Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Yes, I changed the chapter title. I've been rewatching The Crown in order to prepare for Season 6 and I remembered that they had a cover of Bittersweet Symphony with Fort Nowhere & Emma Allaway and so I decided to listen to it, and just – perfection. Think it fits better the vibe I'm trying to set with this chapter.

Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~black and gold~

~chapter 14: bittersweet symphony~

He and Dick got into a fight.

Their movie night had started off well. They'd settled in the living room and put on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a large bowl of popcorn to share between them. They'd gotten through most of the movie...and then Tony had made a comment. Honestly, he didn't even know what it had been; he knew that it hadn't been related to the movie itself. And he hadn't meant it in a personal context, either.

But Dick had thought that he had. Not only that, but he'd thought that Tony had meant it specifically in the context of his decisions regarding Zatanna. Tony had tried to reassure him that he hadn't. He'd tried to just get them to go back to the movie.

The younger omega hadn't wanted to, though. He'd gotten up, which wasn't exactly an easy feat to do at six and a half months pregnant, and gone upstairs to his room. He'd slammed the door behind him, and the sound of it had made Tony flinch.

And just as soon as he had, his nose had started to bleed.

"Shit," Tony had muttered under his breath, which led him to the here and now.

He was standing in the nearest downstairs bathroom to the living room, what had to be the fifth or sixth, maybe even seventh, tissue pressed to his nose. He didn't know; he'd quickly lost count. He was too busy thinking about his argument with Dick.

"I'm eighteen now, Tony," his adoptive son had huffed. "You're not the boss of me anymore! This is my choice, not yours!"

Tony had never wanted to be the "boss" of his kids. He wasn't necessarily their friend either, he was their parent, there was a clear distinction between the three titles. A parent was supposed to teach their children what was right and wrong, supposed to guide them towards the correct choice. And Dick's refusal to let Zatanna know that he was pregnant with her child, that wasn't the correct choice.

...Wasn't it?

Sure, it was Dick's choice to make, but didn't Zatanna deserve to know the truth? Didn't she deserve to know that she had a child out there? Even if she didn't want to do anything with Dick or their child, at least if he told her, then he would know that for sure. There wouldn't be any regrets over his lack of telling her and not letting her be a part of their daughter's life down the line, because it would've been her choice, not his. And he wouldn't have to deal with having to explain to his daughter when she got older why he had decided to not let Zatanna know about her existence.

But would it really be that big of a deal? Or was it sexist of him to assume that Dick's daughter would notice the lack? Couldn't the love of one parent be enough? And it wasn't like that one parent would be alone. Dick would have all the support that he needed, no matter what – monetarily, emotionally, physically. They were never going to push him away. The same was true for the rest of their children.

He didn't know. Things four years ago when Dick had wanted to become Robin seemed so easier now in comparison to what he was dealing with. The idea of children becoming easier to deal with as they got older was a lie...

Tony grunted as he threw the tissue he had been pressing into his nose, now completely bled through in multiple places, into the trash, grabbing another one from the box. "JARVIS?" he asked.

"Yes, sir?"

"How long has this nosebleed been going on for? It seems like it isn't stopping." He knew that his AI had to have been monitoring him ever since his nosebleed had started.

"About ten minutes sir," JARVIS replied.

. . .

Fuck.

"If it continues on past the next five minutes, I suggest that you should get medical attention."

"Yeah," he said, muttering this just like he had his exclamation earlier. "I figured that."

If there was ever a sentence that nobody wanted to hear, it was: "I'm sorry, it isn't good news."

Tony was sitting in some sort of donut shop in Malibu. He didn't know what its name was, he didn't even know where in Malibu it was; he'd just told Happy to drive him some place where he could sit down, alone, get himself a coffee, and think.

What Dr. Thompkins had said kept on reverberating in his head. "The treatment at the current dosage isn't working anymore," she'd said. "We're going to have to increase it. This won't mean too much difference in what you're currently doing everyday for treatment, but this isn't what we wanted. I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this until later in your pregnancy, if at all."

Tony remembered the crinkling sound as he'd clenched the paper over the exam table in his hands. "But you just told me the other day that I didn't need to be on bedrest any longer."

"I did. And you still don't have to, if you don't do anything to make the palladium poisoning worse. But...sometimes it takes a while for our bodies to catch on to what is going on inside of them, Dr. Stark. It's not always immediately obvious. It looks like this was the case with you."

He'd taken time to ponder on that. "And the higher dosage of treatment means...?"

"For now? Nothing, if you stop doing anything that will make the palladium poisoning worse. The baby is fine; they don't seem to be affected, and I want it to remain that way."

"But what about long-term?"

"Long-term, even with the higher dosage, there is a chance that the potentiality of you developing CRS has become..."

Tony was pulled out of his train of thought by the sound of footsteps approaching him. He blinked away the tears that were pooling in his eyes, barely looking up. He assumed that the person coming towards him was his waitress, who had gotten him his coffee and his donut. Really, this place was more of a cafe, if he got down to thinking about it. "I – I don't need a refill. Thank you, though."

"Good, 'cause I'm not here to give you one."

The distinctively masculine voice had him looking up as the owner of it sat across from him in the booth. Tony stared at him in mild shock, for multiple reasons. "Just who the hell are you?"

The alpha man stared back at him with his one eye, the other being covered by an eyepatch like he was a pirate or something, unimpressed. "The name's Nick Fury," he said, pulling out his wallet and flashing off his shiny badge. "I'm the director of a little organization you should be familiar with, the Strategic Homeland Intervention – "

"Oh," Tony said. His nose wrinkled; he felt like he should've parsed that. "You're Phil's boss."

"He's not the only one I'm in charge of." Tony expected him to add something on to that, but he didn't, his eye squinting at Tony's neck. "That's not looking so good."

Tony flushed; yeah, so the darkness in his veins had been growing out even more over the past forty-eight hours, so what? "I've been worse." He looked around the room. "Hey, do you know where my waitress went?"

"I thought you didn't want a refill."

Well, if I'm going to be dealing with you, I'm going to be needing one.

Nobody else was in the cafe anymore it seemed, but somebody did walk in. His eyes widened when he saw who it was: she wasn't wearing the clothes that she typically had the past month or so, but her face was unmistakable. She was supposedly his kids' summer nanny, Natalie Rushman.

He felt like the carpet had been drug out from under his feet, especially when he caught a whiff of her scent. She wasn't wearing scent-blockers, making her scent as a delta obvious.

He'd been right. He'd had suspicions to doubt her, to not hire her as the nanny for his kids this summer, but he had pushed those suspicions aside. But he'd been right all along.

"We've secured the perimeter besides Mr. Hogan, but I don't think we should hold it for too much longer," she informed Fury.

Tony felt like he should say something. There was only one thing that he could say: "You're fired."

Natalie – Rushman, or whoever else she was supposed to be, barely spared him a glance as she sat down next to Fury. "That's not up to you."

Fury gestured between them with a hand. "Tony, I want you to meet Agent Romanoff."

"What," he fired back, absolutely fuming, "do you want me to say 'hi' to the woman who I entrusted the care of my children for the past month, only to find out that I never should have in the first place?"

"Please," she snorted, "I'm a SHIELD shadow. Once we knew you were ill, I was tasked to you by Director Fury. Mainly to observe you, but also to protect your children in case anyone tried to harm them when you weren't around, since your husband isn't either. I'd protect them with my life."

"And that's supposed to be comforting?" Tony almost screeched. "Who even is watching my children right now?"

"They're with Rhodes, Potts, Barnes, and Pennyworth. I told them I had an emergency to attend to. It wasn't exactly a lie."

Fury chose at this moment to interject, which was maybe a good thing. Tony was just about to the point of reaching across the table and duking it out with Rushoff physically, not just verbally. "You've been busy, Stark," he said. "First, you reappeared in the suit to help out with the aftermath of the LA earthquake. Then you fought with Vanko in San Diego. You made a suit for your best friend. All of this begs the question: why?"

Tony sneered. "What do you want from me?"

He was used to this, after all. Used to people seeing him as nothing more than a means to an end. Whatever the reason why Fury had identified him as a person of interest, it obviously wasn't for altruistic reasons.

But Fury only laughed. "What do we want from you?" he paraphrased. "I think you mean, what do you want from me?" Agent Romanoff wordlessly got up, although she didn't leave the cafe this time, instead heading for the kitchen. "You and your husband, wherever he is and for whatever reason, have become a problem, a problem that I have to deal with. Contrary to your belief – "

"What 'belief?' I just met you today!"

" – You are not the center of my universe. I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with."

Tony wasn't able to ask what he meant by that, if it had something to do with the freak storm in Nevada that had happened over the weekend, because then Romanoff returned. Fury nodded at her. "Hit him."

The omega barely had time to react. All of the sudden, Romanoff was right next to him, plunging an injection of something into one of the veins of his neck. "What are you trying to do, steal one of my kidneys and sell it?" he cried. Romanoff ignored him, sitting back down. "God, could you please not do anything awful for five seconds? What did she just do to me?"

"What did we just do for you? That's lithium dioxide. It's gonna take the edge off," Fury said. And...oh. Now that he mentioned it, Tony did feel better. He rubbed at the skin on his neck, noting how the inflammation that had occurred as a result of the darkening of his veins had gone down. He was starting to feel not nearly as tired as he had even a few minutes ago. It felt...good. For the first time in a long while, he actually kind of felt like himself again. "We're trying to get you back to work."

He frowned. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm on vacation. Although, if you give me a couple boxes of that, maybeI'll do it."

"It's not a cure, it just abates the symptoms," Romanoff informed him.

Fury huffed. "No, it doesn't look like it's going to be an easy fix."

For some reason, that annoyed Tony more than anything else the alpha man had said so far. He stood up, placing his hands on the table and leaning over it. "Don't you think I've tried to fix it?" he asked. "I had my AI run simulation after simulation for a suitable replacement." If it wasn't for the fact that he was pregnant, he would've even done some of those tests himself. But alas, he didn't want to harm the baby. "He's tried every combination, every permutation of every known element."

Fury clasped his hands together. "Well, I'm here to tell you that he – and as an extension, you – haven't tried them all."

They went back to the Beach House. Tony didn't have much of a choice – not that he would've chosen differently, if he'd had the opportunity to. He wanted to go home to his kids, especially now that he knew their summer nanny wasn't a nanny at all. He wanted to make sure with his own eyes that they were safe.

When he left the cafe and went to his SUV, which didn't stand out in comparison to all of the other black SUVs there too much besides the difference between public- and government-tinted windows, Happy was standing next to the vehicle, looking absolutely ashamed. "Boss, I'm sorry, but – "

"Save it," Tony barked out. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just...take us home."

Fury decided to ride with him, because of course he did. The smug bastard – that was Tony's new nickname for him – slid into the seat right next to his. He explained on the ride back to the Beach House basically why he wanted Tony to fix the arc reactor so bad, and it wasn't just out of the goodness of his heart: SHIELD was worried that, since Vanko had figured out how to make his own arc reactor and was on the run with the help of whoever had helped him break out of jail, he would be making his debut in a suit of his own soon. They wanted him to stop him, if not in the same way he had Stane (kill him), then something similar.

"I'm pregnant," Tony complained. "Can't you ask somebody else?"

"Your husband is out of the country and you're the only one besides Vanko who knows how to make an arc reactor," Fury pointed out. "Plus, you have the most experience with the suit, and call me sentimental, but it would be fitting for you to finish what Howard started."

Tony's eyebrows knit together. "What do you mean?"

"That thing in your chest is based on unfinished technology. Howard always said it was the stepping stone to something greater. He was about to kick off an energy race that was gonna dwarf the arms race. He was on to something, something so big that it was gonna make the nuclear reactor look like a triple-A battery. Not to mention, to get back to my original point – " there was a gleam in his eye as he spoke this. Tony didn't like that " – you and I both know that that baby inside you isn't exactly...normal."

Tony stiffened. "What do you know?"

If the government knew that his baby was half-alien, if they were going to try to take her because she was half-alien...

Fury waved his hand. "Not as much as you do about it, I'm sure. Nor do I care to. Your family is already putting enough on my plate as it is."

Tony pondered on that.

"You told me that I haven't tried everything. What do you mean I haven't tried everything? What haven't I tried?"

"He said that you were the only person with the means and knowledge to finish what he started," was all Fury told him.

"He said that?" That did not sound like the Howard that he had known. It didn't sound like him at all. Not even back before Tony had presented and the only value he'd had to Howard had been his womb.

Fury glanced out the window. "We're here," he said.

Indeed, they were back at the Beach House.

All of the SUVs trailing them drove down the driveway. SHIELD agents got out and started unloading boxes which, judging by the conversation he'd just had with Fury, probably had to do with his sire's research. After he and Fury got out of their SUV, Romanoff, now back in her nanny clothes and with her scent-blockers on, walked up to the alpha, along with another familiar face: Agent Phil Coulson.

"I would prefer that Natasha remain as the nanny of your children until you go back to Gotham, as was the plan you worked out with her," Fury said. "And you remember Agent Coulson, don't you?"

"Yeah," he remarked blandly. "Hi, Phil."

Coulson gave an incline of his head, but nothing more.

"And Tony, remember," Fury pressed on. He pointed to his eye. "I've got my eye on you." Then he left, heading back to one of the SUVs, which left while all the others remained.

"I'll go back to taking care of your children and will stay until you figure this out," Romanoff informed him. "Besides them and the other members of your family, you're not allowed any communications or contact with the outside world. Good luck." She headed inside.

Tony looked at Coulson. "You got anything to add to that?"

The beta man gave him a bureaucratic smile. "Just that I have been authorized by Director Fury to use almost any means necessary to keep you on the premises. If you attempt to leave or play any games, I don't think you will like the results."

...Right. "I think I liked you better when you were a minor nuisance in my life, Phil."

Coulson, surprisingly, let out a chuckle. "I get that a lot, Dr. Stark."

Tony had to comfort his children first when he got inside, because understandably, they were all a little freaked out about why a bunch of SHIELD agents were swarming the house. "Omi, what's going on?" Peter cried out, rushing over to him.

Tony leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. "Nothing you need to worry about, ciottolo," he said. "Omi's just gotta do some...business for these people. Yeah. A project."

"What does SHIELD want you doing as a 'project' when you're sick?" Jason demanded from where he was standing leaning against one of the interior columns, his arms crossed.

The older omega shot him a warning look. It quickly shut him up.

The SHIELD agents put pretty much everything in his lab. There was a giant table that was bigger than all of the boxes included amongst them, which looked to be a model of one of the StarkExpos back in the day. Tony had thought before about reinstating those. They'd stopped in the '80s, back when he'd just been a kid, but the thought of showing off his company's research and allowing others to do the same, especially now that his company was in the process of no longer being a military contract, was tempting.

"Can I give you a suggestion?" Coulson said when all of the boxes were unloaded and the all the other SHIELD agents besides him and Romanoff had left. He pointed to the box that had been left on Tony's desk. "Start there."

Tony eyed the box. "Why?"

"It'll give you some entertainment," was all Coulson said, before he was walking out the door.

Tony rolled his eyes at the crypticness. God, they really couldn't let up with it for just a couple of minutes, could they?

When Tony opened up the box, he saw that it contained blueprints for the original arc reactor, newspaper articles, and...VHS tapes. The latter wound up sending him on a bit of a scavenger hunt, because while he was sure that they had a VHS player laying around somewhere even at the Beach House, with the advent of the DVD and JARVIS' streaming capabilities, his family was about as far removed from VHS as you could get. He did eventually find the player in one of the closets around the house, put there for a rainy day even though they didn't have VHS tapes, and he took it with him back down to his lab and hooked it up to the TV there. Once he did, he put in one of the tapes, not really caring about the particular order.

When the video on the tape began to play, he found himself scowling. There his sire was, Howard Stark. Although Howard had been killed over six and a half years ago, his opinions on his sire had not changed. If anything, he was glad that his children hadn't been forced to grow up with his presence in their lives.

Howard appeared younger in this, but not too young. This must've been filmed in the early '80s. It looked like this was some ad for the StarkExpo, and he was proven right when Howard began to speak. "Everything is achievable through technology. Better technology, robust health," he said. Tony didn't really pay attention to him, flicking through a notebook that had been in another box he'd opened. Just hearing his sire's voice was bad enough; like nails on chalkboard, really. "And for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace. I'm Howard Stark, and everything you'll need for the future can be found right here. City of the Future? City of Tomorrow? City of...I'm Howard Stark and everything you'll need in the future can be found right here. So, from all of us at Stark Industries, I would like to personally...Tony, what are you doing back there? What is that?"

At the sound of his name, Tony looked up. He saw that a much younger version of himself, probably around the same age as Bea, if that, had gone over to the StarkExpo model that was now in his lab and had picked up something off of it: a small building, it looked like.

"Put that back," Howard admonished him. "Put it back where you got it from. Where's your mother? Maria! Go on. Go, go, go, go." Jarvis appeared on the screen, grabbing Tony's hand and leading him off of it after he'd put the building back on the model table. This made him smile; that was his father right there, in all but blood. The only man besides Alfred who deserved that title in his life.

"Alright," a voice said from behind the camera. "I think we've got..."

"I'll...I'll come in and..." Howard said.

The scene of the video changed. It was still in the same room as before, but Howard was drinking what looked like a glass of whiskey. "Are you waiting on me?" the man behind the camera asked.

Then the scene changed again. "So, from all of us at Stark Industries, I'd like to personally show you my ass," Howard said, getting up like he was actually going to do it. Tony scoffed and looked back down at the notebook. He'd reached the end of it in terms of Howard's notes and research, as now there was nothing but blank pages. He wondered if it was because Howard had given up with the arc reactor, given that he'd already been working on the palladium version of it for twenty years by the time that Tony had been born, or if he'd never gotten to add more. Either because he'd gotten too busy, or because he hadn't been able to come up with anything more before he'd died. "I'd like to...I can't...This is...I can't...We have this, don't we? This is a ridiculous way...Everything is achievable through technology.

"Tony."

The sound of his name had him looking up again. Howard was staring into the camera. He had an expression of...dare he say it, fondness? Tony didn't think he'd ever seen that expression on his face before when it had come to him. It was strange, almost as strange as fiction.

Howard smiled tiredly. "You're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you. And someday you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than just people's innovations. It represents my life's work. This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. Even though you aren't exactly mine, what is and always will be my greatest creation is you." The video stopped playing.

Tony stared at the screen.

What...

. . .

. . .

What did he mean, "not exactly mine?"

That was a trick question. Tony knew what he meant by it, there was only one thing that he could mean by it, but –

"JARVIS," he croaked out. "Did I ever get around to putting a DNA profile of Howard's into your database?"

He'd done it with his kids, himself, and Bruce, of course he had. He and Bruce were two of the richest people in the world, if not the richest with their wealth combined, and that came at a cost to their children. Although nobody had ever been successful in kidnapping them before, at the most only threats had been made here and there, that didn't mean that would always be the case. There could come a day, one day, when one of his children was kidnapped. And he'd wanted to be ready for that eventuality, in whatever way he could be.

But –

"I'm afraid not, sir," JARVIS informed him quietly.

Tony burst into action immediately, SHIELD's demand for him to fix the arc reactor and thus his own health now forgotten. He grabbed the nearest box that he could, tearing it open, searching through its contents. Finding nothing that he needed for his new task, he snarled, then moved on to the next box.

It ended up taking him over two hours to find what he wanted. He practically turned his lab upside down, topsy-turvy, opening every single box and taking everything out of them. When he at last found a small vial in one of the boxes, a vial full of pieces of hair with the roots attached that was labeled HS, -NF (Howard Stark, -Nick Fury), he gazed at it for a second, though that same second felt like an eternity. Then he took the vial and headed over to one the pieces of equipment in his lab. "JARVIS, you know how to do a paternity test, don't you?"

"I have just acquainted myself with the relevant information."

"Good."

Tony rushed through the process of getting Howard's DNA downloaded into JARVIS' system. He rushed through the whole process when he perhaps shouldn't have, but he didn't care. It took him about forty-five minutes working as fast as he could without damaging the DNA, and even that felt like too long.

Once the DNA was put into JARVIS' system, it took him less than five minutes to compare Tony's DNA to Howard's and get the results. He announced that he had them first, nothing more than that. It grated on Tony's nerves. "Well?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry, sir, but Howard is not your biological father."

Tony was sitting on the floor, his back propped up against one of the many boxes when Rebecca walked into the lab. He was sitting opposite to the door to the hallway, so they very easily locked eyes with each other before she glanced her grey eyes around the room. "Well, you've sure made a mess of things here," she said. "Find what they're wanting you to discover yet?"

Numbly, he shook his head.

The action made the female alpha frown. "Tony, what's wrong?"

Oh, how did he tell her? How did he tell Bruce? How did he tell their kids? He knew it wouldn't matter to any of them, not in the way that it mattered to him, but –

"Howard's...not my father."

Not to his surprise, it didn't click for her immediately. "I know you don't view him that way," she said. He'd made that abundantly clear over the years.

He shook his head again. "No...he's not my father, biologically speaking."

Rebecca's eyes widened. "Oh," she said. "Oh, shit."

For some reason, that had him laughing. It started out as a chuckle, but then he reached full-blown hysterics in no time at all. Rebecca came over to him as that first change happened, sitting down next to him. She didn't say anything, even as the hysterics turned into crying.

She was always good like that. A real sister indeed.

When his crying started to tamper off, he wiped at his eyes. "You know," he rasped, his voice rubbed raw from all of his crying. "Back when I was a kid, before I presented, people used to tell me all the time how much like Howard I looked. Personally, I never saw it. Sure, we had the same dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, glasses, but...that was it. I always thought I looked more like my mother."

Rest assured, he'd done a comparison test of his and his mother's DNA after JARVIS had confirmed that Howard was not his biological father, his sire. Unlike Howard, JARVIS had had his mother's DNA on hand, so to speak. And the AI had confirmed that the two of them were genetically related, mother and son.

"They suffered through years of infertility before they had me, did I ever tell you that?" he continued, asking the question rhetorically. "My mother was forty-nine when she had me; she turned fifty that year. She suffered through so many miscarriages, and even a stillbirth or two, I think. Howard always blamed it on her, especially once I presented as an omega. I always thought he meant that because they thought she was the only one to suffer from infertility, but maybe they both did. Maybe..." He trailed off.

Then, he started again. "He said in the video that even though I wasn't his, I was his greatest creation. 'Guess he must've changed his mind about that really quickly. Kind of explains why he was a bastard to me for the majority of my life that he was alive for."

"Tony, no," Rebecca chided him. "A lack of a biological connection is not an excuse to abuse a child. There is no excuse for it, period."

Tony knew that she was right. "It also makes the comments that he made about Dick not being his 'real' grandson back when Bruce and I were going through the process to adopt him even more ridiculous," he agreed. "I just – why did Fury want me to find this out? Why even let me find out about it at all if I'm supposed to continue on Howard's legacy or whatever?"

Rebecca's lips pursed. "I don't know...maybe you could try watching the video again?"

He did, once she helped him get to his feet. Rebecca watched the video with him, her eyes rapt in case she noticed something that he didn't. There was a sadness in her gaze, however...a sadness that came with seeing one of her friends from the War, even though she'd thought him an ass, decades older in this video when she was only biologically a decade or so older than when she'd supposedly "died," although the serum had slowed down her aging so who even knew if that was accurate. A sadness that came with seeing that friend who, not even twenty years later, she had killed along with his wife and maid, Tony's surrogate omither, because HYDRA had ordered her to and she hadn't had a choice not to.

As it turned out, though, Tony noticed the crucial detail himself. As he watched his younger self take one of the buildings off of the 1984 StarkExpo model once again, his mind started to whir. He looked over at the real-life version of the model, since it was now in his lab, his hand coming to a rest under his chin. The model was a little worse for the wear from twenty-five or so years passing since it had been made, but...

"JARVIS, could you kindly create a render of the 1984 StarkExpo model in the lab for me? I need a manipulatable projection."

It only took a few minutes, once Tony and Rebecca got the model into a place where it could be analyzed by JARVIS, because it had to be moved.

"1984 StarkExpo model scan complete, sir," JARVIS said, turning on one of the holoscreens to illustrate his point.

Tony walked over to it. "How many buildings are there?"

"Am I to include the Belgian waffle stands?"

Rebecca huffed out a laugh.

"That was rhetorical. Just show me," Tony ordered. He clicked his fingers and the model on the holoscreen began to spin, lifting upright. He pointed at it. "What does that look like to you?" He was asking mainly JARVIS with this, but Rebecca was interested as well. Of course she was. "Not unlike an atom. In which case the nucleus would be...here. Highlight the unisphere. Lose the footpaths. Get rid of them."

"What are you trying to do?" Rebecca asked him.

"I'm discovering...no. Correction," he amended himself, "I'm rediscovering a new element, I believe. Lose the landscaping, JARVIS, the shrubbery, the trees." He kept on flicking things away. "Parking lots, exits, entrances. Structure the protons and the neutrons using the pavilion as a framework." At this point, the model more than sufficiently resembled a nucleus. He expanded it, then snapped it down so that the model could basically fit into his hand.

"The proposed element should serve as a viable element for palladium, sir," JARVIS said.

Tony didn't know what to do with that information. Here Howard was, seven years after the grave, doing the second good thing he had ever done in Tony's life after decided that Bruce would be the best suitor to sell him off to. He wouldn't have to rely on the palladium anymore. No more palladium and radiation poisoning. Hopefully, no CRS and/or dying along with that. He would be able to be in his younger children's lives, and they would remember him healthy, not sick and weak.

"There is one problem," JARVIS spoke up then. "It is impossible to synthesize."

Tony snorted. A smirk twitched at his lips. "Impossible to synthesize?" Bullshit.

He was Tony Stark – regardless of who his biological father was, that was his name, the name his mamma had decided to give him.

He could do anything.

"You down for helping me do a major remodel of the lab, Rebecca?" he asked the female alpha. Her eyes were a little too bright, but she nodded. His smirk turned into a grin. "We're back in hardware mode."

Word Count: 5,917

Next Chapter Title: it's my life