Please refer back to Chapter 6 regarding Steve's lack of knowledge about the Holocaust.

Sorry for inaccuracies regarding Howard & Maria Stark, I'm not very familiar with Tony Stark's life story (and by not very familiar, I mean pretty much not at all).

Annette is a complete OC.

Written to: Walls - Tiësto ft. Quilla, crosspost from AO3

"Mum took me to see a tailor," Tony said to Steve, flopping onto his bed on a warm, breezy fall afternoon. The white gauze curtains framing his window billowed full and soft, and New York City glistened like diamonds below him. "Wouldn't it be funny if all tailors' names were Taylor? I think it might be."

Why were you going to see a tailor? Steve asked, curiously. Tony's mention of the tailor brought back some disjointed memories, of a man with dark hair and a little goatee and a sharp copper-coloured vest holding a measuring tape against him. The tape was cool, and the man whistled to himself as he jotted down a few notes on a clipboard with a blue ballpoint pen. When Steve had craned his neck to look at the paper, he had seen it was filled with a huge list of numbers. He remembered swallowing awkwardly as the man got down on his knees, measuring across his hips with the tape, averting his eyes from that dark, piercing gaze that seemed to drill right into him.

He remembered the same man presenting with a blue suit, fatigue and pride and hope written all over those sharp features. But it wasn't a suit, not the type you'd go dancing in, not the type that looked so delightful on Bucky's shoulders in shades of black and dark navy. What suit was it? Steve tried to think, but Tony was talking again and he lost his train of thought. He privately made a note to think about it some more, perhaps when Tony was sleeping or when he was at school.

"It's for homecoming," Tony explained, hopping off his bed and going over to his desk. "It's a dance to celebrate the start of the school year or something like that, although why anybody would want to celebrate that is beyond me. Mum said I should go, and Rhodey practically forced me to go. He convinced some girl in our history class to go with me, even though I didn't want to go, but Rhodey's my friend and he really wanted to go with Pepper."

You're not friends with the girl Rhodey set you up with? Steve wanted to know, his words scrolling across the screen in lines of green.

"Not really, no," Tony said, leaning back in his desk chair. "She's just some girl that I know. We're acquaintances at best, but I guess Rhodey heard that she really wanted to go and didn't have anybody to go with. I don't get it, though. She seemed super disappointed that I didn't do this big thing and ask her to the dance, like a lot of other guys did. I don't really get that. Shouldn't it be enough that I'm going with her, why should I have to do some big gesture also? Mum would never let me hear the end of it."

Ha, Steve said, and Tony smiled. That's just the way some people are. And some people aren't like that at all. She's just one of the people that like that sort of stuff, and you're just one of the people that don't like that at all.

"I guess," Tony said, scuffing his feet over the carpet. "What kind of person are you, Steve?"

Hmmm...The dots continued over the screen, like Steve was really dedicating a lot of time to thinking about it. After a while, he replied, I don't really know. I don't think I've ever been put in a position like that. I guess it would have to depend on the person asking me/the person I'm asking. Lots of things depend on other people.

"Yeah, I suppose," Tony said, running his hands through his unruly dark curls. His mum had run her hand through them earlier that day, after they had left the tailor's place, and had told him with a little smile that he ought to get it cut. Tony had disagreed, shaking his head vigorously; Maria had laughed at the way his deep brown curls bounced around and fell over his forehead into his eyes. For the first time in what felt like forever, Maria seemed to be happy, and Tony couldn't help but feel that she would have been much happier if she'd never met Howard. But then that had called into question his own existence, and he didn't much like to think about not existing. He couldn't imagine what it would be like.

"Oh, and guess what Steve?" Tony said, grinning as he caught sight of the letter on his desk again. It was stamped with a crimson crest, with the lettering 'Massachusetts Institute of Technology' written in the border of the circle. Without waiting for Steve to ask what it was Tony sounded so happy about, he continued. "MIT's offered me a position at their school, for electrical engineering. I guess there were some reps at the state robotics competition last year, and they really liked my designs, so they came up and talked to me and sent me an application form. I bet Rhodey's wishing he'd decided to participate in robotics club instead of some boring British literature club."

Even as he said this, Tony felt a pang of regret. Rhodey and he hadn't been so close lately, drifting farther and farther apart. And Pepper certainly wasn't helping any of that, Tony thought, but he supposed it could help if he weren't so petty about things...

So you're going to go to university? That's fantastic! Steve's text looked genuinely excited and proud, and Tony grinned, pushing Pepper out of his mind.

"Well, they said that since I'm still in high school, I can choose to finish that before I go there, but if I just want to go, I can...just go," Tony said, smiling. "I don't even need to graduate."

Well, you've got time to think about it, I guess, Steve said. I'm sure whatever you decide will be great.

"Did you go to university?" Tony wanted to know. "Do you know what the people there are like?"

I never had a chance to go, Steve admitted. I never really had money for tuition fees, and my plans all involved going to the army. I wasn't really focused on school. But I think you'll do well there. You're a smart kid.

"I'm a man, now, Steve," Tony corrected, laughing.

The screen just spit out a smile ":)" and Tony whistled to himself while he pulled out his backpack and started his homework. He had a paper due on the Holocaust in European History in a few weeks, and he still had a bunch of things to research for it.

Maria smiled up at her son as she adjusted his deep blue tie for him, tightening the knot gently and smoothing out the creases in his shirt collar before stepping back to admire her work. Tony was getting to look more and more like Howard by the day.

The Howard she once knew, Maria corrected herself. The Howard who wore suits every day, even on weekends, who had a mischievous quirk to his mouth and a witty retort behind every sentence. The Howard who was confident, self-assured, hard-working. Not the Howard she knew now, the one who sat in his office all day staring into a tumbler of amber whiskey and glancing furtively behind his shoulder every half-second. Not the paranoid, timid, frightened man she knew now, nor the angry, violent man she knew a few years ago. Maria wasn't sure which one she would rather have.

"You look lovely, darling," Maria said, smiling at Tony. She smoothed back his unruly hair - she hadn't managed to convince him to get a haircut - and sighed in mock frustration when the curls insisted on spilling over onto his forehead anyway. "Goodness, your hair just doesn't want to stay put, does it?" she teased him. He shrugged, examining himself in the floor-length mirror.

"Do I have to go?" he asked his mother, standing very still as she took a comb slicked with water and brushed his hair. "I mean, it probably won't be very fun."

"You've already said you would go with her," Maria said, stepping back and examining him critically. It would do, she supposed. "And it really would not do if you broke your promise. You must act the gentleman, always, and nothing short of death or violent illness ought to stop you from a commitment. And besides, your father and I are going out tonight, and it's Jarvis's day off, so I really would feel better if you were with your friends instead of sitting here alone."

Tony sighed, rolled his eyes. And because she was his mother, and he could see the thin strands of grey woven through her dark hair, and because he knew she worried about him, he agreed.

Her name was Annette, and her father owned an oil company or something like that, Tony thought, looking across at his date as he sipped at his second plastic cup of punch (was punch supposed to be this bitter?) and tried to ignore Rhodey and Pepper batting their eyes at each other only a few inches away.

He'd done everything right, so far, he'd thought. He'd complimented Annette on her dress (a deep blue that matched his tie - Annette had insisted), on the way her curls fell over her shoulders, on how pretty she was. Annette probably knew that he wasn't being sincere, but she had smiled and graciously accepted his compliments all the same. Tony supposed that, objectively, she was a pretty girl, but he didn't feel any attraction whatsoever. She was missing something, but Tony had no idea what it could possibly be.

Rhodey stood up, taking Pepper by the hand, and led her onto the dance floor. Annette looked after them dreamily, and deep inside him, Tony realised that he was supposed to ask her to dance, but he remained firmly in his seat, staring into his punch and adjusting his tie. He was starting to feel rather warm and flushed, and wondered if the air conditioning in the ballroom was broken or something of the like, or if it was because of all the students in here.

Annette looked across at him with a flush creeping up her neck. Not breaking eye contact, she picked up her glass of punch and drained it - Tony watched the smooth line of her throat as she swallowed, thought it was...too smooth, if that were a thing - before reaching across the table, grabbing Tony's hand, and forcing him up. She stumbled on her way to the dance floor, and Tony, not for the first time, wondered why girls bothered to wear heels if they couldn't walk in them. He quickly revised this judgment as he stumbled over to the dance floor, and thought that it must be the level of the floor or something of the like, he certainly wasn't wearing heels.

The room spun dizzily around him, the flashing disco lights overhead blurring into a rainbow of colours as Annette took his hands, placed one in hers, and the other on her waist. They circled around the room, and Annette was speaking to him, saying something, her face getting closer and closer but Tony couldn't hear her, not over the music that throbbed through him, couldn't see her past the flashing lights and the glimpses of Rhodey and Pepper locked in an embrace, Rhodey's back to him always, always, always...

Annette pressed her mouth to his, suddenly. To Tony, the lights stopped flashing, the people around him stopped dancing, the music became a slow, deep pulse in his chest. Suddenly, he was pushing her away, ignoring her hurt look, and the lights were flashing far too much, his head was pounding, everything was moving far too quickly -

Somehow, Tony found himself outside the hotel, hugging his arms to his chest against the slightly chilly evening air. His face was wet, and his breath tasted like metal in his mouth.

He barely had the presence of mind to hail one of the cabbies waiting outside the hotel and tell him his address. He sank into the backseat of the car, smelling the leather and cigarettes embedded into the seats. It was familiar, it was soothing, and he breathed deeply and watched the flashing lights of the city around him.

The apartment was silent - Jarvis was on his day off, and his parents had gone out to celebrate the opening of some new factory in Manhattan or something of the like, and most likely wouldn't be back until much later.

Tony barged into his room, hurriedly unknotting his blue tie with one hand and tossing it to the side, running his other hand through his dark hair and mussing it up. He was crying, he wasn't sure why, but that had been his first kiss, and his mother had always told him to have your first kiss with somebody that you really, truly liked and cared about. He hadn't liked Annette, not like that, and he'd lost his first kiss and the room was spinning and it was still too hot...

He unbuttoned his starched white dress shirt, shrugged out of his, out of the dress slacks, and let the clothes puddle on the floor in an unorganised pile, leaving him in cotton boxers and a white undershirt. He pushed open the window, letting the cool night air against his skin.

Back already? Steve asked, his monitor lighting up with the green text in the room's darkness. Is the dance over already? I thought these were supposed to go on for a long time.

"I didn't feel like dancing anymore," Tony muttered, trying to hold back tears as he sat down in front of his computer and tried to think about something, anything but the dance and Rhodey and Pepper and Annette and what he was going to do when he saw her again on Monday.

There was a moment of stillness. Don't cry, Steve said, and how he knew was beyond Tony's comprehension, but those words on the screen made the tears come faster and before Tony knew it he was crying and sobbing and telling Steve everything, from how the punch was bitter and his shoes were too tight and how she had kissed him and she didn't want him to -

It's alright, shh, shh, and Steve was making those noises that he'd been making ever since Tony had met him, and it continued until Tony's breath came in short little hiccups and his eyes were red and raw and there were no more tears to be had.

He was exhausted, but didn't feel like sleeping. Sirens wailed in the street beneath him, and Tony absentmindedly wondered where they were going, so many sirens, so frantically, as he opened a new browser window on his computer and began to research more facts about the Holocaust for his paper. The accounts from survivors were bonechilling, and Tony thought about how his father and what he might have done in World War II - Howard didn't really talk about that, not that he did much talking to Tony anymore.

You should try to sleep, Steve told him, his box of green text interrupting Tony's typing. Crying always makes one tired.

"I'm not sleepy, not really," Tony said, but because he was glad Steve was worrying about him, he continued, "But I'll go to sleep in a bit, after I finish the outline for this paper."

What are you writing your paper on? Steve wanted to know. Lots of police tonight, he added, as more sirens wailed past. Tony hadn't been counting, but he felt sure that whatever had happened, it must have been something really bad.

"I'm writing about the Holocaust," Tony explained, looking at the brochure for the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. "It's for my European History class."

I can't imagine there's too much to write about a book burning, Steve said.

Tony arched an eyebrow at the screen, even though he knew Steve couldn't see him. "Gee, where've you been?" he asked, jotting down some facts from the brochure. "It wasn't just a book burning. It was a lot more than that, everybody knows that."

A long pause, like Steve was trying to process this. What do you mean? he asked cautiously.

"Lots and lots of people died," Tony explained. "The Nazi Germans killed people that they didn't think were up to par with their visions for an ideal race."

I do suppose hundreds of thousands of people is quite a lot, Steve agreed, and Tony just scoffed. Rolled his eyes.

"No wonder school wasn't for you, Steve," he said, his words starting to slur together. Downstairs, the door banged open, and the noise drove itself into Tony's brain. "Not if you can't remember stuff like that. It wasn't just hundreds of thousands of people."

There were footsteps racing up the stairs, and Tony was privately impressed that his father was able to run so fast in the state he was probably in. Howard usually came back drunk after outings like this, and the footsteps were far too heavy to be Maria's light tread.

How many...? Steve's response was reluctant, as if he didn't want to know.

"Eleven million people," Tony said, and very suddenly, he wished he hadn't said it. A scream howled through his room, a wordless shout so filled with pain and anger and terror that drilled into Tony's brain and made him press his hands against his eyes and plead with whatever gods existed for it to stop. Green text was filling his screen at a rapid rate, huge A's and H's and strings of gibberish punctuated with the number "11" over and over again. As if Steve couldn't believe it, though Tony thought it was common knowledge.

Jarvis burst into his room, breathing heavily, to find Tony trying to find a way to turn his speakers off. He noticed the tear tracks on Tony's face, hurried over and cradled the young master in his arms, trying very hard not to cry himself.

"Oh, you poor boy, you poor boy," Jarvis kept repeating over and over, stroking his hand through Tony's dark curls. Tony's cheek was pressed up against the butler's starched shirt (did Jarvis ever dress in casual clothing, Tony wondered), and he vaguely wondered how Jarvis knew he was upset about Annette and the dance and the kiss.

"How did you know?" Tony asked, pulling back from Jarvis's tight embrace and wondering why there were tears in his eyes. "About Annette?"

"Annette? Who's that?" Jarvis asked. "Oh," he breathed, as he suddenly realised Tony had no idea what was going on. "Oh, young master, oh. Something terrible has happened. Your parents were in a car accident -"

Tony stopped breathing, could barely think over the screaming, could barely hear Jarvis mention things like "killed instantly," "driving home," "two external casualties..."

And then Jarvis was wrapping him in a tight embrace again, rocking him, and Tony suddenly realised that the screaming was coming from him.