Written to: Signal Fire - Snow Patrol, crosspost from AO3. Today is my birthday.

The next time Howard talked to Tony, it was because Tony wanted to, and because Howard had run out of excuses and was too tired to think of a new one for why he couldn't see or talk to his son.

Tony was ten.

"Father," Tony said, peeking around the corner of the study door, peeping in at his father. Howard was sitting at his desk, staring into a swirling tumbler of whiskey and wondering where he'd gone wrong in his life. Stark Industries was doing better than ever, its stock rocketing through the roof at an almost alarming pace. Though it had ended a decade and a half ago, the war in Vietnam was still fresh in everybody's minds, compacted even more by the fear of the Soviets and nuclear weapons that no one saw but everybody talked about. Stark Industries now worked primarily in defence, but under the surface, if one bothered to look just the slightest bit past the politics and the bullshit, one could easily see that the company was all offensive.

It made Howard's head hurt, looking at his fleets of engineers tightening nuts and bolts on high-tech rifles, looking at his scientists in the labs in their sterile white coats holding up tubes of bacteria that, if given the chance, would decimate entire races. It made him feel sick, the power he held in the palm of his hand; he was tired of playing God, and tried to drown himself in alcohol, but didn't seem to be able to sink under deep enough.

And then there was Maria, and the boy, of course. He had taken to calling himself Tony, instead of a proper gentleman's name like Anthony; Maria had shrunk away from him, and Howard could feel the cold column of mattress between her body and his as they slept together at night. He hadn't lifted a hand against her, not in a very long time.

Howard hated to admit it, but he was tired. He was just too damn tired, and felt like all he was really doing was dying.

"Father."

Tony's repeated address made him look up. The boy was getting tall, shooting up like a beanpole, but the childish roundness hadn't left his face yet. Howard squinted past the afternoon sunlight painting Tony's face, and in that moment, he saw a tall young man, dressed in a sharp tuxedo, tugging at the corner of a well groomed mustache with one hand, a glass of champagne in the other. It was him. It was not him. And Howard had no idea about supernatural things, didn't think they existed, refused to believe in premonitions, but he would swear that in that instant, he had seen the man his son would grow up to be.

"I want to learn how to program."

Howard was startled by this. Tony hadn't shown any interest at all in the technical subjects, sneering at computer science books, rolling his eyes at derivatives and integrals (though Howard was surprised and pleased by how quickly he picked up the fundamentals of differential calculus), and had instead been more inclined towards the humanities. Howard had eventually given up, and the science texts and clinical papers collected dust in neat piles in the corners of Tony's room.

"And I want a tool kit, and access to materials."

Howard stared at his son in disbelief, wondering what could possibly have prompted the change. Surely it couldn't have been Maria's doing.

"I - what kind of materials?" he stuttered, clearing his throat and eyeing his son with bloodshot eyes.

"Pipes, tubes, electrical wiring, stuff like that. Science stuff," Tony said, chewing at his nails and wondering if he had pushed his father too far.

There was a long pause during which Howard pinched his thigh under the table to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He wasn't, and winced as the sharp sting traveled up his leg.

"Yes, you may," he said after a while. "But you must always make sure to have Jarvis escort you to the laboratory. I will make sure to keep it well stocked."

Tony nodded his head, smiling in satisfaction. That had been a lot less problematic than he thought it would have been. And maybe now he could make The Whisper Man talk again.

Tony pored over the computer science manuals that his father had given him, reading up on Python, Java, C++, everything. His father had delegated one of his employees to be a CS tutor for Tony, and every day after school, Tony would spend at least two hours with Ms. Peggy Carter, a woman in her sixties or seventies, her dark hair mostly white. She had laugh lines around her eyes, and wrinkles around her mouth, and Tony liked how she always kept butterscotch candies in her pockets and gave them to him when he had completed a particularly difficult coding task. She told Tony that she had once used to be a friend of his father's, back during the war, when Howard's hair was still all dark and he didn't have silver at his temples, when he didn't have worry lines around his face.

She told him that, after a person very important to her had disappeared, she had picked up coding as a hobby, as a way to hide her emotions behind the impersonal facades of numbers and binary numerals. Tony wondered who the important person was, and Ms. Carter showed him an old, faded picture she kept in her wallet of a strong blonde man. He looked like a very nice man, Tony thought to himself, but Ms. Carter never told him what his name was. Just that he had been a very good friend, and that Ms. Carter had liked him very much.

With Ms. Carter, Tony learned the ins and outs of computer science, how to create infinite loops, how to create signals and pathways of coding and solutions where none existed.

Once Ms. Carter had asked him why he wanted to learn all of a sudden. And Tony had thought about The Whisper Man, had smiled brightly up at Ms. Carter, and had told her that he wanted the Whisper Man to be able to talk again.

And Ms. Carter had smiled indulgently down at him, her laugh crinkling the corners of her eyes, and had told him his parents must be blessed to have a boy with such a vivid imagination. Tony didn't correct her.

The evening he plugged the little screen and lens apparatus into a computer, he was confronted with a login screen password.

Username: HStark.

Password: _

Tony frowned, tapping at the keyboard unsurely. He hesitantly tried a few words. Whiskey? Alcohol? Stark? What would his father like? None of the passwords worked, and he frowned at the screen.

His father had made these things during the war, he thought to himself, and maybe he hadn't been into drinking then. He sighed, frowned, and decided he would ask his father about it tomorrow.

Howard looked at Tony blearily, trying to get over a hideous hangover.

"Whaddaya want?" he slurred at his son, trying very hard not to vomit all over his desk.

"The password to the lens and drive in my room," Tony said, very quietly, so as not to aggravate his father's headache. "You know, the one under the monitor with all the green specks."

Howard groaned, rubbed at his eyes with his hands, rummaged around his desk for a pad of paper and a pen. In shaky handwriting, he scribbled something down, folded the paper and handed it to Tony, who took it but didn't unfold it.

"It's the things most precious to me," Howard muttered, gripping the edge of his desk and thinking very hard about pleasant things, peaceful things. Waterfalls, kittens, ohms and circuits and motherboards...

Username: HStark.

Password: M4r14 4NTH0NY ST4RK

Tony grinned as the drive took his password, allowed him to open up his programs and run them. He looked up at the green specks, how they started swirling around curiously, then more quickly.

Hello? the screen read out.

Tony had to bite his cheek from squealing in delight. Only babies did that, and he was already a big boy.

"Hi, Whisper Man," he said in delight.

There was a pause while the green specks frantically darted around the screen.

You can see this?

"Yes! I can! It worked, Whisper Man, I did it! You can talk now!"

I could always talk.

"Well, I can see it now. So now you don't have to shh anymore. Though I guess you'll need a new name then."

I have a name.

"You do?" Tony asked. "What is it?"

I'm Steve.

"My name is Tony!" Tony crowed proudly, grinning from ear to ear. If he was looking carefully, he would swear the monitor's speckles rearranged themselves into a smile.

Yes. I know.