Written to: Up, Ship! - Port Blue

Tony's first semester whirled by in a flurry of papers and exams and pages upon pages of notes in Tony's cramped, elongated slant. He passed Morgan in the halls a few times, and the older boy made no mention of his birthday party or the gift Tony had set upon his bookshelf. Tony let this pass without comment, and lost himself in the world of circuits and joules and the hard, impersonal comfort of numbers. His grades were excellent, his marks amazing, and his teachers shot smiles at him when they thought he wasn't looking. And it wasn't enough, it still wasn't enough.

And yeah, Tony had Steve to talk to every night in between solitary bites of toast or lonely bowls of cereal, maybe sometimes a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and napkins that he'd managed to sneak out of the dining hall. And Steve was good company, to be sure, (and, really, where else did Steve have to go? Tony wondered. It didn't seem like the man was making any progress through time, but that concept didn't make sense, not at all, not even to Tony, who was an avid Doctor Who fan and was fascinated by the concept of time travelling), but every time they talked, every time Tony jiggled the mouse and watched his computer screen light up, every time he licked his lips and prepared to talk to Steve, there was a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach that Tony tried to quash to no avail.

A feeling like tingling and tickling and nervousness whenever Steve would laugh at something he said, a sort of heat pricking up and suffusing through Tony's body, an itchy warmth that had him wanting to crawl out of his own skin and simultaneously hug himself tighter, wrapping his limbs in a little ball in his desk chair and lacing his fingers in front of his crossed ankles, feeling lonely and empty and wishing the arms were someone else's. Tony didn't tell Steve about this - good God, what would Steve think? - but more than a few times, hearing Steve's casual confidence rich in his deep, strong voice, every syllable practically drenched in it, Tony found his hands wandering, over his clothes, over his skin, dipping into waistbands and brushing aside zippers, wondering what if, what if?

More often than not, he would pinch himself - hard - on the thigh, and tell himself to stop being silly and get back to work. Those quantum mechanics problems weren't going to solve themselves, were they? Of course not.

And lately, something else had been bothering him as well. Steve had mentioned a Peggy once, just in passing, saying casually that he'd finally figured out that woman's name before going on to other, more relatable topics.

"Peggy Carter," Steve had said, his voice laced with nostalgia, and Tony had swallowed roughly, his mouth suddenly dry. "I remember her. A sweet girl who always wore that sharp brown uniform and always had lipstick on. A real smart cookie, that one."

And Peggy Carter surely couldn't be the same Ms. Carter that used to give Tony butterscotch candies whenever his code would run correctly? Surely, it couldn't be. There was no way Steve could be talking about the same one. Ms. Carter was smart, she was, and Tony supposed she did have a penchant for always wearing lipstick, but there wasn't any way that his Ms. Carter and Steve's Peggy could be one and the same. There must have been hundreds of Peggy Carters in the U.S., and probably at least a dozen in New York alone.

But what if? That niggling thought had burrowed into Tony's brain and had taken up residence at the base of his spine, making it hard for him to sleep, making him toss and turn, his window open in the cool April night breeze. If that Peggy and Ms. Carter were the same person, that would make his Steve (his?) Steve Rogers. Wouldn't it? He vaguely remembered a Peggy Carter in the Captain America comics gathering dust on the bottom level of his bookshelf, an intelligent woman in a brown uniform who was instrumental to the war effort, a woman who'd worked closely with his father and with the Captain himself.

Tony had found himself reaching out for the books more than a few times, before firmly grabbing his wrist and stopping himself. He wasn't sure what it would accomplish to look, and by the same token, wasn't sure if he wanted a confirmation or a denial.

Tony brought Steve home for the summer, leaving the rest of his belongings neat and tidied in his single. Jarvis showed up promptly after Tony's last final, greeting him with hugs and a paper sack full of still-warm homemade chocolate oatmeal cookies, congratulating the young master in between bouts of asking him how his classes were going, had he made any friends, did he still like macaroni and cheese?

His classes were fine, he had a few friends (a lie, really, but Jarvis didn't have to know that), and would the macaroni and cheese be out of the box? (Of course it would be, Jarvis assured him, and Tony said that he was looking forward to that very much.)

As the miles melted away beneath their tires and the car crossed the state border into New York, Tony found his mind drifting to his parents, to their graves, how pretty the cemetery must be in the summer, no snow to encase the ground in a bitingly cold crust and dust the headstones with white silence. He heard Jarvis distantly asking him if he wouldn't like to go visit them, Jarvis had been taking care of their graves and no rampant weeds were growing up all over the place, he'd even managed to convince some pink roses to trail over his mother's headstone, just the kind she liked, and Tony was grateful for this, really he was, but he wasn't sure if he was ready.

Maria Stark, beloved mother and wife. Sorely missed.

Mother and wife? Surely there must have been other words to describe her, surely that headstone in its granite finality wasn't nearly enough to describe the person she had been. And sorely wasn't a good enough adjective. Not nearly good enough.

A cool hand on his forehead when he had a fever, drinking orange juice mixed from concentrate, eating chicken soup without the chicken because he didn't like the gummy texture it had in the soup. A kiss on his forehead before he went to bed, even if he was a teenager and that stuff wasn't cool. Laughing as she watched him building skyscrapers in the park's sandbox, her eyes covered with wraparound sunglasses to make sure you couldn't see if she had been crying or not. Tony felt a wrench in his gut at the last thought, and turned his gaze outside the window to watch the familiar buildings of his life flash by in a glimmer of steel and glass.

Jarvis sat down with him and Mr. Williams, VP of Stark Industries, to review the company's figures. As Mr. Williams coughed and pointed out the rising red line across the charts that indicated Stark Industries' net worth, relative yearly income, and relative stock value, Tony found himself tuning out the man, letting the numbers and zeros engulf him in a musty silence that wore the cape of dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the penthouse apartment's windows. The figures reminded him of his father, sharp and angular and factual without give.

Words droned around him. Missiles. Tanks. Artillery.

I thought we were supposed to be protecting people, he wanted to say. I thought we were supposed to save lives, not look for different ways to end them.

Mr. Williams eventually ground to a stop, placed a liver-spotted hand on Tony's, and asked him if he had any questions, if he had any suggestions he wanted to look into. He said that there wasn't anything at the present time that he felt concerned with, and his chair scraped against the hardwood floor as he stood up to go.

The last month of summer eventually came around, golden and already crisp with the promise of fall, and Tony was entertaining himself with books upon books about string theory.

"Things in nature are not comprised of mere points. Instead, if one is to fully understand the complexity of natural beings, it may be better to picture their composition as millions of tiny, indivisible yet individual, strings, operating on different wavelengths."

Tony found the theory fascinating, and spent hours on hours debating it with Steve, who didn't fully understand the subject, but was willing to listen to Tony gab on about it.

Tony was grateful for Steve's sincerity, and gladly welcomed his company, even if it did make butterflies dance in his stomach and a flush to creep up his skin.

Tony's been talking to me about string theory, which, supposedly, is the idea that all living things (or, things from nature, as he called it) are made of strings. Not just single atoms.

Whatever that means.

I suppose the concept is interesting, to say the least, that everybody is actually made up of thousands of tiny strings, that the whole world is connected through knots and loops of thread that exist on a separate plane. That people's lives are intertwined because a few knots manage to string them together at a few indeterminable points in time before they spin apart again.

Did Bucky see that? I've often wondered. Did he see me reaching out for him as he fell from that train, could there be strings reaching from my grasp to his to spin us back together again? Did they exist? Or have all his connections just been cut off already? Do I have a loose set of strings with no ends, spinning out into the universe and reaching, searching for other loose ends to tie to for completion?

Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But for what it's worth, I feel like Tony and I have been getting closer since his parents died. That sounds like a horrible thing to say, I realise, but it is the truth.

Maybe it takes a loss to open up your loom for other connections.

Tony's asleep now, and it would be rude of me to wake him up to ask him to read me his old elementary school history textbooks. He just got past World War I, but I know there's got to be a lot more. Decades, maybe even centuries, although I was under the impression that centuries later a flying automobile would already have been invented, but maybe that's just wistful thinking.

I remember seeing one, at an exposition with Howard Stark. Bits and pieces of my life have been floating back to me seemingly out of nowhere, and I remember him presenting a chrome shiny car that levitated a few inches above the ground before falling back with a crash, his embarrassed, casual laughter saying that that definitely wasn't supposed to happen, and that he'd be looking into it, it was only a prototype, after all! I remember looking at Bucky's back and glaring at the girls who hung onto his arms, begging him silently, willing him to look back. He didn't.

I remember something else. A man with glasses and a fatherly smile, telling me that just maybe he could pull some strings, get me into the war after all, as he stamped an A on my file. An A for my clearly 4-F body.

There are the strings again, connecting you and me and everybody.

Tony says that the strings never really go away, even if somebody dies, their strings just get redistributed into the universe in some way, shape or form.

That got me thinking, about those eleven million people. That number still sickens me, and I can't say it out loud. Where did their strings go? Are they all here, in you, in me, in the lives of children and generations yet to come? Or are they all floating somewhere in the ether, tied and knotted in tragedy and fear, all clumped up together as if to demarcate this event from the rest of history?

I've no idea, and for the first time, I've been glad I wasn't available to experience that, to know about it firsthand.

Poor Howard. Carrying that knowledge around must certainly have unhinged him in some ways, those strings reaching out and tugging at him and telling him that yes, 11,000,000 people were once alive and now aren't, and do you understand, can you understand that, at one time you and these 11,000,000 people existed, and all of a sudden, it was just you?

It's far too late to ask him, and I know it'll be hard for Tony, but I feel like I ought to tell him that perhaps the father he knew and the man he once was weren't the same person, not really. How could they be, knowing what I've just told you? It seems insanely improbable.

I've managed to see. Or, at the very least, I've managed to wrench open my eyes. I've seen cracks and fissures above me, and little bubbles, sometimes light blue, mostly black. It's very boring to look at, but it is something.

I've got a bad feeling about it, though, as odd as that sounds. I've got a lump in the pit of my stomach. Something bad is going to happen, and someone, somewhere, is going to need me very soon. I don't know why I feel that way. I just do.

Please, God, if you exist, don't let it be Tony. Don't do anything bad to that poor boy anymore. I'm begging you.

Please.