Life Cycle Chapter 15: Friendships Wilkersons, an avengers fanfic

Maria & Friendships, Anthony Age 5

Rounded tipped scissors,
aren't for you little boy,
weld wire to wire,
set metal on fire.

All in all, Tony had a well-rounded education for someone who didn't attend school. What he lacked in was friends. Maria Stark occasionally tried to arrange some friendships for her son.

This is an account of the time she sent Tony over to the Wilkerson's to play with Johnny Wilkerson. She warned Tony to be polite and he tried his best.

Tony's POV

Johnny wanted to play Candyland, so we played. I was bored and didn't understand why you'd play a game that required no strategy, but I played. Then we played Shutes and Ladders, yet another game with no strategy. I was flummoxed by the mistakes Johnny occasionally made with counting. Flummoxed means I was confused and bewildered at the same time. I did my best to apply my godfather's lessons on maintaining a poker face. Either I pulled it off or Johnny wasn't observant enough to notice my facial expressions.

Then Johnny suggested we do arts and crafts. But our craft supplies were limited. Mrs. Wilkerson didn't want us to use paint because it's messy. I was bewildered. All you had to do was put on some old clothes and put down a layer of plastic and then paint away and who cares if it splatters? That's what old clothes and plastic were for. How could Mrs. Wilkerson not think of such simple solutions? Of course her son struggled with counting, so perhaps mother and son weren't all that different in the brains department.

She didn't want us using scissors because the ones with the rounded tips had gone missing and the pointy ones were just too dangerous for us to use. An appalled, "Seriously?" popped out of my mouth before I could think to restrain it. I regularly use soldering torches (the small ones, for electronics) and had lessons on how to shoot guns. To be told pointy scissors were too dangerous for me to use was completely absurd.

Mrs. Wilkerson glared.

I rolled my eyes and accepted the box of crayons that was handed to me. At least it was the box of 64. It was a close thing, but I did manage to bite my tongue when it became apparent that Johnny couldn't read the names on even half the crayons.

I drew Captain America leading the troops into battle against the Nazis, including graphic images of the wounded or dead Nazis. That means I used lots of red to show all the blood and even tried to include the guts and brains coming out of a few of them. I also drew the desperate, skeleton like Jews that Captain America's Commandos were there to save. Battle needs a purpose. It can't just be people killing each other. Captain Roger's purpose in this scene was to rescue the people in the internment camp.

The Germans had made all the Jewish people sew stars on their clothes, like in the Doctor Seuss story about the Sneetches. But with the Sneetches it only took a few pages for them to figure out that they were all basically the same and they might as well get along. It took years and years of fighting in World War II for people to figure that out.

Dad said that most of the soldiers on both sides were just soldiers fighting for their land and their people, but that on the Axis side there were also certain groups of soldiers that were rounding up all the people with stars on their clothes. I thought that was confusing and I said so. "Round them up, like the witch did to Hansel, by making her fat and round before eating her?" I was only 3 at the time, so I didn't know the other versions of the word round yet.

Dad laughed at that, but then got really serious, because it was a serious topic. "Rounding up means gathering together."

Last year I watched a cowboy movie with Jarvis and the cowboys were putting brands on the cattle to show who owned them. Each cow also got tagged with a number, so they could keep track of specific cows. And though they didn't show it, you just knew those cows were doomed to become steaks. But before that, they had to round 'em up. Both in the make them round and the gather them up sense. One of the cowboys on the screen yelled, "Round 'em up!" and all the other cowboys started using their horses to get the cattle to move towards each other and into the corral.

Then another day, Dad and I watched a documentary about WWII, and it had actual footage of an internment camp and it was just so much like that cattle that it felt creepy. They'd rounded up the people with stars on their clothes, sort of like the branded cows. The people, even the little kids had numbered tattoos put on their arms, just like the cows had been numbered. But they hadn't been rounding them up in the making them fat sense. It looked like they'd been starved. It was really scary and sad to watch. How could people do that to other people?!

I didn't know if Captain America and the Hollowing Commandos had ever rescued Jewish prisoners from an internment camp, but I knew they would've if the timing worked into their schedule.

I didn't quite understand how you couldn't make time for something like that, but Dad said the war was really big with people everywhere fighting, and as much as you may want to stop all the bad stuff it just isn't possible for one person to be everywhere and for them to fix everything. That's why soldiers work as a team and why there's lots and lots of them.

But I like to think that Captain America and his team did find time to free a bunch of Jewish people from their prison, so that's what I drew. His team coming to the rescue and taking out all the bad guys on the way. It took several sheets of paper.

Johnny drew a dog chasing a ball. It was a very simplistic rendition. Mrs. Wilkerson praised Johnny's simple picture and flinched in shock at mine.

Then Mrs. Wilkerson said the most bizarre thing of all, "Nap time."

Johnny started to toddle off to his room telling me that I could sleep on the top bunk. For a moment, I just sat in bewildered shock. Bewildered is kind of my word of the day, like on Sesame Street, but with much bigger words than they'd ever use on that show.

I had tried to obey Mom's insistence that I be polite during this visit, but the best I could manage at that moment was to express my thoughts in German, (Dad had picked up a bit of it during the war and would sometimes let the words slip when angry or during Cap stories), with the assumption that the Wilkerson's wouldn't know how rude I was being. And though I was sure that they had no clue that the German translated to, "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" they did understand my tone and apparently the rudeness came shining through.

Then again, perhaps at least one of the words sounded a bit too close to its English counterpart. Jarvis was there to pick me up within 15 minutes.

I tried to beat Mrs. Wilkerson to the door but she insisted on being the one to open it. I'm not supposed to interrupt adults so my goal was to start talking before she could get a chance to start. I had my art in hand. Maybe if I talked about it long enough Jarvis would get distracted from why he was picking me up early.

Dad called it a filibuster technique. Sometimes it worked on a nanny, but not on Dad. Dad uses filibusters when there's a press conference and he wants to fill up the time talking so the press can't ask questions. I tried filibustering Dad before work so Nanny Gene wouldn't have time to tattle on me for working on my project at 3 in the morning. I was barely into my second sentence when he pointed a finger at my nose and said, "This filibuster stops. Now." Then he looked at my nanny and asked, "Nanny Gene, I believe you needed to speak with me about something."

"I discovered Master Anthony assembling a toy car at 3:00 in the morning."

Then he turned to me. "Your lab's closed for today and you'll be in bed an hour early to make up for the missed sleep."

I really wanted to whine, 'But Daaad' with the a held way to long, but I'd already learned not to. I gave the response he wanted, a reserved, "Yes, sir."

But just because the filibuster hadn't worked on Dad didn't mean it wouldn't work on Jarvis. The second Mrs. Wilkerson opened the door I nudged in front of her and started talking. "Hi, Jarvis. Johnny and I played Candyland. Then we…"

He interrupted me with a phrase only British people must use because I'd never heard of it. "Halt your monologue."

"Huh?" Halt meant stop. Sometimes commanding officers said it to soldiers. I didn't know the other word he'd used.

"Master Anthony, you will stand there silently while I speak with Mrs. Wilkerson, then you will apologize to her."

So busted.

Jarvis was not pleased with me and decided that the appropriate response was to have me follow through on nap time. Or failing that, "You're not to move your tush, legs or back from the prone position on the couch until the timer goes off," then he walked out, leaving me in the dull, beige sitting room.

I started to sing.

"And voice box off."

It was the worst punishment! All these thoughts racing through my head and unable to do anything with them. I wanted to go to my lab and build something.

But Jarvis had earned my respect by never tattling on me, unless his edicts were ignored. And I really didn't want Mom or Dad to find out that I'd sworn at Mrs. Wilkerson. I was definitely keeping mum about that part of the day.

Plus, Jarvis controlled my outings and the meal menu as much as or more so than Mom and Dad. Jarvis was known for doing sneaky things, like serving me a plate of almost entirely broccoli or Brussel sprouts, with only small amounts of the main course on days that I refused to do as told. Dad would raise a brow at the vegetable laden plate and then check Jarvis' expression. If Jarvis had a twitch of a smile, Dad would simply say, "Eat." If Jarvis looked angry or frustrated, dinner would include a lecture and possibly a restriction on the next day's activities.

When Jarvis or one of the nannies got frustrated enough to actually tattle on me I'd sometimes gotten a wallop or two. I really didn't want that to happen today, particularly since I suspected swearing might be worth more than two swats. TV shows and books hinted that soap was involved.

So, there was nothing for it but to obey. At least I was away from the lame Wilkerson's.

It seemed like the timer was never going to go off! He didn't even tell me how long! He just demanded that I stay there and silent until I got permission to get up. I may have closed my eyes because it is easier to go into imagination world with your eyes closed than when you're just laying there staring at the ceiling. But I didn't sleep, I swear! I was too old for naps! I made sure I kept opening my eyes now and then to prove that I wasn't sleeping.

I was bewildered when the clock said 4:18 and he was telling me to go play in my room. He'd had me laying there for nearly 2 hours! The man was a sadist! I didn't really know what that one meant. The dictionary definition didn't make sense and no one would explain it, but I was pretty sure it had to do with someone being really mean and over the top. A two-hour timeout was way too long, even for swearing.

6-Year-Old Tony

All in all, Tony had a well-rounded education for someone who didn't attend school. What he lacked in was friends.

A Cave in Afghanistan

Adult Tony's POV

"So, you are a man with everything, and nothing."

I didn't respond to Yinsen's claim. We both knew it was true. If I wasn't paying them, Pepper and Happy would drift out of my life, like an evaporating pond in the dry season. Rhodey was a permanent in my life. We may sometimes rub each other the wrong way, but we always forgave and moved on. But though I considered him my brother, his family was not mine.

In the beginning, after my parents' death, and again after Obie's, Rhodey invited me to the family shindigs with his parents and siblings, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles… Extended family such as I had never had.

I couldn't and wouldn't intrude upon the Rhode's family get togethers. So even on the years that he harangued me into saying, 'Yes.' I'd have a last-minute business emergency. Or I'd say, "Was that this year? Sorry. Can't make it. I'm in the Bahamas." And some years I would really take off on vacation so I wouldn't have to lie to him. Other years, I couldn't get up the gumption to travel, would drown myself in liquor and allow the Scotch to deliver the lie.

I still sent Christmas and birthday gifts to Aunt Peggy, or had Pepper send them. It was a perfunctory thing; a gift for the godparent, even if I had rarely seen her since I left for MIT. She'd made it to my college graduation, unlike Dad. But that was one of the rare instances I'd seen her in years. About one call a year was all I heard from her, if that. Not that I made the effort to call her. If she wanted to know about my life it was spilled across the news rags. She had a tendency to keep mum about her own life. So there wasn't much for either of us to say.

6-Year-Old Tony

End Game

Adult Tony

5 years ago we'd failed to stop the bad stuff. We had really, really failed. 50% of all sentient beings, everywhere in the Universe were dead. And apparently there were a lot of planets with sentient life.

We'd been spread too thin with too many battles on different fields.

Now we were giving it a go at team work again and our crew had expanded to include a cyborg and a raccoon, amongst others. We still weren't at the lots and lots of them stage, but perhaps as a team we could bring everyone back.