December 23, 1989

Hands shoved in his pockets, Tony Stark carelessly bypassed the main house and ambled over to the neat little residence where the Jarvises lived. He was a ridiculous sight in his graphic t-shirt and his board shorts whilst surrounded by a timely Northeast winter and the penguin habitat that accompanied it. Last he heard, the family was spending the holidays in Los Angeles, and he was unwilling to admit that he had been remiss to realise this was no longer the case. One did not admit to wrongdoing when one was a Stark.

He had just returned from a somewhat extended global sojourn, during which he was supposed to be deciding what – "productive endeavour, Tony!" (thanks, Dad) – he wanted to do next. He had been travelling "aimlessly" (which, OK, not entirely inaccurate) since graduating from MIT. Summa cum laude. Top of his class. Big deal, right? Well, not according to his old man. Nothing he accomplished ever seemed like a big enough deal to dear old Dad.

Tony was thinking of schooling in Switzerland, cracking the eggheads at Oxbridge or ETH Zurich, a whole wonderful ocean away from the great Howard Stark. He had always been one of those strange kids who loved school. And not just because he was good – no, great – hey, let's be honest here – the best at whatever he did, wherever he went. You see, he was a weirdo who liked actually being liked, which wasn't likely to happen at home.

He knew his mom loved him, but – as a socialite, philanthropist, humanitarian, and the wife of Howard Stark – she was a busy woman. Ana Jarvis, his erstwhile nanny, had respectfully given him his space since he was fourteen and he kicked up a fuss about being babied when he was "a complete and total grown-up, lady!" Edwin Jarvis, the Jarvis that he hadn't been too embarrassed to push away, had been his dad's butler longer than he'd been alive, watching over him his whole life. There was no one that Tony trusted more. Jarvis was the most reliable person he knew, keeping an amusingly precise schedule and having an ever-growing list of things to do; errands to run; places to be for his dad.

Like now, for instance.

Jarvis had barely unloaded Tony's luggage from the trunk of one of his dad's precious cars when he'd been called away to attend to "pressing matters for Mr Stark" (Tony had interpreted "pressing matters" with the subtext: more important). But not before smiling like Tony didn't think he had ever seen before and telling him to see Ana after settling in. Tony assumed that the Jarvises had gotten a new dog. Gigantic, excitable Arno IV had died from old age months after Tony ploughed through his last year of college. Summa cum laude. Top of his class. No biggie.

Tony didn't bother settling in – like he ever could, sharing a house with his dad – seeing as he planned to escape the Stark Gulag as soon as he could. He was dressed for the California sun in the New York snow, and he had never been a big fan of the blasted cold. So, on second thought, maybe forget Europe. Forget Oxford, forget Cambridge, forget Zurich. Maybe Caltech was the way to go, dumb college rivalries be damned. He had always liked California.

Tony flipped the black plastic shades on the end of his freezing red nose to rest back on his messy dark hair with a consciously nonchalant finger. No, it wasn't shaking. No, he was not shivering. He then hastily beelined for the Jarvises' house and didn't bother knocking before or during or after he let himself in.

Karma had given him mere seconds to indulgently sigh in the indoor heating, before …

"What the –?"

Tony looked down. A red toy car had crashed into his neon yellow sneakers the moment his foot hit the cream living room carpet. His red toy car. Tony knelt and shook his head, bemused. He knew, if this was in fact his old toy car, the remote should've been broken and that couldn't have happened. His sad little eight-year-old self had thrown the remote control against his bedroom wall after painstakingly repairing it – which he'd felt totally justified in doing because his dad did it first.

"Katz!" Ana's Hungarian accent – which had stubbornly remained strong after decades in the good old U.S. of A. – rang from another room.

Tony was startled by the sudden appearance of a –

"Tiny human," he uttered, startled.

It had appeared suddenly, like, blink-and-you'll-miss-it sudden. Tony froze. The tiny human in its hilarious tiny suit and shorts combo, like it was supposed to be a tiny dark-haired Jarvis, hugged his legs. Hard. He did not make whatever wimpy noise that may or may not have escaped his mouth at the surprising pressure.

Ana, her once red hair now grey but her warm smile as bright as ever, trotted into the living room in an exuberant flurry of homespun-yarn and floral-printed cloth. "Oh, csillagom! There you are!" Her loving gaze shifted up from the tiny-suited tiny human and she smiled at their new arrival. "Young Master Tony, back from your fun so soon?"

"Uh …" Tony glanced down at the tiny human – which was still hugging his legs with its tiny arms, hard, and looking up at him with its big, freakishly blue eyes – then back over to Ana. "That's not a Bernese Mountain Dog."

Recommended Reading: Iron Man 2: Public Identity (2010); International Iron Man (2016)