Chapter Text
Ch.1
4 Year-Olds Panic Too.
~2,357~
Tony Stark was a smart child. In fact, most people would call him a prodigy, and as he got older, they would eventually call him a genius. At the age of 4 he built a working circuit board. He started college when he was just 14, and finished college with several degrees when he was only 17. He faced his parents deaths at 17 also, and took over his father's company when he turned 21. In the next decade after taking over his father's company, Tony Stark became the face of the weapons manufacturing industry, supplying the military with more than half of their weapons and nearly all of its technological devices and upgrades. Because of this, he was also called an American Patriot.
Then, everything went to Hell in a hand basket, what with being captured by the Ten Rings in Afghanistan. But he powered though, built the Arc Reactor, built the first Iron Man suit, and destroyed the terrorist camp while also escaping with his life. When he got back to the US, he quit making weapons, sending both the media and his close friends into a frenzy. He found out one of his family friends, someone he had looked up to like a father, was the man who had hired the terrorists to kill him. In the end he defeated him, and dealt with the betrayal of the close friendship while nearly dying several times in less than 24 hours.
He also over came being poisoned by the very thing that was keeping him alive; the Arc Reactor. He fought off a deranged criminal looking for revenge for his late father and a robot attack by one of his old weapons manufacturing competitors.
In just the last year, Tony Stark fought two Demi-Gods, nearly got sliced to pieces in a giant fan type engine that was supposed to be supporting a flying SHIELD base, fought alien whales, got thrown out of a window in his own tower, without his Iron Man suit, and he saved the world by flying a nuclear missile into outer space and nearly dying in the process.
Though out his life, people have called Tony Stark many things: a genius, a playboy, a menace, a mistake, a buffoon, a billionaire, an alcoholic, an idiot, a philanthropist, a hero, a fake, and the merchant of death, but the one thing that no one has ever called Tony Stark, is a mutant. But out of all the things he's been called though out the years, the one thing he hasn't been called, would be the one that held the most truth. Because all the things Tony Stark has been called in his life could be taken away, he could change his mind any second and stop being a playboy, he could lose all his money and become poor, he could easily stop drinking and or being so generous. But he could never stop being a mutant. Even in death, he would still be one, it was in his DNA, and even if he never used his powers again, it was something that would never change.
Tony first noticed his strange gift when he was four. He was sitting in the middle of his bed in his room, working on wiring his complex circuit board when the lights suddenly went out. Frightened by the sudden darkness, Tony jerked, accidentally flinging his half-done circuit board into the air, only realizing what he had done a second too late. He knew that it was going to break the second it hit the floor, and that he'd have to start all over. He didn't want to start from the beginning again: it had already taken him nearly a month to get where he was just barely halfway done. Sure, now that he had done it once, it would be easer, but still, he didn't want to start from the beginning again.
With out thinking, Tony leaped forward in a desperate, and futile, attempt to try and grab his creation before it smashed into the floor. He missed it in the dark, his hand closing around nothing but air. He closed his eyes in grief and anticipation: his greatest creation, destroyed, smashed and broken before it was even finished. He waited with bated breath, but he never heard it hit the floor. Confused, Tony sat up and swung his legs over the end of his bed. The lights flickered, lighting up the room for a bare moment, but he saw it, his circuit board.
Tony's eyes widened in both shock and fear. He quickly leaped backwards on the bed, scooting back until he hit the headboard. He rubbed his eyes in disbelieve, he couldn’t have seen what he thought he had. The circuit board had been floating in the air, just a few inches above the ground. Tony's breathing became erratic, and his heart began to beat quickly. The lights flickered again, but he couldn't see the circuit board over the end of the bed.
There was no way. His circuit board could not be floating. It wasn't possible. It had to have been a trick of the lights flickering. That's it, he'd made a mistake, his eyes had played a trick on him, that's all. Tony's breathing slowly calmed and his heartbeat came back down to normal. He slowly and cautiously crawled towards the end of his bed. The lights were still out, so Tony couldn't see where the board had landed.
It was mid December and the snow storm had more than likely knocked out the power for the whole neighborhood. Of course, his dad had a generator that could power the entire house for just this type on incident.
Either way, until his dad got the power back on, Tony couldn't see anything. He waited on his bed: laying on his stomach, looking at where he thought his circuit board should be on the ground, lying broken. Tony waited, the lights flickered again and he was forced to shut his eyes when the board wasn't on the ground. He jerked to a sitting position eyes still closed. What was taking his dad so long to get that generator started? His eyes must still be playing tricks on him or something, they had to be. He really hoped it was laying broken on floor, despite his wishes mere minutes ago.
Then the lights came on. Even with his eyes closed, Tony could tell, but he didn't open his eyes. He was scared of what he would see... again. Thinking about it, he wasn't so sure his eyes were playing tricks on him anymore. He had see it twice, if it was a trick, it wouldn't have happened a second time. Right?
Tony took a deep breath and slowly cracked open one of his eyes, then the other. He opened his eyes all the way and his sight landed on the circuit board. The one that was still floating in mid air. Tony took another deep breath, then for good measure, he took another half a dozen. Slowly, Tony lowered himself down to the ground as he stared at the floating piece of technology. He tentatively reached out his hand and waved it underneath the board, then above it, making sure there wasn't anything holding it up. Then, with a slightly shaking hand, Tony tapped the board. It moved slightly, but stayed floating.
After a minute of tapping and observing the hovering object, Tony began to make theories as to why it was able to float by itself, though none of them were plausible. He thought about getting his dad to look at it, but Tony felt that the minute he left the room or took his eyes off the board, it'd fall to the ground or disappear and his father wouldn't believe him. Then Tony began to think about if it could follow him or even move higher than just a few inches off the ground, or if that was as high as it could float. And as if it was reading his mind, it moved an inch higher. Tony jumped back in surprise. And after another minute of staring at the circuit board, Tony got an idea. He thought about the board moving higher again, and just like before, it moved another inch upward. And Tony realized it was him that was making the board float. Either that, or the board had become sentient with telepathic powers... which was highly more unlikely than him being the one controlling it.
For the next five minutes, Tony experimented with moving the board up, down, left, right, and across the room. He was getting the hang of it: all he had to do was concentrate and think to direct it, and while he wasn’t all that good at concentrating, he was good at thinking, really good. All he had to do was think about where he wanted it to go, and it would go there. Tony was very smart for being only 4 years old, he understood things most adults wouldn't, and he knew what this type of power was: telekinesis, and Tony knew what type of people had this power: mutants.
Not many people knew about mutants, they were relatively new to the world, or at least newly found by non-mutants, but he had heard his father talk with Obie and government officials about them over dinners. And because of that, he knew how people viewed mutants, as freaks and outcasts. He knew his father's opinions on mutants, he knew Obie's opinion was very similar to that of his father's: they both thought that mutants should be experimented on and used for war. Just thinking about what his father would do to him if he were to find out made Tony shudder and gulp in fear. He swore he'd never let his father find out. He'd never let Obie find out either, for Tony was absolutely sure that he'd go to Howard with the info.
He didn't know how his mother felt about mutants, whether she liked them or hated them: she was an 'unknown,' but he wouldn't let her find out either, for both his and her safety. If Howard found about about Tony being a mutant he'd be furious, and if he found out Tony's mother knew too, and kept it a secret, he would be furious with her. And even if his mother didn't like mutants and ended up hating him, Tony still loved his mother more than anything.
That's when Tony heard the footsteps down the hall. Specifically, and recognizably the angry footsteps of his father, coming towards his room. He was blessed to have the room at the end of the hall, that way he knew if someone was coming to his room or the bathroom, which was the door right before his. He had just enough time to make the circuit board land in his hands right before his father burst into the room.
"So this is where you were?" Howard says curtly, and with with more than a hint of anger and disgust. "Your mother is looking for you. Don't worry her. She's in the kitchen. Dinner's ready."
"Yes Father." Tony said quickly, he couldn't smell the alcohol from across the room, but he could easily see how Howard let the door frame take most of his weight. "I'll be down just as soon as I put this away Father."
Howard shut the door and left without acknowledging him. Tony sagged against his bed, clutching his circuit board to his chest, and after hearing his father's footsteps disappear, he heaved a sigh of relief. Slowly, Tony released the board and made it float a few inches above his hand and made it float over to its spot on the table. Tony wondered if he could make anything float, or if it was just the board. Tony looked over at his shoes sitting under the table. He thought that it'd be cool if his shoes could fly too, and they lifted an inch off the floor. Then like he had done with the board, Tony made them fly over to him. And without touching them, Tony tried to make them stay solid in the air as he slipped his feet into them. That was a bit harder, but Tony finally got the hang of it after a few minutes. He tried using his powers to tie his shoelaces, which was much harder and after a few minutes, Tony gave up and tied them by hand. It would take much more practice to build up the mental dexterity to tie his own shoelaces. By the time he finished, it had been over ten minutes, and Tony was late to dinner.
As Tony exited his room, he took one look back at his circuit board that lay on the bed side table, he was glad that it hadn't broken, but he was so very glad that he'd found out about this special power. Not simply because he now had this amazing power and gift, but because he had found it without anyone else knowing about it. That he had found out about it by himself and not in front of his father or Obie. Tony sighed again in relief and closed the door to his room. On his way down to dinner Tony thought that he'd need to find a place to practice: his room was too dangerous to practice in. His father could walk in any moment, or his mother, or Jarvis or one of the maids, and everything would go to Hell.
Tony walked into the kitchen and saw his mother setting the table for two, that meant that his father had passed out in the ten minutes since he'd told him dinner was ready. Good. He thought gleefully. Tony loved the dinners when it was just him and his mother, they were so peaceful. Tony talked with his mother, laughed with his mother, and put all thoughts of his new found power, both good and bad, in the back of his head to sort though later.