Chapter Text
“Mr. Stark? Are you-”
“Peter, please! Give him some space to breathe! Let Helen work on him!”
“Peter, move aside. I have to have space.”
“But he’s-”
“He’ll be okay, Peter. Move.”
The scramble of voices fill the room as Tony returns to consciousness. Feeling first returns to his head, which is pounding violently against the front of his skull. He can barely register the cool hand pressed against his forehead, and it would be almost soothing if he didn’t have a massive headache.
“Ugh…” he mutters out before he can feel his mouth fail on him.
“Mr. Stark? It’s me, Peter!” Peter practically screams, but he sounds far away.
“Peter, I thought I asked you to move!” He picks up Helen’s loud voice (albeit not as loud as Peter’s) from directly to his right.
Regaining more feeling in his chest and arms, the only thing he feels now is pain. He groans and manages to open his eyes, but immediately regrets it. The light above his head is intense, and it takes him a few seconds to squint at the area around him. He’s on a hospital bed, and realizing that, he almost freaks out. After fading in and out of consciousness in Afghanistan surrounded people who don't look qualified to be doctors, it's obvious that he'd naturally be scared of anyone in a lab coat. Upon closer inspection, he realizes that he's most likely in Medbay. He calms down a little knowing that the doctors here are all trustworthy and won't hurt him, but it doesn't fully diffuse his anxiety. The heart monitor on his left is beeping much faster than normal heartbeats should. He can vaguely make out Peter, Helen, and Rhodey in the room with him. He first turns to look at Helen, who’s fiddling with a syringe.
Helen seems to realize that Tony’s eyes are open. “Hey, Tony. Just relax, it’s okay. I’m giving you some morphine to help with the pain.”
Tony only manages to grunt a sound of assurance before he blinks his eyes rapidly, still trying to adjust to the light.
“He’ll be okay, Peter, see? He’s already waking up.” He hears Rhodey’s familiar voice from across the room, most likely from where Peter is standing.
“Mr. Stark? Can you hear me?” Peter almost whispers.
“Just let him get situated, Peter. Let’s go outside. Dr. Cho will take good care of him, won’t you?” Tony can make out Rhodey’s figure turn to Helen as he speaks.
“Yes. In fact, he should be feeling better shortly. The morphine should be working any second now.”
Tony can hear Peter’s breath hitch; hesitating.
“Okay,” Peter says finally. “Just let me know when I can see him.”
“I will.”
Tony watches Peter and Rhodey leave the room. Helen pipes up again.
“You really took a hit out there, Tony.” Helen speaks quietly, as if to balance out the loudness of the teenager’s voice earlier.
Tony can feel the pain slowly fading away, but it’s replaced by relaxation and drowsiness. He struggles to speak, barely managing to slur out:
“Is everyone okay?”
Helen faces Tony and smiles. “Yep. Everyone's okay, Tony. Get some sleep, okay?”
That’s all the permission Tony needs.
=-=+=-=
When Tony wakes up, he feels much better. He can see much better, and the majority of the pain from earlier is gone, sans the slight persistent headache. He notices the lights in the room are turned off, and twists to see the digital clock on the nightstand beside him. It reads 10:31pm.
A deep inhale beside him almost makes Tony scream. He spins to face the other side of the bed to observe someone resting, or asleep. The blurry body before him slowly sharpens into the shape of his most trusted confidant. He's thankful for Pepper's presence; she's always there to help him when he's hurt, stressed, or just having a bad day. He supposes today was one of the worst days he's had in a while, since nothing prior to this stupid battle had been too risky for him. That battle was cutting it really, really close.
Earlier that day, Tony and Rhodey were investigating a tip they’d heard of Chitauri weapons in New York City. Tony was suspicious; his clean up crew had removed all alien evidence from the New York attack a long time ago. Upon arriving at the suspected location, they weren’t greeted with Chitauri weapons, but with a rogue sorcerer who claimed to be enlightened and almighty among mortals.
“You will regret the day you decided to battle against me!” The sorcerer shouted and begun preparing his defenses against Iron Man and War Machine.
“I sincerely doubt that.” Tony had said as he aimed his repulsor.
Tony got in a few good hits, and so had Rhodey, until the sorcerer chanted in a language that was foreign to both superheroes. Before Tony knew it, he was struck by a concentrated beam of light, and immediately lost consciousness.
“Mm…” Pepper stirs beside him, pulling him out of his memories. He puts his hand on hers and she immediately jerks up. “Oh my god, Tony! I was so worried about you! Rhodey told me what happened, and I can’t even imagi-”
“I’m okay, Pepper, I promise.” That’s weird. He remembers his voice sounding a lot deeper.
“You can’t even go a week with me gone to end up like…this.” She sighs.
“Like what?” His voice cracks hard. He hasn't had voice cracks this bad since...
“Tony… I’m so sorry.” Pepper’s eyes well up with tears. “Let me go get someone. I’ll tell the team you’re awake.”
Tony watches Pepper leave the room and his back slumps into the bad. What the hell happened to him? He knows he was in severe pain when he woke up, but he doesn’t know why. Did something happen to just his voice? Or did something happen to his body? Or to his mind?
No, he still feels like himself. He just doesn’t sound like himself. He's becoming frightened.
His train of thought breaks when he hears Rhodey enter the room. “Hey, man. How are you feeling?”
“Why the hell does my voice sound like I’ve been inhaling helium for the past hour?” He almost violently gestures to his vocal cords. Tony is now terrified by the way his voice is cracking and how… childish it sounds.
“Tones…I’ll be honest, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this. You took a big hit during the fight and collapsed. At first, I thought you were dead since the suit didn’t seem to be responding to anything I tried. But when I opened the suit…” Rhodey trails off and stares out the window. It takes all of Tony’s willpower to not reply.
“Tony, you’re fifteen. You’ve de-aged to your fifteen-year-old self.”
Tony’s brain shuts off. He doesn’t know how to process the information. It's like his brain stopped working all at once because he cannot believe it. Fifteen? Regressed back to a teenager? That's impossible. No de-aging technology exists. Magic, though? The rules are a bit trickier to understand. Of course, magic is something Tony does not care for, but can magic really de-age someone? Can it be reversed? Even if it can be, can it bring back the marks on his body that made him the man he should have been today? The arc reactor…Afghanistan…Yinsen…
He holds out his hands in from of him and observes more carefully. They are, in fact, his hands. But not his calloused, scar-ridden hands that he’d earned from years and years of engineering and lab work. They are his hands from youth: baby-skinned and innocent. They are his hands from MIT, from childhood…from his father. All of his achievements and struggles just vanished. Like they never happened.
Tony throws his hands out of his face to avoid digging himself into a deeper hole and finally acknowledges that Rhodey is saying something to him.
“…we tried contacting so many people, Tony, we even tried Strange. He came in while you were asleep and-” Rhodey is cut off by Tony’s quiet voice.
“Can you leave?”
“What?”
“I just want to be alone.” Tony barely holds back a sob. He sounds so much like a child, and that thought absolutely terrifies him. He can’t cry, not in front of Rhodey. He just needs time to think.
“Sure, Tones. Get some more sleep, if you can. Do you need anything?”
“I just need some time alone.” Tony’s voice betrays him, and before he knows what's happening, tears start to cloud his vision. Immediately, Rhodey is at his bedside. Tony doesn’t move. Once the tears begin, they can’t seem to stop, despite Tony’s best efforts to wipe them away.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Rhodey reassures as he slowly reaches his arms out to Tony. When Tony doesn’t respond, Rhodey wraps his arms firmly around Tony. Tony doesn’t back away but doesn’t fully lean into the hug either. He's too distraught to react to anything at this point. The fat tears roll silently down his face (with the occasional sob) as Rhodey utters words of comfort into the night.
=-=+=-=
Tony can’t recall when he fell asleep, but when he wakes up, he is greeted with the warm light of the sun shining through the window.
At first, he doesn’t remember quite where he is, but in a flash, everything catches up with him all at once.
He got hit by a sorcerer.
He’s in Medbay.
He’s fifteen.
The heart monitor beside him starts to beep faster, and although he tries to calm down, he can’t. Helen almost tumbles into the room.
“Tony, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m… I’m okay…” Tony stutters out. Helen doesn’t look convinced.
“Are you in pain? Does anything hurt?”
“No, I’m fine… I just-”
“Oh.” Helen murmurs, now realizing the reason for Tony's distress. Here eyes dart to the heart monitor, then back to Tony as he rattles off excuses for his state of being.
“I just need more of that medicine, Helen, please, that’s all I-”
“Tony, I’m so sorry. We’ve really tried everything, but nothing's worked. Rhodey already told you about all people we contacted, even Dr. Strange, but everybody keeps telling us the same thing: it’s permanent.” Helen explained reluctantly.
“What…what am I going to do?” Tony whispers just loud enough for Helen to hear him. He looks up at Helen, waiting for her to show some sort of hope. There is none. Helen timidly pauses to think of a response, but in her hesitation, the door creaks open, causing her to jump slightly.
“Hey.” Rhodey greets. Tony hums quietly in acknowledgement and Helen snaps out of her daze to nod in his direction. “How are you doing, Tones?”
“I…I don’t…” Tony turns his full attention to Rhodey and tries to convey his emotions through his eyes. If there's one thing Tony loves about Rhodey, it’s that he’s able to know what Tony’s feeling at any given moment. Rhodey just seems to understand him without having to talk about it.
“Pepper’s sorting out the legal stuff.” Rhodey explains. “She’s filling out the papers to make me your legal guardian until you turn eighteen. Then, you can inherit Stark Industries again and work as usual. Until then, we need to keep this whole situation on the down low since the press will go absolutely berserk if they pick up on this. You won’t be able to leave the compound for a while, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem for you, right?”
“…yeah. Yeah, I should be fine.” Upon hearing a solid plan about what was going to happen, Tony suddenly feels a rush of hope. Even though his situation was permanent, at least there’s a solid plan in place for his future. Tony could follow plans. Schematics. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to make you my legal guardian, though? Why can’t I just file for emancipation?”
“Pepper thought it would be good for legal reasons.” Rhodey sits down on a nearby chair. “She’s more on the business side than I am, so I don’t exactly know all the benefits. From what she told me, it was a good idea since the press would be easier to hold back now that you're underage, and because I can take care of all of your suits, patents, and shares of the company. It’ll just be much easier than trying to file for emancipation.”
“…what about Ross? What about…” Tony fights to keep the wobble out of his voice. He trails off before he got a chance to mention Steve Rogers.
Rhodey sighs before answering. “The team you assembled can deal with him. I’m part of that team, and I'll most likely be taking over the important relations. Ross is none of your concern right now.”
“...it’s like I’m suddenly useless.” Tony mutters as his view drifts down to his lap.
Helen joins the conversation. “It’s not like you won’t be doing anything, Tony. You still can make things for Stark Industries and help with legal work, if you’re up to it.”
“I can’t just sit here and not try to do at least something!” Tony angrily raises his voice, but not enough to shout. He doesn’t want to freak himself out with his own voice again. “You said you contacted people, but what if we haven’t tried everyone? There’s got to be some way to reverse this. I can’t just grow up again! I have a life! I have work to do! I have responsibilities! I can’t just disappear. The media is going to pick up on something eventually! They never listened to me before, and this–” he gestures to himself, “–this is just going to make things worse! They’ll never listen to me now! What is Ross going to think when I don’t show up to discuss the Accords? What do you think Steve–“ Tony stopped himself. Steve is so much bigger than he is now. Tony doesn’t even have a way to fight Steve now that his suits don't fit him anymore.
Tony is on the verge of tears again. He silently curses at himself for being so vulnerable. He's in his fifties; he shouldn’t be this openly torn up. He's normally much better at controlling his emotions. Then again, he's now physically fifteen, so he could just blame teenage hormones. Thinking of himself as a fifteen-year-old sends shivers down his spine.
“Whoa, slow down, Tony.” Rhodey makes his way across the room to give Tony another hug, but Tony shifts back at the touch. Rhodey backs off and crouches next to the bed instead.
“It’s going to be okay.” Rhodey whispers.
“We’ll figure it out.” Helen chips in.
Tony successfully holds back the tears that threaten stain his cheeks. After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Helen leaves to inform the rest of the compound staff of Tony's condition. Rhodey almost leaves, too. However, he unexpectedly halts, turns around, and seems to remember something.
“Hey, Tony, do you mind if someone else visits you, or do you want to be left alone for a while?” Rhodey asks delicately.
Tony contemplates for a few seconds. “It depends on who it is. Is it Pepper? I wouldn’t be opposed to her–“
“No, Tony, it’s your intern from SI, uh…Peter Parker.”
Tony’s breath is caught in his throat. He forgot about Peter's existence. He wonders how long Peter has been at the compound. He wonders how Peter even heard about Tony's status after the fight. How much does Peter know? It occurs to Tony that he's about Peter’s age now. What a scary thought; he is about as old as his own protégé. What would Peter think about that? Some small part of Tony wavers at the thought of letting Peter see him, but another part really wants to speak to someone who may understand. Maybe someone his age would understand. Tony shudders again at the thought of considering himself to be fifteen.
“Tony? Did you hear me?” Rhodey’s firm voice snaps him back into reality.
“Yeah, uh… yeah, he can come in, sure.” Tony swears his voice falters, but Rhodey pays no mind to it, so Tony assumes he’s in the clear. He lets out a quiet sigh of relief.
“I’ll send him in then.” Rhodey smiles and walks out of the room, leaving Tony to brace himself.
But he doesn't get much time.
“Hey, Mr. Stark.”