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Tony was a genius. Everyone knew that; it was a known public fact since he was four years old and he built his first circuit board. Howard had done the media circus rounds with him, smiling like the proud father he pretended to be. Tony had been paraded and spoken about as if he was Howard’s invention and not his son. It was a pattern that would hold until Howard’s death.
So yes, the whole world knew Tony was a genius; there had been talk that he may even surpass his father’s intelligence as he grew older.
Jarvis had been the first to notice that while little Tony was undoubtedly smart, there seemed to be something else at play when he was building, fixing or creating. Sometimes, things seemed to just do his bidding, almost like he was willing them to take shape, reformat or adjust until it worked just as Tony wanted it to.
Poor Anna almost had a heart attack when she walked into the kitchen and found Tony with her new VCR broken down into tiny pieces. He’d just wanted to see how it worked, he told her and promised he’d fix it and make it better for her. He began putting the pieces back together, his tongue sticking out in concentration. When he was done, Tony plugged it in but it didn’t turn on.
“Turn on, turn on, turn on,” he whispered as he tapped the machine with his screwdriver. After a moment, the machine lit up causing Tony to laugh and excitedly explain to Anna what he had done.
Later, Anna would ask her husband if he had seen the faint blue light that would come out of Tony’s hands when he spoke to machines. They both agreed that it may be for the best to not let Mr. Stark know of this quite yet.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
James Rhodes’ suspicions were proven right one night when he was dragging his drunk roommate from a party across campus. Tony would not stop talking about the learning AI he was coding for his robot. “But I’m not using the hand-wavey Rhodey,” he stopped walking and looked up at his best friend. “I really don’t use it often”
Thinking this was one of those times when Tony was miles ahead in the conversation, he just hummed and hawed whenever Tony paused to take a breath. The walk back to their dorm took twice as long since a drunk Tony was a curious Tony and there were many things he wanted to look at.
Once in their room, Tony ran to Rhodey’s bed and flopped onto it causing the GridCase that was on it to fall to the floor. “It’s ok! I can fix it. Watch this,” he took a deep breath and moved his hands as if sliding things in the air.
Rhodey didn’t have a chance to tell him that the GridCase was already broken and that he’d been about to work on it. He saw the blue tendrils moving around the machine and going into it as if they were being sucked in. He blinked and the screen began lighting up. Tony looking like the cat that ate the canary.
“What the fuck Tones. Was that magic?”
“Magic! No,” Toney said, eyebrows going up in offense. “It’s just… You know, Hand-wavy. A different type of science,” he finished, his voice raising at the end as if asking a question.
It was an argument they’d have many times in the future. Rhodey would call it magic to irritate Tony, and Tony would primly paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke and say that this was just science too advanced for him to comprehend.
Rhodes would also come to call him Harry Potter, Gandalf, Merlin, and just to be an ass, once or twice he called Tony a red priest.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Even though Tony had felt from a young age that he might never be good enough for Howard, it wasn’t until he was 16 that he knew it without a doubt.
Tony had just won MIT’s Robot Design award and felt that maybe, just this once, Howard might say he did something right. This might be just enough. All he received from his father, however, was a message asking him to disassemble the robot because the space was needed at his workshop.
As he took DUM-E apart, he spoke to him. Letting him know that as soon as he had the space figured out, he’d put DUM-E back together and he’d never put him away again. DUM-E absorbed all the information, repeated those words to himself for however long he remained in the dark.
Many years later, when he found himself in the dark again, DUM-E would repeat them again, knowing TON-E would not leave him in the dark for long.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When the Ten Rings captured him, they had no idea the shit they’d be in. It looked like they had won the jackpot by capturing Tony. There had been a moment when Tony feared he would never see Happy, or Rhodes or Pepper. But with Yinsen’s support and encouragement, he built the reactor to replace the car battery. He and Yinsen came up with a plan to escape, and that meant trusting each other fully.
When the day came, and Yinsen was wounded, the blue lights emanated from Tony’s hands, filling the armor with them, attempting to save Yinsen, who had seen those lights while working on the armor with Tony. He knew Tony would be the change needed in the world.
“Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life,” Yinsen told him.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tony tried to honor Yinsen’s request. He shut down weapons manufacturing, became a superhero, joined Fury’s boyband and fought aliens. He became part of a team, and in doing so he gained a family. He built them a home and made sure they were protected.
He’d work on their equipment himself, drawing schematics on his holo-screens, mixing the blue of the screens with the blue from his hands. He’d think of nothing but helping them stay safe and alive.
There were ups and downs, fights and misunderstandings. But he kept building for them, even those years more than half of them spent in Wakanda. He understood things better now than he did during the Accords fight. Steve had been wrong, but so had Tony. Steve should not have lied about his parents’ murder, but it wasn’t Barnes’ fault either.
And so he built, he created, he fixed. And he continued pouring every bit of his light into his projects. No, it wasn’t magic, but if Tony were more sentimental, he might say it was love. He noticed the energy flowed better when he cared about the people he created for. It shone brighter, and worked faster.
Some called it witchcraft, some magic. To Tony it was just technology and science. He just didn’t fully understand it yet. He might one day, but it was ok if he never did. This thing he did, it was just a part of him and it had always been.
And this thing he did? It’s what allowed him to control the power of the Infinity Stones for a moment, just long enough to save the universe.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Everybody wants a happy ending, right? But it doesn't always roll that way. Maybe this time. I'm hoping if you play this back…”
“Come on! You promised you wouldn’t play that Nebula. Barnes, tell her to stop it,” Tony begged from the couch where he was laying down; he poked Bucky's thighs with his socked feet to get him to help.
“No can do sweet thing,” Bucky grabbed his foot and began massaging it. “We all want to see how much of a sap you were being.”