January 10, 2004
5:23 PM
Westchester
"So," Tony said after they'd pulled out of the school's drive and started heading out. "I'm guessing you had fun?"
Sasuke kicked his legs back and forth for a bit, staring out the window. "Yes, Uncle."
"You can give me details, you know." Tony glanced away from the road just barely long enough to poke Sasuke in the shoulder. "And you can't talk about it once we get back home, because Pep and Ms. Douglas and JARVIS are there. So if you want to tell me anything, now's the time to do it."
Sasuke made a face. "Um… I showed them Henge and my Goukakyuu."
"That's the big fireball, right?" Tony knew it was, of course, but he tried to be involved with Sasuke's non-traditional schooling, to make it obvious that he was paying attention. He remembered what Howard had been like growing up; he didn't want to be that kind of parent.
"Mm-hm." Sasuke nodded. "But we had to wait for when Mr. Howlett came outside while you and the other adults were talking. Ororo said we could not do anything that dangerous unless there was an adult there."
"Smart girl." Tony commented. "What about the other kids? You get along with them pretty well?"
"I think so." Sasuke frowned a little, as though going over the day's events and trying to decide for himself.
"Well, tell me about them, then. Were they nice? Were you nice? What did you talk about?" Tony tried to draw an answer out, though he felt like he might have been a bit too pushy.
"I… Ororo is nice, and so is Remy, but they are both a few years older than me." Sasuke bit his lip and turned to look out the window. "Ann Marie talks a lot, but her brother doesn't. And David is… smart. Very smart. He knows Japanese, and other languages. Remy left, but the rest of us played games in David's room. He has a game that I like. I think it is called… Battleship?"
"I think we can pick that up on the way home, if you want." Tony offered. "Or JARVIS can pull up a digital version."
"Mm." Sasuke kept staring out the window. "Kurt is blue. And, ah, he has fur?"
"Seems to be a common enough mutation, since Hank's the same way." Tony shrugged. "Is there anyone in Konoha that's blue?"
"No." Sasuke shook his head. "But there might be in other villages. I think I saw a picture in a Bingo book one time. It was on my father's desk."
"The world gets a little stranger every day." Tony commented, pulling onto the main highway. "But, just to be sure, you did like it there? You wouldn't mind going back once in a while?"
Sasuke looked at Tony for a second. "Yes. I would like that."
"Good. You need friends on this side of the Pacific." Tony grinned over at Sasuke. "Gotta have someone, right?"
"I already know you and Pepper and Ms. Douglas and Obadiah and Rhodey and Dr. Frost." Sasuke pointed out, primarily out of a desire to argue.
"And none of us are the same age as you, and I know you aren't close to anyone except Ms. Douglas back in Konoha." Tony sighed, and switched to Japanese. "Listen, kiddo, I just want to make sure you're okay. I didn't have any friends my own age when I was a kid, and I know how bad that can hurt. I'm just glad to see that you've got friends, okay?"
Sasuke frowned and looked out the window, refusing to answer, but there was something warm in his chest again.
He didn't entirely hate that feeling.
o.o.o.o.o
July 23, 2003
France
Sasuke's ninth birthday was spent in Paris and the surrounding countryside, sightseeing.
o.o.o.o.o
September 14, 2004
8:52 AM
Stark Industries, Queens, New York
"Okay." Tony closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay, this is happening."
"Uncle?" Sasuke tilted his head. He was sitting at the counter, watching his uncle pace around the room and mutter to himself in worry. "Why are you…?"
Tony made a face, guessing the end of the sentence. "Worried?"
"Yes."
Tony's expression didn't change. "Listen, kiddo, I've been doing my best to make sure no one knows you exist for a year and a half now. And you've proven that you can keep that illusion thing up without any trouble for a couple hours, but that doesn't mean there isn't something that could go horribly, awfully wrong at some point and destroy all that work to keep you out of the public eye."
"I'm good at Henge." Sasuke protested, though only half-heartedly. "You do not need to worry so much."
"Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you're going to have zero trouble with it if a situation pops up." Tony told him, if only because it felt necessary to have the words said out loud. "If you're put into a dangerous situation, you might lose hold of it, and then I'll have to deal with people knowing about you and questions about why you have powers like that."
"And they will think that I am a mutant and might try to have me taken and ex… exa… tested?" Sasuke hedged, stumbling on the last words.
"Examined, and possibly, though I doubt it. I'm too big of a name in most political circles for them to risk that. But I grew up in the spotlight and it's… not healthy. Not safe. Not for a kid like you." Tony rubbed a hand down his face. "I don't need the media's spotlight on you, for multiple reasons, and most of them are to keep you happy and safe, okay?"
"I know, Uncle." Sasuke like the fact that his uncle cared, but he could be a bit… overbearing, even if it wasn't as often as Sasuke's parents had been, sometimes. "But I can do this."
"Yeah, yeah you can." Tony put a hand to the back of his head, scratching lightly. "I just… I can't come with you, because then people might notice, so I'm just…"
"You can trust Ms. Douglas." Sasuke frowned, kicking his feet a little. "She's taken care of me so far."
"She can't save you from everything." Tony muttered, once more pacing around. "You're sure you can do this?"
"Yes, Uncle." Sasuke rolled his eyes when Tony's back was turned. "Even Iruka-sensei told me that I was good enough for this when I asked him."
"Okay," Tony stopped pacing and put his face into his hands, breathing out slowly. "Okay okay okay okay okay."
There was a knock from the entrance to the kitchen. "Sasuke?"
"Ms. Douglas!" Sasuke hopped down from his chair and ran over to her, skidding to a stop a few steps away. She smiled down at him. "I am ready, but Uncle is worried."
"Of course I'm worried." Tony muttered. "Okay, you guys are just going to Madison Square Park and I'll do my thing and go to the Shake Shack and we'll all have excuses to be there and I'll wear sunglasses so that people can't tell I'm watching and this will all be fine."
Sasuke exchanged a glance with Ms. Douglas. She smiled softly and shook her head. "Yes, Mr. Stark. Ms. Potts will be with you, correct?"
"Yeah. We'll be talking business so that people don't bother us." Tony rubbed hishands together and huffed out a breath. "Right this is happening."
"Yes, Uncle, it is."
o.o.o.o.o
September 14, 2004
10:34 AM
Madison Square Park, Manhattan, New York
"Calm down." Pepper muttered under her breath, pen scratching over the surface of the paper on her clipboard.
"I am calm." Tony mumbled around a mouthful of burger, followed up immediately by a slurp of the smoothie he'd also gotten. Neither one was anything amazing, but they were decent and also fairly famous, so he had an excuse.
Also, he just really liked burgers.
"Your leg is shaking." Pepper pointed out, gesturing just barely with a nod of her head.
Tony swallowed and looked down, his sunglasses obscuring the glance, and noted that yes, his leg was indeed bouncing up and down at a rather rapid pace. He forced it to stop.
"Right."
Pepper looked up at him again, this time with a quirked brow. She leaned over and whispered as quietly as possible, with as little movement of her lips as she could manage. "He's right over there, right in your line of sight, and Happy's keeping people far enough away that they can't see what you're looking at. You can sneak glances once in a while, Mr. Stark. That's why you're here."
Tony leaned back in his chair, slouching and resting his laced hands on his stomach, and 'casually' looked over at where he knew Sasuke and Ms. Douglas were.
Ms. Douglas looked the same as ever, proper and young and olive-skinned, clean and unblemished. Overall, slightly intimidating for some unspoken, unknown reason, but respectable and business-like.
She almost distracted people from the man beside her.
Clearly an Uchiha, with curly hair and winged eyeliner, Sasuke's Henge was recognizable as the figure of an older cousin he had pictures of in the family album he'd spent the past few years putting together. Shisui, if Tony wasn't mistaken. A pretty young man, but given that Sasuke had altered the Henge to wear more typical New Yorker clothing rather than a shinobi outfit, he'd somehow managed to make the Henge even prettier. He was attracting the attentions of a few younger women that weren't more distracted by Tony.
He also looked a bit uncomfortable, but he was more interested in drinking his shake and talking to Ms. Douglas than paying attention to the girls. Tony couldn't quite relate, but he could understand, mostly. Besides, Sasuke was nine. Whether he eventually became interested in women or not, he was still very young.
"Are they having fun?" Pepper asked quietly, not looking up from her papers.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think they are."
This could work.
o.o.o.o.o
January 16, 2005
11:36 AM
Malibu, Tony's basement laboratory
"—and that's how you finish it off, okay?"
"I can do this, Uncle." Sasuke pushed his way to the table, slightly annoyed by the fact that Tony didn't seem to think he could do this.
"I know, brat," Tony ruffled Sasuke's hair, probably because he'd spent the day with Ms. Douglas in his Shisui henge instead of at home, and Tony had a habit of ruffling his hair when he did that. Or maybe he was just doing it to be annoying. "But you're not used to this after all your time in Konoha."
"Ah, yes," Sasuke switched to Japanese, "I will be the genin best suited to fixing the telephone wires."
"Okay, your city has a dangerous amount of unprotected wires just lying around." Tony wagged a finger at him and walked around the table. "Seriously, it's just dangerous, especially with all the ninjas jumping around."
Sasuke rolled his eyes, and then sat down on the bench and looked at the components before him. He glanced over at what Tony had made.
"You can do it; it's just a toaster."
Sasuke shot Tony a glare, not softening at the cheery grin that he got in return. "You're not helping."
"C'mon, I've been teaching you how to do the sciencey stuff for almost two years. I know you know how to do this."
Sasuke moved his glare back to the pieces before him and took a deep breath. He could do this. Right.
He began pulling parts together, wires and heating components and structural parts. He'd just seen Tony do it and he knew how each part worked individually, so it was just a matter of some memorization paired with logic.
"I bet David could do it." Tony teased, batting away the small screw that Sasuke tossed at him. "Now, now, no throwing things."
"I'm not David's kind of genius." Sasuke said, fingers deftly twisting a wire. "He is in a caliber of his own."
"His genius is partly mutant power; of course he is." Tony sat down on one of the lab chairs and swiveled in place. "In a decade, even I wouldn't be insulted by someone telling me he's smarter than I am, and I'm one of the smartest people on the planet and almost thirty years his senior."
"Very humble." Sasuke muttered, most of his attention on the pieces in his hands. He wasn't entirely sure which one to use where at the moment, but if he placed them just so, it wouldn't matter. Probably. He'd solder it down anyway to make sure it didn't rattle about.
"I have every cause to be." Tony declared, picking up a pen. After a few seconds, he began to spin it through his fingers, the sound of it loud in the quiet air of the lab.
"Right." Sasuke snorted, and finished screwing in what he thought was the last piece. After a few seconds, he nodded and pushed it towards Tony. Switching back to English, he asked, "How did I do?"
"Well, I watched you make it, so I know where you went wrong and right, but…" Tony reached under the table and pulled out a plate of bread. "How about we test it out?
Sasuke was tempted to bite his lip in anticipation, but tamped down the impulse and watched impassively instead. Nothing seemed to go wrong when Tony pressed the lever down, and there weren't any sparks or the smell of burning.
DING!
Out popped two slices of bread, very lightly browned; they weren't quite toast, but they were certainly on their way.
"So?" Sasuke leaned forward onto the table and kicked his legs back and forth. Tony took a bite of the bread and seemed to think it over.
"…Tasty." Tony declared.
"Uncle!" Sasuke didn't pout. Of course not.
"Alright, alright!" Tony laughed. "Okay, so you didn't do things quite the way I showed you. You kind of bungled a few things, but you still got it to work, even if it's a bit weaker than expected. So there's room for improvement, but you passed or whatever."
Sasuke took a minute to translate it all in his head, and then nodded. So he hadn't done it entirely right, but it was close enough to sort of work.
"Okay, so what did I do wrong?" Sasuke asked, all business.
Tony grinned. "Come over here and I'll show you, step by step."
o.o.o.o.o
July 23, 2005
Konohagakure no Sato
Sasuke's tenth birthday passed mostly without incident, in Konoha. He avoided fangirls and Naruto, but was otherwise alright. Tony brought far too much food and shiny new toys, but he also brought Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and Obadiah, so Sasuke was happy.
o.o.o.o.o
October 5, 2005
3:34 PM
Madison Square Park
Sasuke liked going out into the city with Ms. Douglas. The activity was interesting and, unlike going around with his uncle and pretending to be yet another security guard, he could actively pursue interesting things. Museums, parks, tourist attractions, all of them were within his reach when he went out with his caretaker instead of his uncle.
Sasuke did love Tony. He was family and he was good at being family, but he was also very famous and it wasn't easy to go places with him because of that. With Ms. Douglas, he could move around almost freely.
(Not completely freely, because as old as his henge looked, he was still legally a child and needed supervision and boundaries.)
Sometimes he even got to go out without a disguise on, though that was rarer, and got to go to children's museums and playgrounds, though that wasn't always as fun, given that most of the children there were incredibly… well, civilian. And so were their parents.
"Billy Kaplan, you get down from there right now!"
Very civilian.
"Ms. Douglas, I don't understand why they are so protective." He said as he sat next to her on the bench, sipping on a box of juice. "Most of those places aren't high enough to be dangerous."
"You're a ninja, Sasuke. Your chakra allows you to heal faster than them, and makes you more durable as well." Ms. Douglas reminded him, pulling out a bag of celery sticks and handing them to him. "It's easy to forget, but they are much more breakable than you are."
Sasuke made a face at that, but relaxed. "Things would be much easier if they made the ground softer, then."
"Yes, but that costs money, and people prefer to spend government money on other things." Ms. Douglas mused, "Like subway repairs."
Sasuke though it over for a second. "Those are probably pretty important."
"Yes, most people would agree with you." Ms. Douglas laughed. "They need those to get to work or school, and would have to use much more expensive transportation methods if those didn't exist, and many people can't afford that."
"I guess." Sasuke kicked his legs back and forth. "Can we go to the Natural History Museum later?"
"I don't see why not. I'll tell your uncle and well see what he says."
o.o.o.o.o
January 25, 2006
8:52 PM
Stark Industries, Queens, New York
"I see. Yes, we can do that. I'll work on it myself. You can discuss the contract with Ms. Potts." Tony hung up and shoved his face into his hands, groaning quietly. His desk was a mess, but… well, when wasn't it?
"Mr. Stark?" Pepper asked from her own desk. "Is something wrong?"
"You ever get the feeling that the world is turning into a really weird place?" Tony asked, pulling his face up and resting his chin on one palm. "Just… like all the weirdness that was in the Hidden Continent is, like, slowly leeching out?"
"Not really." Pepper answered slowly. "What brought this on?"
"Just got a call from the Secretary of Defense and… oh hell, Pep, it's crazy." Tony shuddered a bit. "This scientist at Culver was working on some project for Thunderbolt Ross, you know, the asshole? It was something about recreating the Supersoldier program from the forties, because that's worked out so well in the past, and they were playing around with gamma rays on the project, and the feds threatened to cut the funding so one of the scientists working on it decided to test it out on himself and… it changed him Pep. This was weeks ago and they've kept it all under wraps somehow. Come look at this."
Pepper stood slowly and made her way over, stepping delicately around some of the things Tony had lying around on the floor. She was quiet while watching the videos, save for a small gasp here and there, and quiet when it ended.
"So they want me to build something to take this guy down."
"You don't want to." Pepper guessed.
"The man was a brilliant scientist, Pep. I've read his papers, the man's a genius and he only means the best. But Right now he's a massive threat to a lot of people and if he shows up in a populated area like that again, it could mean a lot of deaths." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "And for some reason he's immune to most physical weaponry so I've got to come up with something powerful enough to take him down that doesn't somehow rely on bullets or explosives or anything like that."
"You can do that, Tony, easily."
"But I don't want to, Pep. A mind like that? It's… it's almost a sin."
"You don't have much of a choice, Tony. Not this time." Pepper looked at the screen again, at the two pictures side by side, of a kind-looking man with a soft face and rage-filled green monster. "Maybe he'll stay away from people or keep it under control somehow."
"Maybe." Tony sounded doubtful. "But they've got Ross on this. Whether Banner tries to be safe for people or not, Ross will hunt him down."
"I know."
But there aren't many options.
o.o.o.o.o
March 12, 2006
2:32
Westchester
"I saw a picture on the Professor's desk today." Sasuke said, moving a piece forward on the chess board in front of him. David was sitting on the other side, wearing the reverse neat-o Helmet, while Anna Marie and Kurt were sitting off to the side. "He was with a woman in it. She was blue, like Kurt."
Kurt nodded. "That is my mother. She and the Professor grew up as brother and sister."
"You do not call him uncle." Sasuke noted, watching the board as David moved a piece.
"We just like calling him the Professor better. It sounds more cooler." Anna Marie crunched down on an apple slice. "We still call him Uncle Charles sometimes, just not when we're talking to people who don't know we're related."
"You never told me." Sasuke said, trying not to sound like he was complaining.
"You never asked." Kurt replied, grinning.
Sasuke stuck his tongue out at Kurt in retaliation, but gave in to his curiosity a few seconds later and went back to asking questions instead of being bratty. "If your mother is blue, and so is Kurt, why is Anna Marie not?"
"I was adopted." The answer came easily, matter-of-factly even. "Mom found me after some bad stuff happened at my old home, and then left me here when she needed to do other stuff. Uncle Charles found Kurt a year later after some stuff happened at the circus he was living in in Germany."
Sasuke nodded slowly. "A circus? What is a…?"
"A circus is a group of travelling entertainers." David translated, which was more than he'd said for most of the afternoon. "There are animal performances, clowns, trapeze artists, acrobats, magicians, and so on."
"I… see." Sasuke thought he may have heard of such things in Moon country, but not in many other places on the Hidden Continent. He thought he might like to see one. He turned back to Kurt. "You were raised in one?"
"They were good people." Kurt said, smiling. "But the authorities found out about me and wanted to take me away, and that is when Uncle Charles stepped in."
"Why did he not before?"
"He saw that the family I had was good, and thought I would be happier there than with a man I barely knew." Kurt shrugged. "When that changed, he came to find me and brought me here. I still write letters to the people I know in the circus, but I cannot live with them anymore."
"Oh." Sasuke looked down at the ground and frowned. "That is… not good."
"It is what it is." Kurt shrugged again. "They are alive, and they love me, and we can speak with one another when we want to. It is enough."
"I just wish Mama would come back." Anna Marie said, and her voice, normally quite chipper, was suddenly much sadder. "She hasn't been by since she left me here, and I miss her."
Sasuke frowned. "Why not? Why does she not come?"
"She does not know that I am alive." Kurt said. "Uncle Charles says she stays away due to grief and anger, and that he has known her to leave and not communicate for far longer."
"She was already sad when she found me." Anna Marie confided. "But she tried not to be, I think, so that I wouldn't notice, but I did. She left me with Uncle Charles because she didn't think it was healthy for me to be around her when she was like that."
"At least, that is what he told us." Kurt said quietly.
"I'm sure she will come back eventually." Sasuke said, mostly telling the truth. "And she will be very happy to know that you are alive, right?"
"Right." Kurt smiled at him, and Sasuke could tell that neither of the siblings really thought Sasuke was any surer than he did, but ending the conversation on a hopeful note was a good idea.
"Checkmate." David said, drawing Sasuke's attention back to the board. He shrugged at Sasuke's indignant look. "You weren't paying attention to any of your plays."
"Again." Sasuke demanded.
o.o.o.o.o
July 23, 2006
Tokyo
Sasuke's eleventh birthday was spent in Tokyo, seeing one of the largest cities in the world and enjoying the fact that he could speak the local language far more fluently than his uncle.
o.o.o.o.o
A/N: I promised to add a scene about who Ms. Douglas actually is here but I ran out of steam and I hit a decent word count anyway, so… maybe next time.
Ja ne,
Phoenix
