capacity that day. He wondered why his father had even bought the ruddy thing.
Turning the bartender bot around, Tony flipped open its main power hatch and tugged a length of wire that snaked up towards its skull, then neatly clipped another set of blue trailing strands. When he pressed the tips of the copper together sparks flew and a garbled mix of a popular tune spouted from the contraption's flapping metal mouth, warbling and shrieking with an awful racket. Tony clapped a hand over the thing's mouth and it calmed down, eyeballs rolling over the airplane's posh cabin.
"Howdya do, young mister?" The bot sounded extremely perky, its eyes flashing with a multitude of colors. "Can I get you anything? A whiskey, perhaps? You look like a whiskey sort of fellow."
"I'll take a milk. On the rocks." Tony snorted, settling back onto the couch. His hands left trails of black along the fabric. It had probably been imported from Milan or Austria or some far-off market, and Tony knew better than anyone that oil stains never came out.
"You're a real funny guy, huh? That's fine, I like funny guys." Its head tilted sideways, sending the bowler hat askew.
"You've got a complicated bit of machinery in that noggin of yours, old boy." Tony crossed his arms, smirking slightly. "Anything else you can do besides mixing up drinks?"
"I've been told that I have a good set of pipes on me. Do I want to be with you, as the years come and go..." The bot crooned, a tinny sort of recording playing at is flapped its metal lips to the tune.
"I know about those pipes, I oiled every single one of them. What's your name then?" Tony asked, and the light behind the robot's eyes sputtered. Perhaps it was running out of its jump-start power.
"A pleasure. My name is Servo-32894, a product of Knudsun Electronics and Mechanics firm. If you'd like I can recall my batch number and serial code, but I think you'd be a bit bored by strings of numbers, and me rambling on and on..." A spark of light flashed behind the Servo's eyes. "But what about you, my young mechanic?"
Tony rolled his eyes, casting the cockpit a shot glance. Surely Howard had heard the bot's boisterous animation cycle, if the clatter of gears and wires hadn't tipped him off already. "Mechanic? Are you kidding? I'm the fulcrum of the war, sir! I'm the American who makes weapons of war like a right old German, and somehow I'm still as worthless as dirt."
"I don't compute." Servo's head tipped to the other side, his hat spinning about on his forehead.
"You and me both."
The robot stumbled on its sticklike legs as the plane tipped forward, the engines filling the cabin with a low buzz. Tony would have to inspect Servo's gyrosphere later – older models always needed fine-tuning on those fiddly devices. Even he had trouble with them sometimes, and that was saying something. Tony Stark needed nobody's help with mechanics, and he was barely old enough to be in service as is.
He shoved Servo behind the bar and tugged out his hastily hotwired fuse; the robot's eyes darkened and its posture sagged to a deadened state against the back of the counter. Just in time, too – the door to the cockpit opened and Howard walked out. He had smoothed back his hair, leaving lines where the teeth of his comb had skimmed through his hair gel, and looked just as dignified as if he were meeting the Prime Minister. Which he had on multiple occasions, and happened to drag Tony along. It was a dismal affair, as Tony had found Chamberlain positively revolting, far too much like Howard for his liking.
Howard's cold eyes fell on Tony's blackened hands and the streaks of oil that peppered the sofa and the thin rug. Tipping his chin upward, he continued on his way, careful not to scuff the tips of his shoes. Howard's British Loeb dress shoes were the finest England had to offer; perhaps that was why he worried himself so greatly about the plight of the Limeys. A spot of oil on the sole would merit a rigorous polishing.
"Come, Tony," Howard's eyes grazed over the cabin, lip curling ever so slightly. "Do radio in a cleaning service, won't you?"
Tony turned to see the pilot emerging from the cockpit, responding to his father with a sharp nod. At the Stark household, even trained pilots were treated like servants. Of course, Howard had made sure Tony could fly a plane before he started grade school, so a pilot's license didn't hinge on too much importance. It wouldn't surprise Tony in the slightest if his mother crept out at night and took the gliders for a spin.
The airfield was private, of course, with hydraulic steel plates running a mile up the Potomac, lined with cherry blossom trees. They looked particularly bare in the bitter winter, branches clawing like massive fingers into the blackened sky. Twin smokestacks plunged into the cloud-smeared sky filling the horizon with sticky soot and steam. Tony raised his head as he stepped down the short flight of steps onto the tarmac. The air smelled sharply of oil and a wisp of something floral – home as he knew it.
Tony ducked as the wings of the plane folded back on themselves, the segmented parts pushing into the cabin with the hiss of steam. The tail collapsed inward as well, giving the luxury plane the look of a massive sausage. It was unwieldy, but it stored much better than the full wingspan. The pilot drew out a small radio device and keyed in a short code, and the large tile of steel the plane was perched on slowly sank down into the ground, the plane tailoring itself in the right direction. The hiss of hydraulics pierced the air as the plane slowly lowered into the ground, then the airstrip raised itself back to the surface. There was no sign at all that an aircraft had landed mere minutes ago.
The aboveground hangars were uncharacteristically active, though, and Tony couldn't help but stare at the white structures with curiosity. A golden glow emanated from the airship hangars, and the dull buzz of power tools sounded through the whisper of the sweet-smelling breeze. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen someone doing any hard work in the airship hangars, and he hadn't heard word of a new project from Howard or the workers. Something was up, and Tony was determined to find out.
Howard pressed a firm hand against Tony's shoulder, directing him away from the noisy hangars and instead towards the manor. "Come, son. It is time to see your mother."
Fascists - specifically Italian Fascists, the leading political party of Italy during World War II. Led by Benito Mussolini.
Kraut - derogatory/slang term for a German
Limey - derogatory/slang term for an Englishman