Written to: Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event.

The residential board at MIT had settled Tony in a single at Burton Conner, a grand multistoried brick building with beautiful white arches and columns framing the main entrance. Tony's room had lovely lighting from the window at the corner, a beautiful New England light smattered with the first rosy hints of autumn shining over his desk, where he set up Steve, a desk lamp, and a perfectly round fishbowl containing a blue betta fish, which he'd called Parker.

His floor advisor had explained to him on the first day that the residential board had conferred, and after a series of several meetings, had determined that the 15, almost 16-year-old, might feel more comfortable in a single; this arrangement wasn't permanent, he'd been quick to assure Tony, if he decided halfway through the year that he had found a classmate he might want to live with, he was more than welcome to move into a double. And of course, there were always the floor dinners through which Tony could meet other people living on his floor, if he wanted. The residential advisor was quick to explain that Tony, despite his young age, was more than welcome to participate in all the activities MIT had to offer.

His floor advisor, a junior in biomedical engineering who went by the name of Morgan, gave him a tour of the campus. Morgan's clear, confident Boston accent outlined the campus for Tony, the brick buildings taking on names and meanings, sketching the beginnings of a new home and a new life. On their tour, Morgan greeted several other students with a wave and a nod and a smile, and Tony felt the first springs of hope begin to well up inside him, that maybe he'd find someplace to belong in, some place to forget.

"This is one of the dining halls," Morgan explained, pausing by a squat brick and glass building, just a few hundred feet from Burton Conner. "So you'll probably be eating here most of the time. I mean, unless you can cook," he hastily went on. "It's just that, I was your age not too long ago, and I don't think I could have made much more than instant noodles or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," he said, with a modest laugh. "To be fair, I can make a mean PB&J, if you're interested."

Tony smiled, and told Morgan that he would definitely have to take him up on that offer. Not even 16, he had started to take on a certain air of quiet confidence and dignity that would be helpful in someday taking over Stark Industries.

"And of course, there's some rules we've just got to get over with," Morgan continued as he stepped inside the elevator, its walls mirrored and polished to a bright sheen, the floors a brassy tile, the buttons an off-white colour with light up numbers. "You know, for the floor and in general." Tony nodded as the brass elevator doors closed and the elevator began its smooth ascent. Morgan began to tick off the rules on his fingers.

"No drinking, no drugs, etc. etc, you know, the usual," he began. "At Burton Conner, we expect you to be courteous about your dorm activities, so quiet hours begin at 10 PM during the regular semester, and begin at 8 PM during examination weeks. Of course, if you find that other people are being extraordinarily loud, feel free to file a noise complaint or go to one of the libraries on campus or one of the study rooms on the third floor." Tony's room was on the 5th floor. "Let's see...no pets, except a fish, which I think you have, I remember you carrying it in."

"Try to keep your room clean, or at the very least, habitable," Morgan continued as the elevator doors slid smoothly open and disgorged them onto the soft carpet of the 5th floor. "It wouldn't do to have bugs in your room, very nasty things, you know," he said as they walked along the hall, their footfalls soft in the thick carpet. "No unmentioned guests, of the opposite sex or otherwise, in your room without a guest pass, although to be fair, I'm pretty lenient about that. So if you want to have a friend from school over or something, feel free to do so, just be aware that they have to abide by all the above rules and such."

They stopped in front of Tony's door, and Tony fumbled in his pocket for the smooth metal keychain that he'd affixed his dorm key to.

He pushed open the smooth cherry wood door, taking a deep breath as he stepped over the threshold, the dusty, academic air affixing itself deep in his lungs with a permanence that spoke of new homes and unopened scrapbooks and photographs swinging in the clothesline over chemical baths, waiting to be developed. Morgan stepped over the threshold with him, looking around the room, at Tony's small collection of personal possessions.

"You read comics?" he asked, his eyes drawn to the small collection of Captain America paperback volumes Tony had yet to shelve. "Only Captain America, I see. I was always more of a Batman fan," he said, picking up a book at random and turning the pages carefully. "Didn't your dad work with him?"

Tony muttered an affirmative, but Morgan either didn't hear, or just brushed it off as he put the book down and went to the side of the room to check on the status of Tony's thermostat.

"What's your degree in, again?" Morgan asked, going over and reaching up on tiptoes to check at the vents of Tony's air conditioning and heater. His cream-coloured, cable-knit Fair Island sweater rode up a bit as he reached overhead to press a hand against the vents, the other hand fiddling with the dials of the thermostat. "You're going to be needing the heat," Morgan told him, looking back over his shoulder, and Tony swallowed, dragging his eyes reluctantly away from the strip of pale golden flesh Morgan's treacherous sweater had revealed. "Winters get bitingly cold, but I'm sure you already knew that, being from New York and all. I've never been, but I imagine it must be quite nice."

"Um," Tony licked his lips, cleared his throat quietly. "I want to get a degree in electrical engineering," Tony said, as the pipes clanked softly and a dim heat began to seep into the room. Morgan lowered himself back to his normal height, and tugged his sweater down, turning back to Tony with a boyish smile on his face.

"Electrical engineering, huh?" Morgan asked. "Sounds interesting, I suppose. Heaven knows it's going to be damned useful in the near future. And what with Stark Industries and all," Morgan continued, going over to sit by Tony on his bed, made up with some spare sheets Jarvis had managed to rustle out of a back closet somewhere in the apartment, "I'm sure that degree's going to be fantastic what with the work you'll be doing in the future. I mean, if you do want to take over the company in the future. I guess you could sell it, if you wanted to. I was really sorry to hear about your parents."

Morgan's hand was hot and heavy on Tony's shoulder, and he tried to ignore the strength in his fingers, the warmth of his palm through Tony's light sweater. Tony swallowed, concentrated on Parker swimming around and around in his fishbowl, the afternoon sunlight twinkling off the glass. Morgan wasn't bad-looking, tall and blonde and athletic, with a twinkle in his blue eyes that crinkled in the corners whenever he smiled and displayed dazzling rows of white teeth. Tony vaguely found himself staring at the curve of Morgan's mouth, wondering, what if, what if -

Morgan patted him on the back consolingly, jolting him out of his thoughts. "At any rate, I remember when I first came here, I was pretty out of it too," he said, getting up, the bedsprings creaking as the weight lifted from the mattress. "I'm a young one, like you. Not quite as young, but I'll be turning 19 in about a week. We'll have a floor party, with cake and pizza and everything. You eat those, right, no gluten allergies or whatever?" he asked, already heading toward the door and towards more pressing social obligations.

Tony nodded, but by that time, Morgan was already around the door, and with a little smile and wave and a "Good luck!", had popped out of sight.

The first week of Tony's classes passed surprisingly quickly, and Tony, loaded down with syllabi and packages of graph and college-ruled paper, scurried from his dorm to his classes to the dining hall and for once was able to crawl into bed and fall into blessedly black sleep. His dreams were about class, about equations and formulas that tasted saccharine sweet and crisp in his mouth, and for a short few hours, he was able to forget that his parents, that his mother, really, was dead.

But there would be quiet, stolen moments throughout the day, when something, seemingly out of nowhere, would remind him of Maria.

Three leftover Honey Nut Cheerios floating in a small puddle of milk in his breakfast cereal, the morning of...the accident. He had been in one of his silly moods, had told Maria that he would only eat a number of Cheerios that was a perfect square (172 was not, he said stubbornly, a perfect square, and so these three would just have to be forgotten). Maria had laughed and had leaned over to eat the Cheerios, fingertips wet with milk as she'd pinched Tony's cheek and told him that he was being too silly and smart for her tastes.

Word problems in his differential equations and optimisation calculus textbook. "Maria wants to design the best layout for a cafe..." would have him holding his breath, biting at the inside of his cheek and trying to solve the problem, the numbers bitter and glutinous in his head as he tried to figure out the solution as fast as possible so he could move on to the next question.

The smell of the winter air, bitingly crisp and cold, when he woke up in the mornings to the shrill brrrr-ing of an alarm clock, when he would rise from the jellied fog of sleep, smiling and thinking that his mother would walk into the door at any minute to tell him it was time to get ready for school. Mornings were the best and the worst times. The best in that, upon waking, he could forget, could easily pretend that he was still dreaming and that the accident had just been some horrible story he'd read about on the news to some other unfortunate family. The worst was when he couldn't pretend any longer and the wintry air crept under his covers and drove sleep from his head, when he realised that his mother wasn't really going to walk through the door, that this dorm, this small lavishly furnished cell was his reality.

He hid his tears in his notebooks, little circular splotches that made the ink and graphite run and smudge. Nobody asked to see them, and Tony didn't show them to anyone.

Though Morgan had explicitly said that alcohol would not be tolerated in the dorms, and certainly not for underaged people (Tony sincerely doubted most of the people crowded into Morgan's suite were legally able to drink), the night of Morgan's 19th birthday celebration saw dozens of brown bottles and handles of all colours of liquors arrayed on Morgan's coffee table.

The instant Tony had sidled in, hesitantly, a bottle had been pressed into his hand, and Morgan, whose face was already red and creased in merriment, urged him to drink.

"Might as well get it over with now," Morgan said, his words already blurred and slurred with alcohol, his breath laden with whiskey vapours. "It's a part of any bona fide college experience, and besides, it's pretty early in the semester, so it won't affect your grades or anything."

Tony took a swallow, forcing his face to remain placid as the bitter drink slid down his throat. Morgan smiled and clapped him on the back, telling him that there was more in the kitchen and to help himself if he so chose. Morgan walked away to greet some other floor members, and Tony put down the brown bottle, allowing his nose to wrinkle in distaste, and set the little wrapped Batman volume he'd bought for Morgan on one of Morgan's bookshelves, crammed to the brink with biomedical books and calculus texts and everything an engineering student could possibly need. One shelf was dedicated just to photographs, and Tony absentmindedly reached out and traced the wrought iron scrollwork of the silver frames: Morgan and an older woman, who must have been his mother; Morgan at his high school graduation, dressed in black robes, a red tassel hanging from his cap as he delivered a speech; Morgan and a girl wearing an MIT sweater. Morgan's arms were wrapped around her, and her eyes were turned towards him, up and to the left in blatant admiration as Morgan pressed a kiss to her cheek.

A sudden wave of nausea swept over Tony, a clenching fist in the pit of his stomach, and while Morgan's back was turned and everyone's attention was directed into their own private conversations, Tony quietly slid out of the room and back to his own dorm.

"Steve," he said, reaching out from where he lay face-down on his bed and groping blindly for the mouse, stirring the computer from sleep. "Steve. Talk to me."

Steve's voice, when it came, was clearer and stronger than Tony ever remembered it being, and he leaned over, balancing himself precariously on the desk as he turned down the speakers and admonished Steve not to talk so loud.

"Sorry about that, Tony," Steve said, his voice hushed now, but it still had that same strong quality about it. Tony wondered what exactly had changed. "How is school?"

"It's good. I'm -" Here, Tony paused, wondering what to tell Steve. He decided to go with a default response. "I'm fine."

There was a pause. A heartbeat skip.

"You don't have to lie to me," Steve said, a bit hurt, and Tony frowned. How had Steve been able to tell?

"I can hear it in your voice," Steve added. "You can trust me, you know that, don't you, Tony?"

Tony swallowed. "Yeah, I do," he muttered. "It's just, I don't want to talk about it. I kind of just want to go to sleep. Talk to me until I fall asleep, won't you?"

A raucous cheer rose up from Morgan's apartment, and Tony could hear it, even as far down the hall as his own dorm was situated.

"What was that?" Steve wanted to know. "Is there a party?"

"Something like that," Tony mumbled, wanting to steer the conversation as far from this topic as possible. "Don't worry about it. I popped in for a little bit, wasn't my kind of thing."

Another pause, during which Steve sighed, cleared his throat, and began to tell Tony about a girl with chestnut-brown hair and cherry red lips, her name was "Penelope...no, wait, that wasn't it, Polly, maybe? No, that's not it, either..." and Tony finally groaned, told Steve he was going to sleep, and rolled over, clutching a pillow to his chest and trying not to cry.

Tony's already sleeping. Well, he told me he was sleeping, but I can still hear his breath, hitching and hushed, like he's crying and doesn't want me to hear. I can hear his gulps for breath, just slightly louder than the dim shouts of the party. I'm sure he's going through a lot, what with his parents and adjusting to a new school and a new way of life, so this sort of thing is completely understandable.

But what was her name? P-something. I met her through the war, the war brought us together even when it was dragging so many people apart. She had on a smart brown uniform, nipped in at her perfect hourglass waist, her dark hair spilling over the lapels in waves and curls, tucked in at the top with a neat little beret. Her lipstick never flaked at the corners, not even when she smiled, and it was almost as though her lips really were that colour...I can't tell you if that's true or not, I never saw her mouth without that shade of crimson on it.

I remember her perfume, something like vanilla and a deeper, muskier undertone to it. I remember how her dark hair curled over my pillow, the wavering flickers of her eyelashes as she woke up and smiled at me. The pinching feeling of guilt and shame as I looked at her, her bare skin pearlescent in the early morning light, and thought about how this was all wrong.

Paige. Patricia. Pamela. Patsy. Paulina. Penny.

...

Peggy.