Please read this note.

During part of this chapter Tony monologues. When a new paragraph starts but he continues talking the quote marks will look like this.

"Tony talks.

"Tony continues talking.

"Tony continues talking then stops talking."

If there are no closed quotation marks it is still Tony talking.


Thank you MagicSapceHole for your advice on how to correctly use quotes for monologuing. Though MagicSpaceHole has been my wonderful Beta Reader for scattered chapters, it was purely for advice. I did not ask them to check for typos, so if you see any of those they are purely my own mistakes.


One unhappy soul

Can transmit discontent

To all around.

One trusted hand

Can heal the wounds

And save the soul.


Principal's POV

I had tried to call the Stark residence multiple times over the last few weeks. I was relieved when today the phone was finally answered.

"Stark residence."

"Mr. Stark, this is the Principal of Anthony's school."

"Please hold. I will get Mr. Stark on the line."

Oh, of course. Many of our families were wealthy enough to have servants and I should have identified from the way the phone was answered that I wasn't speaking to Mr. Stark, it's just that I am anxious to do so.

It turns out Mr. Stark had just returned home from a month of business trips, primarily in Europe and that Mrs. Stark was still in Europe. I strongly suggested that homeschooling with tutors were best suited to Tony's various educational levels, and that his complex project ideas might be more feasible for him at home, leaving out the discussion of his frequent disobedience and lack of positive relationships.

I contemplated bringing up his extreme levels of homesickness, which Tony had skillfully hidden most of the semester, but decided that his use of the 5th Amendment, 'Mum's the word.' was in fact quite useful, and that it would be to the benefit of my school that a wealthy family, with presumably numerous lawyers, was left unaware that we had been so overwhelmed with Tony's other needs and personality quirks that we'd failed to notice his distress over being away from home.


Howard's POV

I went with Jarvis to pick up Antn'y from school. I'd missed him. Next week I'd have to deal with the headache of finding appropriate tutors who could challenge my son and keep up with his active, creative nature. But today I needed to see my kid.

It had been unbearably silent without him around, and the conversations dull. Alone time with Maria had been great. But there had been many times recently when I'd nearly called out, "Ant'ny," wanting to show him something or to challenge him to figure out how to do something new. Then I'd remember he wasn't with us.

It was mid-morning on a Tuesday. Jarvis went to the dorms to pack Anthony's things. I went to the school's office to retrieve my son. The secretary walked me down to the 4th grade room where Antn'y was attending math class.

All of the students looked to the door when it opened.

Tony's POV

"Dad!" I dropped my pencil and clinched the paper in my hand, squishing it up on one side and ran over to greet Dad.

"An'tny." Dad jerked his head to the side as a gesture of follow me into the hall. I followed. "So, school isn't working out for you?"

I looked back and around. The door was shut and no one was in the hall, so I didn't have to keep mum or stay united. I could say everything on my mind and it all just spilled out. "There's nothing to build with in the classrooms! They don't want you to build things. They want you to write everything, even the steps to every math equation. I can write now. I learned to write letters correctly. It's about the only thing I have learned here. That, and the Bill of Rights. I use them all the time! I got moved up from kindergarten handwriting classes to 3rd grade cursive. That's kind of fun, so I guess I'm learning something there too, and I can use that for S.I. because all that paperwork needs cursive signatures. But now that I can write I lost my P.A."

Howard's POV

"P.A.?" I asked. I knew what the initials stood for but I hadn't expected my son to have a personal assistant.

"My personal assistant. She still walks me to classes, but they won't let her be my stenographer anymore." My lips twitched. Of all the six-year-olds in the world I was sure that mine was the only one that wound up with his own personal assistant-stenographer at school. The only one that even knew the word stenographer.

The verbose child continued, "But they don't want you to use anything you've learned here. They say it's a waste of time and money!" Anthony pointed towards the door he'd just left. "Most of the time the drill sergeants can't even answer the question, 'How can you use this in the real world?' They get mad at me and say I'm interrupting the lesson. Sometimes they ask me how I'd use it in the real world, but they think I'm going to be just as stumped as they are. Then they get mad when I give them an answer because they say I talk too long and start acting like I'm the teacher instead of them.

"I'm just trying to get us to do something other than sit in chairs, but they won't listen." His arms stretched wide showing that the entire building encompassed these problems. "When others don't take charge of a situation, you're supposed to step up and do it, like Captain Rogers did going to rescue those soldiers. The kids were willing to take directions from me. They wanted to build the fort and put on the play. But the second I started to try to assign task to get the ball rolling the teachers get really irritated and take away more recess."

I continued to remain quiet. The easiest way to interrogate a chatty six-year-old is to say nothing. It seemed my child had a lot to vent about. "Not that there is anymore to take away. They've even started taking after school free time away. They're always mad at me. Even when I'm helping another student they get mad at me because they want the room silent. But, you're supposed to help people. That's part of being a good citizen.

"They get mad at me for being nice, but they pretend they don't hear when the older kids call me a baby or other names because they don't know how to stop them from being mean, but then they punish me for punching them. You said that the Captain said that you can't just let them push you down or they'll never stop, so I push back. But I'm always the one getting in trouble, not them."

Tony's POV

I was running out of steam and tears of frustration were starting to pool in my eyes and I really didn't want them to fall. Through the blurriness of them, I saw the math paper still clutched in my hand, now wrinkled in my fist, and it brought forth one last concern I really needed to vent. I sucked in the sad emotions as best I could then looked up at Dad with hope and trust that I could finally get a real answer to this question, "Dad, what's the purpose of knowing how to compute fractions in fraction form? I know how to change them into decimals and get the correct answer, but they keep insisting I write them out in fraction form, but they can't tell me why."

Howard's POV

I gently loosened my son's grip from the page. I glanced it over, then flipped it to the back and pulled a pen from my pocket. I set the paper on a table sitting beside the door and jotted down a chemistry equation involving the conversion of grams and mols.

"When you've helped in the kitchen, you may have noticed teaspoons can be converted into tablespoons and cups can be converted into quarts or gallons. At S.I. we make similar conversions when making new materials, but on a different scale. We need to use the correct amount of atoms of a certain type. So we convert the amount of mols of atoms, into grams. Then we can use the correct amount of grams of that substance in the recipe. We keep the calculations in fraction form because at the start of the equation the type of unit used is different in the numerator and denominator. It takes several steps to eliminate excess terminology before you're able to compute the final answer."

I glanced over at Antn'y. Until that moment I hadn't realized how simple it was to be my son's hero.

Tony's POV

I was so relieved to finally be with someone who could and would answer my questions and didn't get mad at me for asking. I reached up, took the pen and paper from Dad and looked the equation over. Now that I had a reason, I didn't mind doing the math. Computing numbers was fun. I flipped back to the front of the worksheet, focused in on the equations and completed the 15 questions in under 3 minutes, showing all the work. Then I marched back into the classroom with determination. "Mr. Covington, I completed the assignment. Dad explained why it is important to know. You need to know it so you can convert things into different units, like with turning mols of atoms into grams." The task complete I rushed back out into the hall, not wanting to get trapped in desk hell for the rest of the day. Or the rest of my life.

I held my hand out to Dad, "Can we go home?"

Howard's POV

I took the offered hand and we walked down the hall towards the exit, "That's why I'm here. Let's go see if Jarvis has finished packing your stuff."

The king has grasped your hand,

Allow him to carry you to safety.

Howard's POV

I'd missed Antn'y while he was away at boarding school; and it appeared he'd missed me too. Typically, he sought his independence and would get frustrated when a nanny or Maria refused to release his digits. I didn't make him hold my hand when he was out with me. He knew better than to stray too far from myside. He'd probably been 3 the last time he'd sought my hand while walking, preferring to show that he didn't need that sign of comfort and protection. But today, it was like my hand was a rescue buoy and he was afraid if he let go the boat might leave without him.

We went to the dorm so he could change out of his school uniform.

"Jarvis!"

My hand was released and Antn'y flung his arms around Jarvis' waist and had his back patted. Definite twinge of jealousy, but my own damn fault. Hugging wasn't in my nature. "Just about done here?" I asked Jarvis.

"This is the last box, sir."

There were a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and red sweater waiting on the bare bed. "Get changed out of your uniform, Antn'y, and we'll blow this joint."

" 'Kay, Dad."

Jarvis and I waited for him in the hall. He must have Superman changed because he was out there with us in less than 1 minute. Then he did another thing he hadn't done since he was about 3. He stretched both his arms up to me in that universal kid gesture of pick me up. I obliged, righting some of the jealousy I'd felt towards Jarvis as my kid tucked his head in next to my neck.


And so it was, after a total of 8 long weeks of boarding school, Anthony Edward Stark returned home to be homeschooled by tutors for the next several years.


Author's Note: I know that based on the movies Tony probably went full time to boarding school through all the years, but I can do so much more with the storyline and character development if he has a few more years at home.