Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stephen did not expect the moon to be this beautiful.

'The big white round thing in the sky’  Wong had said. Stephen couldn’t understand what he meant at the time, but now that he’s seen it once, he never wants to lose sight of it again. Though it’s difficult to focus on anything more than it’s light while trying to hide between the darkness.

Stephen is rather tall for his age, and compared to the handful of the people he knows, he's much slimmer. If he ignores the stinging pain tearing at his soles he can find his way through the trees. He’s ignored far worse before; he can handle this. If Stephen is good at anything, it’s being quiet when he needs to. He’s good at listening for the footsteps of bad men and monsters, sniffing for something to sink their teeth into.

He just didn’t expect to have to hide alone.

Stephen hears nothing, at least for a short haven of time. He expects the bad men to be close by, to pop up at any second. He crawls into a bush, feeling the sting of branches digging into his skin, no doubt leaving a couple of cuts bleeding along with the ones on his feet. A scent. Stephen digs his shaking hands into the earth beneath him and drags mud and dirt all over his skin. It’s the first time he’s ever felt it— he didn’t expect it to be this cold, but he has more important things to focus on.

Barely satisfied with his hiding, he hears a distant sound. Stephen stops breathing and tries to control the thump-thump-thump in his chest. Footsteps, many footsteps. An occasional light aiming in the distance, fighting against the safety of the moon. One pair of footsteps stands out amongst the others, followed closely by the sound of a monster, black and brown and slobbering as it sniffs for him like it’s starving. It probably is. Stephen knows he was.

Stephen tries to keep as still as possible. Maybe if he doesn’t move or breath, it won’t see him. He peers through the leaves and stares at the monster with four legs and the other with two. He realizes then that his breaths are coming in shudders, shaking his entire chest as he’s taking gulps, struggling to breathe. He knows what drowning feels like. Stephen has never taken a slow breath in his entire life, each inhale comes too quickly, each exhale a reminder than he’s still alive. Stephen thought that coming to the surface would allow him to take the first calming breath of his life, but nothing is ever that easy.

The monster’s eyes reflect against the light, as if they’re glowing. Even through the glow, Stephen can tell it’s spotted him. It bares its teeth. A man shouts, a light blinds him. He covers his eyes and hears the monster run up to him and he shuffles back, still on the ground. The monster barks and snaps its jaw to bite at him, but his body struggles between the bushes. Stephen manages to stand up and starts to run, not wanting to push his luck.

He has no idea where he’s going anymore. He feels bruised, battered, and out of breath. The young man has never seen trees like these, the sort he’d always been told about that look like they can touch the stars. But Stephen doesn’t have time to take in his new surroundings. The bad men behind him are catching up, at least a dozen heavy footsteps in earshot from every direction.

They were supposed to be here with him. They were supposed to get away together.

A light shines on him from a distance, pointing straight at him once more as a bad man yells out to the others that he’s been found. If Karl was here, he could hurt them. Wong could keep him safe too. All Stephen can do is keep running -- his hands ache too much. He can’t do this alone, but he can’t give up. Not for them.

Stephen keeps running in another direction. He was told that the forest was huge, but if he kept running towards the moon, he could find a way out. The only thing that matters now is that he doesn’t die. It’s dark out, and barely any light from the moon shines through trees.

Stephen hides in another set of bushes. He can play this game all night if he has to. The young boy sniffs, trying to keep himself still and quiet so the bad men won’t find him. It’s hard to do so when his entire body shakes as much as his hands usually do. Stephen holds them against his chest, clenching his jaw so he won’t cry. Wong and Karl wouldn’t cry. They would know exactly what to do.

The sound of boots stepping over sticks and leaves pulls him away from his thoughts. The bad men are getting close, very close. Stephen can hear the monsters barking in his direction again, more than one this time. They’re going to find him and track him down and kill him and lock him up forever and keep him alone and --

Focus, S. Focus, or else.

With weak, trembling hands, Stephen does exactly what Karl and Wong told him not to try in the first place. But it’s either dying at the hands of Mrs. A and the bad men or dying doing what he was bred and born to do.  

Stephen envisions the edge of the forest, in the direction of the moon. He pictures somewhere with less trees. Somewhere quieter where he can rest. Maybe it’s close to other people. Close to a house. It’ll drain everything he has, and he’ll have to do it without his brothers’ help, but he knows it needs to be done. Stephen sees the glow of a circle forming in front of him -- the same glow he’d seen back home so many times before.

He hears a bad man yell at him from afar, pointing a light at his face once more. “Hey, kid! Come back here!”

A pack of monsters run after him. The one that leads has cuts all over it’s head. Same one that tried to bite him in the bushes, most likely. The one that knows his scent properly. Stephen jumps into the portal without a second thought.

The monster leaps. Stephen closes the portal before it gets past it’s neck.

Stephen looks away so nothing will splatter in his face. The mess only stains his clothes. Now that he can get a proper look at the monster, or at least at part of it, he can’t help but feel sorry for the thing. It was in the same situation as him, he can’t blame it.

Stephen presses a hand against the monster’s fur, trying to understand, but he’s too drained for that to work.

He crawls, too tired to stand up. He manages to make it a couple of feet forward and finds a bed of leaves. He takes a handful in his fist, hearing them crunch against his aching hand. So that’s what they feel like.

Stephen rests his body against the leaves. They’re far more comfortable than his bed back home. He hears no footsteps, barking, or bad men. Just him, the leaves, and the moon. Stephen takes a deep breath and exhales. He feels hollow.

He closes his eyes and can only hope his brothers find him soon.

---

“Tones, you sure we should be doing this?” yells out Rhodey from his bike for what feels like the fifth time.

“Not at all, but I’m gonna do it anyway,” Tony replies, adjusting his belt with one hand and trying to steer his own bike with another.

Beside them, Pepper sighs.

Business as usual. Just another day in the deep forests of upper New York , the young boy thinks. It isn’t like he forces his friends to come with him during his experiments, but after the time he almost blew himself up making those non-lethal stun grenades after they watched a few too many action movies, Pepper and Rhodey have been attached to him by the hip making sure he doesn’t break his arm. Again.

Pepper speaks up this time. “How do you know exactly where the weird stuff starts?”

Tony... doesn’t. He knows approximately where they need to go and thought he could remember the pattern of tree where the incident happened, but turns out there are a lot of clusters of trees that look the same. He guesses that’s what happens when he isn’t used to hanging out in the forest. Or outside, for that matter.

“Don’t worry, I know when we’ll get there. We’ll just use this.” Tony stops his bike and waits for his friends to stop beside him. He reaches for his utility belt -- he needs to add some more holders and straps to it, the more tools he can hold the better -- and takes out his handheld radio. New, of course, he bought it with his last allowance. He turns it on to the first station he finds. “Ugh, Wham.”

“We’ll play music at it?” his friend asks, turning the dial to a regular news station instead.

“Nope. We’ll know we’ve reached the weird zone when the radio signal starts getting crazy.”

“Because maybe we’re near a base and there’s radio interference so spies won’t listen in?” Pepper asks.

“There aren’t any bases here, my parents would know. It probably gets weird the farther we’re from town because we’re in the middle of the woods,” Rhodey adds, looking unimpressed.

“I... I don’t know. I saw it in a movie once.” Tony shrugs, embarrassed. “Listen, there’s something weird about this forest and I have proof.”

“Area Fifty-Two?” Pepper teases.

“This is where they’re hidin’ E.T’s cousin.”

Tony smiles. “I was thinking more along the lines of the cool tech we could find, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some aliens.”

He doesn’t have to look up from his radio to know that both of his friends roll their eyes, but the trio continues biking anyway, with Tony occasionally glancing down at the radio to make sure it continues as normal. He fiddles with the settings after the group gets bored with listening to the news -- he already listens to it enough back home -- and turns it to a music station instead.

They delve deeper into the forest for another ten minutes when the radio finally starts to act up, music going in and out and eventually turning into complete static. Tony checks the rest of the stations until he is absolutely certain they are in what can be considered a dead zone, and he grins at the rest of his group. “Alright, guys. Time for the real show.”

Tony gets off his bike and starts to rummage through his backpack. He has all his gadgets there: his lighter camera, readily made booby traps and stink bombs, and his tools. He also has that pair of x-ray goggles he bought back when he was younger that he would wear all the time, but now he wears 3D glasses instead. He can actually see with those, anyway. Sort of.

“So why are we here again?” asks Pepper, eyes on the trees above them, so thick they almost manage to block out the afternoon sun.

“Are we gonna be here long? Mom said I had to get home before ten,” Rhodey asks, already beside Tony to help him attach the wings back on his remote helicopter -- unaware it’s his newest work. He just likes planes that much.

“Nah, I just had to do an experiment and I wanted backup. Shouldn’t take long,” Tony reassures them. He stands up and gestures at the helicopter, proudly. It was a gift from his mom a couple months back, when she visited him upstate while his dad was out, and he had taken the liberty of modifying it for his own devices. “Ta-dah!”

Pepper raises an eyebrow. “...So what’s the catch?” she asks, already knowing it’s been changed somehow from her previous experience with Tony’s “inventions”.

“Alright. Remember how I didn’t go with you guys to the arcade last weekend because I said I was busy? I was working on this. It looks like a regular toy helicopter, right?” Tony leans down again to flip the toy over. “But when I press this button and have it up in the sky, this cover here will open and...” Tony flicks a switch on his remote control, showing the process as he speaks. “There’ll be a hidden camera. Whenever I press this button, the shutter goes off and I can take all the photos I want, then I can develop the film in school.”

Ha, now Pepper looks impressed.

“You made this just so you could take pictures of Mrs. Laughney tanning next door, didn’t you?” Rhodey asks.

Pepper’s face turns into an unimpressed frown again. Well, that lasted a hot minute.

“No! I mean... yeah, but it wasn’t the point. This can be really useful! Maybe I can sell it to the cops in town and get a bunch of money.”

“Tony, you know they aren’t going to use any more of your tech ever since last time,” Pepper says.

“It’s not my fault that they didn’t specify how much stronger they wanted their tasers. The guy lived!” Tony huffs.

“But why do we have to test it in the middle of the woods?” Rhodey gestures at the empty wilderness around them.

“I’m getting to that.” Tony rummages through his backpack again. “So, I took it out on a few trial runs around my house and in the park and took a couple of pictures. See?” He hands Rhodey and Pepper a couple of printed out images he developed earlier during the week. All of them are in black and white, most of them are blurry, showing Tony’s backyard, his pool, with one or two pictures of Mrs. Laughney in her swimsuit in the mix. Pepper says something about him being a ‘perv’, but Tony’s used to it enough that he brushes it off. “I wanted to see how far it could go and how long it could last so I took kept flying it while I chased after it in my bike and ended up around here.”

“You went here alone ?” Rhodey askes.

“You don’t even like going into nature with other people.”

“Yeah. It was night time and I didn’t get nervous once. Pretty badass, if you ask me.” Tony stretches as he speaks, making sure Pepper is watching, but her expression doesn’t change a bit. She can probably tell he’s lying; Tony ran out the forest the instant he realized it was dark out, grabbing his helicopter and hastily throwing it into his backpack after getting too carried away with his tests. “Anyway, I kept taking pictures of the forest until I was sure I ran out of film. But the farther I went it, the creepier they got.”

Tony shows them another batch of photos, also black and white and slightly blurry, flashing one after the other. The further he goes down the pile, the stranger they become. At first, the only anomaly they see are odd lines in the middle of the picture, which they chalk up to Tony developing them poorly. Except then the later pictures start coming out completely distorted. Some as if they were stretched out, others in a wave pattern, a few even look as if they were being viewed by a kaleidoscope. Each one is stranger than the last.

“You sure it wasn’t the camera acting up?” Rhodey asks.

“Here’s the weirdest part, the camera just stopped working. The helicopter didn’t crash against anything, I made sure. It just... didn’t work. But the film was okay,” Tony says, a wide smile on his face. It was a mystery. A proper actual mystery, and Tony feels like he’s just starting to unravel an actual challenge. “I replaced the camera last night and did a test run in my backyard just to check. It was working. Once I get them developed I can compare all the pictures together, and this is where you two come in.”

Rhodey and Pepper both perk up, even if they are both acting like they aren’t entirely interested the entire time. Tony knows they are just as curious as him, though. Well, maybe not as curious, but still eager to solve a puzzle.

“Here.” Tony hands both of them a pair of cameras. Pepper gets a point-and-shoot one while Rhodey gets the instant camera.

“How the hell can you afford this?” Pepper asks, weighing the camera in her hand.

“Perks of being rich,” Rhodey shrugs.

Tony turns on the helicopter, grinning wide as it starts to fly above them. He may have upgraded its wings and power a bit as well. “Scientific method guys. Control and variables, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this.”

“What’s your hypothesis, Tones?” Rhodey asks, aiming the camera at Tony.

Tony poses, rolling up his sleeves and smiling wide, and he starts walking. “That we’re gonna uncover some weird shit.”

Rhodey takes the picture and starts to dry it off, throwing it in his bike basket to check later. “We’re like the Scooby-Doo gang.”

“I’m Fred,” Pepper says, completely serious.

“No way, I’m Fred,” Tony says, eyes on the helicopter as he takes a quick picture.

“You’re more like Daphne,” Rhodey adds. “I guess I’m Velma.”

“Why not Shaggy?” Tony asks.

“No one wants to be Shaggy !”

The group continues on their bikes, stopping every few minutes to take pictures of their surroundings. Rhodey actually gets off his bike and make sure that they look nice, while Pepper simply stops for half a second and keeps moving. Tony doesn’t really mind how well they look, as long as he can make sure how affected they are. Now that he thinks about it, he should have bought a compass to figure out which direction the strange area is in. He’ll do that some other time.

Tony looks down and checks his utility belt, knowing he must have a compass somewhere. He checks his watch, it’s thankfully just five o’ clock, and double checks the compass he found at his side, only to find out it keeps moving at every direction.

“My compass isn’t working.” Tony frowns, tapping it. “Rhodes, do you know which direction we’re heading?”

Rhodey squints as he looks for the direction of the sun. “Sun is setting in a couple of hours, and it’s behind us, so we’re headin’ east.” He takes the compass from Tony’s hand and shakes it, but it doesn’t make it work again.

Beside them, Pepper zips up her jacket, looking around their surroundings. “I think we should start heading back while there’s still light, guys.”

“Why, you scared?” Tony teases, hooking the broken compass back on his belt.

As if on queue, they hear a thud of something falling to the ground or into a pile of leaves. The three of them jump in surprise, huddling together instinctively.

“What was that?” Pepper asks, grabbing on to both Rhodey’s and Tony’s arms.

“I think it was your helicopter, Tones,” Rhodey whispers. “Did it run out of battery?”

“I replaced the batteries this morning too. It couldn’t have been.” Tony walks a step towards the sound. “Unless the weird place breaks more than cameras.”

Pepper checks the radio again, turning it on and fiddling with the stations. “Nothing. Everything’s static.”

“Rhodes, take a picture.”

Rhodey does so, taking a picture into the direction of the fallen toy. The group huddles together once more, watching as Rhodey shakes the instant film and waits for the picture to appear. Except nothing comes. They stare at it for what feels like minutes and not even outlines of an image show through. It stays white, like the film hasn’t been used. Like they aren’t allowed to take pictures at all.

“Okay, this is getting weird. I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” Pepper starts again.

“We’re gonna leave now ? Right when things are getting interesting?!” Tony yell-whispers. He isn’t entirely sure why he tries to keep his voice down, but there’s something about these woods that makes him feel like they aren’t alone.

“I don’t know...” Rhodey trails off, looking sheepish himself.

If Tony is being honest with himself, he’s starting to get scared too. But he isn’t going to admit that.

“Okay, just... Let me get my helicopter back. We can head back to my house and I’ll ask Jarvis to make us some sandwiches, and everything will be okay. Sound good?”

Pepper and Rhodey look at each other then nod.

Tony walks over to the pile of leaves he believes his spycopter fell into, trying to walk without making any sound. He hears Rhodey and Pepper walking a few steps behind him, also trying to move as quietly as possible. It’s no longer a secret that the three of them are afraid of what they might have gotten themselves into, and Tony is more than ready to just grab his toy and run, cycling back home faster than he’s ever done before.

The closer he gets, the more it smells like something is rotting.

Tony takes a whiff of the air and covers his nose, grimacing. It definitely smells like old meat.

He stands next to the pile of leaves, still covering his nose, and finally sees his helicopter beside it. Tony leans down to take it, his finger barely brushing against the plastic before he falls to the ground on his ass, stumbling back with wide-eyed horror.

Before Rhodey and Pepper can ask what’s wrong, they do the same, taking many steps back and covering their mouths to avoid screaming. Well, Rhodey does, but Pepper lets out a loud yelp in shock before Rhodey covers her mouth. Pepper is so afraid she doesn’t even slap his hand away.

Tony can see a pair of pale, cut and scratched feet on the other side of the pile. Out of the corner of his eyes, a bit farther away, he sees a dog’s decapitated head, eyes still open. Tony covers that side of his eyes with his hand, too grossed out by the sight to look at it anymore. He’s trying to breathe through his mouth so as to not smell it any more than he has to.

“What the hell...” Rhodey whispers, helping Tony get up.

He grabs Tony before he can step any further.

Tony glares back at him. “What if they’re still alive?” he whispers.

“We don’t even know if that’s just their feet.”

Pepper shakes her head, pulling Rhodey’s hand away.  “We should call the cops.”

“And let them think we’re involved? No way, my parents would freak out,” Rhodey snaps back. “Tony...”

Wordlessly, Tony pulls himself away from Rhodey’s grip and starts to circle the large pile of leaves, the body on the other side making itself clearer with every step.

It’s a kid.

A boy, from the looks of it, who looks about thirteen or fourteen. He’s only wearing what looks like a long house dress or a hospital robe, white without any designs on it except the bit of blood that stains it. Tony wonders who it belongs to as his eyes trail down to his feet. Barefoot, bruised, and scratched, probably from wandering in the woods without any shoes. He looks back at the boy’s face. It doesn’t look bruised, so he probably wasn’t beaten, but there’s dried blood on his face and upper lip that looks like it came from a nosebleed. He’s covered in mud; nearly his whole face and the expanse of both of his arms are caked with it.. He has a long face and high cheekbones. Very, very pale and skinny too. The strangest thing about him is his hair -- it looks like a normal haircut but the bangs that partly cover his forehead are completely white; it reminds Tony of Lily Munster. The only part of his body that looks extremely damaged are his hands, they’re very scarred, but the longer he looks at them, the more he realizes how old those scars look.

He’s still breathing. Shallowly, slowly, but it’s something.

Tony gulps, kneeling down beside the kid but not touching him. “He’s alive. Guys, he’s alive.”

Rhodey and Pepper take a step closer, still keeping their distance but looking somewhat relieved, even if they still look incredibly worried.

Be a man, Tony. For once in your life.

Tony feels his heart in his throat as he reaches out a hand to shake the boy’s shoulder, checking whether or not he’s unconscious. To his horror, he is not.

The other boy’s eyes shoot open, as if he was just woken up. He stares at him, blue-green eyes that were a bit far apart staring at him wide-eyed. He looks just as afraid at Tony is, except the boy is unmoving, completely quiet, probably unsure of what to do.

“Are... Are you okay?” Tony asks stupidly, trying to keep his voice steady. Of course he isn’t.

He doesn’t answer and instead moves away from Tony’s touch, glancing at his surroundings, then looking at the dogs head. At the sight of it, the boy flinches, most likely scared or shocked.

“You got a name?”

The strange boy stares at him, transfixed. Tony’s so shocked that he’s still alive that he doesn’t hear him speaking.

“--Brothers. Where... are they?” His voice is cracked and slow. Like he hasn’t spoken in a while, or he’s too scared to do so without it trembling. Tony holds his hands in front of him, trying to reassure the other boy that he means no harm. He’s been in a similar state before, albeit not found half-dead in the woods, but he knows how scary it can be to not know who you can trust and who wants to hurt you.

“B-Brothers?” Tony asks, scared that his siblings could be the reason the kid is here in the first place.

The boy eyes grow wider then he stares down at the ground, keeping his hands close to his chest and starting to breathe heavily, definitely panicking.

“Hey, hey. Calm down. I don’t know who or where your brothers are, but I’m not here to hurt you.” Tony holds out a hand.

The boy look at it for a moment and reaches out to him. His hands are shaking -- a lot .

Rhodey speaks out behind him. “Tony, careful!”

The kid stops as he reaches out for his arm, giving him a worried look, silently asking if it’s still okay.

“Don’t worry. You’re safe now.”

“Safe?” Even if they’re the same age, his voice is a bit deeper. Tony nods.

“Yeah. We can help you. You’re safe.”

The boy stares at him then at his hand. He takes it, and, as he helps him stand up, Tony eyes the scars, stitches, and what looks like burn marks covering his hands. Even stranger, the tip of his fingertips feel weird against his skin -- not like it hurt or anything, but like sparks of electricity are running through his blood. Tony wonders for a moment if this kid is an alien -- he looks kinda weird, that’s for sure, but not in a bad way -- and peers back at Rhodey and Pepper. “Guys, we gotta take him home. He’s really fucked up.”

At this, the pale boy starts panicking again. “Home? I can’t... No, I can’t--”

Shit, he must be a runaway. Rhodey goes to help Tony carry him, but stop before he gets any closer. Rightfully worried about whether or not they might get in trouble for helping him, but Tony can’t just leave a kid in the middle of the woods no matter how much his dad might end up yelling at him. “No, no. We’re heading to my house.”

The boy still stares at him, confused, and Tony wonders whether or not he’s even from this country. Maybe he doesn’t even speak a lot of English. “My house. You understand? Far away from whoever you’re running from.” Tony pauses. “Safe.”

The boy nods again. “Safe?” he says, softly.

“Safe,” Tony says, half-lying.

His grip on Tony’s arm tightens, fingers almost digging into the skin, and the weird electricity suddenly gets stronger. The boy’s nose starts bleeding. He raises his free arm in front of him and starts moving it in a circle, sparks coming from the end of his scarred, trembling fingers.

“Uh, what the fuck?” Rhodey asks, backing away from the two of them again. Pepper starts doing the same, heading for her bike, but the boy’s grip does not leave Tony’s arm. “What the fuck? ”

Oh, shit.

“Name?” the boy asks with a strained voice, coughing.

Tony stares at the weird kid in shock as the sparks begin to form a circle that grows bigger and bigger with each second. Part of him wants to pull away and run, just like Rhodey and Pepper are doing -- he doesn’t blame them, he’s also scared shitless even if he isn’t going to show it -- but the other part of him wants to ask so many questions. What happened to you? Are you an alien? Are you taking me somewhere? What’s up with the white streak in your hair?                                                                                                                                                             

“Tony. People call me Tony,” he answers, finally, and the circle of sparks seems to form an image on the other side. He sees grass and a couple of trees. The familiar sight of a cold, unused pool in the corner. The hedges separating his home from his neighbors home. It’s his backyard.

It’s a portal. The kid just made a portal.

Tony’s heart is beating so fast he thinks he’s gonna end up fainting.

“Home,” the boy says weakly, holding his arm and pulling him into it as he stepped in himself. He seems unaffected, if not extremely exhausted. “Come.”

It might be the stupidest decision he’s ever made, Tony thinks, but Stark boys are supposed to be brave and made of iron. How can he become a great scientist if he doesn’t jump at the opportunity to do the unimaginable?

Tony watches his friends ride off out of the corner of his eye, then looks back at the weird boy, and follows.

It feels like... nothing. Like he stepped through a door and suddenly he’s back home, surrounded by the familiar large, open field, obscured from view from the driveway in case his dad comes back at any moment. It’s right beside the secret entrance through the hedges he made when they first moved in. How the hell does this kid know about his secret entrance?

Beside him, the kid finally lets go of his arm as he passes out on the ground, scarred fingers still trembling and the bottom of his nose and upper lip covered in blood.

Tony is going to be in so much trouble.

Chapter Text

In all his years of working here, Lucien has seen some horrible and terrifying stuff. From something as innocuous as hushed secrets and pieces of paper being more valuable than human lives to hearing and seeing experiments done to innocent men, women, and children that were supposed to stop a decade ago. Lucien accepted his relocation and gave a vow of secrecy, expecting to do nothing more than to monitor random animals that happened to pass by and fill in paperwork for hours on end. Nothing could have mentally prepared him for this.

He’s seen some terrifying shit, but nothing is as scary as the bald, British woman who is sitting just a few feet behind him, idly smoking a cigarette a hundred feet underground.

Lucien focuses on the monitor in front of him, still trying to trace the signal on the three boys, but half of his mind is too distracted by the conversation happening behind him to focus entirely.

Mr. Haggard speaks up from the awkward, stunned silence as the base took in what had just happened: a bunker filled with almost one hundred specialized agents could not hunt down three runaway fourteen year olds.

Three real freaky fourteen year olds.

“I don’t know how this happened.”

Doctor A, as he recalls she likes to be called, responds in a bored tone. “We taught them how to do the unimaginable, you all had to know they were bound to escape one day.”

“In controlled environments! Sterile labs! Hooked to a dozen different machines!” Mr. Haggard yells, shutting the rest of the room into an uncomfortable silence. “Doctor Conte?”

Lucien hears the sound of a chair moving. Doctor Conte speaks up in a nervous voice. “T-The amount of energy required for one of them to create a portal by themselves would be astronomical. It would result in loss of consciousness or even death, depending on where... where they went,” she says, definitely rehearsed.

Doctor A sighs, “Why do you assume they escaped individually?”

Lucien didn’t have to turn around to have to know that Mr. Haggard’s face was probably already beet red in anger. “Your entire job was making sure they didn’t get that idea in the first place.”

“Human psychology is quite complex, Jeffrey,” Doctor A said. Lucien bristled at the use of the deputy’s first name. “Not even I could have predicted they would work together.”

Mr. Haggard pauses. “You put precautions in place that were designed to stop that from happening. They speak different languages, interact as little as possible, and we have to encourage a hierarchy. Those were the rules you put in place. We used boys for that very reason.”

“Kids make friends a lot easier than adults do,” Doctor A said. “When you isolate a child from the world and instill nothing but fear, there are two major possibilities: they either become stupidly loyal, or they become more rebellious with each year and try to escape. Our mistake was making them work together to accomplish a goal.”

He hears the woman stand up, high heels echoing across the room with every step that grows closer to his station but thankfully stop before Lucien feels her near. “In order for the experiments to become a success, we could not teach them to hate each other if they needed to be in synchronized harmony.”

She pauses. “As I recall, I was informed that the two eldest attempted to escape a year before I was called in. I wonder if it would have been wiser to have let them go than to bring them back to this miserable existence.”

“Then you knew that would cause them to want to leave. You knew !”

“It is not my fault nor the children’s fault for doing what they would have naturally done eventually. My job was to keep them at least somewhat sane. Trusting enough. Forgive me if I am assuming, but we are in a facility surrounded by the top minds in hypnosis and drug use. Why not use those alternatives?”

One researcher speaks up. “We did when they were younger, but any sedative or attempt at hypnosis would render their abilities useless.”

“Defeating the purpose entirely, I see,” Doctor A finishes for him. “Well then, why didn't you shoot them?”

“Because a lot of goddamn money and time has gone into this experiment and we let it all go to waste on kids we can find again. You know how many we had at the start of this?”

“Twenty-four,” Dr. A groaned back. Lucien almost groaned too, having heard this little history speech a dozen times before.

“And now we just have three left. Three. We need them alive , you hear me?” Mr. Haggard directs at the agents surrounding him now.

“If you even know where they went.”

“Ma'am, Sir -- if i may,” says another researcher, eager to explain a key-factor. “Finding them might not be as difficult as we thought. We know they can’t go far— even they know that the longer the distance, the more effort it would take. For all we know, they could very well be in the state.”

“Is there anyway to track them down?” Doctor A starts walking towards him again, until he can feel her right behind him, looking at the monitor. Lucien gulps.

“They took off their tracking devices,” one researcher states. Lucien looks back at the man who placed three ankle bracelets on the table, all torn apart as if they were sliced open by heated metal. “We have no accurate way of knowing where they are beyond speculation.”

“How the hell ...” Mr. Haggard asked, dumbstruck. “Did they shoot them off? Saw them?”

“We have no idea how they acquired anything that could have done... this.”

As the others bickered, Doctor A taps Lucien’s shoulder and speaks in a softer and oddly kinder voice that still felt devoid of any emotion. “May I beginning see the security footage again?”

Lucien nods without a word and did as told. He moves aside form the monitor so the woman can see what they’ve already seen before: S, K, and W standing in a triangle before holding hands and creating a portal right beneath their feet. From the grainy footage, all they could already analyze was that the area they seemed to move to was forested, which let them know they had still been in the area in the beginning of their escape, and that this might have been premeditated as none of the three boys spoke during the entire exchange.

“Rewind it farther than the beginning by thirty seconds,” Doctor A instructs. Lucien did as told, starting the video slightly earlier than their current official cut.

“Here, look,” Doctor A says, tapping the paused image. It takes Lucien a moment to realize the woman is speaking to him. “Play it back again five seconds.”

Lucien leans over at a safe distance from the Doctor and watches. S, the caucasian boy, taps K’s face with his hand, holding it there for a second, before touching the W in the same place. They do that once or twice more between the three before all nodding, and the video begins at the regular starting point once more.

“What do you think that means? Reassurance? Surprise at the touch of another human being?”

“Um... I’m not exactly instructed on this kinda stuff, ma’am.”

Doctor A frowns. “I asked you a question,” she says, more like an order than a fact.

“Well,” Lucien begins, rewinding the tape one more time before answering. “If you asked me, I’d say they’re communicating in a way we can’t. See? K nods a bit after S touches his face. I mean, they can already do some weird shit, I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination... Ma’am.”

As he speaks, an odd smile starts to form on the Doctor’s face. Not a sinister smile like the sort Lucien always pictures when he sees the woman, but an actual smile, her eyes still transfixed on the looping video on the monitor.

The doctor sits in silence for a second, cigarette near her mouth but allowing it to run out into ash before she speaks again. Lucien says nothing when she puts it out against the equipment. It’s clear that she doesn’t have a lot of respect for what they do here beyond her own interests. If Lucien’s honest, neither does he... but a paycheck’s a paycheck.

Doctor A stands up to address the still bickering crowd behind them. “Gentlemen, Ladies -- I can safely say, without a reasonable doubt, that the three of them are working together. We can also assume that they left as a group. We are looking for three teenage boys of different ethnicities dressed in tattered hospital clothes. I suggest you inform the local police to be on the lookout somehow. It would be a good place to start.”

“No civilian can be involved in this.”

“Oh, relax. Besides, it’s your job to track them down, not mine.”

Lucien could feel Mr. Haggard’s shit eating grin from the other side of the room as he scrapes away the bit of cigarette ash that had fallen against his desk. “No, your job right now is to talk to our most important investor and inform him that you fucked up. Big time.”

The sound of a metal lighter flicking open then snapping shut is the only sound that fills the room before Doctor A speaks, heels clicking towards the door. "That's because I’m the only one here with enough balls to look at Stark in the face without pissing on the floor.”

The doors of the conference room slam shut as she leaves.

They are going to be in so much trouble.

---

Stephen loves dreaming.

He normally has nightmares, memories of what he had gone through during the day repeated in his head at night in strange apparitions and forms. But nightmares don’t bother him, he at least knows nothing can hurt him inside his head. It’s only the people outside that can. This time, however, he’s having a dream. He feels like his body is floating in the air without any fear of suddenly falling, and he envisions himself among the stars, near the moon Wong and Karl had told him about. He likes to imagine that it’s cold there, but cold in a nice way, and that the view must be amazing. They showed him and his brothers pictures of astronauts once. Stephen wonders what it feels like to be up in the sky.

He feels something, or someone, touch his shoulder and shake him gently. Stephen doesn’t snap awake from sleep as he usually does and instead lets himself fall back gently into the real world, eyes struggling to open properly as he yawns. How long did he sleep? Back home they would wake him at the same time every single day, never allowing him a longer rest than five to seven hours, sometimes less on hard days. He doesn’t see the grey and white that he would usually be greeted by and instead sees... a lot of colors, actually, still blurry in his eyes. Brown walls with lines, images on the walls of people he can’t recognize, objects he doesn’t understand thrown all across the floor and tables. Stephen wonders for a moment if he died and this is where he was sent to.

He hopes it’s not a new experiment.

Stephen finally turns his head to the side and sees a familiar face. Tony, he recalls after a few seconds, looking silently with wide eyes.

“Hey, uh... Are you okay?” the boy asks in a soft voice Stephen isn’t used to hearing.

He isn’t sure, but he nods anyway.

“Good.” Tony gestures at the room around them. “I didn’t know where to take you so I took you to my room. That’s my bed--” Stephen runs his shaking hands over the soft fabric. It’s the most comfortable bed he’s ever slept in. “--and this is my room.”

It’s the biggest bedroom he’s ever seen. He wonders why anyone would need this much space but his eyes dart to a group of toys thrown across the floor, colorful and inviting. He remembers back when he was younger, when they were actually allowed to use toys sometimes, especially Wong, but they were always for tests. It’s been a long time since he’s seen one in person again and Stephen can’t help but feel the most intense urge to play with them, but he stays put, not knowing what to do.

“I didn’t know how to clean you up really well but I tried my best. Your feet and your face were covered in mud and... blood.” The boy looks at him strangely, expecting some sort of further answer, but Stephen shrugs off the blankets and looks at his legs. Most of the blood is cleaned off, and there are a couple of bandages covering his cuts. It’s kind, even if they’re not placed properly. “But if you wanna wash yourself and uh, go to the bathroom you can use mine over there.” Tony points at a door on the corner of his room.

Stephen gets the message and stands up. Tony seems to flinch as he does so.

“You can use the towel next to the toilet. Um, you need help or...?”

Stephen looks at him and shakes his head a bit. The cuts on his feet and legs still hurt, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. He’s been through worse.

The boy makes his way towards the bathroom without waiting for Tony to speak up again, closing it behind him. The bathroom is big too, almost as big as his sleeping space back home, except brighter and more colorful.

Stephen takes the towel he assumes he can use and sets aside, glancing at the shower. It looks more like a... container than a shower he’s used to. Less flat, and there’s a weird tube underneath the shower head that looks like it belongs in a sink, except bigger. Stephen turns the faucet to the hottest setting, unused to having a choice on the temperature. A lot of water comes through -- too much, actually. He sets it back to the shower setting and watches at the room fills up with steam.

Stephen washes himself quickly, scraping off dirt and mud from his cuts and cleaning any more blood he finds under his nose, making sure his ears hadn’t bled either. That had happened once, it was scary. He’s very careful cleaning his hands, looking around them to make sure another cut did  not appear, but thankfully it’s just the scars he’s always had.

He stands under the water for a very long time.

Eventually, he has to force himself away from the hot water. Stephen dries himself off and wraps himself around the towel. He glances at his usual scrubs that are lying on the floor beside him. They’re covered in dirt and blood.

Stephen throws it in the trash can and goes out the door, still slightly damp from the shower but feeling cleaner than he’s been in days.

Tony almost drops what he was holding when he sees him and stuffs some objects that were on the ground into a drawer. The room seems much more organized now, it looks like he was cleaning it up.

“Right, I should have offered some clothes,” Tony mutters, sliding open another door in his room that had a lot of clothes inside, all in colors he’d never seen on fabric. They were mostly black and red, though. Stephen watches from the corner, transfixed to the sight as Tony walks back toward him holding things.

“It might be a little small... you’re taller than me,” the boy says, looking slightly annoyed by the fact. Stephen doesn’t understand why. “Um, you got a favorite color?”

...Favorite color?

Stephen shakes his head. Tony tsks and hands him a pair of underwear, black socks, and a pair of deep blue pants. He shrugs off the towel covering his body and begins to dress himself.

“Woah! Warn a guy,” Tony covers his eyes, surprised at the sight. Odd.

Stephen finishes dressing and wonders why Tony didn’t give him a shirt. Maybe they don’t wear them that much up here?...

“So, I don’t know which one you would prefer so I bought both of them. Rush or Bowie?” Tony holds up two shirts, both of which say the words he just said.

Stephen quirks an eyebrow. Is he supposed to know what that means?

“Don’t like them? What do you listen to?”

Stephen shrugs, not understanding what Tony is trying to say. “I...” he tries to begin, finding it hard to choose the right words. “I don’t know.”

Tony bites his lip and hands him the blue shirt that says “Bowie” on it. If he’s honest, Stephen doesn’t really care. He’s never had clothes like this before and is grateful for anything he can wear.

The shirt is a bit short, barely touching the hem of his jeans. His eyes dart back to the closet, wondering if there’s something longer he could wear that could cover the bit of skin, especially with this cold. Stephen didn’t expect the upside to be this cold.

His eyes focus on a red jacket. A very red jacket, the color blood is when it dries against fabric, except it looks nice. He doesn’t have the courage to ask to see it, though. Tony has already offered enough.

“Oh, this?” Tony seems to notice him look at it anyway and takes the jacket off it’s hanger. “You like this one?”

Carefully, Stephen nods. He’s been offered something he wants only to have snatched from his grasp a lot of times. Too many times. He’s not afraid to do what he needs to do to get what he wants anymore.

But Tony hands him the jacket like it’s no problem at all. “Here, you can have it. I don’t wear it a lot.”

Stephen brings it to his nose and sniffs it. It smells... nice. He puts it on quickly, excited to know what it feels like when he has it on.

“Got a mirror over there if you want to model,” Tony says, laughing a bit. Stephen doesn’t know what that last word means but goes to look at himself anyway.

Stephen isn’t used to seeing his reflection. It looks... odd, but he adjusts his new clothes and feels the corner of his lips quirk at the sight and the newfound warmth. He wipes his streak of white hair from his face and slides it back.

“Thank you,” Stephen says, speaking more than he had in a single day than he does on most weeks.

“No problem.” Tony fidgets where he stands. “Can I... Can I know your name?”

Stephen ponders for a second. “S...” At least, that’s his official name. Doctor A gave him a real name when she came to the home. “S-Stephen.”

“Stephen. Cool, cool. My real name’s Anthony, actually. But no one calls me that. I usually go by Tony, it’s cooler. I think.”

Stephen doesn’t remember asking about anything that Tony added, but nods anyway. He has a feeling Tony is going to ask a lot of questions now.

“What’s up with the, uh...” Tony’s eyes dart from his hands to his hair. Stephen sticks them inside the jacket’s pockets instinctively. “The bit of white hair?

Stephen remembers it appeared when he was younger, after a man gave him some pills, and continued to grow white just in that area of his scalp. He doesn’t know how to explain that out loud, though. “Grows like that,” he settles for.

“It looks... cool.”

Stephen isn’t sure if he should say thank you again.

Tony’s hands fall to his side, looking around his now organized room then back at Stephen. “Is it okay if I ask some questions? I did save your life, after all.”

Stephen ponders on that for a moment. Tony... did. He is also the first person from the upside he’s talked to. Well, Tony’s talking at him, rather, but he’s still making an effort. Stephen has to be cautious, there are things he promised not to say ever, even if Tony already saw him using his... talents. He should have pretended to be dead when Tony and the other kids found him, then he could have kept walking to town to find his brothers. Except he wouldn’t be clean, or have new clothes, or would have been able to see what it’s like to live in a house in the upside.

He decides it’s best to escape tonight.

Stephen nods. “Okay.”

Immediately, Tony takes a deep breath before getting close to him and speaking very, very fast. “How do your portals work? Are you bending molecules or do you bend the space-time continuum? Can you go back in time? How did you know where my backyard was? Can you read minds? Is that why it felt so weird when you touched me? Where did you come from? Do your brothers have superpowers like you?--”

Stephen can barely register most of the words as Tony continues talking. He opens his mouth a couple of times, thinking of a way to possibly answer, but closes it once more as Tony jumps to the next question that confuses Stephen even further.

He hears a knock on the door and they both freeze.

Stephen feels his chest ache, heart beating quickly as he starts to panic. They’re here. They found him. This had been a trap all along to catch him. Brothers. Brothers . --

“Hide in the closet,” Tony whispers, pushing him to the small room. “Yeah, hold on Jarvs. I’m getting dressed!” he yells to the door, then looks back at Stephen. “Go. It’s just my butler. Stay quiet.”

Stephen allows himself to be pushed, barely able to register what’s going on as he tries to keep his breathing steady. He’s panicking. He always panics. He can’t cry now.

Focus, S. Focus or else.

Tony slides the door closed and Stephen snuggles in between the hanging clothes. He presses his hand gently against the wood as he peers through the slides.

A taller, adult figure without any hair comes into the room, dressed in black and white clothes. It’s not a man he recognizes from the home, and he seems more focused on asking what Tony would like for breakfast rather than trying to find a runaway asset. His accent is odd but it reminds him of what Doctor A sounds like. It’s strangely... soothing. Stephen closes his eyes and feels himself calm down a bit, knowing he’s not in any immediate danger.

“Can I have some sandwiches? Maybe like... three? I’m really hungry this morning,” Tony says.

“Certainly, Anthony,” the man answers, nodding and making his way out the door.

“Oh! And extra chips! And extra coke!” Tony yells out. With another confirmation, the man named Jarvis leaves, closing the door behind him. Tony lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay, you can come out now.”

Stephen knows it should be safe, but he feels more comfortable in his dark closet than outside in the room. His hands shake against the wood and he drops them, wondering whether or not he should take this opportunity to go somewhere else and start looking for his brothers.

...But he did promise breakfast.

Stephen doesn’t come out, still too shaken from the fear of getting caught to muster the courage to leave the darkness. Thankfully, Tony doesn’t pry for him to do so, and instead stands in front of the closet. Stephen can see him through the cracks in the wood, but he isn’t sure Tony can see him. Like the mirrors back home where the bad men can see him during tests. Except this time Stephen feels in control, for once.

“Can I still ask you some questions? I’ll be slower this time,” Tony promises. “You can ask me questions too, if you want.”

Stephen nods then remembers Tony can’t see him. “...Okay.”

“Where are you from?”

“Down.” Stephen frowns as he tries to think of a way to explain. What’s the word? He knew the word. “Underdown.”

“Like... Down under? Are you Australian?” Tony’s voice perked up.

“No. Here. But down,” he replies, frustrated with himself for not being able to speak more. He knows he can find the words, speak as quickly as his brothers can, but his heart beats too fast and his words fly by his mind faster than his lips can process them. “Under.”

“Oh! Underground? You lived underground?”

There. That’s the word. “Yes.”

He can tell Tony has a dozen more questions from that answer alone, but he’s waiting for Stephen to say something else. It’s his turn to ask a question.

“...What’s a but-ler ?”

“It’s kinda like... a helper. An assistant? He works for me and my dad. Jarvis cooks, cleans, and makes sure I’m taken care of. Kinda like what a dad is supposed to do but... he does it instead.” Tony clears his throat. “He’s been part of the family for ages.”

Stephen clenches his fist.

“Okay, my turn.” Tony’s eyebrows furrow, trying to collect his thoughts. “What were you running away from?”

“Bad men. Monsters.” Stephen shudders. “Bad... people.” He can see Tony trying to peek through the blinds on the closet door, waiting for more context. “Hurt me.”

Stephen feels his head ache at the memories.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”

That may be the first time Stephen has ever heard those words.

“Your turn.”

“What’s a dad ?”

Tony looks at his direction in silence for a long time.

“Um... Like, your parent? Y’know, like your mom and dad? Part of your family?”

Stephen doesn’t answer. He has no idea what Tony is talking about.

“Like... A dad and mom make a baby and that’s where you come from. Preschool stuff. They raise you and send you to school and love you. Did you... have that?”

“...Don’t think so.”

Tony only hums in response to that. Stephen has no idea how he should feel. All of this is too new and confusing for him.

“Do you have any kind of family? People that you’re close to and that like you back?”

Stephen does, in fact. “Brothers.”

“How many do you have?”

He holds up two fingers.  Stephen wonders if Tony has any brothers. Were the other two kids he saw in the forest with him his family too?

“...What do they look like?”

Stephen opens his mouth to try to answer but jumps back at the sound of someone knocking the door again. It must be Jarvis bringing Tony his breakfast. He stays quiet and watches the nicely dressed figure set the a large plate of food on a desk, organizing a few things to the side before leaving. “Will that be all, Anthony?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jarvs.”

“Will you be out with James and Pepper later today?”

Tony yawned. “Nah, I rode bike all day yesterday and I’m pretty beat. I think I’m gonna stay home and work on some stuff here.”

“Be sure not to overwork yourself, sir. You have school tomorrow.” Jarvis went to close the door, but stopped halfway. “Ah, yes. Your father already left to New York. He told me to tell you he won’t return for a few days. Perhaps weeks.”

“When did he leave?”

“Quite early in the morning. He did not want to wake you.”

“...Okay. Thanks, Jarvis.”

The butler nods and closes the door. Tony stands in the middle of the room for a moment, head down, before he runs to open the closet door, looking at a very stunned and confused Stephen. “Alright, he shouldn’t come in for another few hours. Come on, he made cheese and ham sandwiches and pb&j.”

Stephen isn’t sure if he’s ever tried the food Tony mentioned, but his eyes dart to Tony’s hand, offering to pull him out of the closet.

He takes it. Tony closes the door behind them and pulls his arm away, rubbing his palm up and down against his arm. “I meant to ask, why does it feel weird when you touch me? It’s like... electricity. Does it have anything to do with the portals?”

Stephen shrugs, pretending he doesn’t know why that happens.

Thanks to the quick touch, he manages to see a very quick, sudden memory Tony has when he tries to look for something to do with family . He sees the face of a woman, smiling down at what he assumes is Tony when he was much younger. That’s his mom , he thinks, registering similar thoughts that Tony would have at the time. She looks kind and a lot like Tony -- same round eyes, same black hair, same long eyelashes. She says something kind, promising to go outside with him for a fun day, and he hears a younger Tony laugh. From the memory, Stephen feels a warmth in his chest he can’t quite place. The woman presses her lips against Tony forehead. Stephen wonders what that feels like.

“Here, try this.” Tony hands him one of the sandwiches for him to try, sitting down beside a television screen. Stephen eyes it suspiciously, expecting it to turn on at any moment like it would during the tests that used it, but the sandwich looks too appetizing to focus on anything else. Stephen takes a large bite, and smiles, quickly eating it in a few more bites. He knows he ate it too fast, but he can’t risk the chance of it being taken away somehow.

“Damn. Here, have some coke,” Tony says, chewing. He hands him a cold can of something called Coca-Cola, taking a sip of his own can. Stephen sees the latch on the top and tries to open it, but his finger trembles against the tab, the other hand holding it shaking too much to keep it still. His hands haven’t been very useful since that test.

Tony takes the can from his hand and opens it in one try, handing it back to him without a word, though Stephen can see that Tony is staring at his hands while they eat.

“Accident,” he lies, not wanting to elaborate. Tony nods in understanding.

After a bit of silence as they eat, Tony presses a button on the television and flicks through the channels until it lands on something Stephen has never seen before.

“You like Scooby-Doo?”

Stephen doesn’t answer and stares at the screen, entranced. Nothing like the sort of entranced or dissociative feeling he would get from being forced to look at screens back in the downside, but because it’s interesting. He enjoys it. And it doesn’t make his head ache or nose bleed afterwards.

He nods.

Maybe he doesn’t have to leave just yet.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Tony smile and grab something from his desk. A sort of contraption Stephen has never seen before -- though, there are a lot of things in this room he’s never seen before -- and by the looks of it, Tony seems to be repairing it with some sort of tool in his hand.

Stephen goes back to looking at the screen, enjoying the sweet taste of soda and the pb&j sandwiches. He’s never had so many sweet things before. They’re quiet, mainly because Tony looks too focused on the thing he’s making at the moment, but it’s a comfortable kind of quiet. The sort Stephen has only felt enough times to count with one hand. He likes this. He wonders if life is like this in the upside all the time.

Chapter Text

Tony wakes up the next day to the sound of an alarm, sitting up in shock as he sees the time. Six am. Almost half an hour earlier than Jarvis usually wakes him up. He wipes his eyes, wondering why the hell he would ever give up thirty precious minutes of sleep.

He hears someone shuffle under his mattress. He sees Stephen’s head peek from under the bed, silently asking if it’s okay to come out.

Oh, right. That’s why.

Tony presses a finger against his lips, hoping Stephen understands the universal symbol for staying quiet, and goes to lock his door for safe measure. He goes to the bathroom and gets dressed and ready fairly quicker than usual, telling Stephen to do the same as fast as possible. The other boy does as told without a word. Well, Stephen does most things without a word. He expected to get a few more answers from him yesterday after they finished eating, but Stephen was too focused on the television, or would answer with a few cryptic words quietly. Each answer left Tony with a hundred more questions.

Tony wants to know everything about him.

But Tony has other stuff to take care of... Like school.

Stephen comes out of the bathroom in the same clothes he was wearing yesterday, looking eager to go with him. Tony didn’t consider the possibility that Stephen might not even know what school is . He can try to explain that some other time.

“Okay, I gotta go for a couple of hours. You know how to read a clock, right?” he asks Stephen, making sure the guy doesn’t run away. Or portal away, for that matter. If he’s escaping from a shitty family or the police, he’s safer staying in Tony’s house for now. No other house in the street is better protected.

Stephen nods.

“I leave school at three. I’ll be back by the time it’s 3:30, I promise.” Tony looks down. “You’re not gonna... try to leave, are you?”

Stephen shakes his head. His face is unreadable, but it’s enough for Tony to trust.

“Jarvis goes outside at ten to noon to tend to the garden. You can sneak downstairs then to get something to eat if you get hungry. Trust me, I’ve done it before. He won’t catch you.”

Stephen gives him a small smile, but his eyes keep darting to the toys in the corner of Tony’s room. Like his old cassette player and his Transformers. Tony hasn’t thought about those in ages, mostly using them for spare parts for gadgets.

“You can use them, if you want. Just make sure that Jarvis doesn’t catch you. He doesn’t know you’re here... I’ll think of something once I come back.”

Stephen already made his way to the box of toys, finding his rubix cube. Tony laughs. “Yeah, that one’s a bit hard to get. You gotta make all the sides have the same color.”

Tony’s best time is one minute. Stephen completes the rubix cube in thirty seconds.

Huh.

Stephen places it back into the box like nothing happened and rummages around for more toys, trying to make the least amount of noise as possible. He seems distracted enough not to notice Tony set a walkie-talkie next to him. Tony places it’s pair on his utility belt.

“In case anything happens, just talk to me through this.” He quickly explains how to use it and that the frequency should be strong enough to reach his school. “For emergencies only, though.” The last thing he needs is for it to go off during class and explain to his teacher why he has his walkie-talkie and gadgets into his backpack. Again.

Stephen seems to understand well enough. With one last goodbye, Tony opens the door to his room and closes it gently, only to find Jarvis looking at him from the end of the hallway, probably on his way to wake him up.

“Sir, you’re up early,” Jarvis says, eyeing his belt but saying nothing. He stopped trying to get Tony to leave it at home a long time ago.

“Just wanted to get a headstart,” Tony smiles. “And I told you not to call me ‘ Sir ’ a bunch of time, Jarvs. Tony is fine.”

“Of course, Anthony,” Jarvis replies with a bit of a smile on his face. “Breakfast is ready downstairs.”

Tony heads down to eat. Jarvis made him his favorite: french toast and orange juice. It’s surprising; Jarvis has been telling him to cut back on the sweets for weeks now and has been making him eat eggs and vegetables for breakfast. He probably thought Tony was sad about his dad leaving without a word.

He isn’t. Tony is used to it, but he appreciates the gesture anyway.

This time, Tony allows Jarvis to drive him to school. Tony usually just rides his bike, but the more he can keep Jarvis away from the house and Stephen, the better. It’s not that he is embarrassed that Jarvis drives him, but it’s more the fact that Jarvis drives him to school in the Mercedes... while all the other kids ride in cheaper, older cars. Tony doesn’t mind showing off, he kinda likes it, but not in school. It always ends up with the high schoolers trying to steal something from his locker in exchange for quick cash. They already know Tony prefers to just pay them to leave him alone than to get into a fist fight.

It ends up with him getting a kick to the stomach no matter what he does, but the money makes them leave faster, eager to spend it.

Tony makes Jarvis drop him off a block away from school, saying goodbye as he closes the door and walks towards the familiar building from hell. He doesn’t see Rhodey or Pepper at first glance, just a scattered few faces he recognizes from class but doesn’t really talk to. Tony looks down and kicks at a rock before making his way to his classroom.

He does see Rhodey and Pepper there, sitting together and talking about something. Pepper notices Tony first, falling silent and looking away. Rhodey looks equally as awkward but he still locks eyes with Tony and he gets closer, making his way to his seat right in front of his best friend.

“Hey guys,” he starts, not knowing what to say.

Rhodey and Pepper reply with a hey in unison. They probably don’t know what to say either.

Pepper breaks the silence. She usually does, and she’s really good at it. “Tony, why didn’t you call us after... after what happened?”

Tony looks down. He isn’t entirely sure why he didn’t. “I don’t know.”

“We thought you were abducted. We thought you died or something!” Rhodey whispered. It’s best that no one else in their class knows about this. “We ran away because we thought you would run too.”

Pepper sighs. “Are you okay? Did your dad find out?”

Tony gives her an apologetic smile. “No, he left for New York yesterday morning. Listen, guys, I’m fine. I didn’t get abducted or anything. But I think I might be on the verge of discovering something way cooler.”

Rhodey  and Pepper both perk up, but the teacher comes through the door right as he’s about to explain everything.

“I’ll tell you guys during lunch. You brought your cameras, right?”

“Yeah, thought you might want them. Rhodey did too,” Pepper answers, opening her backpack to show Tony the camera he’d lent her earlier.

“Stark and company...” the teacher drawls, used to calling the trio’s attention back to the class at least five times a day. The three collect themselves, pretending to pay attention to whatever he’s saying. Well, at least Tony is, he knows Pepper and Rhodey are better students than him. But it isn’t like his grades would slip if he didn’t pay attention.

Tony sneaks a hand into his backpack, grabbing his latest idea and a screwdriver. He has better things to focus on.

The day continues as it normally would. Tony gets a circuit board he’s toying around with taken away during math but he manages to sneak it from the teacher’s desk right as lunch begins. He tells Rhodey and Pepper everything he knows, from the way that Stephen doesn’t speak much to how weird it feels when the kid touches him. Pepper and Rhodey react just as Tony suspects they would: nervous about the situation but still curious enough to want to meet him.

They stop by a local darkroom in town before going to Tony’s house, leaving the film of the pictures they managed to take with one of the workers who already knows Tony well enough to stay quiet about whatever he may find, along with a bonus few bucks Tony slides under the counter.

Rhodey shakes his head. “How much of your allowance did that cost you?”

Tony chews on his gum and thinks for a moment. “About half?”

“Jesus.”

He buys Rhodey and Pepper each a can coke so they’ll shut up. They don’t, but it isn’t like they’re complaining about having a rich friend anymore.

Tony checks his watch while Pepper lets him ride on the front of her bike. He’s thirty minutes later than the time he told Stephen, shit.

He hopes the guy hasn’t disappeared by now.

When they pass through the gates of Tony’s house, Tony jumps off Pepper’s bike and runs towards his house. He barely notices Rhodey and Pepper look at each other in mutual confusion before they dump their bikes to the side and run after him. Jarvis greets Tony from the kitchen, already preparing dinner for him and his friends, and Tony gives him a half-hearted hello before bolting to him room, slamming the door open with Rhodey and Pepper right behind him.

Stephen has his back against the corner of the room, eyes wide open and definitely caught by surprise.

Tony lets out a sigh of relief. “Sorry for scaring you. Just wanted to make sure you’re still... here.”

Beside him, Rhodey gives Stephen an awkward hello .

Stephen’s eyes dart towards the two of them, unsure on how to react.

“Don’t worry, these are my friends. This is James, but we call him Rhodey. Or Rhodes.”

“Hey,” Rhodey walks toward Stephen and extends a hand. Stephen looks a it, unsure of what he should do but looks a bit more at ease.

“And this is Pepper. Don’t worry, she’s actually nice once you get to know her. Kinda.”

Pepper rolls her eyes and does the same as Rhodey, extending her hand in front of Stephen for him to shake. Instead, Stephen grabs both of their hands and just... holds them.

Thankfully, he already told both of them how awkward Stephen can be, so neither seem to mind. Well, Rhodey doesn’t.

“Um... Yeah, okay.” Pepper retrieves her hand and clears her throat. “Did you just keep him cooped up here?”

“Yeah? Where else would I keep him?”

Pepper narrows her eyes. “He’s not like the pet frog you snuck into your room last year, Tony. You can’t just keep him here forever in secret. Someone’s gonna find him, and you’ll get into way more trouble than you did with that frog.”

Tony looks at Stephen. “Did Jarvis catch you?”

Stephen fiddles with the toy he just grabbed, looking down at the floor and shaking his head.

“See? He’s good at hiding. He’ll be fine.”

Rhodey gets closer to Tony, whispering low enough for Stephen not to hear. “But it makes you wonder what exactly he’s hidin’ from.”

Tony crosses his arms, not admitting that Rhodey has a point but not denying it either.

“What if he’s some sort of experiment?” Pepper adds, voice low as well.

“Maybe he was born in a tube,” Rhodey says.

“Or he’s running from a very strict Mormon family.”

Rhodey lifts up his hand. “I don’t think Mormons are that strict.”

Tony shakes his head. “Guys, can we not talk about him like he isn’t in the room?” He walks over to where Stephen is sitting, helping him stand up. “Whatever he is, we gotta help him and keep him safe. And Stephen is our new friend. Right, Steve-o?”

“... Steve-o? ” Stephen asks in a whisper.

“It’s a bad nickname, don’t worry. But we’re pals now! And we got a lot to teach you about the real world.”

Stephen blinks, confused, then looks at Pepper and Rhodey.

Pepper shrugs, unsure about the whole situation, but Rhodey gives Stephen a smile. “Yeah, if you got any questions, you can ask us. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you more about music than Tony ever can.”

“Fuck off. I have more records than you.”

“So?” Rhodey heads over to the box with Tony’s records, flipping through them for something that might be good. Pepper gets closer to Stephen again, cautiously. Well, both of them look equally cautious, really. She moves some hair away from her face.

“If you have any questions about important stuff, I can answer that too.” She gives Stephen a kind smile. The kind she gives to people when he’s trying to make a good first impression, but Tony prefers it when she’s rolling her eyes or telling them to go to hell without any actual ill-intent behind it.

Stephen frowns, trying to think of the most pressing question in his mind, and whispers as he speaks, holding up one of Tony’s old Transformers that his dad got him from Japan.

“Who is this?”

Tony is about to interject as the resident expert on cool robots, but Pepper answers before he can. “Oh! That’s Bumblebee. He’s my favorite.”

Pepper and Stephen end up sitting down, Pepper helping him name all the models Tony owns and listing off the ones he doesn’t, while the sounds of Prince plays in the background, per Rhodey’s insistence.

Rhodey and Tony try to explain to Stephen the concept of music after realizing from a few set of clues that Stephen has only been allowed to listen to classical music. They’re listening to entire albums, trying to make a list of all the albums Stephen should listen to in order of best to worst. Pepper tries to chime in, adding her favorite pop songs, but Tony and Rhodey won’t take her seriously until she has to grab the list from their hands and writes them down herself in perfect cursive script. Rhodey includes some disco songs his mom likes for ‘some extra flavor’. Tony tries to explain the meaning behind all of the posters in his room. Pepper grabs a magazine from her backpack and shows Stephen all the famous actors and actresses she likes.

Pepper and Tony end up having an argument just minutes after the conversation about movies stars. This time, it was about the best choice for the first movie Stephen should watch.

“Star Wars is a cultural staple!” Tony yells, pointing at the posters next to his bed. “It’s easiest for him to understand because it has nothing to do with Earth culture!”

“But then he’ll get the wrong idea and expectations about what to expect in the real world!” Pepper repeats for what feels like the fourth time. “Why not The Godfather?”

“ Why the Godfather?! It’s way too violent! That’s like giving a baby a rifle for it’s first toy!”

“But it’s a good movie!”

“Did you just imply Star Wars sucks ?!”

“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal!”

Beside them, Stephen doesn’t really seem put off by their yelling. Either he’s used to it, or it’s because Rhodey already told him how common a sight it is between them. Rhodey, on the other hand, is describing his favorite James Bond movies in great detail, telling Stephen all about what it meant to be a spy. Stephen looks very interested.

“And he has a british accent -- so he talks like this -- real fancy and stuff. Always gets the hottest ladies and wears this black suit. Y’know what a suit is, right? Like the black, nice clothes guys wear?”

Stephen thinks for a moment then nods.

“I’ve seen ‘em all. I think my favorite has gotta be The Spy Who loved Me and From Russia With Love . I hear there’s a new one coming out this year too -- Hey, you alright?” Rhodey asks, worried enough to snap Tony and Pepper away from their argument.

Stephen is trembling and staring at the TV, which has been on the entire time. It’s the meeting between the president and that one Russian guy everyone has been talking about, especially his dad. Tony doesn’t know much about what’s going on, he just knows that he shouldn’t trust Russians for some reason and that his dad hates Gorbachev.

Tony looks back at Stephen, then at the TV. The boys eyes are fixed on the guy he assumes is Gorbachev, with an intense look in his eye that Tony can’t place as fear or hate. Maybe both.

Tony waves a hand in front of his face. “Hey? Stephen? Stephen are you okay?”

A bit of blood starts coming out of his nose. Tony hears a crack come from the tv screen as it begins to short circuit. Tony pushes the table it’s sitting on out of the way and unplugs the T.V from the wall before it catches on fire. Both Rhodey and Pepper back away, but Stephen continues to stare at the TV before shaking his head, looking like he’s in a daze, then holding it in one hand like he has a headache.

“...He ever do that before?”  Rhodey asks, glancing between them.

Tony waves away the bit of smoke coming from the T.V before it goes to the fire alarm. Thankfully, it isn’t enough to activate it or let Jarvis know that his television set just exploded from the inside.

“No. I thought all he could do were portals.” Tony kneels beside Stephen, hand on his shoulder. “Stephen? Did you see something?”

Stephen wipes the bit of blood from his upper lip and nods. “I had to... I-I had to..”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell us,” Pepper says reassuringly.

“I mean, I’d kinda like to know.”

Both Rhodey and Pepper shoot Tony a glare.

“Hey, I at least want to know why he broke my T.V.!”

Pepper’s focus goes back to Stephen, and it seems that it’s the first time both she and Rhodey notice the boy’s hands, scars and all. Tony can’t help but wince a bit whenever he sees them, he has no idea what could cause so much damage expect a really, really bad accident.

Unless they were done on purpose.

“I had to -- Couldn’t see... the bad men.” Stephen squeezes his eyes shut. “They told us to.”

“Who told you?” Tony asks.

“The... suit men.” Stephen’s eyes open again, like he just realized something. “They wear suits.”

They are probably the longest sentences he’s heard Stephen say so far.

Rhodey grabs some pencils and a notebook from his backpack and starts drawing something neither of them can see. Pepper is running a hand up and down Stephen’s back reassuringly as he does so and it seems to calm Stephen down. His hands still shake, though. It never seems to stop.

“Did the suit men have this on them? Like on a badge or a patch or something?”

All three of them look at Rhodey’s drawing at once. He’d sketched out a guy in a suit holding out his FBI badge, wearing sunglasses.

Stephen shakes his head.

Rhodey erases something from the page and draws again.

“What about this?” he asks again. This time, he includes the CIA logo next to him. Crudely drawn, but Rhodey isn’t a bad artist. He must’ve seen the logo a couple of times before with his parents. Neither of them are CIA, but still in the military. Even if the CIA isn’t military, as Rhodey has explained a million times before.

Stephen pauses for a moment and nods.

Tony feels himself smirk a bit, a hundred theories swimming in his head at once, but he doesn’t say anything for the sake of keeping Stephen calm. Still, they got a lead. A real lead.

It just leaves him with a hundred more questions.

Rhodey lowers his notebook. “This might be a bit more complicated than I thought it was.”

“What did you think?” Pepper asks.

“Shitty parents, mostly. Runaway from a weird family that lives in the middle of the woods. I mean, it’s more believable than what we’re all thinking.”

The room falls silent, only the low beat of Tony’s record player playing the final songs of the album they were listening to. This time, Stephen is the first one to speak up, voice still shaking but louder than usual.

“Thank you.”

Tony blinks, surprised that Stephen managed to say something unprompted. “For what?”

“For helping,” he says, and leaves it at that.

For a moment, they all think Stephen meant that as a sort of goodbye, but he stays, foot tapping to the music idly against the carpet floor of Tony’s room.

“It’s no problem, we’re friends.”

Stephen keeps his eyes on the ground. “Friend?”

“Yeah. That’s someone you like a lot. Someone you trust and always feel like you can talk to. Peps and Rhodey are my best friends.” Tony glances at the other two, smiling. Rhodey smiles back. Pepper smiles too, if not a bit confused by the sudden sappiness. “So are you.”

Tony squeezes Stephen’s shoulder. Stephens smiles back, seemingly understanding, and moves one of his hands to grab Tony’s, squeezing back.

Rhodey clears his throat. Tony is thankful that it gives him the excuse to release his hand from underneath Stephen’s touch. It saves him the trouble of explaining that people don’t exactly do that in the real world. Well, some people do, but it usually ends up with someone getting a black eye if they’re caught. He’ll explain it to Stephen later.

“How long do you think you’ll have to stay with Tony?” Rhodey asks.

Stephen shrugs.

Pepper speaks up. “You have to tell Jarvis somehow. It’s better if you tell him yourself than him finding you have a kid our age smuggled inside your room.”

“Okay. Okay,” Tony huffs. It isn’t that he minds Jarvis knowing, but he knows that if he tells Jarvis, then Jarvis might tell his dad... and that’s already kinda risky. He doesn’t think his dad would be shitty enough to force him to get rid of Stephen or call the cops or anything, but the fact that he isn’t completely sure is enough to make him nervous.

He has two ideas. One is kind of stupid, but it’s his safest bet. The other is riskier, but less stupid.

He goes for the first, obviously.

“I think I know where we can hide him.” Tony snaps his fingers and points out his window at what looks like an empty patch of grass that’s a slightly darker green than the rest.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Rhodey asks. He probably already knows what Tony’s plan is.

Tony nods and gestures at Stephen to get up. The boy does, looking very confused but eager to help. “Think you can portal us over there?”

Stephen does as told without another question. His nose doesn’t bleed this time, either. Tony theorizes that distance between portals affects his strain, but it’s not like he can run any tests or experiment with Stephen without freaking him out.

A now familiar sight appears in front of them. Yellow, glowing sparks circling the entrance to Tony’s backyard, big enough for all of them to fit at once. Stephen’s hands circle at the shape of the portal -- it looks steadier than the other one’s he’s seen Stephen do. Tony steps through it, hands as his hips with a proud smile on his face as he watches Pepper and Rhodey gape at the sight. Pepper steps forward, sticking her hand into the portal ever so slightly before quickly pulling it back again. “You weren’t kidding...” she mutters, and steps inside. Tony offers a hand to help her, but she doesn’t take it.

Rhodey gulps, looking slightly more nervous than Pepper, looking like someone trying to jump into a circling jump rope at a perfect moment. Behind him, Stephen grits his teeth. “Hurry.” He can’t keep it up forever.

Rhodey closes his eyes as he jumps into the portal, landing on his feet with the autumn sun shining on him and the recently sprinkled grass.

“What. The. Hell.” He shakes his head, still in disbelief.

Tony offers a helping hand to Stephen as well, who goes through the portal last and doesn’t react when it closes behind him. Stephen holds on to his arm as he walks, tightening his grip ever so gently as he stops, basking in the sight in front of him.

It’s a regular backyard, high hedges and fences to offer a bit of privacy. Well, a luxurious backyard, if he’s honest. Most kids at school don’t have a high tech sprinkler system or a pool that can heat itself up so it can be used even in winter, though Tony hasn’t lived long enough in this part of the state to test it. The garden that surrounds the house was per his mom’s request, back when she and dad bought the house as a vacation spot when they wanted to get away from the city. Back when he was younger, his mother would ask him innocently, if they were to live alone together, whether or not he would like to move upstate. Tony didn’t understand the implications at the time. Now, it just feels ironic.

He taps Stephen’s shoulder as he leans over the pool, dipping a hand and watching it disappear into the cold, clear water.

“That’s called a pool,” he says, assuming he’s never seen one before. “People use it to swim, relax, or have fun when it’s hot out.”

Stephen doesn’t answer and takes his hand out, drying it on his jeans, staring out in silence. Tony holds him by his shoulder and guides him to the patch of grass he was going to show him in the first place. At first glance, no one was supposed to notice any difference, but any discerning eye could clearly see the grass was taller than the rest, made out of plastic. Tony leaned down and grabbed a handle obscured by the grass. “Rhodes, help me open this.”

Both Pepper and Rhodey went over to help him, the trio using all of their force to lift up the large, metal entrance to his father’s underground bunker.

The sight of the steep, dust-covered stairs leading into darkness is a uncommon sight, but not entirely unfamiliar. There have been scattered summer days where Pepper, Rhodey, and him would stay in the bunker for the night, all too scared to fall asleep but still too proud to say they were afraid. Tony takes out the flashlight from his utility belt and turns it on, deciding it’s only fair that he goes in first. “You aren’t scared of the dark, are you?” he asks Stephen.

Stephen stares down at the entrance, wide eyed and frozen. He isn’t sure if he’s afraid of the dark or something else entirely.

He takes the hands Tony offers and follows him down the stairs, Rhodey and Pepper trailing close behind him.

Stephen’s hand grips on his wrist, fingers shaking. Once they reach the end of the stairs, Tony quickly reaches for the light-switch, making the area around them a lot less eerie.

The bunker came built with the home, if he recalls correctly. It’s bigger than most bunkers, with a small makeshift kitchen that has a gas stove and a small fridge that has yet to be plugged in, and cabinets stockpiled with cans and boxes of food. It also has a room with two pairs of bunk beds -- one for him, his dad, his mom, and Jarvis -- and a door that leads to a comfortable work study for his dad. Tony lost track of the times he’s escaped to use the study as his own, working on his tech or studying in silence, where Jarvis couldn’t urge him to fall asleep and where his father couldn’t call him useless.

Stephen stands in the middle of the room, staring at the single light bulb illuminating it. His hand is still holding tightly to Tony’s wrist. Tony hopes he doesn’t break it.

“I don’t...” Stephen begins, trailing off immediately after. He looks like he’s in some sort of daze.

Pepper opens a few cabinets and takes out a old box of cereal, checking the expiration date and deciding it’s good enough to eat. “You sure it’s a good idea to keep Stephen in here?”

Stephen’s head turns to face him. “What?”

“It’s as good a place as any. My dad never comes here, neither does Jarvis, and he could open the latch as he pleases.” Tony gestures at the expanse of the bunker. Sure, it’s small in comparison with his two story house, but it’s big enough to function as a house, and bigger still for just one fourteen year old. Had it been Tony in his situation, he would be delighted to have all still space just for himself. Stephen, however, does not seem equally excited. He looks terrified.

Tony’s so distracted by the cold look in Stephen’s eyes that he doesn’t notice the other boy shaking his head, eyes darting all around him. “No. I can’t. No. Not underground.”

“Hey, you okay?” Rhodey asks carefully. Stephen pulls at his hair and shakes his head.

Pepper sighs. “This was a bad idea.”

Stephen’s starts breathing quickly. He’s panicking, sweating despite the cold. His scarred hands move  to the back of his neck, pulling Tony closer. Tony doesn’t notice the light bulb above them shatter until Pepper lets out a loud scream, grabbing on to Rhodey as they back away.

“Stephen?” Tony asks, and Stephen all but grabs him by the side of his face and smashes his forehead against his own, the same sort of electricity that ran through his skin when they first met now buzzing in his head, almost burning through it. It’s the first time since he’s met Stephen that he’s afraid of him. They’re in the pitch black dark, twenty feet underground, and he’s at the mercy of a volatile government experiment. The strange energy that starts where Stephen’s skins touches his own comes in a sudden burst. The last thing Tony sees before his body goes limp is the sight of Stephen’s red eyes and bloody nose. He sees a fuzzy white light, blinking with eyes that aren’t his own, then sees something else entirely.

The visions come quickly, fragments of moments he doesn’t entirely understand but manages to piece together like a thousand-piece puzzle. The sting of needles digging into a restrained arm. The cold of winter in a country he doesn’t recognize. The faces of men and women he also doesn’t recognize who stare at him through thick glass. A flash of two faces Tony doesn’t know, but he Stephen does, and there’s an instant warmth when the two boys, both his age but with the same tired expression that no fourteen year old should have. He sees a bald woman with a cold smile that he still manages to trust, because he has no other choice. He feels his eyes get forced open by tape, staring at a screen with images of uniformed men that make him inexplicably angry.

He doesn’t know how long he’s out. Could be seconds or it could be minutes, the memories seem to pass through too fast like he’s switching pictures on a view-master. He realizes quickly that these are Stephen’s memories, a summary of everything he’s gone through. He also realizes that dragging a boy that’s been forced to live in a secret underground base his entire life into yet another secret underground base was a very bad idea.

Arms wrap around his chest and pull him back into reality. His reality. The one that he thinks is so fucked up beyond the outer layer of comfort he pretends to have in front of the rest of the world until this random guy comes along and shows him that getting yelled at by his dad is nothing compared to what he’s gone through. Tony feels his heart racing in his chest, sweat forming on his face and over the back of his neck, like he just came out of P.E.. Behind him, Rhodey checks his pulse, slapping his face a bit for him to open his eyes.

His eyes adjust to the darkness ever so slightly, he can make out the shape of Pepper holding on to Stephen in the exact same way, except Stephen is unmoving, and has his head bowed to the side, avoiding all eye-contact. The light from a fallen flashlight turns until it’s aiming it’s light at all of them. The group settles. Somewhat.

“What did you do to him?!” Pepper yells at Stephen.

“Peps, it’s okay,” Tony breathes out, standing upright once more.

“Okay?! He touched you and you blanked out for five seconds! For all we know you could be under some sort of mind control o-or--”

Tony rests a hand on her shoulder and smirks. “Never seen you so worked up and worried over me.”

Pepper growls. “Of course I was, you idiot! We have no idea what he’s capable of! He’s dangerous, Tony, even if he didn’t mean it. Right, James?”

Rhodey kicks at the floor to their side. “She has a point, Tony.”

Beside them, Stephen sits on the floor in silence, hugging his chest. Occasionally, he lifts his hand to wipe the bit of blood trickling from his nose.

“No, it was a bad idea to bring him down here anyway,” Tony admits. “He got scared and did what he knew how to do.”

“Which is?” Pepper asks.

Tony glances at Stephen who looks back at him. It’s still incredibly dark, he can only see the outline of the boy’s face. He’s afraid of the darkness for the first time in years. Afraid of the bunker itself. As if Stephen’s fear projected itself on Tony. Whether it was a residual of Stephen’s memories or just him now realizing how fucked up it is, he doesn’t know, but he needs to get out of here.

“I’m not sure yet,” Tony half-lies. “Let’s... get out of here.”

Rhodey and Pepper help him up, both still afraid that Stephen somehow hurt him. The other boy walks ten steps behind, hiding his face from view as they walk back into the light.

When Stephen comes out last, Tony escapes from his friend’s help to extend a hand. Stephen looks at it, not entirely sure what to do.

“I wanna help. I’ll help you find your brothers and do... whatever it is you have to do.”

Rhodey speaks up behind him. “He’s a freaky government experiment made to spy and kill commies! I don’t think we can help him with either of those things.”

“Shut up,” Tony snaps back, though there’s barely any bite to his bark. He turns back to face Stephen. “I promise I’ll keep you safe. You don’t have to go into the shelter ever again. Unless you want to. Your choice.”

Stephen’s eyes dart from him to his hand to back at his. “Promise?”

“It’s, like... a specific bond of trust you can’t break. If I say I’m gonna keep you safe, it means I’ll never try to get you hurt. If I do, it means I broke your trust and my promise.” Tony gestures at his hand. “You’re supposed to take it and shake it.”

A scarred, shaking hand reaches for his own, stopping just less than an inch from it. Stephen stops, thinking, and Tony wishes nothing more than to ask for more memories from the guy to answer his billions of questions, but that would be weird. Stephen takes his hand his in own and Tony grips it tight -- a manly, business shake like his dad taught him to do -- then let’s go with a smile. Stephen gives him an awkward smile back as his rubs his hand. Maybe it was too tight.

“So... now what? You still have to find a way to keep him in your house,” Pepper says.

Tony scoffs. “Why not your house?”

“Um, because I can’t keep a boy in my house! My parents would freak! They barely let you come over for more than an hour because they’re scared you’ll break their T.V. again.”

“Hey, I didn’t break that T.V.. I enhanced it.”

Pepper throws her hands up. “It only showed channels in Japanese!

“And you can watch Tranzor episodes early. You’re welcome.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t keep arguing, which means he won. He’ll take any victory he can get.

Rhodey interjects, “I definitely can’t keep him in my house.”

“It’s fine,” Tony waves them off. “I have another idea.”

“Is it gonna be as badly thought out as this one was?”

Tony shrugs. “No. Maybe. Probably not.”

Both Rhodey and Pepper groan in unison. Stephen stands beside him, playing with the zipper on his new red and yellow jacket.

Tony tells Stephen to portal the three of them back to his room and for him to wait at his front door, knocking once he gets there. Rhodey seems a bit disoriented after going through the portal, still unused to the sensation, but Tony has thrown things and himself through Stephen's powers so often in the past few days that it feels as natural as walking.

Tony bolts down the stairs the instant he hears the first ring of the doorbell, knowing Jarvis must already be standing at the door to greet Stephen. The boy looks at him frozen in place, unsure of what he should say.

"Hello, how may I help you?" Jarvis asks in his usual fancy accent.

Tony runs up behind him, greeting his friend with a smile. "Yo, Stephen! Glad you could come. What's up?"

Stephen gives him a confused look, not answering and looking even more confused when Tony gives him a side hug and rests an arm on his shoulder. "Jarvs, this is Stephen. He's just moved here and I invited him over to stay for a few days."

"Stay?" Jarvis turns his attention to Stephen. "Are your parents alright with this?"

Tony interjects before Stephen can answer. "His parents are kinda... not great. They’re going through a divorce. It might be safer if he stays here on the downlow for a bit."

Jarvis raises an eyebrow, most likely not believing him, but he doesn't ask more questions. "Well, Stephen, you're welcome to stay here as long as you need to. It's been a while since Anthony has had a sleepover. Let me know if you need anything."

Stephen just nods, still unsure of everything that's happening.

"May I have your full name just in case your parents come looking for you?"

Stephen shakes his head and shrugs. Tony panics, trying to come up with a quick answer. "Um, Jarvs -- with the divorce, he might not know what his last name is going to end up being. Give him some time."

Jarvis looks at him with another expression of complete disbelief, but he’s sure that whatever suspicion he probably has is nowhere near to the weird truth.

“Alright. Tell me when you can.”

“Cool, thanks Jarvs! He can stay in my room!” Tony pulls Stephen inside and closes the door behind them. From on top of the stairs, he can see Pepper and Rhodey staring at the pair with their arms crossed, probably judging him for not thinking of such a simple solution first.

Experiments are all about trial and error. It’s fine. He just has to try his best to come up with experiments that don’t fuck up that quickly, and badly.

For Stephen’s sake.

---

Later that night, once Pepper and Rhodey leave after a movie essentials marathon, Stephen sits up on the mattress Jarvis set up for him beside Tony's bed. The boy had instantly curled up amongst the soft blankets and comforter. Jarvis had even offered him a pair of pajamas that Tony refused to wear, he preferred to sleep in his underwear and a t-shirt. Stephen accepted them with a quiet thank you, the only words he said up until now.

Tony sits up to look at him. "You okay?"

Stephen hides his face, even in the dark. "What's a full name?"

"It's, like... your first name along with the family name on your dad's side. Or your mom, but not really often. But you didn't have parents so..." Tony trails off, realizing how depressing it became the more he spoke. "You don't have a full name."

Stephen doesn't answer.

"My full name is Anthony Edward Stark. But no one calls me Anthony except my dad and Jarvis." Tony begins, trying to come up with something to lighten the mood. "Stark is my dad’s last name. Edward is my middle name. Um, I don't know why people have middle names... Most of the time I think it's a name your parents really liked but not enough to make it your first name. Can you imagine if I was called Edward? People would call me 'Ed' or 'Eddy'. No way!"

Stephen doesn't even offer him a pity smile. He probably doesn't even know people do that sometimes. People do weird things.

"You know, um, you don't have any parents that named you but you can always name yourself. People do that all the time when they don't like their first name. I'm pretty sure Pepper came up with her own nickname because she hates it compared to her real name. Virginia, by the way. Don't tell her I told you that." Tony tries to recall his thoughts, too many swimming in his head while he desperately tries to be serious for at least a minute. "You can have any name you want now."

Stephen eyes glance at him. "I like Stephen."

"Cool. Perfect. You got your first name on lockdown. And you don't need a middle name. Most people don't have middle names... probably. Anyway, now you just need a last name."

The other boy turns to face him and thinks for a while, occasionally looking around the room for an idea.

"Did anyone call you anything else other than Stephen back when you were... uh, underground?"

"S," Stephen responds, looking uncomfortable. "Freak. Agent. Experiment three."

Tony bristles. He should say something empathizing. Something to show that he understands, or at least wants to understand. What comes out is this: "Oh. That's... strange."

Stephen tugs on the sleeves of his red jacket. He hasn't taken it off since he got it. Tony wonders what it feels like to be like him. To be able to start from page one once more in a series of bad stories.

"Stephen Strange," The other boy says, repeating it as he gets used to the words.

Tony smiles. "I like it. It's weird but it fits you."

Stephen doesn't meet his eyes when he smiles back, but Tony knows he's smiling at him. It's the most he's seen him smile since they've meet, lips not curving so much as they crook up because of Stephen's weird face, a hint of teeth showing through his grin. He doesn't lie back down, even after Tony rests back on his mattress to go back to sleep. Tony closes his eyes before he ever finds out if Stephen gets any sleep as well, but the tilt of a smile never leaves his face.

Chapter Text

When Doctor A was first transferred to America, she expected nothing more than to end up in some second-rate headquarters near a disgusting, unkempt, loud city, surrounded by incompetent men who could barely do their job. Thankfully, the headquarters are at least clean and far from any city. A small consolation for the price of dealing with a daily migraine, and her yoga classes are doing fuck all.

The bunker and the nearby town, where she spends most of her free time, are located two and a half hours from New York City, an area she avoids at all costs. Not that the city doesn’t have its charm — it has a dazzling nightlife, cheap exotic food, and dozens of different subcultures that she loves to learn about — but it is everything the people in her current job expect her to avoid. If she has to be complacent in something miserable, the expectations placed upon her make sure she is miserable all the time , leaving her stuck to only visit the city during the day to meet with droll, regular people and eat the same shit she can find in any posh London home.

Hopefully that will change soon.

Today, she sits at a small, secluded table at a restaurant she knows her companion will like. A haughty and ornate French place. Overpriced not for the ingredients but simply so the people buying their food can feel self important. She sips her wine and checks her watch. He’s fifteen minutes late, just like their last meeting together. She has no doubt that the man will make the excuse of being “fashionably late”, or some other common saying American men like to say to feel important.

Next time she goes to the city for a confidential meeting, she’ll make sure the rendezvous is at a nightclub. Preferably one with a lot of glitter to make her investor feel self conscious.

Not that he isn’t already.

She orders a small salad when she finally sees Howard Stark saunter towards the table. The man stops the young waiter, ordering “the usual”, which already says all she needs to know.

“Sorry, my driver chose the most inane route he could think of but, hey, fashionably late and all, amirite?” he says, flashing her a smile as he digs through his pockets for what is most likely a cigarette.

She sighs and takes a sip of her wine. Good to see her degree in human behavior and psychology still works as well as ever. She hands Stark a cigarette she has tucked into her head-wrap, as well as one for herself.

“Thanks, Doc.” He lights them with an engraved, expensive looking zippo. Stark brand, actually. The doctor finds herself somewhat jealous, she usually just uses matches. “This better be good, A. I had to cancel my two o’clock and my three o’clock.”

“I can assure you this is more important than your appointments.” She takes a long drag of her cigarette and lets it sit for a while before exhaling. What would be the best way to explain the situation without throwing Howard into a hissing fit?

“We encountered a problem with the alphabet,” she leans back, waiting for his reaction.

Howard narrows his eyes. “What kinda problem?”

“The subjects started working together. I have no idea how, as I’ve been closely monitoring them for the past five years, but they managed to escape. And we have no idea where they are.” She waves a hand in a shrug and takes another sip of her wine, tea now long forgotten. Her eyes glance at the growing vein in Stark’s forehead.

“You mean to tell me... three supposedly braindead kids managed to escape one of the most well protected bunkers in this side of the country?” Howard enunciates his words with a jab of his thumb against the table. “I designed those security systems, coded them from scratch. They should be impenetrable.”

“Coding can’t stop teleportation?” she tries to add, half-joking. “We might have made them too powerful.”

“Yeah, wasn’t that the point? And isn’t your entire job to prevent them from, y’know, having any independent thoughts?” He lowers his voice. “Don’t they have methods to make sure they’re too fucked up to even think straight?”

Her face tightens, jaws clenching at the mere thought of what he’s implying. “Maybe before I was transferred and turned their child prostitution ring into an actual functional experiment. But not when I’m around. Dumb spies do not make good spies. Why did you think there’s only three left?”

Howard breaks eye-contact and clenches his fist, not enjoying being treated as an idiot. “Cause they’re the smartest ones.”

“No, because they were the only ones who were still functioning human beings.” She lights another cigarette for herself, not offering one to her companion. “Thanks to yours truly.”

“Look, I didn’t invest this much money just to have this all go to shit so quickly. If this gets out and traces back to me, I’m done. Dead. Finished. Is there any intel on their location?” Howard asks.

“No, but they have to be nearby. I don’t believe they’re even out of state considering they barely know what the outside world looks like. Even working together, the energy needed to go the distance needed to leave New York would render them all unconscious. They escaped to the forest and fled. We already informed the local police to be on the lookout for my ‘three missing adopted boys’. And to not ask any questions.”

“I suppose that’s a start. This is just shit. I thought they had trackers?”

“They broke them.”

Howard shakes his head and mumbles under his breath something she’s not interested in deciphering in the slightest.

“However,” she begins, hoping to leave on this note. “When scouting the forest, we believe one of them was separated from the trio. I suggest you stay alert.”

“Which one? Was it the fat one?” Howard takes a bite of his fish, suddenly remembering he ordered food.

“No. Here.” She takes out a file and slips it in Howard’s direction. He opens it while chewing, looking at the information and one of the only two pictures they have of subject S.

The second one is in her pocket.

“Oh yeah, the weird looking one with the hands.” He folds the file and tucks it inside his suit jacket. “I’ll keep an eye out. But I don’t leave the city for another three weeks. This ain’t the only project I’m funding. But it is the reason I moved to that... fucking shit town in the first place.”

She calls for the waiter and asks for a bag. Hopefully she can eat it on her way home, or give it to a homeless man and get some food with a bit of flavor instead. “Good to see you have backup plans in case this goes tits up.”

"Ever the optimist,” he smirks.

Doctor A presses her cigarette into the ashtray between them. “Don’t patronize me.”

Howard, thankfully, raises his hands a bit in an unspoken apology. “I can handle the bill, don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” she gives him her best fake smile and stands, taking her bag with her. “Oh, and Howard?”

“Yeah?”

“How’s your son, by the way?”

“Good. Great. Staying with Jarvis and his friends. He’ll be fine.”

The last sentence is telling, to say the least.

She leaves without another word, hoping desperately that Stephen hasn’t been harmed too much . Out of the three, he has always been so trusting. So stupidly trusting.

---

Stephen can't always count on his memories. Apart from the fact that they’ve been tampered with beyond repair, there are memories so horrible that Stephen tries to forget as best as he can. Unfortunately, Stephen remembers everything. In vivid detail. Every single experiment, moment of torture, odd touch he can't understand is ingrained to his brain forever. It makes a good spy , he was told. He is special among his brothers because of it. They had erased W's memories once. Part of them, anyway. Stephen wishes they had given him the same kind of mercy.

Ever since his escape from home — or the bunker , as he has learned it's really called — Stephen has had the best week of his entire life. He knows that if they catch him, the bad men will try to erase everything he's learned about the real world. But first they have to catch him, and Tony promised him they won't. He wants to hold on to these days forever even if it means keeping the bad ones.

In the past few days, Tony and his friends have taught him the most interesting things. The TV is not actually used for hypnosis, though Tony and Rhodey had a long argument debating that as Pepper showed him all her favorite shows. There are a lot of movies, it would take Stephen an entire lifetime to try to watch all of them. The four of them watched one called Back to the Future and it's like nothing Stephen had ever seen, or even imagined, before. Rhodey could not stop talking about how much he wants a flying car, though Tony keeps telling him how it isn't going to happen any time soon, even in the next millennium. Stephen is just content about the fact he can dream of a distant future that used to feel untouchable. Now? It feels real.

He also goes to school, despite the reassurance from his three new friends that it is not worth it. Stephen likes it a lot, though. They told the man in charge — the ‘principal’, he recalls — that Stephen is Tony's cousin from a place called Sweden. And that he is shy. Stephen doesn’t feel shy, he just doesn’t know how to form words when he is suddenly surrounded by so many kids his own age.

He does well during math classes, all of his training is far more advanced than the one they teach at Tony's current grade. History, however, is difficult, but since the teacher believes he is foreign she gives him a pass. Stephen spends the rest of the day pouring over Tony’s textbooks, trying to learn as much as he can.

Physical education is... difficult, to say the least. Compared to his brothers, Stephen has always been more fragile. The temptation to simply form a portal towards the top of the rope is so strong, but Stephen isn't stupid. He knows it would single him out as a ‘weirdo’, a word he is not unused to hearing, but he thinks he can escape it in the real world. Stephen has never noticed how far apart his eyes are, or how strange his face looks in comparison to everyone else. The scars on his hands also did not help, nor did the white part of his hair. Thankfully, Tony never asks about them, unlike everyone else.

“What happened? Did you get electrocuted?” One girl asks between classes. “Oh my gosh. Did you get stabbed? One of my cousins got stabbed once.”

Tony answers for him, “Car accident. Quit being so nosy, Claire.”

It is an okay lie. Stephen uses it as an answer now whenever it gets asked. They always want to know details, for some reason. Tony always tells them to leave him alone, thankfully. Tony continues to save him over and over again.

Today, however, is a Saturday. He learns quickly that it's Tony's favorite day of the week. It's the day he can do whatever he wants and forces himself to take a break. Most days, Tony gets home and spends most of him time working on an invention. He's been trying to add a mechanism on his belt buckle that can punch people ever since they saw The Goonies together. So far, it's only succeeded in harming Tony somehow.

But it's his ‘day off’, no talk about gadgets and more things Stephen doesn't understand. He's a quick learner, but not that quick. No, today they're going to the most incredible, fun, and exhilarating place in the world, according to Tony.

Tony is going to take him to an arcade.

He's played video games with his friends before. Mostly, he watches in delight as Tony beats Rhodey every time, while Pepper manages to beat Tony every time, resulting in an endless cycle. He does not understand why or how the three of them suddenly hate each other during games and go back to normal the instant they stop. The first time Stephen played, he won against Tony at a game of tennis on Tony's new NES, which resulted in Tony telling him to fuck off . Stephen misunderstood and figured he'd finally crossed a line and Tony didn't want him to stay at his house anymore. It took him awhile to calm him down after that. He didn't mean to break Tony's TV again . He didn't expect to become so... troubled.

Stephen makes sure to remind himself not to lose his temper inside the arcade.

“— And I bet I can beat you at Dig Dug. I'm really good at that one. I think you'll like it. Did I tell you they sell snacks in there?” Tony rests a hand on Stephen's shoulder while they walk down the street, guiding him in the right direction. It's a bit of a walk, if he recalls correctly. The arcade is supposed to be between this town and the next. Stephen doesn't mind.

“No. Do... they have... pizza?” Stephen asks. He's grown comfortable using longer sentences and more words recently. Especially around Tony.

“Yeah, it's pretty good. But I prefer the nachos. They also got crazy good hot dogs.”

Back when they met, or found each other, Stephen would have continued in silence, not even giving Tony the indication that he heard anything Tony just said. Now, Stephen smiles and nods back, a cheerful mood radiating from him. Tony doesn’t like being quiet for too long, especially when he’s just walking and not focused on anything in particular and can allow his mind to wander for too long. His mind goes to odd places when it wanders, but he knows that he can at least have a comfortable sort of silence when it's just him and Stephen. Tony tries to stay quiet for once.

It doesn't last long. At least it's in no fault but his own this time.

“Hey! Stark! You got a lot of nerve walking around here!” A voice yells behind them. Tony recognizes it immediately.

He sighs and turns around. “What can I do for you, Darryl?”

An older kid wearing a ripped, red t-shirt and cargo pants walks up in front of them, followed by his two friends, Slater Gomez and Pierce Williams. Tony warned him about them the first day he tried school. All of them are seventeen, skaters, and always smell like weed. Or at least that's what Tony told him it smelled like. Tony told him they jumped out of an anti-drugs cartoon and came to life, whatever that means. Darryl clenches his fists at the sight of Tony, a common reaction it seems. “My dad got laid off your fucking company last week.”

“It's not my company, man. My dad hasn't died yet.” Tony rolls his eyes. “If you have any complaints, tell it to his secretary.”

“Nah, not the complaint kinda guy. I prefer to take action.” He cracks his knuckles in front of Tony. He wishes he was less scared of getting beat up so he could laugh at the sheer cheesiness of it all.

Just then, Stephen stands between him and the taller, older kid, glaring at him without saying anything. He holds up his fist like he's about to fight.

“Woah!” Slater says, laughing. “Got a new boyfriend, Stark? Did Rhodes leave ya?”

Okay, now that gets him angry. Tony reaches to his back pocket for his wallet. “Guys, come on. If I pay you to leave can you just go back to being high-school rejects and leave us alone?”

“Dude, check out his hands. What the fuck?” Pierce points out, gesturing towards Stephen. “Gross.”

Stephen bristles at that, but keeps his ground. “Just take the money and go, please.”

The teenagers seem taken aback by Stephen’s stern, deeper voice. Deeper than most fourteen year olds, that is, and almost decide that they aren’t worth their time. Except Tony’s impulsive fucking mouth has to have the last word no matter what.

“Yeah, go home and deal with your daddy issues. It isn’t my fault your pops won’t be able to find another job in anything but flipping burgers.”

The two of them run away before they can see Darryl’s face turn into a snarl.

Stephen is fast. Faster than most kids should be. Tony can barely keep up with him as the other boy grabs his arm and leads him down the street, the sound of three teenagers running right behind him.

“Stephen, shit. Fuck. Hold on!” Tony pants out, already exhausted. He really doesn't exercise much.

Stephen doesn't answer, and starts turning into an alley, his free hand making a quick circles in front of them to make a portal as quickly as possible. Except the three older kids catch up to them, panting behind. Stephen is fast, but no matter how tall he is for his age he isn't faster than those three. He stops just as the portal begins making its sparks and lets go of Tony's arm.

Slater and Pierce grab Stephen by each arm. It's a feeling he's used to, yet one he's never been allowed to struggle against back when he was home . Take what you’re given, S. Now he can struggle and fight back, but he's stopped before he can even move at the sight of Tony being pushed to the floor, a swift kick aimed directly at his stomach. Tony softens the blow by curling himself into fetal position and doesn't fight back as Darryl kicks him over and over, saying words that sound degrading but Stephen doesn't understand them at all. There are a lot of words Stephen still doesn't understand.

“That's what you get you little fag,” Darryl enunciates each word with a kick. “Fuck you, bitch.”

This isn't like the Tony he's grown to know, curled up and scared, taking the pain as it comes. Stephen knows the feeling. He hates to see his friend have to go through the same.

He acts quickly, just like he was taught to.

Stephen digs his fingernails into Slater's arms. As the older kid winces in pain, Stephen has only seconds to look for the most painful memory he can find. It doesn't take very long for him to see the image of a pretty girl the teenager seems to miss a lot . Stephen mixes his own memories for good measure and has Slater on the ground, crying, in no time.

The sight of this, along with Stephen's nosebleed, catches Pierce off guard enough for Stephen to free himself, and runs towards the entrance of the alley.

“Stephen!” Tony yells out, voice cracking. Stephen doesn't have time to assure Tony he isn't leaving. He'll just have to trust him.

Running gives him just enough time and distance to start forming a portal beneath Pierce and Slater's feet, knowing exactly where he can send them.

They fall into his trap. Or rather, Pierce falls while Stephen pushes a sobbing Slater with his foot into the portal, watching them fall inside the nearest dumpster with a shocked look on their face. Stephen closes it before they can figure out what's going on. It won't trap them forever, but it should give him enough time to deal with Darryl, who's stopping kicking to stare at him, scared and holding a bruised and tired Tony beside him.

“Don't get any closer to me, you freak!” He says and he pulls out a switchblade. Stephen stops as the teenager presses it to the side of Tony's arm. “Stay away from me!”

Stephen has been hurt by far worse things than a blade. This threat means nothing to him.

Tony, however, looks terrified.

“Stephen?” he asks, but Darryl cuts him off.

“Shut the fuck up! Both of you! I'll cut you both!”

He sounds more hysterical the closer Stephen steps, pressing the blade against Tony's shoulder but causing no actual damage yet. Stephen tastes the familiar sensation of blood running from his nose to his lips. He must look feral. Darryl takes a step back. Perfect. He's too afraid to see the portal forming behind him.

Stephen runs as fast as he can and grabs Tony as the other boy reaches out to take his hand, effectively pushing Darryl back at the same time. He falls straight down into Tony's next door neighbor's pool. Stephen isn't strong enough to pull Tony back completely, leaving him holding the edge of the portal so he won't fall.

“Stephen, fuck. Fuck. Help! Help me!” Tony panics, looking at the distance between him and the water.

Stephen doesn't have a lot of time before his concentration falters and the portal closes. It could cut Tony's hand off. Or cut him in half. Stephen grabs both of Tony’s hands, ignoring the sharp pain in his own, and pulls him up with a struggle. Come on, S. Come on.

He pants out and Tony practically throws himself to the ground once he's out of the circle, a distant shriek from a woman now muffled as it closes. “I have you. You're safe now. Safe.”

They're words he's only heard once before. Spoken in a language Stephen didn't understand back then. They were the first words Karl had ever told him. His brother only spoke Romanian at the time, but the sentiment was universal. Stephen repeats the words in English, gingerly resting his hand on Tony's shoulder until the boy stops shaking. They barely notice Pierce and Slater get out from the dumpster down the alley, staring at them with wide eyes.

All Stephen has to do is turn his head to face them before they start running for their lives.

His wipes off his nose bleed with his own scarred hands and smiles at Tony. “An... Anthony?”

Tony doesn't warn him when he wraps his arms around him. It's a hug. He's still getting used to them, but they feel wonderful. Stephen awkwardly pats Tony’s back, secretly hoping Tony never lets go.

“Thanks. Thanks, man.”

Stephen nods even if Tony can’t see him, not knowing what to say.

Eventually, Tony pulls back and pulls up his shirt to see his bruises. He winces, “Holy shit. Ow.” He pulls it down again. “I shouldn't have said anything. I’m an idiot.”

It's not the worst bruising Stephen has seen in his experience. He's dealt with worse, but he assumes it's best not to mention that. “No. You're not.”

“I am. I always get us into trouble and you have to help me or show me how dumb I was being. What's the point in having inventions to help me stay safe if I get so scared I forget to use them?”

Tony grits his teeth, hands curling into fists. He hits the asphalt beneath him, creating more bruises. Stephen grabs his arm before he can do anything stupid. He doesn’t have to say the words calm down for Tony to catch the meaning. He does, breathing slowly through his nose, and raises his shirt again.

“This was worse than usual. Jarvis is going to freak ...” Usually, Tony would sound so ecstatic at the thought of his butler showing any sense of panic. Now, he just sounds worried and tired. “Pepper and Rhodey are gonna freak too. Damn it.”

“It's okay. You’re safe now,” Stephen repeats.

“Am I? ‘Cause I almost got stabbed by some shitty teenager because I can't shut up!”

“You are. You have me.”

Tony stops himself from arguing back and, ironically enough, shuts up. Stephen lets go of his arm.

“Yeah... I have you,” he trails off, breaking eye contact from Stephen.

They sit in silence in the middle of the alley. Tony lays back on the ground once more, trying to deal with the pain that aches throughout his entire body. “This sucks. I just wanted to go to the arcade.”

“Tomorrow,” Stephen tries to add helpfully.

“Yeah... Tomorrow. Or after school on Monday. I don't know,” Tony sighs.

Stephen pauses, “What... does ‘fag’ mean?”

It seems to catch Tony off guard. He clears his throat, “Uh, It's a bad word for a guy who likes other guys. Like like. Wants to kiss them and stuff.”

“Oh,” Stephen looks at his hands. “ Are you a... fag?”

“No,” Tony replies. He glances at Stephen for a moment. “I don't know.”

Stephen has never had to consider anything like this before, he never had the chance. Life in the upside is very complicated. He looks at Tony and then toys with the velcro on his shoes. “I don't know either.”

He looks up at the sky before standing up, leaning down to help Tony up. “Home?”

Tony grabs him by his wrist. He probably knows that grabbing him by his hand would cause him pain. Stephen appreciates the thought.

When he stands, he looks down at his hand on Stephen's wrist for a moment before pulling it away, back to his facade of confident relaxation, even if Stephen can see him hiding the ache in his body. Stephen rests his arm on Tony's shoulder to help him upright, using his other hand to make a portal against the alley wall that goes to Tony's house. Home.

“I'm sorry.”

“Why?”

“For getting us in trouble all the time,” Tony clears his throat. “Thanks a lot for this.”

“Of course,” Stephen says, and gestures at the now open portal. “Friends.”

Tony looks at him and smiles. The bruise on his cheek must make it hurt, but he does it anyway. “Yeah... Friends.”

Chapter Text

The outside world has been... interesting for Wong, to say the least.

The last time he saw it was only for a few minutes. It was during Karl and his first attempt at an escape about five years ago. The memories are fuzzy — they were forced to become fuzzy — but he remembers so many trees and the breath of fresh air. Once they both took a peek of the life they could live, even during training, it was hard to focus on everything else. It gave them a different perspective on their life, if he could even call it a ‘life’. Nothing was the same after that, him, Karl, Doctor A, and the workers who monitored inside the bunker knew their second attempt at an escape was an inevitability.

Everyone except Stephen, who was transferred to their bunker much later. Karl thinks he was inside the bunker the entire time, just closed off in a small, padded room so the two of them wouldn’t know he exists. He always thinks of the worst possible scenarios. Karl and him considered leaving him behind for a brief time as they thought of their plan, but Stephen was so weak and naive. Those men would have eaten him alive had it only been him left. Getting separated from Stephen was a horrible mistake that has not stopped eating him up during the past month. Karl is worried as well, but he mentions it so he won't worry too much. Wong just stares at his fries in silence.

Karl takes his fries and shakes them, pulling him back to reality. “You should eat.”

Wong huffs but does as told. “Sorry, I was... distracted.” He takes a few fries in his hand and eats them, looking at the toy he was given with his food. Stephen would have liked it.

If there’s anything good about the outside world, it’s that the food is very good. Though, he wishes Karl doesn’t insist on going to McDonald’s every time they manage to get a bit of money.

Karl opens his toy after finishing his burger, ripping the bag apart in a hurry to see what he got. He stares at it for a moment. Wong sees a spark form on the tip of his fingers, seeing a bit of the plastic begin to melt.

He takes his brother’s wrist in his hand, speaking quietly. “Don’t. Not here.”

Karl grinds his teeth, “I never get the one I want.”

“You can have mine.”

“I already have that one,” Karl says, but he takes it anyway. Wong doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be. He believes the animal is a horse, but he doesn’t think they’re supposed to be purple and pink. Karl seems to like them, at least, so he doesn’t comment on it.

Wong speaks up, carefully. Karl is already looking up at him as he begins. He has a serious face, apparently, and Karl knows him well enough that he can pinpoint the second Wong needs to say something important. It was Stephen who learned the term ‘brothers’ first, and they've been calling themselves that ever since.

“I'm worried about him.”

Karl’s face falls and he puts down the nugget he was about to eat. “I don't think he's dead.”

“How do you know?”

“It is a gut feeling,” Karl says. They just learned the term yesterday from a group of kids when they were searching for money. “He's not that stupid.”

“I never said he was stupid, I said he was naive. Different things.”

“You have no faith in him,” Karl shakes his head. “Doctor A thought he was just as strong as us. She told me.”

Wong furrows his brows. “She did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

This is going nowhere. Wong goes to ask the woman at the counter to refill their bottles of water. She slips them a pack of a dozen nuggets for no extra charge. She asks no questions about why they are alone, a question they get often, especially Karl. Simply existing in the open has gotten them in trouble more than once, making it difficult to be careful and trust anyone. He takes kindness where he can get it.

He thanks her with a slight bow and returns to Karl, seeing him gripping his toy as he thinks.

“I do not think he is dead, they would not kill him but... what if they caught him?”

Wong almost gets sick at the thought. “Doctor A would not let anyone harm him. She wouldn't.”

“I know,” Karl glances up at him, a worried look on his face. It's not a look he wears often. “But she can't keep them looking the other way all by herself.”

Wong hates it when his brother is right. It's more often than he'd like to admit.

“We need to find him, Wong. We need to,” Karl pleads. There is no way he can say no.

They leave, shoving the leftover food, water, and toys inside Karl's backpack. They took it from a random man who wasn't looking at his things. Wong made sure to throw away everything that was inside nearby, it would encourage the man not to call the police and maybe have some sympathy. They thankfully avoided the police, even if Karl got a couple of odd looks for carrying around such a nice backpack. So many people assumed he stole it automatically. Wong wanted some credit too.

“Hey! You two!”

Both of them turn to face the man yelling for their attention. He is pale, wearing boring clothes, and has very ugly facial hair. He is also the only man standing outside the already fairly empty parking lot. Wong gets a bad feeling instantly.

He walks up to them, a bit of a smile on his face. “What are your names?”

Karl frowns. “Why do you ask?”

“I'm having a party at my house later with some other kids in the block. You two look new around here. Wanna come?”

Bad feeling. Bad memories. Wong clenches his fist. “No, thank you.”

“You sure? There's gonna be a lot to do.” He gets a bit closer. Not close enough to get into their personal space, but it's enough to feel predatory. Wong knows that if Karl was raised in the outside world he would have said yes. He is just as naive as Stephen at times. But they are not stupid, they are just kids who want some fresh air and freedom.

This man can probably smell that desperation and nervousness oozing out of them. He probably likes it.

“Like what?” asks Karl, still cautious.

“I got booze, cigarettes if you wanna try those out,” He lowers his voice a bit. “And I got some weed. I'll let you try some for a price.”

“We're not interested,” Wong tries to stop this before it escalates.

“Come on. It'll be fun. You won't even have to pay with money.”

It escalates.

It takes very little energy for Wong to push back the man with enough force to dent the car behind him. He hopes it's his, but he really doesn't care. Wong doesn’t stop Karl when he sees him stare at the man, nose already bleeding as he screams in pain. Wong knows from experience that the man's screams are not from him hitting the car.

If it didn't attract attention, he would have allowed Karl to keep going until the man was burned into a crisp, but the two of them are already in their stolen bikes as the people inside the McDonald's run to see what had happened. They pedal as fast as they can into the nearest alley, blocks away.

Karl breathes fast, hands on his knees as he catches his breath. Wong takes Karl's face by his chin and wipes away the blood underneath his nose.

“I'm sorry. I got... carried away.”

Wong stares down at Karl for a moment. “No. You did the right thing, he deserved it.”

Karl smirks. He stands upright again, finally catching his breath, stretching his arms and legs. “Where do we go now?”

Wong sighs, considering their options. “When we escaped, none of us had the energy to go farther than the town near the forest. If Stephen escaped in the other direction, he might still be in the town. I do not see him travelling far.”

“Or he's in the bunker,” Karl adds.

“Yes,” Wong pauses. “We need to find him.”

“Okay. Yes, okay. But we need more food and money.”

Wong brushes that off. They can simply portal inside a supermarket after it closes again. Karl always feels bad for stealing but has not once complained after trying all the snacks and cereals they've discovered since then. Wong reminds himself to steal a bowl and spoons next time so they can try it with milk.

“We should stay here for the night,” says Wong. They have found places where kids and adults alike without homes sleep. Sometimes they have been able to get information from the people or trade with them. Wong has seen Karl give them spare food when they steal too much. One of them has given Wong a couple of books to read at night by their lantern. He curses the people that kept them for so long for never allowing him to read books before.

Wong cannot afford to get angry at his past life right now. He can do that once they are completely safe. Once they have Stephen. “Tomorrow we make our way back. No portals, we have to conserve energy in case anything happens. Okay?”

Karl looks at him with all the trust in the world. Wong feels a stab in his chest he cannot understand completely. He looks away. He is filled with the indescribable urge to protect the other boy with every single atom that makes up his body. They will never be hurt again.

As they make their way through the city, Wong only hopes that Doctor A finds Stephen before the bad men do.

---

“Stephen, can I ask you a question?”

That's how it begins. A whisper in the dark in the middle of the night. Stephen nods, then remembers Tony can't see him.

“Yes,” he answers. There are so many questions Tony can ask him and each one he thinks of makes him more and more terrified.

“What happened to your hands?” He pauses, waiting for a response that Stephen does not give him. “You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I just... I really want to know. But again, you don't have to tell me if it's really personal.”

Stephen sits up on his bed that’s pressed up against Tony's. He doesn't understand why they can’t just share a mattress. Tony's bed is big enough to fit both of them and maybe someone else. He really wants to know what Tony’s bed feels like.

When he sits up, he can make out the silhouette of Tony doing the same. Tony reaches for the lamp on his bedside table and turns it on. It doesn't illuminate the room a lot, but it's just enough for them to see each other. It makes Stephen feel like they're the only people in the world.

“I...” Stephen begins, trailing off shortly after. He wants to say it. He wants to share it with someone else so badly. Even back in the bunker, he was constantly ridiculed for his hands. It was their fault, too. They were making fun of something they caused. It hurt. Stephen wants to share this hurt with Tony, but he can’t find the words.

“It's okay. You don't have to—”

“I want... to,” Stephen replies. “My hands were an... experiment.”

Tony tries to think of something useful to say. “You went through a lot of experiments, right?”

He extends his hands for Tony to see, resting them in the space between them. “Yes. This was one of the first.”

“What was it for?”

“The things I can do they... come from a metal inside my hands and my arms. They had to put it inside us. And take out... bones. They used me for the first time they ever did it,” Stephen sniffs. “They didn't do a good job with me.”

“They don’t look that bad.”

Stephen grits his teeth. “They are awful. Ugly. Freak.” He spits. He can’t cry, he doesn’t have the strength to do so right now, so he settles for anger instead. It radiates off him in waves, and Stephen can’t help but remember every single thing that made him angry, like a domino effect. He thinks of the bad men, the dogs, the distance between him and the only other people who care about his existence. He thinks of every unwanted touch and uncomfortable, painful thing he’s had to do for so long. All of his brothers have scars. Karl has them on his face, Wong has them on his back — they’re parts of them that they can’t see unless they look in a mirror. Stephen looks at his hands every single day. It’s a memory he can never escape and can never fix. It makes him furious.

Tony reaches for his hand carefully, as to not startle him. Stephen allows the touch and doesn’t move, watching intently to see what Tony will do. Will he try to poke around to feel for the metal? Will he check the depth of his scars? Stephen doesn’t really care, he’s prepared for anything.

Tony rests a finger over one of his own and traces his scar, fingers trembling as much as his own. He meets Stephen’s eyes for a moment before he rests his hand over Stephen’s completely and keeps it there. Unmoving, if not a bit sweaty. Tony doesn’t meet his eyes. Stephen doesn’t know where he should be looking at all.

He wasn’t prepared for that.

From his time in the bunker, Stephen learned a lot of complicated words. Words that most normal kids his age wouldn’t know. Sisyphean. Deception. Metacarpal. Exploitative. Reprehensible. He knows how he can kill a man in ten different ways. He knows the locations of the worst places to strand a human being through a portal. The middle of the Atlantic ocean. The Atacama desert. The top of the Himalayas. These are all concepts he knows intimately, but he doesn’t understand intimacy. The only sort of intimacy he was given before was confusing and painful. This is... the total opposite.

Stephen turns his palm around. He senses so much fear in Tony’s mind. Panic, even. Stephen would be lying if he said he didn’t know why. He feels like his heart is going to bust out of his chest. He’s usually only ever felt that from pure fear and horror. This is a different sort of fear, the one that can lead to good things. Stephen lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in. Tony does the same. He isn’t used to this.

“I-I... I think they look cool.”

Stephen keeps his eyes trained on their hands. “They’re ugly. Like me.”

“You’re not ugly at all. Anyone who calls you ugly is, like, blind,” Tony replies. He purses his lips right after he blurts out his words. Stephen is stunned into silence.

Tony speaks up, nervous about any long bout of silence. “H-Hold on,” he says, getting off the bed and looking through his drawers, muttering to himself as he does so. Stephen can't hold back a soft smile. Tony hates silence so much he talks to himself and his gadgets to fill the room.

He comes back holding something in his hand, settling back into the bed. He hands the thing to Stephen like he's offering a gift. Stephen will never get used to just being... given things. He takes them, slowly. His fingers brush against Tony's when he does so. He doesn't understand why it feels so odd.

Stephen looks at the gift curiously. They are what looks like a pair of clothes for someone's hands. They're black and look like they could be warm. He tries them on. They're a bit tight, if he's honest. Tony's hands are smaller than his own.

Tony noticed his initial discomfort and grabs a pair of scissors from his nightstand drawer. “Okay, I can fix this.”

He pulls them from Stephen's hands and cuts out the tip of the fingers, so only half of them would be uncovered. “Here, try it now. They’re called gloves.”

Stephen does. They are much more comfortable. The gloves cover most of his scars, the nastiest ones are on the back of his hand and now he doesn't have to see them. Stephen sniffs, he has no idea what to say.

He told himself earlier he wasn't going to cry; now he has no idea what to do with the tears he didn’t know he had.

Tony looks even more anxious because of it. Stephen can't help but feel guilty for ruining the moment.

“H-Hey! It's okay. It's okay. Did I do something wrong?” Tony asks, moving closer.

Stephen rests his head on Tony's shoulder in front of him. He had to teach himself to cry quietly back in the bunker, and doesn't know how to not hold back his sobbing. For once, Tony says nothing, only running a hand up and down his back reassuringly. Like he isn't going anywhere. Stephen is terrified of the idea of him ruining all of this, that he's become too annoying and wasn't worth saving.

Stephen has to cover his mouth with his hands, probably covering his new gift with tears and snot and spit. Tony offers him some water. He hands him some napkins to blow his nose. Tony doesn't let go of him.

“Glad I didn't give you that in front of Pepper and Rhodes. I don't know how they would've reacted to you like this,” says Tony after Stephen finally manages to calm down. His breathing still feels erratic and his heart won't stop beating so quickly, but the feeling of Tony's hand on his back is so soothing. He hadn't noticed they were lying in bed again, somehow making their way onto Tony's mattress. Stephen doesn't move away.

Stephen gives Tony a weak smile. “That would have been awkward.”

“Yeah...” Tony has his hand resting in the middle of the space between them. Stephen wants to take it so badly, but he doesn't feel it's right. He rests his hand right next to it, not touching but not too far from it either. Maybe he can move it closer without him noticing.

“Tony?” he says, trying to focus on what he meant to say earlier.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.” Stephen feels his eyes closing on their own. He's so tired. “I like the gift a lot.”

“Oh. I'm, glad you liked it. I thought you would.” Tony clenches and unclenches his fist but does not move it from where it lays. “Good night, buddy.”

Stephen closes his eyes, waiting until Tony is asleep. A few minutes pass and he peeks open one eye to peek, only to find Tony is doing the same.

They both close their eyes quickly, embarrassed.

Stephen has his eyes closed this time when he feels Tony hand move. Only a little. It’s barely noticeable if he wasn't paying attention. Except he is, it's all he can think about. He wonders if Tony feels the same way right now. Tony always has forty different things inside his mind at once; he wonders if someone like Stephen could catch his attention completely. Stephen already knows he's been captured.

Stephen moves his hand a bit in return, just a subtle as Tony did.

Tony responds only a moment later, same amount of movement, like a sort of game. Who can get closer first. Who makes the first move.

Stephen plays along, eyes still closed as he reaches out with one trembling finger reaching in the darkness for a simple touch. He finds Tony’s hand, index finger brushing against a bit of skin.

Tony retaliates, going to extra mile because he's naturally competitive. Stephen feels the other boy take his hand, squeezing gently, but not enough for it to hurt.

Stephen accepts his defeat and squeezes back. The game ends. Neither of them let go for the rest of the night.

Chapter Text

The last boy she has to interrogate doesn't seem like a complete idiot, at least.

Darryl Montero. Seventeen years old. Male, mixed race. His clothes and background point to the middle class. Average grades and an apparent interest in studying engineering. He has a stay at home mother and his father was recently fired from a nearby Stark Industries Center for stealing lab equipment from the company and selling it for extra cash. According to the other two boys she talked to, Mr. Montero's ‘sudden’ unemployment was the root of his problems that caused the whole fight in the first place. 

She'd managed to keep the fact that Stark's son was involved in the argument. Hopefully, Haggard will continue his habit of sending her as his mouthpiece to communicate with the man like some sort of secretary, but he can't be completely offended when she knows it stems from Haggard's fragile ego. She's also already marked off the involved names on the police report as confidential. The local department was told to turn a blind eye and forget it ever happened. If they knew what was good for them, they would do as told. This wasn't her first ‘rodeo’, as they said in America.

She closes the file and sighs, looking at the boy through the one-way mirror. He obviously knows they're there, according to his file this isn't the first time he's been in the town jail. He remains quiet, looking down at his hands as he waits for his eventual talk with whatever officer they sent him. She smiles to herself and hands the censored file for Haggard to eventually not read.

To his credit, he at least has the decency to skim through it before closing it and saying: “Alright, what did this one do?”

She stabs her cigarette into an ashtray before talking. “Montero was the one to hold the other boy ‘hostage’, so to speak, as subject S detained his two companions. He was the leader of the group and the one who managed to see them best. He was found in a private pool about 2 miles from the alley where the fight happened. He claims he has no recollection of how he got there. All the boys told the police they ‘passed out’, apparently.”

“Have the other two said anything different?”

“Williams was lying through his teeth and I wasn't able to get much out of him so I didn't bother. He's in total denial. However, Slater's memories were genuinely affected. He said all he could remember after going into the alley was seeing many ‘clones’ of his ex-girlfriend all ending their relationship at once, then running for his life.”

“Did any of them mention dimensional wormhole manipulation?” Haggard asks.

“None of them are going to fucking use the words ‘dimensional wormhole manipulation’, Jeffrey. They're seventeen, only one of them mentioned and used the word portals ,” Doctor A says, still staring at the boy.

“That one?”

“Yep.”

“And what about the other boy Subject S was with? Any word on his identity.”

She continues to stare at the boy, face calm. “No, they refuse to mention his name.”

Haggard scoffs, “Don't worry, we'll get them to talk.”

“The other two have already been wiped and sent home. I am not resorting to violence or torture for a simple civilian interrogation.”

“It would make this real fuckin’ faster if you ask me,” he says.

Doctor A turns to face him, taking off her sunglasses and calmly setting it on the stool beside her, “That impatient attitude is exactly why we lost the subject in the first place.”

“Listen, Doctor . I know you like to think you're smarter than us, but I’ve been running this experiment since before those three were born. You were only brought here for oversight, we didn't need you. Everything was running smoothly until you showed up and they became too smart and independent for their own good,” he presses a finger against her chest as he speaks, directly in her personal space. Doctor A makes sure she doesn't look affected in the slightest and makes sure to suppress all her rage inside her chest. She'll drown it in wine and a movie later. For now, she sneers at him, growing closer in return.

“Because of your insistence in breeding and raising the subjects with unexplained experimentation, violations, and hate, you lost twenty-three that didn't survive past the age of five. None of them would still be alive had I not come in. The fact that they didn't try to escape sooner baffles me,” She gets close enough that he has to step back. The only time she can tolerate Haggard is when he's quiet and squirming, and not in the fun way.

“They hate you. They hate you and do not respect you in the slightest. You made them perfect and stronger than anyone else. They know that. How often do they fantasize of killing you, do you think?” She continues, a slight smile forming at the corner of her lips, but her eyes remain calm. “How does it feel to create something that hates you?”

Haggard grits his teeth, avoiding eye contact. “What fuckin’ side are you on, A?”

“I was sent here to stabilize and understand these boys.” She hands him her pack of cigarettes and a lighter, knowing he'll need it. “I can't do my job if they're missing.”

She stops at the end of the door, not looking behind her when she speaks, “What I said about their hatred for you wasn't for dramatics. If we succeed in bringing them back, do not expect them to act the same. If I were you, I would start worrying about consequences.”

Haggard huffs, cheeks flushed with both anger and embarrassment. Doctor A steps aside to allow him to talk out the door and out the hallway of the local jail, not even looking at her to say goodbye. 

She smiles to herself. She didn’t expect it to be this easy to egg him on enough to have him leave for the final interrogation, which he wanted to watch personally. Thankfully he fell for it, allowing her to speak to Montero in peace, and without worry. 

It wasn’t like she had to lie to get him to leave, either.

Doctor A steps through the next door, looking at the teenage boy with a smile on her face, “Hello, Darryl. Why don’t we have a chat?”

The boy frowns, “I already talked to the cops.”

“Yes. Luckily I am not a cop.” She shows him her badge and it manages to shut him up, if not make him more nervous. She doesn’t mind doing this, it’s not like he’ll remember ever seeing her face in an hour or two. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. At least, no more trouble than you would usually be in.”

The boy leans back into his seat, “What do you want?” He asks, absolutely no trust in his voice. 

Doctor A sits in front of the boy, threading her fingers together as she looks at him intently. “I want you to tell me everything you saw.”

---

A week passed until Tony recovered from his injuries. Jarvis drove both Stephen and him to the doctor to make sure all the damage was external. It was, thankfully, and Tony even got to stay at home for three days while he got better. It was great. Jarvis made all his favorite meals, like fried chicken and ice cream Sundays, and ordered pizza. Being able to look at Stephen’s face as he took his first ever bite of pizza was priceless, and he laughed so hard at Stephen not being sure if the crust was edible or not that the bruises on his abdomen hurt like hell.

Rhodey and Pepper visited every day after school. At first they were worried that Tony had gotten a concussion or something, but then they just ended up getting mad that Tony didn't invite them to go to the arcade. In Tony's defense, he wanted to spend some alone time with Stephen. Just the two of them, plus he would get to teach Stephen how to play all his favorite arcade games properly, without Pepper's insistence that she was the best player between the three of them. She was, with a few games, but Tony would never admit that out loud.

He feels great today. The sun was shining, so they didn't have to wear as many layers to play outside. It wasn't like Stephen would ever take out his jacket outside, thought. Tony wonders if he would like a few patches or an even cooler jacket as a Christmas present. He hopes he can show him what snow looks like soon, he bets the guy has never even seen a snowflake before.

He wants to show Stephen a lot of things.

“Hey, Tony! Throw the fucking balls already!” Rhodey yells out.

Tony is taken out of his trance and shakes his head. Right, the experiment.

Beside him, Stephen conjures two portals that are on top of each other, facing one another. He manages to keep them steady without bleeding from his nose. Up until now, Tony had no idea that Stephen could create two at a time, he can't imagine it's easy for him.

But it's all in the name of science.

Tony throws the three plastic balls into the bottom portal and watches the ball go faster and faster as they start falling into the exact same place. He jumps over and over where he stands. He's never seen anything more awesome in his life.

“Okay, ready?!” Yells out Rhodey, who looks equally as excited. “Three. Two. One. Shoot!”

In a split second, Stephen manages to move the portal inside the pool. The four of them watch as the three plastic balls shoot up from inside the water, breaking the thin layer of ice that's formed from the cold, and rise up about twenty-feet before falling back down. Pepper claps, impressed, while both Rhodey and Tony vibrate with excitement. Stephen smiles confidently, a look he's been wearing more and more these days. 

“Again! Let's try it again! See if you can make it go up the chimney!” Rhodey asks.

“Dude, yeah!” 

Pepper watches their boy’s club while she sits on one of Tony's lawn chairs, laughing whenever either of them get excited. Stephen shares their excitement, Tony figures he's probably seen and done a lot of tests just like these, but he seems to enjoy it nonetheless. 

The experiments continue for a while, throwing balls and some old toys through different portals as Stephen practices how quickly he can form them, making the objects jump around as if he's juggling them. He manages to do the same for Rhodey and Tony for a bit, until they hear the noise of the gate opening that means Jarvis came back from doing some errands. Stephen said his head was starting to hurt as well, so the powers stop soon thereafter and they decide to just huddle around in the lawn chairs, enjoying the fact that they can still stay outside for a couple of more weeks before the New York snow starts falling and it gets too cold to hang out in Tony's backyard. 

Tony asks Jarvis for cups of hot chocolate for everyone. When the butler comes back with their trays, Stephen actually asks for more marshmallows. Tony noticed that the guy really likes sweets out of all the food he's tried so far. 

“So, Stephen, Tony told me that you made one of the guys cry just by touching them,” Pepper says, already finished with her hot chocolate. 

Rhodey rolls his eyes, “Ugh, man. If I gotta hear that story one more time...Tony already told it, like, fifty times!”

Pepper frowns at him, “I wanna hear Stephen say it.” She turns back to Stephen. “So? What did you do? Did you make a portal inside his guts? Do you have secret arm breaking powers?”

“That's morbid as fuck, Peps,” says Tony.

“I'm just curious! If you can make a guy cry just by touching him then I want to hear more. And maybe learn too,” Pepper shrugs, a bit of a wicked smile on her face that Tony used to really like. These days, he hasn't really thought about it much. He ignores that thought and takes a sip of his drink.

“Well...” Stephen begins. “I can make portals, but all my brothers can do that. We all have, um... our own talents.” He looks oddly embarrassed for some reason. Maybe it's the fact that he has to talk to Pepper. Or maybe it's because he isn't used to talking this much at all. Tony watches him intently.

“I can look at people's... memories. Their mind, but only if I touch them. It helps to get information from bad men, it was what I was trained for.” Stephen looks at his drink. “I can change them. Make them worse and scary. I found a bad memory when he grabbed me and I changed it, and I gave him some of mine.”

The three of them stare at Stephen in shock. Tony starts to realize that they've all been touched by Stephen somehow, and he figures that all of them are wondering what he has seen. What kind of secret does he know? Tony starts to feel the blood rush to his face. Oh no, what if Stephen knows... everything?

Pepper looks for a good question to ask. She glances at Rhodey, who only shrugs at her in confusion, then back at Stephen. “Uh... What kind of memories did you see? Or give him?”

Stephen fiddles with his fingers, still wearing the gloves that Tony gave him even if it isn't that cold outside. “Hm. I found one that felt really sad of a girl screaming at him. It was his girlfriend but... not anymore. I felt sad too, but it was okay.” He pauses before answering her second questions. “I gave him... very bad memories.”

Tony looks at Pepper and hopes she has the decency not to ask him to elaborate. Thankfully, she does, and leans back in her chair without saying anything else.

“When we were in the bunker and I passed out, I saw some stuff. Some bad stuff. Was it... was it that?” Tony asks carefully. He doesn’t want to tell Rhodey and Pepper exactly what it was that he saw, but he can't get the image of needles stabbing into his skin and the odd feeling of restraints on his wrists and ankles out of his mind. It was almost as he'd been there instead of Stephen. 

Stephen hasn't looked up, still toying with his fingers. “Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't know how to... say what I wanted.”

Tony gives him a comforting pat on his shoulder. “Hey, you're getting way better.”

Rhodey doesn't look any bit calmer. “Have you ever, uh, looked into our memories or somethin’?”

Stephen shakes his head, “no. Not yours. Or Pepper's. I promise.”

Pepper narrows her eyes and asks the question Tony was just about to ask: “What about Tony?”

The flush pink that covers Stephen's nose and cheeks from the cold turns into a light red. Pepper snorts at the sight. “Um. In the beginning, yes. I was curious.”

Tony feels his heart beat faster. “What did you see?”

“Your mom when you were young. It was a nice memory. She kisses your forehead. And, um, I saw a different house. I also saw a dream.”

Now Tony's heart feels like it’s going to jump out of his chest. He laughs it off thought, looking at his friends with a practiced calm smile. “Hope it wasn't an embarrassing dream or anything, right guys?”

Stephen smiles back, “you were in space. You dreamt you were an... ohwhatstheword — astronaut. You were happy.”

That wasn't the sort of dream Tony expected Stephen to see. His heart calms down at a bit, at least, and he leans back in his chair as he tries to recall the specific dream he's talking about. “Oh... Yeah. I get that dream sometimes.”

“I thought you wanted to be an engineer?” asks Rhodey.

“I do, duh. And I'm gonna be one. Dad already promised me I'm going to MIT. But... I always wanted to go to space too.”

Pepper sighs, “You can be an engineer for NASA.”

“Yeah! And then you can build my spacesuit when we go to space together, man!” Rhodey says in support, reading over to high-five Tony. Tony does, smiling along with his best friend. 

“Maybe... I don't know. Maybe I can expand Stark Industries to work with space stuff too. Not just weapons,” Tony says wistfully. It's not the first time he's thought about this, but Pepper and Rhodey don't need to know that. It's not like any of it is gonna happen, anyway.

Stephen just stares at them with a face that tells them he didn't exactly understand anything the three of them just said, but he doesn't ask anyone to elaborate. He just waits to be spoken to.

“Hey, Stephen, what am I thinking about right now?” Rhodey asks, laughing a bit. Stephen stands up and walks beside Rhodey, not warning him when he presses a finger to his cheek, like he's poking him.

“You're thinking about a girl. Her name is Carol—”

Rhodey almost falls from his chair. “W-Wait! Hold on, man!”

“You like her. You're thinking about how she looks in P.E and--”

Rhodey manages to smack his hand away before Stephen continues, laughing nervously. “I... I shouldn't have asked that.”

Pepper, however, looks like he just struck gold. “Oh my god! I knew you liked Danvers! Holy shit!”

“Shut up! I was just thinking about her ‘cause she owes me five bucks!”

“Rhodey and Carol sittin’ on a tree—”

The two of them continue to bicker back and forth. Stephen, probably feeling left out from the conversation, goes back to sit next to Tony. 

“So... You got any other powers I should worry about?” Tony asks, trying ignore the conversation beside them.

This makes Stephen smile a bit, at least. “No. Just those two, but my brothers have different powers.”

Tony moves a bit closer to Stephen, “tell me about them.”

“Um. They are both my age but they are stronger than me. Wong is from China, I think. Or his parents were... He can push people away, or make a forcefield around himself and other people so nothing happens to them. They wanted to give that to soldiers but all of them died when they tried it too,” Stephen says slowly, trying to recant his memories correctly. The last part makes Tony shiver. He bets Stephen has a lot of memories like that 

“Karl was taken from... I don't know, actually.” He pauses, no doubt trying to remember the world globe he saw the last time he went with Tony to school. “Ro... Romania. He’s very strong. He can look at people to make them hot. Very hot. Burning from the inside. The bad men use him for interrogations.”

Tony grimaces at the thought. If Stephen and his brothers weren't escaped kids they could be the most terrifying supervillains ever. He thinks for a moment, “Wait, so can Karl have the ability to affect the movements of particles in his line of sight? And Wong can change electromagnetic fields in a specific space?”

Stephen blinks, clearly confused. “Doctor A just called it magic. They never actually told us how it worked.”

Tony laughs, “uh, there’s no such thing as magic.” 

Stephen deflates a bit at the comment, but Rhodey interrupts. It looks like his discussion with Pepper had ended and they were listening in on their conversation. “Dude can make portals with his mind. I don’t think magic is that far of a stretch.”

Tony shakes his head, “No! We're supposed to teach him about reality, Rhodes. We can’t him magic is real. All his powers have scientific explanations.”

Pepper raises an eyebrow, “Alright then, Einstein. Explain it.”

Tony opens his mouth to say something but closes it immediately. “I... I'd have to do more research.”

Both Pepper and Rhodey laugh at him, a sight that Tony is completely used to. He pouts and sinks back into his seat, trying to figure out a way he could explain his theory on how Stephen's powers work to his friends, but that would require a knowledge math way more advanced than the pre-calculus he's taking with the seniors.

“Hey, Stephen... I’ve been meanin’ to ask. Who's that Doctor A person you mention sometimes?” Asks Rhodey. 

Tony turns to look at Stephen, watching his face light up. He's been meaning to ask him that question for a while, but it seemed so intrusive, and he already asked about Stephen's hands and his brothers, it seemed like too many questions in a short amount of time. Stephen, however, looked delighted to talk about this doctor.

He smiles, looking down at his hands again. “Doctor A came to the bunker after something very bad happened with the experiment we're from. She was the only one to talk to us, and she let me talk with my brothers for the first time... it was all in secret, too. She likes us.” Stephen looks back at the rest of them, at his friends, and smiles brighter than Tony has seen in a while. “She helped us escape and she promised she’s going to take us somewhere safe.”

“Why didn't she take you, then?” Tony asks, slightly irritated.  

Stephen shrugs, “Things got complicated. But I know she'll find me and my brothers soon.”

Tony frowns, not understanding why Stephen would want to leave still. He's happy here, he gets to hang out and do cool stuff with Tony all day, every day of the week. 

“Is she, like, your mom?” Asks Pepper.

Stephen shakes his head, pauses, then nods ever so slightly. “I... I think so.”

“Ugh, but she isn't even related to you! She works with the government! What if she's bad?!”

All of them stare at Tony after his outburst. “I guess? I don't know, man. Stephen just said she's the only nice one,” says Rhodey.

Tony scoffs, “How would he know that? He probably went through so much shit that any person that didn't try to kill him was, like, an angel!”

Stephen flinches at the sight of Tony yelling at his direction, then frowns. “She's a good person. She's gonna find me and keep me safe.”

“You don't feel safe here?”

Stephen does not give him an answer.

“Tony, calm down. Stephen, I’m sure she'll find you soon,” Pepper says as she tries to ease the tension.

“But what if she doesn’t? What will you do?”

Stephen stares at him, as if the possibility never even crossed his mind. His face turns from anger to total worry as he breaks eye contact entirely. The white part of his hair falls to his face, it's grown quite a bit since he arrived. Stephen pulls his knees up to his chest and shakes his head, “I don't know... I don't know. I don't exist, where could I go?”

Tony desperately wants to say that Stephen could stay with him forever, but he promised himself to be realistic. He knows it could never happen.

The four of them fall silent, trying to figure out what to say as Stephen starts shaking in his seat, a strange sort of heat radiating off him. 

“What if they left without me?”

Tony feels like a dick for making Stephen this stressed out, but he can't stop himself from having the last word no matter what. “Maybe they did.”

Stephen slams his hands against his hair, eyes red-rimmed like he's about to cry. He grits his teeth and disappears into the chair without a word, without a warning. Tony falls off his chair and peeks through the portal before it closes. He sees a random part of the woods and distant footsteps, watching it disappear with the half of the chair.

Rhodey throws his hands up in the air, “Damn it, Tones. I gotta be home in an hour! Why the hell would you tell him something like that!?”

Pepper pushes Tony by his shoulder, “He could be anywhere! You scared him, idiot!”

Tony glares at her, “I was worried for him, okay?! What was I supposed to tell him? That his evil doctor mom is gonna save him and they'll live happily ever after?!”

“You don't know that! We don’t know anything about him! Neither do you!” Rhodey yells.

“Fuck!” Tony kicks at the ground beside him. “We gotta find him, guys. Please, I'm sorry! I fucked up! But we have to find him.”

Pepper and Rhodey are already running to get their bikes, set beside Tony's house like always. “Duh! Come on!” 

As if on queue, Jarvis appears from the house with a tray of sandwiches. “Kids, I think it's time to go inside.”

“No can do, Jarvs! Stephen just ran away! Thought about his abusive parents or something! Gotta find him!” Tony waves back at him as they go through the already open gate. “Bye!”

Pepper shoves him slightly from her bike and starts pedaling faster than him. “Great lie, genius. Totally not suspicious.”

Rhodey frowns beside Tony, “Guys! Where are we even going?!”

Pepper and Tony both stop in the middle of the road along Rhodey. Pepper looks at him as if he's guilty. Well, he kinda is, but there's no reason to keep on arguing.

“You know him better than us. Where would he go?” 

Tony tries to think of every place he's taken Stephen. The school, the arcade, the town, the McDonald's — none of them feel like places he would run away to. Tony grips on the handlebars, “I don't know. Shit, um... maybe—” He forgets his place in his sentence. What other places would Stephen know? What place would he care about?

“Oh fuck. He's in the woods! He's where we found him in the woods!”

Without another word, the trio pedal towards their usual entrance, the one they used last time they investigated the area, when they found Stephen half-dead. Tony feels a strange sensation in his gut, feeling guilty that Rhodey and Pepper are going to get in trouble for staying out so late. Maybe Jarvis will ground him too, but he never does, he usually just stares in disappointment. Sometimes Tony wishes he would just ground him instead.

It was the edges of sunset, just a bit of time before night falls and they're out in the middle of woods by themselves, in the dark. Tony gulps as they make their way deeper inside the woods, not once pedaling any slower. He turns on his radio, every so often turning to the direction where the audio sounds more like static, but it could be also because they’re in the middle of the woods. Tony doesn't have his utility belts, only the compass he happened to have in his pocket, but he can barely see it with the light in the front of his bike.

“Wait, guys... w-was the place where we found Stephen north or west?” Asks Tony, panting and already exhausted. He needs to work out more.

“I don't know! I don't know, Tony!” Peppers yells back. 

“I think it was west... Okay, we follow the static until we find the scent of decomposing dog meat because of that dead dog head that was next to him!”

He can barely make out Pepper's face, but he already knows it's showing some form of anger. Rhodey regains his breath and speaks up, “Guys, I really gotta go home. My mom hates it if I'm out after dark. And she can't know I was out in the woods!”

“And we have school tomorrow,” Pepper adds.

Tony stares at both of his friends in complete disbelief. “So?! We have to find Stephen!”

Rhodey huffs, “Maybe if you shut up for once this wouldn't have happened in the first place!”

“I know! I know I can never shut up and I fuck up everything all the time! But our friend just ran away and he could be anywhere and he's scared and he's alone and I really don't want him to leave because he's my new best friend and I'm really worried about him and, and--” Tony wipes his eyes, trying to calm himself before he says anything stupid. Like every time he opens his mouth. “I can't let anything happen to him... I promised, guys. I promised .”

Pepper looks down at the ground, kicking at the fallen leaves as she thinks. Rhodey places a hand on Tony's shoulder, saying nothing but it's still comforting. Tony sniffs, forced to wipe his eyes again before he gets made fun of. He has to stay strong and calm. For Stephen. 

“Okay. Okay, fine. I'll keep going. But if we don't find him in an hour, we go back,” Pepper finally answers. Rhodey agrees, a look of worry still on his face.

Tony sighs in relief, “Thanks... Alright, come on.”

The forest is pitch back now. Nothing about it makes Tony feel safe. A good memory is worth nothing if each memory of the forest just looks the same. The radio is all static now, but nowhere do they smell rotting meat nor do they see any kind of tracks. Stephen could have easily portalted from place to place without leaving any trace that he was ever in the forest.

Tony checks his watch and sees they only have 20 minutes left of Pepper's time limit. He feels his eyes sting again, realizing he might spend the night without Stephen.

They haven't even talked about the fact that they held hands. Tony tries his best to ignore it, but the memory keeps resurfacing in his mind at what feels like every second. He knows what it means, or what it can mean. No one can ever find out, not even Stephen. He knows that staying silent will just make the ache in his chest worse. The feeling remains. He never expected Stephen's hands to be so soft.

“Tony...” Pepper begins. Tony doesn't know if her voice is soft because of how tired he must be or because of the pity. “I don’t think we're gonna find him tonight.”

The static of the radio dies down. Fucking batteries. Tony shakes his head, “No. Guys, please. What if the CIA found him again? What if something happened to him? Please. I don’t wanna lose him.”

“Tony, we really shouldn’t be out here right now. I'm sorry, but this is too much for me. I wanna go home,” Rhodey gets back on his bike and turns it to the opposite direction.

“ Nononono -- Fuck this. Stephen !” Tony yells out at the top of his lungs. He doesn't even know why he’s screaming. But if Stephen is in the woods, he'll answer. Or listen. Please, God, at least let him listen. “ Stephen ! Stephen!”

Pepper shushes him, trying to get him to calm down while Rhodey waits for them all to be ready to leave.

A sound emerges from far away. It's faint, if the radio was still playing they wouldn't have heard it at all. But it's enough for all of them to stop saying anything completely, frozen where they stand.

“ Help !”

Tony grabs his bikes and heads for the direction of the sound without waiting if his friends follow. They do, they always do. Tony wishes he could have met them before, back when he was still in New York City, but if it took a divorce and a sudden move to a completely different small town for him to meet all his best friends, then it would have been worth it.

He just hopes they can all survive the night.

Chapter Text

They find him in the middle of a clearing of trees. 

As they pedal toward the cry for help, they hear what sound like barking and growing. Dogs, he assumes, tracking ones. Tony goes as fast as he can, using the dim light from Pepper's and Rhodey's bikes to guide him and stop him from crashing into a tree. The barking stops abruptly, sharpened by a sudden whine before the forest grows silent once more. The trio stops for a moment, afraid of what the sound might imply, walking with their bikes beside them to make less noise as they enter the clearing.

Rhodey points his bike light at the figure in the middle. Stephen looks back at them like a feral animal struck by fear before he recognizes them and stands up.

It looks straight out of a horror movie. Stephen's clothes is ruined, even his precious jacket is covered in mud and blood. He's surrounded by two dead dogs, one cut in half and the other by it's head. Rhodey moves to the side to throw up, Pepper just looks away, muttering ohgodohgodohgod over and over again in efforts to calm herself down. Tony feels nauseous too, but he has to look strong right now more than ever.

Stephen stares at him, shaking. Dried blood stains his face from his nostrils to his chin, along with drops that managed to get on his cheeks from fighting the dogs. Tony extends his arms at the sight, not able to form any words. It doesn't seem to matter to Stephen, though. He walks slowly into his hug, too in shock to return the embrace but his breathing slows down, just a bit, still somewhat on high alert.

Stephen's eyes suddenly snap open, and he pulls back from Tony, looking around them for something. Or someone. “You... need to leave. Go. Danger.”

Tony shakes his head, “No way. We came all this way to find you. What's going on?”

“Bad men. Bad men found me and they're on their way,” Stephen speaks in a whisper.

“CIA dudes?” Asks Rhodey.

Stephen nods. Then they hear distant footsteps.

Everyone snaps into high alert. Pepper and Rhodey already on her bike as Tony whispers at Stephen. “Please, let us help. I’m sorry.”

Stephen doesn't answer, but he holds on tightly to Tony's back as they try to go as fast and far from the sound of the men looking for Stephen as possible.

“Can you make us a portal back?” Asks Pepper, trying to keep her voice low but too scared to do so properly.

Stephen sighs, “No. Too tired. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. It's okay. We can go back.”

“No. They saw me, they know I'm here. I have to get rid of them.”

They all stop to stare at Stephen, desperate for him to elaborate.

“Get rid of them... how?” Rhodey asks slowly.

Stephen looks at them, deadly serious and covered in blood that isn't his. “Kill.”

When no one answers, he continues, “there are two. I can stop them, I know how to. I have to.”

Pepper laughs nervously, “No way. I'm not going to help you kill someone. This is too much, guys. Too fucking much.”

“You won't do anything. Just me. Please,” Stephen pleads. “They'll hurt you too.”

“Nah. This ain't right, right Tony? This ain't right,” Rhodey keeps shaking his head in disbelief, half-threatening to leave and too scared to go alone.

Tony looks at the ground for a moment then at his friends, knowing they're letting the men get closer with each second the passes. God, Tony, what have you gotten yourself into this time?

“Stephen, do you have an idea?” Tony asks.

Pepper gasps, “Tony, you can’t be serious!”

“I am, okay! I trust Stephen and he knows what he's fucking talking about. These people are horrible, I've seen the things they've done to him and his brothers and it's... If that's how we can make sure they don't get Stephen, then that's what we do. And I'm gonna help him even if you guys won't. Stephen, I asked if you have any fucking ideas?”

Stephen nods behind him, “I saw a cliff nearby. Over there,” he points to their side 

“We bait them towards the cliff. Great. Great...” Tony turns his bike to the direction Stephen told them. “You guys with me?”

Pepper and Rhodey look at each other and sit back on their bikes, following Tony without another word. Tony can feel the unease and the tension in the cold night air, digging into his skin. Behind him, Stephen breaths against his neck.

The cliff is not far, just as Stephen said. The mood gives them a bit more light than before as it illuminates the sight. Pepper and Rhodey stand behind some bushes, watching what happens. Tony hides beside them. He feels Pepper hold him arm, making sure he's real and okay. A while ago, he would have been delighted. Now he's too busy looking at Stephen to remember anyone else exists.

Stephen stands beside the edge, the darkness too harsh for Tony to make out his face. The wind is harsh and blows against his now tattered clothes. Stephen balls his hands into fists and screams. Over and over again. Tony wonders how much much practice he's had. He wonders how long he's kept those screams in.

The three of them hide deeper inside the bushes as two men appear on another part of the clearing. Tony can't make out their faces either, thankfully, but he can see they're holding flashlights and batons. They point their lights at Stephen. He face is unreadable. 

“Subject S, come here now! You are to be taken back in immediately!” One if them yells.

“Christ, where the fuck did it get clothes?” The other one says to no one. They take a step closer. Stephen doesn’t react, simply staring at them.

“Subject S, do you understand me? Come here! You will be reprimanded if you don't comply!”

They step even closer. Stephen takes one step forward to bait them. He's smart, Tony thinks. Pepper has already covered her eyes, too afraid to watch. He has no idea what Rhodey is doing. He bets he's praying. Times like these make Tony wish he knew how to.

They’re a foot away from grabbing Stephen by his collar when the portal beneath them, their scream echoing through the forest before a a sound Tony thankfully managed not to hear from Pepper and Rhodey screaming, maybe to avoid hearing the men die too. Stephen sits at the edge of the cliff, feet dangling by the fall as he stares at what is no doubt the bodies he created. Tony wonders how he feels. He doesn't think it would be right to ask.

Pepper looks shaken and refuses to get closer to the cliff. Rhodey sits beside her and offers a comforting shoulder. 

“We found him,” she says. “I wanna go home...”

Tony emerges from the bushes and goes to sit behind Stephen, a bit farther away from the cliff than him. Not that he doesn't like heights, but he doesn't like looking at dead guys either. 

“Hey.... you okay?” He asks against his better judgment.

“They didn't touch me. The dogs didn't hurt me either,” Stephen answers quietly.

“No I meant... are you okay?”

Stephen pauses, still not looking at him. “...No.”

“Let's come home, buddy. And we can all go to sleep,” Tony extends a hand for Stephen to take once he turns around. “Please?’

Stephen does eventually shuffle away from the cliff after a minute of silence, marked only by Pepper saying ‘ I wanna go home ’ over and over again. It's the first time in a long time he's heard her get genuinely scared. In any other circumstance he'd be laughing at her, but he thinks they're all scared right now, just not at the men or the dogs.

Stephen takes Tony's hand and sniffs, wiping his face before Tony gets a good look at him. “I'm very tired... I can only take you and Rhodey home right now.”

He gestures at Rhodey and Pepper, who are now sitting beside their bikes and away from the bush they were hiding it. “I can walk her home. We'll say we saw a dead dog on the road and that's why she's so shaken.”

Pepper huffs, “I guess technically we did .”

Tony smiles, trying to be comforting too. “At least you wouldn't be lying.”

Pepper shoots him a glare. He isn't good at this.

Stephen nods and weakly makes a portal in front of them to the road where they both live in. It's shaking and doesn't look very stable, so they both jump through quickly. Pepper walks off to the sidewalk without saying goodbye. Rhodey look back at Tony, “Bye, Tones. I... uh, I think I need a break for a while, man. This is a lot, sorry. See you at school.” 

Rhodey only glances at Stephen before dashing off to catch up with Pepper as the portal closes behind him. Stephen falls to his knees, panting for air. He's either exhausted or he's having a panic attack. Tony only has experience with one of those things.

“Hey, you can get behind me on the bike and I can pedal us home,” Tony offers, sitting beside Stephen. He's really bad at comforting people, and he doesn't want to say something stupid now more than ever. 

“I can... I can make another. I just need some air. Rest...” Stephen coughs, blood trickling from his nose again, then holds his head as if it started aching. “Ow.”

“No, Stephen. It’s okay. Come on, I'll help you stand up,” Tony grabs him by his arms and helps him to his bike. It's not comfortable to sit with two people on a one person bike, but he can manage it for a while. He can't bitch about comfort when Stephen literally looks like he's going to pass out. 

Stephen wraps his arms around Tony's stomach and rests his head on his back. Tony likes the heat, even if Stephen smells horrible like now. Like nature and blood. Fuck, how is he going to explain this one to Jarvis...

“I'm sorry,” Stephen says. Tony still hasn't left the forest when hears it. It is a pretty long ride, after all. Leaves crack and bristle beneath his wheels as they move. “So much trouble...”

“I told you, it’s fine. I said something shitty and you got mad,” Tony trails off. “...Wouldn't be the first time I've done that to someone.”

He doesn’t say anything else until they finally reach a road. Tony has great memory, and knows the entire town like the back of his hand. If he could get New York City, a small town like this is nothing new or scary. Except the events of tonight have made him skittish -- Tony Stark is not a skittish person. Still, he also wasn’t the kind of guy who helped his friends fight against government agents. Every part of his life feels different these days.

“I hope your doctor mom and your brothers find you soon,” Tony says quietly. “Not too soon, though. I feel like I just started to get to know you.”

He senses the smile in Stephen’s voice when he answers. Tony doesn’t take his words for granted, even now they are few and far in between most days. He doesn’t expect him to get better any time soon, especially after tonight. “I want to know you more too. I have so many questions but I don’t know... Being outside is still so strange.”

“But you like it, right?”

Stephen nods and squeezes his shoulders, “I love it.” 

Tony’s thankful Stephen is behind him and not able to see his face.

They both eye the gate of Tony's house from around the corner of the familiar street. Stephen speaks so quietly Tony barely hears him through the sound of his tires move through the pavement. "That's the first time I used that word out loud."

Tony stops his bike on his usual spot: the front lawn beside Jarvis's now dead garden. He was worried about how Jarvis would feel, but he seemed alright. A lot of the flowers he enjoys taking care of only work in the Spring and Summer. Not much blooms in the cold fall weather, or beneath the occasional snow. 

He helps Stephen walk to the house, his mud stained arm swung over Tony's shoulder. "It's a good word to use. Kinda hard to say, though." 

"I don't think I know what it means."

Tony glances at Stephen, "Yeah. Me neither." 

Jarvis answers the door after only one knock, staring at the two boys with wife eyes.

"I... I found him," Tony says awkwardly. Stephen only waves, no doubt looking like he was just found out of a pile of compost. 

Jarvis sighs and lets them in, not commenting on the mud that Stephen drags in as he walks. The old man stops him with a gentle hand to his chest and helps him out of his shoes and socks in silence, then takes of his and Tony's coats.

"Mister Strange, I go upstairs if you can. I will prepare a hot bath for you, if you'd like. Then we can take a look at these cuts." Jarvis looks at Stephen's legs, seeing the indents and incisions of what looks like a bite. Tony looks away from the sight. Stephen told him he wasn't hurt by the dogs. "Can you make it upstairs on your own?"

Stephen nods and already starts walking up the stairs, limping slightly with each step. Jarvis stands and turns his attention to Tony.

"Another alteration with his parents, you said?" 

Tony looks down, "Yes."

"Should we inform the police?"

"No! I-I mean... No. I'm handling it."

Jarvis narrows his eyes, "Are you?"

Tony kicks at the floor, "Jarvs, I can't... I can't tell you the truth. You wouldn't believe me. I'm sorry. B-But I really am handling it! It's way worse than shitty parents, trust me, but there isn't a lot you could do."

Jarvis kneels to meet Tony's eyes, face completely serious now. Tony's eyes start to water on instinct. It's not often that Jarvis looks at him like this, and it always makes him cry like an idiot. He can take being yelled at by his dad — he's used to it to the point where his dad speaking softly is something unexpected — but he can't take disappointing Jarvis.

Tony starts babbling without even waiting for Jarvis to speak. "There's bad people looking for him and if they find him he'll be taken far away. And I don't want that to happen. He's really cool and he's my best friend right now because Pepper and Rhodey are scared of him and I don't want to choose between them and Stephen and I'm really confused and kinda scared and I — " 

Jarvis sets a comforting hand on Tony's shoulder. "Master Stark... Tony, I trust you. You have good intentions, but you must tell me what's going on. For your safety and for Stephen's. No matter how outrageous it seems."

Tony sniffs, "Will you really believe me?"

"I’ll try my best."

"Will you tell dad?"

Jarvis pauses, "No. I will not, if that's what you want."

Tony nods. Jarvis hears the sound of a something falling in the bathroom and smiles. "I should go help your friend. The two of you can tell me over soup and more hot cocoa. Is that alright?"

He hopes Stephen isn't mad at him. It's really hard for him to trust anyone, especially adults. He always seems extra nervous around the teachers if he goes to school with Tony, and never speaks to them at the mall and the arcade. If there's one person who's been nice to Stephen, at least, it's Jarvis. Hopefully he'll understand. 

“Okay,” Tony gives him a tired smile. “Yeah. I'll tell you everything.”

Chapter Text

Rhodey and Pepper weren't playing around when they said they needed more time.

Tony decided to skip school the day after their encounter in the forest. He was too tired from staying up late explaining everything to Jarvis. Stephen was there for the entire explanation, listening in silence and occasionally showing Jarvis his abilities to prove it wasn't bullshit. Jarvis did not seem particularly disturbed by any of it. Maybe it was just to make sure Stephen felt safe. Even when they finished and went to bed, both of them found it really difficult to fall asleep. Holding hands didn't work, but it managed to calm them down. He thinks he got some bit of sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but Tony decides it’s better if he stays alongside Stephen after he recovered properly from his dog bites. Jarvis even found flu and tetanus shots he gave to Stephen himself just in case. Tony can't help but wonder how many other scars like that he has across his body.

When he did go to school today, Pepper and Rhodey avoided him the entire time. Tony doesn’t want to go up to them either, worried that he'll make things worse somehow. It isn't until after school that the two of them go up to him before he gets on his bike back home.

“Hey, Tony...” Says Rhodey, awkwardly. Pepper says the same with a rush to her voice, like she wants to end this quickly. 

“Hi guys. How are you?” Tony asks.

Rhodey shrugs, “I'm fine. I aced my math quiz even if I didn't have time to study, so that was cool.” 

Tony nods, “Yeah, I aced it too.”

Pepper shrugs, “I... I keep having nightmares.”

Tony understands completely. “Dog heads or from the sound of the guys... falling?”

“Both.”

Rhodey kicks at the floor, “I get the dog heads. I didn't hear the sound.”

They all fall quiet. Tony grips the handlebars of his bike, waiting if they'll say anything else.

“How's Stephen doing?” Pepper asks.

“He's fine. He's resting for a while because the dogs bit him. It wasn't that deep ‘cause he was wearing jeans but just to be safe and stuff. He doesn't sleep a lot either.”

Rhodey huffs, “I doubt he ever does.”

Pepper gives Tony a worried look, “Tony... What are you going to do about Stephen?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Your dad is gonna come home soon.”

Tony snorts and rolls his eyes, “Yeah. Remember two years ago when he left for England for six months? I never know what he's gonna do.”

Rhodey shakes his head, “But he's gonna come back eventually. What if Stephen’s family doesn't find him by then? Your dad would totally kick him out.”

“I know that! I don't wanna think about that right now, dude.” 

Pepper breaks eye contact, “And, um, you know he isn't gonna like how close you two are.”

Tony feels an intense heat creep from the back of his neck to his entire face. It must be completely red, but from the way his face curls up into a frown he can at least pretend it's from anger. “What the hell are you implying, Peps?”

Rhodey steps in front of Pepper, trying to calm Tony down. “Look, we saw the two of you holding hands, okay? And you talk about him like he's your boyfriend sometimes.”

Tony grits his teeth, “He's just my friend! I'm not a fucking --” He stops himself before he yells out in front of the entire school. There's already enough rumors about him circulating, he doesn't need this on top of everything. “I'm not gay. I’m not fucking gay.” He whispers through his teeth.

Pepper shakes her head. “Tony, we don't care if you are. We're your friends. Right, James?”

Rhodey nods, “Yeah, man. Bros for life.”

Tony can't believe what he's hearing. He feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest. He knows what they're saying has some truth to it, even if he also likes girls sometimes, but he can't say it out loud. He just can't. Not with his dad...

“No, you guys are being fucking weird. Whatever you think you say didn't happen, okay? It didn't.” Tony sniffs, feeling his eyes water. God, he was such a little bitch sometimes. 

Rhodey places a hand on Tony's shoulder. “We're just worried about you, man. You and Stephen. When you put your mind into something, or... someone, you get too ambitious and obsessed.”

That's it. Tony can't stop himself when he gets off his bike and pushes Rhodey away from him. “Shut the fuck up. You guys don't know me. You guys are only friends with me ‘cause I'm rich, anyway.” He pushes Rhodey again, but the other boy doesn't retaliate. He wishes Rhodey would beat him up so he could have an actual excuse to feel this angry, but Tony knows he won't. 

Pepper takes out a napkin from her backpack, looking more tired than anything else. Tony hadn't noticed he was crying.

He slaps her hand away and goes back to his bike, “I just wanna be alone.”

When he starts pedaling away, Rhodey yells out. “With Stephen, huh?”

Tony pedals faster and tries his best not to break down. He knows it was just a joke. He knows they care and are just trying to make him feel better, but it's not a joke for Tony. He sobs, making his way down the street and hoping no one walking down or in a car sees him. He doesn't think he's ever cried so many times in just a few days, but Stephen has changed everything he thought he knew about himself. It's terrifying.

He shakes his head, desperately trying to calm himself before he gets home. He can’t stop thinking about what his dad would think. He'd call him a pussy. A cry baby. A faggot. He'd be right about all of those things.

Tony wipes his face with his jacket as he opens the gate to his house, breathing slowly to slow down his heart rate. He’s done this before. Thankfully he can blame his red nose and eyes on the cold. Jarvis is always decent enough not to ask too many questions.

He takes off his jacket and sets it on the rack before Jarvis can. He must be out getting groceries or in a different room in the house. Either way, Tony doesn't want to see him. Or anyone, actually. Except Stephen has to be up in his room, and he can read Tony better than anyone. Tony will just have to do his best not to allow his friend to touch him, no matter how much he knows it'll make him feel better. 

When he steps inside, Stephen is on his bed, still resting. He's should be less exhausted than he was yesterday, but he's still trying to make up for all the lost hours they stayed awake at night in silence. Tony sets his backpack beside the bed and sits down, eventually giving up and laying down next to him. 

“You came back fast.” Stephen doesn't open his eyes when he speaks, but it sounds like he was half awake the entire time.

“Yeah, well, didn't want to keep you alone here for too long.”

“Pepper? Rhodey?”

“They’re... not coming for a while. Busy.” Tony turns his body to face him. “Just you and me for now, buddy.”

At least Stephen smiles at that. A dreamy, half-smile with his eyes that still are too tired to open completely. “Okay. Good.”

Tony looks down at the covers. He can't look at Stephen for too long or he'll say something stupid. 

“Hey, Stephen. Can I ask you something?”

Stephen nods, still smiling. Tony fiddles with his hands and pretends they belong to the boy in front of him. 

Why do you like holding my hand? Why do you like sleeping next to me? Do you like boys the same way I think I do? Why aren’t you scared of it? Were you ever taught to be? 

“Do you want to go down to the city tomorrow with me?”

Stephen answers yes almost immediately. From all the movies and television he’s been watching, he’s been extremely interested in visiting the reason most people actually go to New York. Tony hasn’t been as much as he’d like to this year, considering his dad doesn’t have to take him on business trips anymore. Tony sighs and composes himself. 

“Cool. Tomorrow morning, then. We can go and eat some really good pizza, and I can take you to some places I really like to go to. Or if you want, you can make a list of stuff you’d like to see, I guess.” Tony should be excited, he always loves going to the city. Maybe this time he can go to the places his mom and dad would never let him go to. Still, he curses himself for never being able to say anything he actually wants to say. 

Stephen stands up to Tony’s desk to write down all the places he’d like to visit that he’s seen. Tony lies back on the bed, arms behind his head and closes his eyes. The only sound that fills the room is the scratch of lead against paper. Tony quietly stands up to turn on his record player with the first album he sees. If he can listen to some music he doesn’t have to focus on his thoughts, or on Stephen. 

His friend idly moves his head in time to Heart . Tony didn’t even have to teach Stephen how to listen to rock music, it was just something he was born with, he supposes. Stephen loves music just as much as he does, though Stephen seems to lean more towards softer or weirder music, not the punk and rock Tony really likes despite how much his dad tells him it’s satanic or whatever. He doesn’t understand why he says that, they don’t even go to church.

Stephen hands him his list soon after. His handwriting is hard to read, the trembling makes it difficult for him to really grasp his pencil properly, but Tony can make it out by now. 

“Oh, cool. I can work with this,” Tony folds the paper and puts it in his pocket. “I’m gonna tell Jarvis and he can drive us to the train station in the morning. This is gonna be so fun, dude.”

Stephen nods again, slightly more awake now. Tony wishes he could say something else, but he goes downstairs with the words still stuck in his throat.

---

It’s a pretty long train ride, with two changes until they can arrive at Central Station. Stephen looks extra cozy with his new coat as he settles into his seat, reading a book he brought along that Tony gave him from the school library. He still wears that red jacket under his coat. Jarvis didn’t manage to get every single blood stain from it, but Stephen didn’t mind nor did he want to throw it out. At least the stains match the color of the fabric, Tony muses.

Thankfully, the only person sitting in front of them is a business who’s getting some sleep before going to work. Tony takes the opportunity to use the free seat in front of him as a footstep. Tony takes out the list Stephen gave him yesterday, making sure he memorized it properly.

Places to go in NYC:

• A yellow taxi

• Top of a skyscraper

• Pet shop (or zoo)

• Better pizza

• Music show

• Subway

• Park

“Hm, I don’t think we’ll be able to do this last one, dude. You mean Central Park, right?” Tony asks his friend. 

“Yes. Why not?” Stephen tilts his head.

“It’s dangerous. Mom never let me go into it alone. It’s really fucked up and dirty, anyway. Maybe we can find another park that’s smaller and nicer, though.” Tony considers whether or not he should take Stephen to the nicer parts of town where all the rich people live -- where he used to live -- but even the sliver of possibility of accidentally running into his dad makes him anxious. He tends to hang around there when he’s not in Wall Street. Nah, he’ll stick to the places he knows his dad would never step foot in. Tony already has the map of the city memorized, as did Stephen in just a few minutes. “But everything else sounds easy enough.”

Stephen rests his head back on his chair, face obscured by his coat. “Okay.” 

While his friend goes back to distract himself with his book, Tony presses play on his walkman. He only uses it for long trips, or when his dad is home and doesn't want to hear any music blasting from his stereo. Stephen and him both agreed that they prefer the sound when it comes from his records, anyway. Still, he managed to find his favorite Black Sabbath album, Paranoid , on cassette the other day while wasting time around the record store with Stephen.

He closes his eyes, moving his head to the beat of the music, occasionally looking out the window as the snow falls. He catches Stephen's eye when he glances outside after a couple of songs. Stephen smiles, and puts his book back in their room through a small portal beneath his hand. It closes just as it hits his desk, causing the man in front of them to jolt awake for a moment before rubbing his eyes and falling back asleep after he realized they hadn't arrived for their change just yet. Both of them snicker at the sight, like kids that know they got away with something. It's all fine until he feels something wrap against his hand. 

Tony jerks his hand back on instinct, realizing that the thing touching him was Stephen's hand. He frowns at him, his mind going back to the conversation he had with Pepper and Rhodey after school. “What the fuck?”

Stephen looks worried, “But... In bed--”

Tony almost yelled as he covered his friend's mouth, looking around if anyone was looking at them. Only one man had lowered his newspaper to glance, but went back to reading shortly after. The businessman in front of them was still sleeping soundly. “Shh. Jesus, don't talk about that out loud,” he whispers.

“What did I do?”

“Stephen, dude, we can't...” Tony sighs and speaks even lower. “We can't hold hands and stuff in public. If anyone sees us, we could get beat up, okay? Just like in the alley with those teenagers.”

Stephen doesn't look any less worried, he digs his hands back into his coat and frowns. “Why?”

“Most people don't like it when two boys are close like that. Some people really don't like it,” Tony shudders, remembering the story of the senior who got his arm and nose broken after they found a gay porno mag in his room. He moved to the city a year back after he graduated. Tony hopes he's alright. 

Stephen leans back on his seat again, “People don't like a lot of things.”

“No. They don't.” 

“In... In your room it's okay?”

Tony considers the question and all the time's they're held hands and slept close together in Tony's bed. Usually they make sure to wake up before Jarvis to move around before he can find them tangled together, but they've slipped up a few times, or have been too tired to even bother. If Jarvis has seen them, he hasn't mentioned it. 

Part of Tony knows he should say no. It's the right thing to do, it it lowers the risk of getting caught by someone who will mind. Pepper and Rhodey already know somehow. Are they really that obvious? Or do they just know him that well? Tony isn't sure, but either scenario terrifies him. 

The rest of Tony wants to hold Stephen's hand every hour of the day. He wants him close by, just to feel him and know he's okay. Stephen is so pretty -- it isn't a word he should use for another guy, but it's the truth -- with his weird eyes and cheekbones. He knows Stephen doesn't like touching, he's especially weird when adults touch him, but he's always alright when Tony does. It’s a huge ego boost he wishes he had the guts to go further with. Then again, what the hell would he do? Kiss him?

Tony feels the back of his neck burn at the thought and laughs nervously, snapping back from his train of thought. “Um, yes. When we're alone together then it's okay if we... touch,” Tony whispers.

Stephen seems content with that. 

The rest of the rides are mostly silent. Stephen and him share their earbuds as they listen to the two cassettes Tony brought on loop. Once they're close, Stephen takes a deep breath and musters up some energy to throw the walkman back into Tony's room. Because of the distance, it takes him some strength, but his nose doesn't bleed this time. It's an improvement. 

“Don't worry, we're gonna eat soon. There's a place not so far from the station I used to go to all the time.” Tony promises him.

Tony let's Stephen walk in front of him as they get off their final train stop into Grand Central Station. He remembers his first ride to the station, being pulled across the building by his mother. He felt so much wonder and awe at the grandness of the station. It must lose its magic after so many rides, but thankfully they're still kids. He doesn't think that wonder will leave any time soon.

In front of him, Stephen stares at his surroundings in wide-eyed silence, mouth slightly agape. People of all ages and sizes walk by like they're just another obstacle. There's kiosk and information booths all over, he even hears there's an art gallery somewhere too, but Tony doesn't care about all that. The station alone is more entertaining and diverse than the shit town he's in. 

Stephen steps forward slowly, gawking at the sheer amount of people -- some busking, some napoing, some sitting or running across before they miss their ride -- he seems to like it. After years of being cooped up underground, inside a solitary room with nothing but fear and pain, the sight of so many humans must be something beautiful and new. Tony wonders if it scares him.

Tony grabs Stephen's shoulder, startling him out of a trance. “You good? Not too much for you?”

Stephen shakes his head, “No. It's not enough.”

That's the answer he was looking for. His finger grazes against the side of Stephen's neck and he feels something electrifying deep in his bones. Stephen must have given him an emotion or a memory without noticing, because now all Tony feels like doing is hyperventilating. He settles himself quickly, not wanting to make a scene since there's already a cop glancing  over at the two, unaccompanied boys in the middle of the station. He shakes his head and focuses on Stephen, patting his shoulder.

“Come on, let's go get you some pizza.”

Tony leads Stephen out of the station, remembering the area like the back of his hand. He's always been good at knowing directions and stuff, or maybe it's because New York is pretty easy to understand, even if it's been almost three years since he's really lived in the city. They're right at the hub of New York, with the pizza place in 60th street and just a couple of blocks away from the zoo.

It doesn't take them long to get a taxi, there's always a group of them in front of the station. If there's anything useful Tony learned from his dad is that people here don't ask questions, especially when you give them extra cash. Thankfully, this guy didn't care about driving two kids a couple of blocks to a pizza place. It must be a common occurrence and he definitely doesn't give a shit. Tony leans back on the car while Stephen pokes at some bead necklaces hanging from the side seat. He sees Stephen cough a bit at the smell a cigarette smoke from the drive so he rolls down his window, used to the smell by now.

The radio is playing the news, Tony absentmindedly listens to it in silence until they mention Russia, some more talks about tensions so bad they've been calling it a Cold War . But he's been hearing about that forever, even his mom is scared of it and she usually doesn't fuss that much about politics. Still, he doesn't want Stephen to break this guy's radio. 

The radio says something he doesn't quite catch and the next thing he sees is Stephen snap a large bead from the bracelet with fingers. The driver doesn't seem to notice.

“Hey, could you put on some music?” Tony asks.

“We're almost there, man.”

Tony puts on his best fake whine voice. “Come on, this is boring .”

“Alright, alright...” The driver changes it to a random station playing Lennon. Beside him, Stephen seems so calm down, though his hands are shaking more than usual.

Tony leans closer to him, arms still crossed, “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah...”

“Brainwashing’s a bitch, huh?” Tony tries to say sympathetically. Stephen just shrugs.

He hands the driver his cash as they step out at the curb. They're not exactly in the best part of New York right now. Not as bad as 42nd but still not great, but it does have awesome pizza. 

“Come on. This was my favorite place as a kid. My parents didn't take me here a lot ‘cause the area's rough but it's worth it. And the whole city's kinda rough, actually, so it doesn't matter. I always ordered the pepperoni -- y’know, a classic -- but the sausage's great. What's your favorite pizza?”

Stephen stares at him, “Only had pepperoni with you.”

“Oh, right.” Tony kicks at the sidewalk. “Anyway, now that's gonna change, dude. ‘Cause you’re gonna feast your eyes and stomach on Milo's Marvelous Pi--”

Tony's cut off from his sentence from the sight of the boarded up, abandoned building they were now facing. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

He huffs, kicking at the metal door twice before stomping back to where Stephen is standing, looking hungry and confused. 

“Tony?” He asks. 

“Hold on,” Tony says and directs his attention to the homeless man near them. “Hey, man. What happened to Milo’s?”

The man opens one eye and sighs, “Dunno. Heard Milo got shot.”

“He was in some dark shit?”

“Maybe. I don't know, kid. Either that or he was arrested”

“Fucking marvelous Milo got fucking arrested?”

The homeless man frowns at the two of them, “Hey, stop swearin’. Doesn't make you look tough. Have some decency, some of us are trying to nap.”

Stephen steps in, looking just as protective as he did back in the alley. “Do you know of any good pizza places nearby?”

The man gives them the most bored expression he can possibly make.

Tony looks through his pockets, “Right, yeah. Hold on...” He takes out a five dollar bill and hands it to the man. He looks surprised at the amount and smiles. Tony is glad he decided to take out some extra cash for his trip. Thank god for his automatic weekly allowance.

“Huh, thanks. Yeah, there's a place about three blocks from here over in Madison.” He points at the direction. “Look for Sally’s, pretty good and cheap.”

Tony still too angry about his favorite pizzeria closing to answer, so Stephen gives the man a quick thank you before they walk off to their alternative destination. 

“Should've visited before. Could’ve told dad to buy it or something,” Tony mumbles to himself. Stephen doesn't answer, obviously. He doesn't understand what Tony's even talking about. 

The pizza is actually pretty good, just like the guy said. Tony wonders if he would have directed them to a shitty place if he hadn't given him any money. It's somewhere warm to sit in too, at least. It isn't that cold outside but it's still bad enough to need a coat. Stephen looks really cute all bundled up and munching happily on his slices. He's already almost done with his his second one.

Tony takes a sip of his coke and sighs, talking with a mouthful of cheese. “Sorry I couldn't take you to Milo's.”

“It's okay,” Stephen says, wiping his mouth. “I'm having fun. The city is so big and... different.”

Tony nudges him. “Yeah, you like it?”

His friend nods and steals a piece of sausage from Tony's remaining slice. “Yes, I really do. I... I want to live in a city like this one day.”

“What? Is the small town life not enough for you?” Tony teases. 

“No. It isn't for you, either.”

He shrugs, “Hey, it wasn't my decision. I wanted to stay here forever. Nothing ever goes my way, I guess.”

Stephen’s smile falters at the change in tone and stares at the bubbles in his coke bottle. Tony feels guilty for making this about him. Again.

He takes out the list and crosses out the better pizza bullet point. “Today is gonna be a real good day, though. I got a good feeling. Look at all the stuff we're gonna do and it isn't even noon.” He wraps an arm around Stephen’s shoulder and tries to get him to smile. He does. It's wonderful. It's always wonderful. “Come on, Stephen Strange. I got you out of a bunker, now out of a small town. Let's go see the real world.”

---

Despite what Tony said about not holding hands, Stephen didn't feel he needed to. The day continues like some sort of dream. Every time Tony looks at him, he felt his heart racing. A heat goes up to drape over face and ears, like the bubbles in his soda. He can tell Tony is feeling the same way. He wonders, and hopes, that Wong and Karl have felt the same sensation. It's a great feeling. They don't need to hold hands because he can feel Tony touching him all the time.

He holds his arm, grabs his shoulder, whispers something funny into his ear as they walk across the zoo. Stephen likes the penguins and the smaller animals, though the leopard catches his eye. They’re all animals he’s never seen before, some that he didn’t even know existed. The only ones he’d seen were rats back in the bunker, along with a squirrel and a rabbit he watched in Tony’s backyard from the window. Stephen and Tony follow a random tour group, pretending that they are blending in, just to hear the extra information. Tony doesn’t know a lot about animals, surprisingly, but he doesn’t seem very interested in any of the information the tour guide gives apart from cracking the occasional jokes.

They start the habit of pointing at any animal they see to compare it to each other. Tony points at the giraffe while Stephen stares in awe, saying they’re both tall and have long necks. Stephen points at the peacock, telling Tony they’re both bright and show off. Tony says when he smiles very wide he looks a bit like a frog or a lizard. Stephen gets him to laugh and wish he had a camera when he keeps smiling and sticking out his tongue at the same time as the komodo dragon.

“That's the life. Just laying back under a lamp and napping all day,” Tony says, staring at the chameleons.

“You would get bored in five seconds.” Stephen taps the glass lightly.

“Okay. True...” Tony shrugs. “If you were an animal, which would you be?”

Stephen has no idea. “What would you be?”

“Oh, man. Definitely, like... a lion. King of the jungle, dude.”

Stephen quirks an eyebrow, “The guide said male lions don’t really do anything. And they live in the savannah.”

“I know but... Fine, then I’d be a chimpanzee. Or a rat ‘cause they’re also really smart. What about you?”

Stephen ponders on the question as they walk out the lizard enclosure and back into the cold. “Elephant.”

Tony snorts, then realizes Stephen is serious. “Why?”

“We both remember everything.”

“No, man. It’s the animal you want to be. If you wanna be an elephant that’s still cool. You’d be scared of me, though. I’m a rat, remember?” Tony bites at the air between them, showing off his front teeth. Stephen giggles.

“A dog, then. A big, strong dog,” Stephen recalls the dog breed one of Tony’s neighbors have. The ones that always bark at them when they pass by. “A doberman.”

Tony glances at him in an expression Stephen can’t place. He can’t touch his skin either without attracting attention, or without Tony knowing what it means. “Huh. Okay. Didn’t expect that.”

“What did you expect?”

“An animal that helps people, I guess. More like a guide dog or something.”

Stephen zips up his coat and digs his head into the space between his shirt and the fabric, feeling a sudden cold over his nose and mouth. “Okay.”

Stephen eyes the tiger enclosure, thinking back on the large dogs that were after him not so long ago. He called them monsters back then, he didn’t have any other name for them. He knows people keep good dogs as pets now. He’d like a pet someday. He knows Tony has always wanted one too, but his dad won’t allow it. He wonders if Doctor A would once they’re all back together. 

His hands tighten on the railings and the tiger stares at him from its cage. It looks cold and angry. Stephen knows exactly how it must feel.

“Hey, man, the group went to the crocodiles. Wanna go with them or wanna skip out?” Tony asks, holding a plate of nachos in his hand and a bottle of water in the other for Stephen to drink and snack. Stephen just drinks some water. It’s odd not being hungry all the time and having the choice to say no to food. 

He knows Tony is bored, and the last thing he wants to do is bore his friend with what he wants to see. “Can we go to one last place before we leave?”

“Sure. The passes allow us the stay for another hour.” 

Stephen points at the nearby sign that says Petting Farm on it with a smile. Tony rolls his eyes and follows along without a word. 

Only Stephen goes inside the pen to touch the animals. Tony refuses, saying he doesn't want to get his hands too dirty and he doesn't exactly like goats. Stephen has never touched most of these animals. There's a section for goats and lambs, and another section for some chickens. He can even touch some alpacas, which he didn’t know existed, and rabbits. In the end, Stephen sticks with the rabbits, sitting down on a small bench inside their area while petting a small, white rabbit apparently named Zelma.

Tony leans on a railing beside him, watching him with a smirk. “She seems to like you.”

Stephen stares at the animal beside him. “I'm giving her nice memories so she will be happy and calm.”

“Which memories? I didn't think you'd have a lot of those,” Tony asks, taking a bite off a chocolate bar he bought.

“All the good memories I have are the ones I have with you.”

Tony's cheeks turn red at the comment. He doesn't understand why that happens, but he likes it. It seems to be when people hear something they really like about themselves, or when they're nervous. Does he make Tony nervous? 

“Oh. Right. Yeah, that's cool.” Tony mumbled, licking the chocolate clean from around his lips. Stephen focuses back on the rabbit, wishing he could have one of his own.

After some time speaking comfortably in the rabbit pen, they finally leave when a group of younger kids enter the area and are too loud for both of their liking. Tony takes out the list and crosses out Pet Shop (or zoo) as an entry, leaving only the top of a building, a music show, and the subway.

“Next stop?” He asks Tony.

Tony checks his watch. The sun is still out, thought it’s slightly cloudy, and just turned three p.m. “You wanna go to the top of a skyscraper, right? Wanna see the world?”

Stephen nods. He’s been underground for so long, now he wants to know what the sky feels like.

“You're in for a treat. I know exactly where to take you.”

They take another taxi to an area Stephen isn't sure of. He memorized the subway system but not the actual map of the city properly, knowing Tony was already familiar with it. Still, he sees even more people than where they were in before. Stephen stares out the window in wonder, neck bent uncomfortable so he could see how high the buildings went. 

He heard that the taxis here are very expensive from a show on T.V, but Tony never worries about spending too much money. Stephen understood how money works very quickly, and it's not common for people to have so much. Tony's rich, but most of the people he knows apart from Tony aren't. He knows people get jobs to make money, but the process itself is kind of lost on him. Maybe he'll ask Doctor A once she finds him.

When they arrive in front of the building, Stephen can barely find the words to describe what he’s feeling. It’s huge, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything that big in his entire life. He used to think the biggest things that existed were the large men who came into his cell, or the roof of the rooms he stayed in for hours or days. The building stands larger than anything, and can barely see the top unless he crooks his neck all the way back. And even more impressively, there’s another one just like it right in front of it.

“Welcome to the World Trade Center, buddy. South building, the one with the observation deck,” Tony says, narrating the experience as a tour guide would. “The top of the world observation deck, to be exact. It’s one-thousand three-hundred and sixty-two feet tall, with a total of one-hundred and ten stories, built in nineteen seventy-three, just three years after I was born, and probably after you were born, too.” 

He shows off a couple of more facts in an imperious voice, causing Stephen to laugh when he’s actually paying attention, though most of his focus is on the enormity of the building, and the amount of tourists heading in the same direction they are. The officers only glance at them after they mention they’re here for the observation deck. Tony seems to already know where they’re supposed to go, though. Then again, he always knows where to go.

The elevator is Stephen’s favorite part. He has to stop himself from pressing other buttons just to see where they go, but Tony assures him it’s just boring offices like the kind his dad works in sometimes. It’s fairly crowded, forcing the pair to stand in the corner of the small box that goes way too slowly. Stephen wonders if it would be right to slip his hand to touch Tony’s. He knows what the other boy said —never in public, never outside of their room—but Stephen also knows that no one could see them. No one is paying attention to them, and Tony is standing so closely. 

The bell for their stop dings as his fingertips brush the tip of Tony’s hand. Tony glances at him and offers to hold him by the shoulder in silent understanding. Stephen says nothing and walks out with him.

The sight is beautiful.

They don’t have a lot of time, unfortunately, as the observation deck closes in under an hour and a half and they need to find somewhere else to eat soon. Tony and Stephen stand somewhere that isn’t so crowded with family taking pictures on disposable cameras. Stephen mentions that he’d like to take a picture like them, so Tony gives a kid ten dollars to buy off his camera. Like Tony said, having money just makes everything a lot easier.

“Don’t know how much film this has, so we should make ‘em count,” Tony says, fiddling with the camera and trying to ignore the sharp, cold wind that keeps blowing against their face. Stephen stares at the view in front of him. Buildings look like toys from this view, like they’re nothing at all. If he looks one day he can see the North Building of the Trade Center, probably with people looking at them from their windows. He stares back at the sight in front of him quietly, holding onto the railings tightly.

He hears the shudder of a camera taking a picture and jumps, momentarily startled. Stephen looks back at Tony, “I didn’t smile.”

Tony shakes his head, preparing the camera for a second picture. “You didn’t have to. I think some of your hair got in your face, though. Let’s try another. You can smile, if you want.”

Stephen stands straight. He’s only had to take one picture before. It was years ago, his hair was shaved then. It was also back when his hands didn’t have any scars. All the other pictures taken of him were just of his hands, but he guesses there are others he doesn’t know about.

He gives Tony an awkward smile, showing his teeth. Tony still has his eye against the disposable camera as he speaks, “Hey, Stephen?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t look as cute as you always do when you smile like that.”

Stephen widens his eyes and looks away from the camera, laughing for a reason he can’t understand. The shudder goes off again without warning. Tony wanted to get him to smile. Really smile. Stephen can’t help but gently kick him at the side of his leg at the sight of his smug smile. The warmth doesn’t leave his cheeks even as the cold wind hits his face. It all feels too familiar now. It all feels normal.

Tony leans against the railing and moves the camera to face him, taking a picture with a wide smile on his face. “This probably has a couple more. Wanna save it?”

Stephen shrugs, “We don’t have a picture together.”

Without warning, again , Tony pulls him close for another picture, of the two of them together. Tony smiles wide, eyes closed. Stephen is too surprised to react in time. 

“There. We have a picture together,” Tony says. He puts the camera into his front pocket. 

“Thanks, I guess.” Stephen holds the place where Tony grabbed him, feeling the ghost of his touch at the side of his arm. His face feels hot again. 

After a few moments of silence, mostly because Stephen is too focused on the view, Tony breaks it, already bored by the sight. “They made the railings higher.” He says off-handedly. “When I came here a couple of years ago they were kinda lower. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Why make them higher?”

“So people won’t jump off,” Tony says. He winces at the sight of Stephen’s confused face. “They have railings like this anywhere that’s high. A building, a bridge. So people won’t accidentally fall, of course, but it’s also because a lot of people come to places like these to, uh... finish themselves off.”

Stephen shakes his head, still confused. “People do that?”

“All the time.”

“Why?”

Tony looks uncomfortable by the question. “Um, well... Sometimes people get tired of their life and don’t know how else to fix it. Sometimes they gotta escape something. I don’t know, Stephen. People do a lot of crazy shit.”

Stephen looks over to see how high the fall would be. No one could survive it.

If he had known about high places earlier, his escape from the bunker would have been easier. Doctor A told him some of the ‘failed subject’ hurt themselves to make it all end. Maybe falling would have been a lot faster.

Tony places a hand on his shoulder, “Hey, you okay?”

Stephen nods, “Yes. I am now.”

The worried look doesn’t leave Tony’s face, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Stephen glances at him, then at the view, like his eyes can’t decide where he should be staring. “You like it here. In the city. A lot.”

“Yeah, it’s my home. Where I grew up. It’ll probably be where I live when I graduate college and take on my dad’s company.”

Stephen looks at his hands. “You don’t like the town?”

Tony doesn't look at him when he answers, “Nah. It’s boring there. Don’t know why my dad moved us there. We were doing just fine after he left mom. Maybe the city reminds him of her, but he comes here all the time for days or weeks . Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Stephen doesn’t know the entire story of Tony and his family, only bits and pieces that he’s gathered from random memories that make their way to his fingertips, or the random things Tony blurts out when he can’t seem to stop talking. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to have a family, much less why it’s such a big deal to not have one parent, at least you have the other. Things are different in the outside world. There’s so much he doesn’t understand yet. It’s best for him to stay quiet and try to learn.

“At least you have Pepper and Rhodey, right?”

Tony scoffs and shakes his head, “Yeah. Sometimes I do.”

Stephen doesn’t know what that means. Once again, he falls into silence, staring at Tony and trying to find the words. 

“I...” He gulps. “I like the city too. I want to live here one day.”

Tony smiles at him, any anger that he was feeling by the mention of Rhodey and Pepper now gone. “I hope you can, buddy. Maybe we’ll live  each other.”

Stephen is still getting used to having a future. The thought alone makes his heart race, and the thought of living together with Tony for a long, long time starts to form in his head. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but he had no idea what to do with these thoughts. He wishes he could take them out and throw them from the railing. Change them for something realistic. Stephen is also getting used to being able to dream. It’s not an easy feeling to have.

Tony holds him by his shoulder again. The kind of touch where he can wrap his arm behind his neck. They’re so close to each other. Stephen likes this almost as much as he likes holding hands. 

“You wanna go eat? I know a really good Chinese place nearby. Hopefully it isn’t fucking closed.”

Stephen stares ahead, face probably flushed, and nods. When he glances over at Tony he notices his face is flushed too.