Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Harry was five, he came to the conclusion that family was something other people got to have.

Auntie Tuney, Uncle Vernon, and Dudley were a family. They had family photos, family dinners and family outings, and when Harry was very good, he got to look at some of the pictures afterwards. It was made very clear to Harry that they had a family, but he wasn't part of it.

Uncle Vernon only looked at him when he was bad. Whenever he had people at the house, Uncle Vernon would put him in his cupboard and tell him to pretend not to exist. Then he had to sit very still with his eyes closed until people went away.

Auntie Tuney said that he was a burden, not a nephew, and Dudley always pretended they weren't related at school.

He overheard Uncle Vernon talking once about Petunia's disappointment with her sister and her layabout husband and the freak they had landed him with.

Harry knew he was the freak, so that meant that his mum was Auntie Tuney's sister?

Harry had tried to ask about it, but Auntie Tuney's mouth just got really small and her eyes got really tight, the same way they sometimes got tight when Uncle Vernon started drinking the strange brown liquid on the mantlepiece that smelt sharp like cleaning fluid. And then Harry got locked in his cupboard again, so he learned not to ask.

He still hoped. Just because the Dursleys didn't want to be his family, it didn't mean that he would never find someone who wanted him.

Sometimes, when Uncle Vernon was out and there was no one left downstairs at bedtime to watch him, Harry would sneak up to the bottom of the stairs. If he was careful and very, very quiet, he could hear the stories that Auntie Tuney would tell Dudley before bed.

They were full of grand adventures and heroes, and sometimes, when Uncle Vernon was out for a whole evening, Auntie Tuney would even tell Dudley stories that had magic in them. Genies and unicorns and fairies, Dudley liked the ones with swords and battles, but Harry preferred the ones with clever heroes who outwitted the evil villains with words and their brains.

Some of the heroes even had dead parents, like he had dead parents, and they did chores like Harry did chores and talked to animals the way that Harry could talk to the snakes in the garden, and for a short while, Harry let himself imagine what it would be like to go out and seek his fortune and find somewhere to be where he–

Where he might find someone to read him stories and tuck him in at night.

He had some memories of someone who smelled like sunshine and hugged him close, but the remembered warmth was hard to hold on to when he was curled up alone in his cupboard.

Everyone had family, even the orphans in the stories had fairy godparents and step-mothers, but the memory seemed so faint. He had to have had parents once? In order for them to be dead? And maybe they had other family?

He still tried to talk to the snakes in the garden, but they only wanted to talk about hunting and sleeping. The birds never talked back, and the squirrels just ran away. But he still hoped.

When Harry turned four, he got to go to school.

In some ways, his world changed for the better. He learned to read, and the school librarian was happy for him to curl up in the library and read as long as he was quiet and careful with the books.

He even found a book of fairy tales that had pictures of all the different creatures and the princesses.

But the other kids didn't like him, not once Dudley had hit them for talking to him, and the teachers didn't like him either because Dudley kept ruining his homework and messing with him in class.

But things were better than they had been because at least he had things to learn and books to distract him. Initially, the teachers were very impressed by how quickly he learned to read, but when he still couldn't answer questions in class, they went from thinking he was stupid to thinking he was lazy.

So he hid in the library when he could and tried not to shrink under the exasperation and frustration from his teachers and the dislike from the other kids.

And through all of it, there was a kernel of hope he clutched desperately to his chest. A tiny flame that he whispered his dreams and wishes into, the foundational belief that somewhere out there, there was a family for him.

He wasn't greedy; he didn't need a big family with aunts, and uncles, and cousins, and grandparents, and all the other people that the other kids had. He just wanted one person, someone who wanted him back. Someone who could be his.

Harry stared up at the board. His new Year 2 teacher's handwriting was bubbly in a friendly way, with big letters that were really easy to read even from his seat at the back. He barely had to squint at all.

She didn't seem to hate him yet, so when her eyes landed on him, Harry gave her a small smile.

He didn't know what a family tree was, but he always got excited when they got to get out the paints.

They painted out a trunk with the brown paint, and then he got to use all of his favourite colours and his hands to make big leaves for his tree.

He concentrated hard on getting his letters right as he wrote his name at the bottom. It was easy, just 5 letters. He sent a sympathetic glance over at Alexandra, who was having a much more difficult time.

Miss Reyes was wandering around the class, helping the other kids choose their colours and stopping Jimmy from eating any more of the paint.

"Harry?" She asked softly when she crouched down next to his table. Dudley was glaring at him from the other table, but Harry didn't let that bother him for now. Miss Reyes was talking to him. "Did you not want to write your full name?"

Harry stared up at her, confused. "I did write my name," he peered down at the letters suspiciously, but they still said Harry. Nothing funny had happened this time, so he looked back up at Miss Reyes, still confused. "My name is Harry."

Maybe she forgot. Nobody seemed to like to use his name anyway.

"Your full name, Harry." Miss Reyes pulled out one of the sticky notes she used to give out smiley faces, and Harry was briefly hopeful he'd been good enough to get a smiley face, even if he had done something wrong with his name. "Here, let me help you spell it."

She placed the bright pink piece of paper next to Harry and pulled out a pen. "P-O-T-T-E-R, Potter, there we go."

Harry stared down at the friendly writing on the sticky note. "Potter?"

"Your name," Miss Reyes prompted gently. "Harry Potter."

"My name is Harry Potter?" Harry answered hesitantly.

"That's right!" She patted him on the arm before hurrying back to Jimmy. "Not for eating, Jimmy!"

The sticky note had more letters on it, and those letters belonged to him? He wasn't a Dursley?

"Who can tell me what a family tree is?" Miss Reyes asked the class, smiling brightly when a few hands went up.

"It's a picture of all your family," Katie answered when Miss Reyes pointed to her.

"Very good, Katie," Miss Reyes smiled again. Harry liked it when she smiled. "It's a who's who of your family and the different ways that they are related to you. Can anyone give me an example of someone who is related to you? Dudley, what about you? Can you tell me who's in your family?"

"Mum and Dad," Dudley answered after a short pause, the frown of concentration turning his face slightly red. "Aunt Marge?" he suggested eventually.

"That's right!" Miss Reyes smiled at him before moving on to the other children in the class.

As the rest of the class started to call out their relatives - Uncle Arnie, Grandpa, Mikey, Katie's cousin from London.

Harry stared down at his empty tree and the carefully written-out letters of his name.

He couldn't name anyone.

That night, Harry curled around his empty stomach in his cupboard. The bruises from Dudley's favourite game were still aching on his ribs and back, and the torn pieces of his family tree project were sopping wet at the bottom of Dudley's old school bag.

Aunt Petunia had gotten angry at him when Dudley knocked over the hallway vase, and he'd been sent to the cupboard before Uncle Vernon was even back from work.

Uncle Vernon had yelled at him through the cupboard as usual, but this time his words wouldn't leave Harry's head.

He was bad. He was a freak and a burden.

Each word fell like a blow against that precious kernel at the heart of him.

He was bad.

And bad kids didn't deserve a family.

Harry curled up in his cupboard as the flame guttered and hissed and wished he didn't exist. He wasn't pretending anymore; he screwed up his face as he concentrated every last burning bit of himself on that wish.

Unknowingly tapping into that bit of himself that made strange things happen, the part of him that grew back his hair and stopped the hot oil from the pan from burning him.

Energy built in him until he was shaking with it, black wisps of smoky vapour rising, and writhing, and sinking back into him as the magic of his birthright rose in self-destructive fury.

His cupboard started to shake, the screws from the stairs above him burning molten hot as the parts of the wood shattered and reformed, his meagre belongings rising to float in dizzying circles around him.

Far away, in an office in a castle in Scotland, a silver instrument shattered.

Harry's magic poured around him in a heated haze, violent and cutting. The Dursleys cried out in fear as their house shook, all of them pouring out the door as their house continued to shake. Walls cracking and windows shattering, Aunt Petunia clutched her darling boy desperately as more and more neighbours emerged from the houses of Privet Drive, each there to watch as a localised earthquake seemed to shake apart number 4.

Harry's magic was close to eruption when Fate made a different choice.

When the shadows rose up to claim Harry, all he felt was relief.

Tony desperately tried to pull in oxygen, his breath coming in wet gasps as he coughed up water and dust as the rest still swirled in his lungs. He didn't know how long he'd been gone; the oily, reddish light of the cave never changed, and Yinsen had been disappeared off to his own session with their attentive hosts.

He regretted that his cavemate was being treated to the same à la carte torture menu he was, but he didn’t regret having some time to recover on his own. Yinsen was really growing on him, but he had really reached his max of being vulnerable in front of people today.

The cameras watching him sleep, eat and shit were enough.

The return of the waterboarding post-arc reactor installation was enough. At least, he had conclusive evidence that he’d successfully installed waterproofing. It was enough to have water in his lungs; he didn’t need it sloshing around the rest of his insides, too.

He finally dragged himself upright and stumped his way over to the cot. It didn’t matter how many times they did it, or how many times he told himself it was pointless to struggle, he always came back with his joints burning and his legs numb.

A couple of minutes later, Yinsen rejoined him, hands shaking, but Tony didn’t focus on that. He stared at the ceiling until Yinsen had returned himself to his usual impeccable turnout.

When he first arrived, he’d dismissed it as a strange form of vanity, but the longer they spent together, the more he realised it was the ritual that Yinsen valued. Now, Tony envied Yinsen for his neat linen suit and his flat cap; he didn’t have anything so easy. His feeling of calm was too wrapped up in alcohol and women, and had been for years.

Pepper’s strategic placement of books on healthy coping mechanisms around his house was starting to look more prescient than annoying. He was starting to regret burning them.

“They’re getting impatient,” Yinsen commented, smoothing down his shirt, eyes fixed on the camera winking at them from above the door.

“Yeah.”

“They won’t wait for much longer.”

Sometimes saying things out loud helped Tony process. Sometimes they just made him panic.

His breath started to come shorter as his imagination of the coming days played out in front of him.

He may like to think of himself as a logic-driven, cut-and-dry American Hedonist, Capitalist, Billionaire. Whatever you wanted to call it. Tony Stark wasn't exactly the poster boy for the common good, particularly when it came at the expense of his personal good, but even he could accept that his death was far preferable to these people having any more access to his weapons than they clearly already had.

And wasn't that a kick in the teeth for the lossless logistics system Obie was always talking about?

They had already started taking Yinsen out for his own little 'sessions'.

And Tony was nothing if he wasn’t a realist. He wouldn’t be around much longer if their escape plan failed... the backup plan was a one-way street.

His breath started to come quicker, and his thoughts were cycling like spokes of a wheel. Pointless and endless, the last time he'd felt this useless was just after his parents died. He'd just gotten back from MIT, and he and Dad had immediately started butting heads. Something pointless about a gala they wanted him to go to. His dad had turned to the bottle, like father, like son. His mother had just been disappointed.

They'd left for the gala, and Tony didn't even say goodbye.

Later, when the police had been and gone. When Obie had called and told him to stay put, he'd sort everything. When he'd sat and stared at the half-empty bottle of his dad's scotch.

It all felt so pointless.

Maybe Starks just weren't built for long lives and happy things. Starks were made of iron. Dad's favourite encouragement, insult and dismissal, all wrapped into one.

It didn't leave much room for softer things, like hope, love or affection. Things Tony had told himself he didn't really need. Things he was now desperate for.

Yinsen was right – the man with everything and nothing.

The lights above them flickered, and the hum of generators that had been their constant company briefly went quiet.

For a moment, Tony thought the electricity was somehow picking up on the downward spiral of his thoughts, but then a crack reverberated through the room. Sparks flew from the five overhead cameras as they shorted out, and the lights violently flashed before settling back into a steady hum.

The blessed seconds of privacy were enough to distract him for a couple of blissful moments, but even he couldn't ignore the massive, glaring change in the room. Or actually, rather tiny change.

A small boy – Tony had a bad gauge for children's ages, but he couldn't be more than four – was curled up on the floor between his and Yinsen's cots.

Black hair in a shaggy, curly mess on the top of his head, dressed in a massive t-shirt and a pair of shorts that completely swamped him, blinking up at them with massive green eyes.

"Yinsen, I haven't had a drink in a while, but I suppose it could be late-onset delirium. Can you see the kid, or is it just me?" Tony's voice came out more high pitched then he'd like to admit.

"No," Yinsen answered, his voice similarly breathy. "It's not just you."

"I don't know if that's a good thing or not."

The boy remained where he had appeared, a small, threadbare blanket clutched desperately in his hands as his head whipped around trying to keep an eye on both of them.

There was the sound of distant clanging, and Tony was reminded that they were, in fact, still in the middle of the Afghan desert with a group of terrorists who would love another person to hold hostage against their pet arms dealer.

Right, not letting that happen.

"Kid, you need to hide," Tony whispers, dragging himself back upright to stumble towards the kid on the floor. As soon as he got close, the kid flinched back and skittered over to press his back against the nearest wall.

He wasn't an expert, but even he could see the signs of abuse.

Tony probably should have thought of that before he decided to loom over him like an idiot.

"Yinsen?" Tony whispered. "I think you're going to need to take this one."

The sounds outside were getting louder, and the kid was now focusing his attention between Tony and the door, clearly unable to decide which one he was more afraid of.

Yinsen crept upright but kept his body language soft and welcoming, two things Tony had never been very good at.

"Hello, little one," Yinsen whispered to the tiny green-eyed boy. When the boy visibly relaxed, he was glad to see that Yinsen's aura of well-meaning DGAF worked on people other than him. "My name is Yinsen."

The boy opened his mouth to answer, but no sound escaped. Luckily, Yinsen took that in his stride.

"I want to be friends," that seemed to shock the boy, and Tony's heart ached for the naked hope on that little face. "But there are some very bad people coming, and we need you hide and be very quiet. Can you do that?"

The boy nodded vigorously and let Yinsen lead him over to a small cubby carved in the stone. It was mostly used to store the few food supplies they were given, and Yinsen had fashioned a small curtain over the opening.

The boy immediately tucked himself into the far back corner. Blanket still wrapped tightly around his shoulders, bare feet silent on the cracked stone floors. It had the look of a well-worn muscle memory, and Tony didn't want to think about what kind of upbringing gave a kid those kinds of instincts.

He turned to face the door and braced himself; his eyes caught on Yinsen, and seeing a similar determination settle over his friend/cavemate/trauma-bonded wiseman, whatever happened next, they were keeping that kid safe. For as long as they could.

Turns out, terrorists weren't particularly impressed when all the cameras went out on their very high-value pet engineer. They were entirely convinced that Tony had done something, which was honestly fair enough; he totally would have done something like this if he'd thought of it. Or been confident that an improvised EMP wouldn't take out the arc reactor currently stopping him from dying.

When one of them eventually stopped shouting and decided to flip open one of the camera cases they anger turned to confusion. Which Tony also couldn't make fun of them for (beyond the whole not making fun of the people pointing a gun at you life preservation strategy he had going) because he was also confused.

Localised EMPs didn't do that to electronics.

Instead of a couple of fried fuses and maybe a melted circuit board or two, the camera was smoking. An EMP on the scale to do that kind of damage to a closed-circuit camera would have to be big enough to take out a couple of city blocks, not just one room, no matter how thick the stone walls were.

Let alone leaving the lights intact.

Tony would be trying to get his hands on the broken cameras for more tests if he wasn't already pretty sure he knew exactly what, or rather who, had caused it. As it was, he put forward a token protest when the guards shuffled the remains of their camera system out of the room.

They made noises about keeping an eye on them, but it was clear that they had a grand total of one replacement camera.

God bless the tiny camera-busting mutant that had accidentally teleported into their midst, because the Genghis Khan wannabes had decided to aim their one camera at the workspace, which meant Tony finally got to sleep without feeling like Big Brother was about to stomp on his neck.

Tony blamed the bone-deep relief for why he decided to scoop the tiny, terrified child up into a hug as soon as he emerged from his hiding place. "Thank you, tiny child, you absolute wonder," Tony babbled. "I'm not sure you did any of this on purpose, and I imagine it's not particularly convenient, but I am now such a big fan of the way you explode small electronics."

To his surprise, and Yinsen's, who had just spent ten minutes talking the kid out of the cubby like some kind of groundhog whisperer, after the first flinch, the kid went boneless, pressing almost desperately back into Tony's arms.

Tony tried to pat the little boy's back reassuringly and make sure none of his panic was making him stiffen up like a mannequin, because, barring the last few weeks of torment, he was reasonably sure he'd never been this uncomfortably aware of how out of his depth he was.

"Yinsen," Tony whispered urgently. "You look like you're better at this hugging thing."

Yinsen's raised eyebrow said that he'd got himself into this, and he could get himself out of it.

"Hey buddy," Tony tried, his voice slightly strangled. "I am really happy to be hugging you because you seem like a really great little guy, but we've got some questions if you have a moment–"

The kid was out of his arms and back on the floor before Tony could even blink, and the look Yinsen was giving him wasn't helping with the overwhelming guilt surging up in him when the kid went back to trying to disappear behind the furniture.

Luckily, Yinsen chose that moment to step in, dropping into the same crouch he had before. "Hello again, little friend."

Those eyes were unbelievably green.

"Do you think you could tell me your name?" Yinsen asked gently.

The boy stared at him for a long moment, his eyes scanning over Yinsen's face and non-threatening posture, flicking over to take in Tony head to toe, only resting for a second on the glowing circle in his chest, but lingering on his hands. Tony made sure they were as loose and relaxed as he could make them, doing everything he could to avoid his usual stress response of tightening them into fists.

The boy slowly lowered himself onto the floor, his hands twisting tightly into the fabric of his shorts. Yinsen followed him like it was the most natural thing in the world and looked to all the world like he regularly sat criss-cross apple sauce on cave floors all the time.

Tony's journey into that position involved a bit more swearing under his breath and a little less grace, but eventually they were all sitting in a circle like they were about to sing camp songs and eat burnt marshmallows.

But the kid relaxed, and that was the point.

After another few seconds of close inspection, he finally spoke.

"I'm Harry."

"Got a surname, kid?"

"Just Harry."

Mr Tony and Mr Yinsen seemed really nice.

Harry didn't know how he got here, but they had given him a new jumper because, apparently, even though they were in a desert, which Harry thought was meant to be really hot, it got really cold, and Mr Tony didn't want him to be cold, even though Mr Tony and Mr Yinsen had definitely seen him be... freaky.

The jumper was even bigger than Dudley's old clothes, but that just meant he could tuck his knees under it and make it like a whole tent just for him.

Mr Tony had even given him a pair of socks; apparently, his bare feet made Mr Tony sad, so Harry was sure to make sure he rolled them enough that they stayed on.

Mr Yinsen was making food over a fire in the middle of the room that Harry wasn't allowed to go near because it was dangerous. Harry tried to explain that he had gotten very good at avoiding the oil from the pan and he barely ever got burned anymore, but that had just made Mr Tony say bad words, and Mr Yinsen look upset.

He had to stay away from the other side of the cave because that was where the bad guys could be watching. And if Mr Yinsen or Mr Tony said, he had to hide and not come out for any reason.

Mr Tony even made him practice, but he treated it like a game; it was almost like hide and seek, except when Mr Tony caught him, he just patted him on the head instead of hitting him. Harry was glad Mr Tony didn't hit him; he looked like he would hit harder than Uncle Vernon.

Mr Tony called the other side of the cave his workstation. He was wearing goggles and hitting something very hard with a hammer – it made a clanging sound that used to make Harry jump, but he'd gotten used to it now.

"We can't go out the front, not with Harry." Mr Tony looked scared, so Harry tried to smile at him, but that only made Mr Tony try to pretend he wasn't scared. "The risk is too high that he'll be hit by something."

"You should be worrying more about getting your new project finished than the logistics of a day that may never come."

Mr Yinsen smiled at Harry in a sad way, but he still handed him his own bowl of hot food and a spoon. The bad men were scary, but Harry thought he might prefer it here to being back in his cupboard.

"Don't be like that, doctor," Mr Tony accepted his own bowl and settled down on the cot opposite Harry. "As you said, this is the most important week of my life. I will finish the suit."

"Then Harry waits here for you to clear the compound."

"And you wait with him."

Mr Tony was concentrating on his bowl, so he didn't see Mr Yinsen shake his head, but Harry did. "Of course," Mr Yinsen said with his face all cracky and sad, even though his voice was nice and calm. "I will keep Harry safe."

Harry didn't know if anyone had tried to keep him safe before, but it felt nice. A little flicker of light in his chest. Maybe Mr Yinsen and Mr Tony could be his?

Tony watches the kid like a hawk for the first couple of days, his attention constantly split between the suit and the little shadow that haunted the living side of the cave.

He was smart, clever enough to stick to the shadows and keep out of line of sight of both the camera and the door. The first time the ten rings guys came back, Harry was back in the cubby before Yinsen, and Tony even realised they were coming.

He sat quietly when they were working and watched; he watched everything with a kind of hyperfocus that Tony didn't think was possible for kids his age.

He was startlingly thin and seemed so shocked every time they fed him that they had both, without discussing it, started to leave bigger and bigger portions for him.

"That's it, Harry," Yinsen praised the boy, and his face lit up like it was Christmas. "And now you just need to tie it off."

He wasn't sure what use Harry was going to have for his new skill in suturing, but there was a limited amount of kid-friendly entertainment in their current living situation, so they were making do with what they had. Which seemed perfectly fine as far as Harry was concerned. He was British, which could explain it. Did the whole stiff upper lip thing start this early? Because the kid was way too calm about ending up in a cave with terrorists, even if it was whatever mutant teleporting and taking down powers that had brought him here.

The kid was unsettlingly calm. As long as they didn't mention his powers, talk about his past life, even try to touch his blanket, or accidentally loom over him. Then the panic would start, and it was usually Tony who started it, so it was usually Tony desperately trying to calm him down when he sent Harry back to acting like they were about to hit him.

He'd become disturbingly good at the very niche skill of calming down British five-year-olds called Harry because Yinsen refused to help.

Which all meant that there was still no further progress on working out where Harry had come from, where he had been before and how he had teleported himself to Afghanistan. Because Tony was reasonably sure the kid had started in bed somewhere in England, and whilst he knew a bit about the mutants that had started to crop up across the world, he hadn't heard of a power that would involve teleporting inter-continentally and then also blowing up small electronics.

Harry had already proved to be uncannily lucky when it came to dice. If Tony hadn't seen the open-mouthed shock on the kid's face when he rolled his 5th double in a row, Tony would have assumed he was dealing with a little hustler. A cute little mutant hustler with dice powers, camera powers, and teleporting powers and absolutely no idea how he was doing it.

When Yinsen moved over to wash up their bowls, Harry twitched towards him, but he kept his hands to himself this time. Yinsen had been very disapproving when Harry had almost stepped in front of the camera's night one, just help with the washing. The little kid had been crestfallen.

Oh god, there was a kid trapped in the cave with them.

Panic was hovering very close to the surface for him these days, because hiding the slowly coming together suit was somehow much less stressful than hiding their tiny stowaway.

An adorable stowaway who was shivering now that the cooking fire was done. "Come here, kid," Tony gestured to the cot he was sitting on, and tried not to look too nervous when the kid settled in next to him.

It started with just sharing a blanket, and then Tony put his arm around the still chilly little guy, and then, without really knowing how it happened, Tony suddenly had a very sleepy child curled up in his lap.

"It must be witchcraft," he muttered to himself. "I swear he was all the way over there just a second ago."

"Yes, witchcraft is, I'm sure, the only explanation," Yinsen settled on his cot opposite. His big, child-free cot. "And not, of course, that Harry has come to like you."

"Children don't like me," Tony sputtered.

Yinsen stared down at the child in his lap, and Tony tried to look offended.

"It is not a failing to care for a child and have that child care back," Yinsen remarked as he neatly folded his shirt and placed it next to his bed.

The Tony from before the cave would have said something flippant about children not knowing better. This Tony couldn't bring himself to deny that he cared, not when he'd spent just as much of the last few days watching Harry as Harry had spent watching him.

There was something just so wonderful about the kid. Despite the cave. Despite the ten rings hovering like angry hornets. Harry seemed to still be able to delight in his surroundings, whether it was Yinsen teaching him something new or Tony trying to awkwardly talk to a small, British child about any kind of pop culture they might have in common.

Harry had not seen a lot of films or children's TV of any kind, which was weird for a kid from a generation that was already being called the iPad generation. He'd also never heard of Tony Stark, which wasn't that surprising, except that he'd also never heard of Beyonce, and that was just suspicious.

Harry was so kind. He listened when Tony babbled and tried to comfort him when panic burbled over into nightmares and hyperventilation. He helped Yinsen fold his clothes and got so upset when Tony tried to kill a scorpion that Tony had ended up freeing it through the closest access they had to outside, their giant metal front door.

He was pretty sure the guards posted outside had killed it, but didn't have the heart to express that reality to the tiny burst of sunshine currently sleeping on him.

"He will need somewhere to go after this, you know," Yinsen's voice broke through Tony's calm consideration of the last few days. "He will need someone who understands, and so will you."

What.

No, no, no, no. Tony couldn't be responsible for a child. He would break him! Or even worse, he would turn into his father, and then Harry would hate him and it would–

No.

"No need to panic, Stark." Yinsen was smiling, the bastard. "Every first time parent looks the same."

"You have kids," Tony whispered desperately, eyes looking everywhere but the sleeping bundle of adorableness in his arms. "I don't know what I'm doing, after we're all out, you should–"

Yinsen's raised eyebrow stopped him short, and Tony stumbled in panicked silence.

"I think, Stark, that you need to accept that whatever happens when we leave this place," Yinsen's eyes softened into something less disapproving when he looked down at the little boy's sleeping face. "You have someone now, Tony, don't let him go."

Tony stared down helplessly, eyes catching on Harry's sleepy grip on his rough overcoat. His panic softened into something less breathtaking, but still, all he could picture was his dad's disapproving face, his mother's disappointment.

Harry shifted slightly in his arms, mouth opening in sleepy yawn before he blinked up at both of them. He seemed to consider them both for a moment before he yawned again, hand reaching out to rest lightly over Tony's reactor, "Don't be sad, Mr Tony. You and Mr Yinsen can do anything."

With that little bit of wisdom delivered, Harry drifted back into sleep, and Tony felt like his heart might be about to explode.

"Besides, Stark," Yinsen sniffed, his eyes twinkling with a return of his usual humour. "Whilst I would have no problem loving Harry as one of my own, there is no question who he resembles more." He brushed Harry's wild black hair back from his face, the dusky olive of his skin providing a contrast to Harry's pale face. "Look, he has your freckles!"

Tony laughed softly and settled further into his cot. "Sadly, he hasn't inherited my mum's Italian tan. I'll have to slather him with lotion for him to make it through one summer in California." Tony's smile faded as he considered it, really and truly considering the idea of taking Harry back to Malibu with him. The possessive curl in his chest at the thought of anyone else claiming the boy curled up in his lap made the decision for him. If he was going to do this, he was going to be all in. No half measures.

"You've decided," Yinsen stated, no question in his tone and a surprising lack of smugness.

"Yeah," he sighed. "He's mine now."

He could be Harry's someone.

And nothing like Howard.

Harry curled into his corner. He'd only just woken, but he had to hide now. The bad men had come back, and this time it was Mr Tony who took him over to his new cupboard, but unlike Uncle Vernon, Tony was really gentle and even tucked his blankie around him. "Remember, quieter than a mouse kid," Tony smiled at him and ruffled his hair like it was a game, but Harry could see he was scared.

Mr Yinsen, too – his hands were shaking like when the bad men came last time, and Harry frowned as he concentrated on making himself very small and very, very quiet.

"That's it, kid," Tony murmured. "You got this."

And then he was in the dark again, and there was a lot of yelling.

Harry curled himself tighter and tried to pretend he didn't exist. The bad men were like the Dursley's, they would punish him, and Mr Yinsen, and Mr Tony. And he didn't want his new friends to be punished. Not when he'd just found them.

They were yelling really loud and Mr Yinsen really didn't like loud noises. Harry shuffled forward slightly, leaning slightly over the pile of cans that Mr Yinsen used to make dinner from. He peered through the curtain, and he could see lots of people moving. There was a bad man yelling at Mr Yinsen and two other bad men holding him down.

The bad man was holding something glowing like it was hot. He was going to put the hot thing on Mr Yinsen! Harry gasped before he clapped a hand over his mouth. Hot things hurt, and Mr Tony had told him to be as quiet as a mouse, and now he'd ruined everything.

Panic surged like static until all he could hear was his heart beating in his ears.

Harry should have known better than to hope for friends.

Harry was bad. He didn't deserve them.

Tony didn't know what to do; things were escalating, but most of the discussion was happening in Urdu, and Tony was suddenly feeling very annoyed that he had picked up an elective in French at MIT. His fluent Italian was also no help.

And he needed to stop thinking about language electives because the man who just given a speech about bows and arrows looked like he was about to go medieval with a pair of hot tongs, and Tony was not about to watch that happen to someone he was reasonably sure he liked more than most of his family, living or dead.

Luckily, he was saved from the word vomit of panic and promises that was about to leave his mouth when the lights above them exploded.

This wasn't just the shorting sparks of the cameras earlier in the week; this was a shattering explosion of glass and hot metal that showered down on them. Tony's reactor blazed in his chest as the rest of the lights went out.

Tony was feeling very grateful for Rhodey's regular gun fire drills because some of these guys had less trigger discipline than a green recruit, and as soon as the lights went out, they panicked, and Tony might as well have had a glowing target on his chest.

He dropped to the floor immediately as the first retort of gunfire filled the air.

It was long seconds later that Mr Genghis-Khan-had-great-ideas finally got his men under control, the shaky beam of a torch was the next thing Tony saw from his position on the floor, and the yelling was making it very clear that he should remain on the floor unless he wanted to get shot at. Again.

He tried to see what he could from the floor. Miraculously, Yinsen was unharmed, and somehow all the very much still needed plans for the suit were similarly safe.

The ten rings guys were less lucky, and a lot of them were sporting cuts and burns. Worst of them all was the hot poker-wielding maniac who was clutching a cloth over a burn that seemed to be directly over his eye.

"You have till tomorrow to assemble my missile," the man spat before turning to leave, instructions yelled out behind him.

The rest of his men followed, but Tony waited until another group brought them some new standing lights. Looking just as bewildered as he was about the smoking craters that had once been military standard lighting.

Tony waited until everyone left. And then he waited some more.

Tony waited until Yinsen had dragged himself back upright, before he finally let out a sigh.

"Just so we're on the same page, that was definitely Harry wasn't it."

Yinsen just nodded shakily.

"Okay."

He could think about that later, Tony reckoned. He had 24 hours to get the suit up and running. 24 hours to think about all the things that could go wrong in this escape attempt.

24 hours until he had to think about any of the logistics around his possibly incredibly powerful mutant five-year-old.

It took ten minutes of coaxing to get Harry to emerge from the food cubby, and even then the kid looked as a skittish as a deer.

Or at least what Tony imagined a deer to look like when it was being particularly skittish, he’d never seen one in person so it was hard to say. A comparison that made more sense to him, that he definitely wouldn’t be saying out loud, was that the kid looked like he’d been tweaking. All twitchy and paranoid.

“You alright bud?” Tony asked cautiously once Harry finally put his blanket down. Usually a sign that he was feeling a little more secure.

Tony desperately wanted to do something to get that hunted look off his face but unfortunately he was now on an incredibly tight deadline so he was going to be tied to his workbench for the foreseeable.

Harry was tucked behind the central column wrapped in Tony’s scratchy overcoat, Tony wouldn’t need it with the amount of time he was about to spend over the shitty forge they’d thrown together. And Harry seemed to find it comforting, even if it was bloodstained and probably smelt of sweat and grease.

“Yeah,” came the querulous reply.

Super convincing.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No, thank you, Mr Tony.”

Tony tried not to sigh and focused on getting the chest structure piece built. They sat in silence for a while, or at least, as silent as you can get when one of you is welding.

He should probably leave it alone.

“You know that me and Yinsen don’t care that you’ve got something a little bit extra going on, right kid?”

Tony had never been very good at leaving things alone.

Harry stared at him, and Tony wondered if all five-year-olds had eyes that big and how on earth parents ever said no to them.

Tony finished his weld and tapped off the excess slag, he grimaced, the weld was sloppy but it would hold. He didn’t have the set up for precision but the thick line still made him cringe.

Tony moved to crouch a little closer, he didn’t look at the kid, he didn’t want make it too obvious for the camera. “Sometimes people are born with something a little bit extra.” Harry froze. “For me it was my brain, gotta a big old brain crammed into my head and it’s always made people a little wary of me. For some people it’s an extra toe or webbed feet or something like that. But for you, Harry, I reckon you were born with something extra special.”

Harry was holding his breath, and Tony felt like he was on some kind of timer to make sure the kid didn’t asphyxiate himself from stress.

“But you’ve gotta know, green bean, that whatever shape your extra bit of special takes, me and Yinsen aren’t going to have a problem with it.”

That sounded suitably wise and reassuring, right? Tony was running based on 90’s sports films and Sesame Street here, but it felt about right.

Harry was breathing again, and that was the important thing.

“So you won’t think I’m bad even though I’m a freak?” Harry’s innocent voice saying those words really made Tony want to hit something.

“You’re not a freak, Harry.”

Harry still seemed dubious. “Even if I turn your hair blue and talk to snakes?”

“Weirdly specific examples, buddy,” Tony whispered down to him. “But yeah, I would totally still want to be your friend even if you turned my hair blue.”

Tony was starting to think Harry might be more special than he’d thought, but he’d given the kid enough to think about.

It was time to teach Yinsen how to make time-delayed explosives.

This would be easier if he just cooperated.

“I am not sure I feel comfortable—“

“I can’t ask the kid to do it!” Tony exclaimed. “Come on, it’s just a tiny bit of c4–“

“What do you even need these? Surely you can just use the ridiculous flamethrower you’ve built in.” Yinsen was starting to fray around the edges, his eyes wide and worried as he repeatedly glanced over towards Harry.

“I don’t know how you think missiles are usually stored, but I can promise you we don’t usually recommend leaving them scattered around in wonky piles.” His head of safety would be having conniptions right now if he saw the way the Ten Rings were handling some of the Stark equipment. “We need time to get as far away from here as possible before the very delicate cargo in that outdoor barnsale goes up in flames.”

Yinsen didn’t look convinced.

Tony sighed. “Look, I know we don’t have a route cleared for you and Harry yet, but I can’t leave those weapons here if I can possibly help it.”

Harry had fallen asleep a couple of hours ago and was curled up on Tony’s bedding but it was definitely edging on morning by Tony’s judge of the temperature, he didn’t have time for this.

He squinted over at Yinsen, shading his eyes from the morning light, Yinsen looked just as tired as he did and they wouldn’t be resting for a long while.

Tony blinked.

He was missing something.

He squinted over to the part of the cave that Harry had almost exploded and narrowed his eyes against the light. “Yinsen!”

“What, Stark?” The man grumbled, blinking at him blearily.

“There’s light.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other, and then they both rushed towards the small opening in what had previously seemed to be solid rock.

Whether it was the explosion or the bullets was hard to tell, but whichever it had been had left a very small hole in the cave wall.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Yinsen whispered, his voice reverent.

Tony eyed the hole. "It will only be big enough to fit Harry." Tony did his best to clear a bit of the detritus and poke his head through. It wasn't easy to see, but it looked like a reasonably flat piece of ground, and there was even a small collection of bushes they could hide in. "We need to cover it, we're lucky this is out of sight of the camera."

"Let me worry about that, you focus on getting your latest project off the ground."

There was something Yinsen wasn't saying, but Tony didn't have time ask.

It was only later, when Yinsen helped Harry escape through the hole and picked up a gun to buy them time.

Only later, when he was looking down at Yinsen's pale face.

"This was always the plan, Stark."

He stepped into the desert sunshine with one thing in his mind, get to Harry. Don't waste it.

He should have time to add something to help him know which way was up, nothing complicated, even a spirit level might have helped make some sense of the blurry landscape in front of him.

He was heading towards his best guess at where Harry might have come out, but he was starting to see a lot of flaws in this plan. The burst of energy needed to power the suit was quickly waning, and the terrain around them was nigh on impassible on foot. They would need the suit to fly them out, and Tony wasn't sure that was going to work out for them.

The second flaw might be the fact that Ten Rings had a backdoor, and whilst Harry was very good at hiding, even he couldn't do much with 10 metres of open ground in broad daylight.

He had enough juice in the battery for one more blast or one more very short burst of flight; he didn't even have to think about it as he landed heavily in front of the very angry man hovering over a silently terrified Harry.

Anyone who put that look on Harry's face deserved a blast of something unpleasant straight to the face, and luckily, the guy wasn't expecting to be hit in the face by a concentrated beam of fire.

Tony scooped Harry off the ground, careful to keep his now very metal arms as loose as he could; the last thing he wanted to do was hurt the kid. He stumbled as rapidly as he could away from the still burning man, which wasn't something a five-year-old should be seeing, but he didn't have a lot of options here.

He flipped his face plate up as he desperately tapped at the barely glowing reactor in his chest. "Dammit, dammit," Tony chanted under his breath.

He had maybe a couple of minutes to get them clear, or they were seriously SOL.

"Mr Tony?" Harry's small voice piped up, thick with tears, and Tony couldn't bring himself to look at him. This was all his fault; he was going to get the kid killed, all because he had lingered to make sure the last of his weapons would be destroyed. At least he wouldn't have to live with the guilt for long, Tony thought to himself viciously, he couldn't even do that right.

"It's fine, green bean," Tony tried to smile, but he had a feeling it was more of a grimace. "We'll be fine."

"Where's Mr Yinsen?"

"God kid," Tony blinked rapidly, throat thickening as he let out a panicked sob. "I wish he was here, he's– he's–" Tony finally looked down at Harry, who was looking back up at him with those wide green eyes.

"He's gone, isn't he?" Harry whispered, eyes turning back to the still-smoking corpse of the man who'd found him. "The bad man said he was dead."

"Yeah, kid." Tony finally halted his stumbling rush. He looked down at the small child and desperately wished he was out of this suit so he could at least give the kid a hug. "I'm so sorry," he sobbed, tears burning down his cheeks.

Harry's little hand reached out, but he could only reach as high as Tony's reactor, and still that little hand gave him comfort.

The still flickering arc reactor seemed to take comfort too, momentarily brightening under Harry's palm.

Tony's eye widened, of course.

"Harry," Tony choked out. "You know that that really cool exploding lights thing you did earlier?"

Harry shrank back from him, his face taking on the usual panicked shame it always did when his little outbursts were mentioned. Tony was going to enjoy destroying whoever it was who had put that look on Harry's face, and now he might have a chance to do just that. If he could just get Harry to direct that little spark somewhere he could use it. "Do you think you could try and put some of that mojo into the reactor?"

"You want me to be freaky?" Harry asked, his voice shaking with a heartbreaking crack.

"There's nothing wrong with being a bit special, green bean," Tony tried to be soothing, but Harry was definitely picking up on some of his panic if the quickening of his breath was anything to go by. "But I really need you to try, okay?"

Harry hesitantly placed his hand back against the glow, and the arc reactor once more flickered, almost like it was greeting him.

Tony felt like he had the world's most obnoxious countdown clock ticking down in his head, blaring warnings like a claxon. But he wasn't going to put that on the kid.

"That's it," Tony smiled tightly down at Harry's frightened face. "And now just try and push a bit of that special into there?"

Harry stared at the reactor under his hand for several long seconds before he closed his eyes. "Are you sure, Mr Tony?"

"Sure as a sure thing, Mr Harry." God, he hoped this worked.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Tony just tried to be grateful that Harry was at least distracted from the dead man smouldering behind them, at least if they went out in a blaze of Stark weaponry now, Harry would be concentrating on something else.

And then it happened.

The reactor flared, once. Bright light, illuminating the frown of concentration on Harry's face.

It flickered out too soon, but seconds later it flickered on again, this time steadier. The small indicator at the edge of Tony's faceplate flickered to life.

"Just one more push, Harry," Tony murmured desperately.

It flickered back on, and this time it stayed.

Tony didn't waste anytime setting his propulsion unit back to ready, and before the light could fade, they were jettisoning themselves into the air. A squeal of panic from Harry was quickly followed by a giggle and another flare from the reactor in his chest.

At least one of them was having fun.

Tony was too busy panicking about the child, who was only being held steady by one of his arms that he couldn't even tighten without some serious risk of broken ribs. Not even a seatbelt. He was already the worst dad on the face of the earth.

He was finally starting to understand why Rhodey always complained about him driving so fast, his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest at the thought of Harry slipping out of his grip, and he hadn't even started thinking about how on earth they were going to land–

Which had just become urgent.

The caves below them finally exploded, and Tony was seriously reconsidering his calculations because that explosion felt a lot bigger than he'd been expecting. Shards of metal and rock rushed past them as Tony deseperately tried to position himself between Harry and the pointy things. And the fire. And the whole thing, really, he was going to be in so much trouble with whatever child psychologist he hired to help Harry when they go home.

Which was starting to look a little more likely, they'd cleared the initial blast, and whilst Tony could still feel the blast of heat on the back of his neck, he was confident he could find a way to bring them down somewhat safely.

Which was, of course, when the repulsor on his right foot exploded. God was really lining up the hits on his hubris.

Suddenly, Harry was in the wrong place. His front had been the perfect place to shelter him from flying projectiles, but now it looked like it was going down face-first; it was the worst place to be. Not that there was really a good place to be on a metal suit of armour falling out of the sky.

He should have designed some kind of bulletproof cradle for delicate children. Yinsen should never have trusted him with Harry. If they survived this, the first thing he was making was a whole series of disaster-proof baby pampousses.

Tony finally managed to shift himself so he was cradling Harry to his chest. He couldn't see the ground anymore, but he knew that the impact was coming.

"Harry," he gasped. He didn't know what he wanted to say, but he needed to say something before he added himself to the long list of adults who had failed Harry.

"Mr Tony," Harry cried, the excitement of their first minute airborne was long gone, and his face was back to fear.

The arc reactor was madly flashing, Harry's hand still pressed to it.

"MR TONY STOP," Harry cried, the reactor blazing to life under his hands, illuminating his determined little face in bright, blue light.

Tony felt a strange inertia pulling at his shoulders, the wind rushing past his ears became quieter, and the screaming, screeching of over-exerted metal finally silenced.

Tony blinked up at Harry, who was looking down at him with worried eyes. Tony hesitantly glanced to his side to see the desert surface very close. He instinctively flinched, and that seemed to undo whatever had left him hovering above the ground, letting him finally fall the last few feet.

He glanced back up at Harry, who was back to doing his sad, shame face and corrected himself, whatever Harry had done to leave them floating.

"More than just sparky electric, then mini-merlin?" Tony tried to smile reassuringly, but it was difficult when adrenaline was making his vision blurry. Harry wasn't looking much better. "Thank you for the save, Harry."

"Thank you?" Harry asked faintly, his blinks getting longer as he desperately clasped at the metal of Tony's suit. "For me?"

Tony ripped the helmet off and finally pulled his hand loose from the now almost shattered arms. He pushed past Harry's instinctive flinch and pressed his hand to Harry's cheek. "Thank you, Harry, you saved us."

He had the chance to see a beautifully bright smile cross Harry's face, and he smiled back for a moment. Relishing a breath of free air.

It was all looking up.

Until Harry tried to get to his feet and fell down in a dead faint.

Things got panicky again at that point.

Rhodey wasn't sure what he was expecting when he scrambled the latest in a long line of potential rescue missions, the last 2 months digging into every hole he could find in the Kunar province had left him with sand burn and very little hope.

But he mustered the energy to give the helo pilot a reassuring thump on the back as he got his helmet situated, slipping his own comm into his ear before even trying to scan through the brief someone had thrust at him.

"Explosion was about three hours ago as far as we can tell, initial recon says it was a big cache of Stark tech that went up," the WSO recited into his ear. Voice clipped and tight.

No wonder. No one liked working this part of the province, especially Air Force. Quarters were too tight for much air support, and with all the caves and crevices dotting the landscape, it was too hard to pinpoint an enemy before you were already on top of them.

And in a Chinook, they always heard you coming.

"Anything else spotted?" Rhodey asked, his tone was professional, but that didn't mean the rest of the flight didn't hear the desperation in it.

2 months.

It had been 2 months since Rhodey waved off that transport. 2 months since he saw his best friend as anything other than a pool of blood in the sand.

"Satellites picked up a shadow that could be our guy, but if it is, he's made it too far to have been coming from the explosion site on foot. We could be looking at an unfriendly."

Rhodey stared down at the desert floor rush past below him.

God, he wasn't sure he could take another disappointment.

The next 45 minutes were some of the longest in his life.

But as soon as they crested the last hill, he knew.

The stumbling shape in the desert didn't bear much resemblance to any version of Tony he'd ever seen but still he knew that was him.

"Target identification, positive," the WSO called out. "Take her down."

Rhodey was out of the helo before the skids even touched the ground.

"How was the "fun-vee"?" Rhodey cried, voice wobbling as he took in the exhausted face of his best friend. Older, thinner and somehow still Tony. "Next time, you ride with me, okay?"

"Rhodey." Tony pulled him into a tight embrace, the gym muscle his friend had always had hardened into something a bit more wiry, a bit more purposeful, and Rhodey mourned it even as he celebrated the warm, living being that he had finally found in this goddamn desert. "Rhodey, be careful, you're squishing the kid."

Rhodey's brain went to static.

What?

He leaned back and looked down.

"Tony."

Tony just grinned back at him, the bastard.

"Hey, Platypus, meet my kid."

And there in his arms was a bundle with bright green eyes.

"What the actual fuck, Tony?"