Tony Is Four
A.j.

Notes: Written as commentfic that cannot go anywhere without 1. An actual plot 2. About 20,000 more words, I decided to throw it up as fic amnesty. We'll just go with Tony actually getting thrown back in time.

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Initially, he thinks that somehow, someone slipped him something extra special (or he has a concussion or Puppetmaster is playing games again, or... okay, he really needs a less dramatic life because what the hell?) into his espresso. If only because the only experience he's ever had similar to this was that one time in college when Rhodey's roommate's sister's boyfriend landed some honest-to-god LSD and he spent six hours watching his own feet grow and shrink.

After all, waking up roughly three feet shorter and forty years younger isn't exactly a normal occurrence. For him. He has no idea what the hell the X-Men do.

The ruufies theory gets through right out the window after he spends a few minutes staring at his hand, trying to see if it's interesting or strange in some way. It's not, so drugs are out.

It takes him a bit to get unwound from under his, strangely familiar, Death Star sheets and on his feet. A quick recon of the area confirms that yes, this is his childhood bedroom, and yes that is the face he normally sees splashed across every childhood retrospective ever printed about him.

"Motherfucking hell," he whispers and pokes the mirror.

Nope. Finger didn't sink into it. Not The Matrix.

"Anthony?" A quiet, accented voice sounds from outside his door just before a knock sounds. He's damn glad no one else was around to see him jump. Pepper would never have let him live it down. "It's time to get up, young man. Anthony?"

And there she was. In all her buttoned up and orthodic glory. His first true love and nanny.

"Elena?" He'd be embarrassed about the squeak, but he's not even six - that's when he'd been deemed old enough to go without a constant caretaker and Elena had been shuffled out - so whatever.

"Anthony!" Her smile is bright and pleased. "You are awake! That is excellent. We have a long day ahead of us. Come, you need to get dressed."

Blinking, still completely discombobulated from his accidental (he thinks) time travel, he lets Elena bundle him towards his closet. The only thought running through his head is that damn, Pepper's probably pissed.

***

Meeting his parents again is unsettling.

This is not a surprise as a good portion of what he remembers as his life was defined by their absence. At least, that's what he's been able to puzzle out after a couple stints in rehab and Pepper punching him in the arm repeatedly until he 'opened up' and 'talked about his feelings' with her.

Pepper had really gotten violent after the sixth kidnapping attempt. Although, to be fair, he actually had opened up about his 'feelings', so Pepper's method had been leaps and bounds better than S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attempt to get him to talk to a shrink. It figured Rhodey had been right about a good kick in the ass being more effective than anything else.

Still. Parents. Not dead. Awkward.

"Hi, Mom."

Tony felt more than slightly stupid standing in the entrance of the breakfast room, holding Elena's hand and waiting to be invited to sit. He'd forgotten (or repressed) this part of his childhood.

Maria Stark is both prettier and older than he remembers her being. Backlit by the bright windows - Eastern exposure in the mornings, darling!, he remembered her decorating advice - she appears to glow. It's not particularly angelic, given their shared coloring, but it does highlight the soft wrinkles near her eyes and the lines just starting on her hands and neck. She's not how he remembers her, but she's there and not dead (yay), so there's that.

"Tony, come sit down."

Tony let muscle memory take over and in seconds he was comfortably seated, legs dangling oddly, in his chair, to the left of his mother. The booster seat - being short really, really sucked - was surprisingly comfortable for molded plastic. Elena, being well trained, slipped out to go eat in the kitchen, leaving Tony alone with his mother for the first time in something like twenty-five years.

At least, that was the case in his memory.

"You seem quiet this morning, Tony. Did you have good dreams?" His mother's hands are graceful wrapped around her coffee cup. Gold bangles that he dimly remembers being in an old safety deposit box at home dangle from her wrists, and it isn't until that moment that he lets himself feel the deep and heavy weight that's seemingly pressed against his diaphragm.

"Tony?"

He blinks away the haze before addressing his mother and her suddenly worried eyes. "Bad dream," he says and shakes his head. Weird circumstance or not, he's an adult and god knows if this is real or some kind of computer or mental simulation gone horribly, horribly wrong. The person across from him, in all likelihood, isn't Maria Stark, and opening himself up like that just isn't in his nature anymore.

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear." She pats him on the head gently and reaches for the god awful bell she picked up in some 'adorable' shop in the Hamptons to signal the maid to bring out their food. This gives him another clue to his age because Sergio - the Starks' family butler until he turned five and the man ran off with one of his mother's hairdressers (the male one) - had stolen the thing and hidden it in the garage. Tony and his father had found it a few months later and melted it down for parts. "Some food and a walk will probably clear that right out of your head."

Tony nods dutifully and tries to remember just what he was doing before he'd lost consciousness and ended up in this bizarro world. He'd been trying all morning and although it had been a good distraction while Elena was stripping him down - and good god, that had been freaky - his mind was still a blank. The last thing he remembered clearly was talking to Jim Morrison (board member) on the phone and watching Pepper's ass as she walked out of the room to go do something. Nothing relating to Iron Man or S.H.E.I.L.D. or any other weird and wacky superheroing hijinks.

Just a nice morning at the office and a really boring phone call. Somehow, he doubted Jim Morrison had either the ability to send consciousnesses back in time (although the name Rachel Summers rang a vague bell) or give him this complete a hallucination.

Then again, Pepper had shot down his last idea about an addition to the Stark Industries employment application. He still thought a section about mutation ability disclosures was a good idea. Stupid civil rights and privacy laws.

Still, the dream-theory had lost credibility when he'd picked up the algebra book sitting on his desk and read a couple paragraphs while Elena tried to locate his shoes. The words had been fine and understandable and he could even recognize their shapes.

Tony sighed and was about to pick up his spoon to wait for his oatmeal. His mother had always been a big believer in oatmeal. It wasn't (wouldn't be? Aw, shit!) until college that he'd been able to escape his mother's pathological fascination with the breakfast food. The woman – he shoots a glance over at her as she lights up a cigarette – had sworn by it and refused to have anything else served at breakfast in her home.

She may have compromised her ethics in regards to his father's career in weapons manufacturing, but Maria Stark was a dyed-in-the-wool hippie when it came to nutrition. Or, y'know. A nutritionist.

Tony watched her take another puff on her cigarette and reflected on the meaning of irony.

And then... and then his father breezed through the door, patting him on the shoulder before moving towards his seat.

At that point Tony knew that that he'd been coasting through the morning on little more than disbelief and déjà vu. Still, despite what a lot of his critics had said about him over the years, he's not actually a machine, and his father's hand on his shoulder makes this hotmess real. It makes a stupid kind of sense, and there's a level of shame to both the realization and the sudden prickle of tears. Pepper had been the first person to point out that he related so much more to his father and had so much more attachment to him than he did his mother. His reaction to Howard Stark's hand on his shoulder affirms that, and Tony resignedly put another tick in the "Pepper Potts Is Never, EVER Wrong About Anything Ever, Except Her Taste In Food" column.

"Hello, family!"

Tony'd forgotten how bombastic his father was. Howard Stark was (and had been) anything but small or meek. It had been something Tony'd tried to emulate with varying degrees of success for most of his life.

But there he was again. Tall and healthy and Istriding/I through the room like absolutely nothing was wrong with his world.

Tony stared down at his spoon and tried not to burst into tears or throw himself at his father's knees.

This was going to be a long damn morning.

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