Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The gift of the phoenix blood was never given freely. It was rarely ever given at all.

But it was given to Maria Stark.

The phoenix that gave over his power had loved Maria, despite the fact that she loved Howard. But that was okay, because it was not the phoenix’s place to love a human romantically. To do so was blasphemy in their culture, it was unheard of to fall to such mortal desires. Those who did were ridiculed, shunned, exiled. A phoenix’s job was to protect the humans, the really special ones - but they did not fall in love with them.

Maria Stark was one of the really special ones.

She would be the mother to one of the greatest heroes to ever walk the earth. One of the heroes who would protect the earth time and time again. One of the heroes who would risk everything they had to save the galaxy and destroy the mad titan whose coming was prophesied by the phoenix elders long before the birth of the star that the humans on Earth called their own.

So Maria Stark had to be protected.

There was a difficulty during her pregnancy, one that a phoenix couldn’t fight off with fire and claws. After only four months, it became clear that both Maria and the child would die. The humans did not have the technology cure the fetus - the problem was not from the human dimension. It came from the world the phoenixes guarded. A virus, a virus of the demons that lived in the dark caves and otherwise uninhabitable places of their world. Somehow, the demons allowed the virus to leak through dimensions to the fragile, human world that would be defenseless against it.

The demons had known, just as the phoenixes had, that Thanos’s arrival was imminent. And they sided with the titan. The virus was the one gift they could give to him from the safety of their dark corner of the universe. It would twist the destined child into one of their own, a demon who would turn on the heroes. A demon who would aid Thanos.

The phoenix could not fight a virus, not from the outside. But from the inside… The virus would still live, still infect, still always be there - but it would not have control. It was the only option they had. He loved Maria Stark, loved her unborn son, loved the world they lived in. So when the time came to sacrifice himself, to give over the lifeblood and power of his kind to a mortal human, and by extension, her son, he was not afraid. He knew that the child would use the phoenix blood in his veins to protect Earth, to protect the galaxy, to protect his universe. He was okay with dying if it meant all of them, and all of the future generations, would live.

Maria agreed that it was for the greater good, but it still hurt her greatly to know that her guardian would no longer be by her side, unseen by everyone but her.

“I may not be with you in this form,” he consoled her, “But I will always be with you. My power will stay, it will flow through your son’s veins and so I will never truly be gone, I will never truly leave you, or stop protecting the both of you. Not completely.”

The woman was crying, but she nodded her head and smiled through her grief.

“Promise me that you will tell your son about the power that will reside within him. He must know, so that he can use it when the time comes when he needs it most,” he took Maria’s hands in his, letting the feathers around his wrists warm her, calm her. “The power will fully manifest when he comes of age, but he can still use a fraction of it when he is young. You must teach him to control it. Without control, the power I give could do more harm than you can imagine. Promise me you will teach him. And whatever happens… he needs you to be there for him when he comes of age, and the power manifests to its fullest potential. Promise me you will be there.”

“I promise,” Maria whispered, wiping away a tear from her cheek that was immediately replaced.

“Good,” he nodded, drawing his hands away and placing them in the center of Maria’s chest. “I wish you both the best of luck.”

He let a sad smile grace his features, and the only tear he had ever shed in his long, long life broke free. And then energy was sparking at his fingertips, and it raged and coiled in his chest as he poured the energy into Maria’s shaking form. Piece by piece, his skin, his feathers, his flame all disintegrated to ash around them as he gave over his life force to the one thing that mattered most - not only to the human universe, but to all of them. Because if Thanos ever got all of the stones, nowhere in all the realms and dimensions and universes would ever be safe.

The future of everything rested with the unborn child and the power being given to him.

Anthony Edward Stark would save them all, some day.

Chapter Text

When Maria Stark gave birth to Tony, she knew without a doubt that he would be great. He came into the world kicking and screaming with the ferocity of a wildcat, like he demanded he be let out in the same the way the ocean demands respect, or the way the vastness of space demands to be observed through the lens of a telescope.

But it wasn't just the way her son forced his way into the world that convinced her. No. She’d had the thought, when she first heard his screams and cries, but it wasn't until he was placed into her arms that she knew for certain. Because the moment, the moment she had Tony wrapped in her embrace, his cries abruptly stopped and her son stared up at her with eyes glowing a bright, fiery gold.

It only lasted a fraction of a moment, the one little breath of time between one heartbeat and the next. But she’d seen the power within him with her very own two eyes. It was a momentary privilege reserved just for her, and Maria couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, her son had planned it that way.

That instance was Tony’s first minuscule display of his power, and it was far from his last.

As a toddler, Tony would sometimes have trouble falling asleep. He would lie awake in his crib and whimper at the darkness keeping him awake, as the shadows of the night seemed to play with him. The carousel above him would spin, slowly, quietly, pushed by the darkness. The plush rocket ships and planets and stars teetered in the air, rocking back and forth as the crib trembled as though shoved. It was not a comfort.

Even at such a young age, Tony knew it shouldn’t move on it’s own like that. There was no mother or father to push it, and no wind to ease it forward. Whatever moved, it was hiding. And hiding meant it was bad.

He didn’t understand yet how he could do it. But he could, and that was all that mattered. His eyes lit up with gold - hot, burning, bright. A small flame, barely larger than that of the scented candles his mother loved so much, would flicker over his fingers. It licked at his skin, but it didn’t burn. A gentle warmth pulsed from the flame, warming him, shoving the shadows back to their corners.

Even after he fell asleep, the fire would remain.

It would only disappear when the sound of Howard or Jarvis’s approaching footsteps echoed towards the nursery. Yet, the flame stayed for Maria. As though, even sleeping, her son could tell who was there, who knew his secret. Sometimes Maria would whisper to him about fire and phoenixes and power, whenever they were alone. She would tell him of the special blood in his veins, and how they shared it. He was young, but Maria was sure he understood.

When Tony was five years old, not very long after his birthday, Maria came to his room to find him fumbling with several wires and machine bits on the floor. Tears were in his eyes, and she immediately sunk to the ground to meet him as he launched himself into her arms.

“Daddy didn’t like my robot!” Tony cried. “He broke it…” Maria wrapped an arm around her son’s body, rubbing a hand in soothing circular motions on his back and making soft shushing noises.

“Shh, shh… Hey, it’ll be okay,” she murmured. “Your daddy is just… he’s just tired, is all. I’m sure he is very proud of what you built.” The words tasted bitter. She knew Howard had been drinking again, and didn’t even want to think about what he might have yelled when he threw her son’s work-in-progress robot to the ground.

“He said I would never be as good as him,” Tony sniffled into her shoulder.

“That’s not true,” she whispered to him. “You remember what I told you last week?”

Tony drew back, wiping his nose on his sleeve and nodding. Maria placed her hands on Tony’s shoulders and looked into his chocolate eyes.

“The power you have is greater than anything your father can do,” She said when he didn’t repeat it back to her. “Can your father make fire appear with just a thought?”

Tony smiled back at her and shook his head.

“Well then, there you go. Daddy will never be able to do the things you can do. Who’s better now?” She ruffled his hair and gave her son an encouraging smile.

“Me!” Tony beamed. Maria watched his eyes shift from brown to amber to gold, and a small flame appeared hovering in the air between them.

“That’s right, little bird,” She told him, drawing her son into another tight hug as the fire vanished.

By the time Tony was seven, Maria finally told herself that Tony needed proper training. She had managed to teach him the basics with what little power she had inherited from the phoenix, but… that wasn’t enough. That line of thought, of course, stemmed from The Incident.

Howard and Maria were at a press event, and had left Tony at home with Jarvis for the night. She had just managed to teach Tony how to control the shape of his flames, and in hindsight it might not have been best to leave him with only Jarvis when he was so excited. Tony tended to lose control of the heat factor of his flames when he was excited.

“Jarvis, Jarvis!” Tony had called, running into the kitchen with an excited grin.

“What is it, sir?” Jarvis asked, humoring the child with an amused grin.

“Mom said I shouldn't show anyone this because they’d be jealous and maybe a little bit scared,” he began, and Jarvis couldn’t help but wonder just what Tony was talking about. “But you know me and you’re my friend, so I don’t think you’ll be jealous or scared!”

“Of course not,” the butler smiled back at the kid. “You know I’m proud of all the new things you make.”

Needless to say, Jarvis was not expecting Tony Stark’s eyes to burn golden, and certainly not expecting to see a small, sparrow-sized red dragon made of flames appear in the air. He was too shocked to say anything, and could only stare, wide eyed, as he tried not to let it show that he was panicking just a little bit.

“Isn’t it cool?” Tony turned to him, beaming and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet with barely contained energy and glee. “I made a dragon. A dragon!”

Jarvis relaxed, if only slightly. The kid was clearly controlling it to some degree, and Maria had to have knowledge of Tony’s ability if she had told him not to show anyone. The fact that Tony was showing him now made him realize just how big of a display of trust it was that the kid was showing him his powers at all. He couldn't possibly betray that trust. And, he had to admit, the little dragon was kind of - very - cool.

“It's amazing, Tony,” he told him, watching in awe at the fire creature gliding gracefully around the kitchen and living area.

The acceptance of Tony’s one and only true friend made the kid so undeniably delighted that he was fighting back tears. It felt so good to be accepted for who he was by somebody else, someone who hadn't known about his powers since his birth. He had another person he could share it with, and the thought made Tony giddy.

That was where it all went wrong.

With his focus elsewhere, Tony’s control on the little dragon slipped enough for him to forget to keep an eye on the heat it gave off. It also seemed to take on a mind of its own regarding the direction it was flying in.

With that single moment of distraction, the flaming apparition’s temperature grew to extreme intensity. It's flight path became a wild guessing game as it turned and weaved and backtracked, before finally nosediving into his father’s work desk at the far end of the living room and left behind a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke.

The butler flinched at the impact, and whipped his head around to see Tony with a very panic-stricken expression plastered on his face. Sweat beaded on Jarvis’s head as the papers quickly caught flame, engulfing the desk in a matter of seconds. The loud blaring of the smoke detector grated on his ears.

He rushed to the wall for the fire extinguisher, but in the few minutes it took to hoist it off the wall and turn the nozzle toward the burning pile of wood and papers, the flames had already spread to the bookshelf, the couch, and were climbing up the walls and licking at the ceiling and support beams.

Realizing that the fire extinguisher would be next to useless, Jarvis rushed to Tony - who had frozen up on the spot in panic, and not realized the flames were inching their way dangerously close - and scooped him into his arms. Heat seared his face and arms as he ran past the fire to the doorway, and smoke stung at his eyes and lungs.

By the time he managed to get them both outside, Tony was sobbing into his shoulder. He set the child on the ground, gently gripping his shoulders and pulling him into a hug.

“Hey, it isn't your fault, okay?” Jarvis tried, but Tony shook his head violently.

“It's my fault, it's my fault…” Tony muttered, half to himself. Tears threatened to spill, stinging at the corners of his eyes.

Jarvis continued to try and console him, but Tony refused to listen.

The blare of fire truck sirens grew nearer, the red vehicles pulling up alongside the building and firefighters clambering out to set to work on extinguishing the raging flames. Eventually a team of paramedics arrived and rushed to them, bringing oxygen masks to their faces and wrapping a shock blanket around Tony’s shoulders.

Media had grabbed onto the story with both hands and held onto it with an iron grip for over a week, with speculation coming in from all sides about how a fire that spread that quickly could have only been an intentional attack, despite investigators being unable to discover the source of the fire.

Jarvis’s silence on the matter led some people to believe he might have done it, and then internet arguments had broken out like a rapidly spreading disease among the tabloids. The most common point in his favor was something along the lines of: “if he did it to get to get rid of the heir to Stark Industries, why did he save Tony?”

Nevertheless, Jarvis was pulled away multiple times for questioning by SHIELD agents. Luckily, Howard had managed to save him from SHIELD’s more… gruesome method of extracting the truth, but not before keeping him locked up in a cell for a week.

Tony continued to blame himself.

And because of the media and SHIELD, neither Jarvis or Maria could be around for very long periods of time to try to comfort him. Tony was left to his thoughts and his imagination for hours on end.

He kept thinking about how he should have kept the blaze under control. He had powers over fire, for goodness sake, and he couldn't do anything more than panic at the sight of one larger than what he was used to? Tony told himself repeatedly that he should have controlled it, he should have stopped it. That it never should have happened in the first place. His mother had told him not to show anyone his powers, and he had gone ahead and shown Jarvis anyway. His friend could have died because of it.

So, two months after The Incident, Maria Stark decided that, yes, Tony needed a proper teacher to help him learn to control his powers.

Of course, Howard decided at the same time that “no son of his was going to set his house on fire and not be taught to be more responsible.” Howard decided to ship him off to a particularly strict and expensive boarding school. Maria did all she could to convince Howard otherwise, just short of telling him about their son’s secret. Even Jarvis slipped in an occasional comment against the boarding school when he could. But Howard was adamant.

Maria wanted desperately to tell Howard the truth. But she couldn't.

Not only was it impossible to know how he would react to knowing that his son and wife weren't entirely human, but there wasn't a doubt in her mind that SHIELD would take Tony who-knows-where to do who-knows-what to him; they would experiment on him and stick him full of needles and take blood samples and force him to test his limits and all sorts of unspeakable things that Maria didn't want to think about.

Howard knew that Maria didn't want Tony to go to a boarding school. And he didn't really care.

Howard arranged the schooling officially without telling her, and sent Tony away when Maria was stuck at a charity dinner.

Tony never got to say goodbye to Maria or Jarvis before he was sent off to a place he didn't know, on top of having to deal with his own guilt and a power he could barely trust himself to control.

And if there were several small fires at the school throughout the year, well, only two people ever took notice of the news reports.

Chapter Text

It wasn't until Tony was ten years old when it finally happened. He hadn't meant for it to happen, but there didn't seem to be anything he could do to stop it.

A lot of the other children at the boarding school hated Tony. Jealousy of his intelligence made them shun and resent and avoid Tony as though he were a nest of wasps. Or maybe, more like a pile of old garbage that held something shiny somewhere within the muck. One group in particular liked to poke the hornet’s nest, prod the garbage bag with a stick. There were four of them - three boys and a girl; by the names of Gareth, Winston, John, and Sara - and they loved to torment Tony just for the fun of watching him squirm.

Tony hated them.

But he put up with the torment, if only because he knew they were just jealous. Also, he supposed, because he knew he could destroy their entire lives without very much effort on his part. He could kill them easily with his powers, but he promised himself that he wouldn’t. They may be assholes, but they were only children and certainly didn’t deserve death.

It was the middle of the night when it happened.

Fire alarms rang through the school’s empty halls - and oh how he loathed the shrill sound of fire alarms. They were the sounds that most often filled his nightmares.

To be fair, the fire wasn’t his fault this time - he had, for the most part, stopped trying to use his powers because he was scared of causing another incident like the one with Jarvis. Whatever started it, it was something that had to do with the kitchens, he’d heard. Smoke was certainly coming from that side of the building.

Panic was the first thing to run through his mind, because oh god this can't be happening again. Maybe the panic caused him to use his powers unknowingly, maybe the fire simply spread naturally (though Tony had a niggling suspicion that it was the former), but it wasn't long before half of the building - a wooden building because his father just had to send him to a school built forever ago before they had steel - had practically turned to ash.

Students were running to the exits in a panic, still dressed in their night clothes and some of them still barefoot. Tony was jostled by the crowd as they pushed past him, each too fearful for their own lives to give the others more than a passing thought. Heat and smoke was starting to become a noticeable in the scent of the room as the fire crawled ever closer, its spreading pace faster than that of the children trying to rush to safety.

Tony found himself near the back of the crowd. His bullies were pressed in right behind him, for once too preoccupied to do anything more than stare with wide, panicked eyes.

The wooden stairs creaked under the weight of the students, and heat emanated from underneath, searing their feet. The fire was under them, and the only thing keeping them from being burned alive were thin, two inch thick slabs of wood. It was only a matter of minutes before the entire stairwell collapsed.

Other students realized this, too. Several of them started crying, others ran faster. Just 10 more steps, Tony told himself, pulling his nightshirt over his nose to block out the smoke and attempting to breath slower. 10 steps to the bottom of the stairs.

One of the four bullies - Winston, he thought - shoved his shoulder forward hard enough that Tony tripped, and he felt a fleeting moment of panic as he tumbled town the steps.

Landing on his back on the bottom step with a loud groan of ancient warped oak, Tony struggled to his feet to see that his tormentors were still struggling on the stairs. Glowing embers peaked through cracks in the wood, and smoke billowed in the now empty hall. Had all of the students already gotten out?

Something dark stirred in Tony’s chest. It was dark, and ancient, and most certainly not the phoenix blood.

Winston had shoved him down, to be left on the stairs to die in the inferno eating away at the school. Pure, undiluted hate burst from the darkness within his chest, a raging storm of shadows and resentment and the feeling of just having had enough of their shit. He saw red.

Winston froze, staring at him with the delightful sight of genuine fear in his gaze. Sara turned and tried to run back up the steps, only to have her feet ripped out from under her. She fell on the stairs with a shriek, and blood oozed from her head where it made contact with the hand rail. Gareth suddenly choked on the smoke, ashes filling his mouth and lungs. John was lifted several inches off the floor, then slammed back down with the speed and velocity of something that might have fallen off the top of the Eiffel Tower. Wood splintered and cracked and burst at the impact, and John vanished in a plume of flames. Their screams echoed in his ears, full of terror and pleading, but most prominently, pain.

It was wonderful.

It was… it was.

It was horrifying.

Tony blinked away the film of red over his vision. What… what had he done?

Black smoke clogged the hall and the scent of burning skin and hair, the scent of death, carried on the air. Nausea rose up in Tony’s stomach, and he couldn't hold back when his body decided to bring up his dinner.

Bile burned in his throat as he turned away. His heart was beating a mile a minute, the sound throbbing through his ears with every breath. Disgusting purple smoke choked his lungs. Little lights danced in the edges of his sight, and he had the vague impression that it was darker than it should have been.

He barely managed to stumble out the doors before he collapsed.

Nobody had known that the four deaths that occurred were his fault. Tony didn’t remember much.

He remembered the screams. Shrieking, terrified sounds that grated on his ears worse than nails on a chalkboard, and always managed to make the guilt he felt multiply tenfold. The smell of burning flesh, too, stuck out in his memories like a sore thumb. Somehow, cooked meat didn’t upset his stomach for nearly as long as it should have.

Hate, rage - those were also prominent in the memory. It had been all he’d felt, all he’d known at that moment. Like his mind had been taken control of, and somebody had shut off everything except the rage. It had turned him into a weapon, into a bomb. A bomb that killed four children in it’s blast.

In his dreams, Tony had watched that very scene play out as though he were a fly on the wall. He saw the fire, saw the deaths. But the telltale flash of gold in his eyes never came. Instead, they glazed over pitch black.

For weeks, Tony woke up in a cold sweat. He would relive the memory every single night. The screams rang in his ears for hours after his eyes opened, for so long he wasn’t sure if the sound had actually been there all along, and he’d just never noticed. The lingering stench of the burning bodies hung in his nose until noon, and it didn’t take him long to realize that he wouldn’t be able to eat breakfast again for a very, very long time.

Tony hated himself. He hated himself for losing control. He hated himself for taking out his anger on his bullies. He hated himself for killing them.

He took to wearing long sleeves and hoodies more often, so nobody would take notice of the blood and scars on his forearms.

At some point, he acquired a small journal. He wouldn't write his thoughts out in it, never something so simply and easy. Instead, Tony decided that he would write his guilt in the raw, blatant form of the names of the lives he took. He would write them there, and read it every day until it hurt to even think of them.

He vowed to himself that he would never let himself forget them. I was the least he could do, to keep their lives in the world somehow, some way. Tony refused to forget.

Picking up his pen, he wrote down the names with a slightly shaky hand.

Winston Tyler.

Gareth Brant.

John Williams.

Sara Clement.

Closing the book, Tony slid it underneath his pillow and tried to settle in to sleep for the night. Sleep wouldn't come fast, and it would be anything but restful.

The dark, vile thing in his chest woke up again when he’d left the school to go back home for the holidays. Howard had been at the alcohol again, and went on another drunken rant about how disappointed he was with Tony during the middle of Christmas dinner. Maria looked ready to fume, just barely holding herself back.

But Tony looked oddly calm. The killing calm, he would later come to call it.

Through his father’s slurred and drunken words, through all of the abandonment and heartbreak that he felt every time his father verbally attacked him; the evil in him found its next key, the next chink in Tony’s fiery armor. It could stir, and slip through the cracks to find its way to the surface.

Howard didn't notice his son’s eyes glaze over with ebony.

Maria and Jarvis did.

Maria looked desperately to Jarvis for a distraction, anything to take Howard’s eyes away from Tony before he finally took notice. The butler “tripped,” sending the tray of beverages he was carrying to the floor with a loud crash of shattering glasses and splashing wine.

“Jarvis!” Howard growled, whipping around to look at the puddle of wasted alcohol.

Maria led Tony away from the kitchen while Howard was distracted by Jarvis’s muttered apologies. She placed her hands on his shoulders and steered her son out of the dining room, up two flights of stairs, and into his room. All the while, she refused to look at her son’s face, for fear of seeing his eyes pitch black.

Tony didn’t blame her - he had been forced to live through seeing those eyes that were his, and yet not his, nearly every night since the fire. The image was burned into his memory, like a brand burned into skin. The pools of darkness his eyes had become were so deep Maria could get lost in them if she stared long enough, and escape would be out of the question. It was better not to look at all then stare into the void itself.

The ice that had run through Tony’s veins down in the dining room - that horrifying want to kill, to attack his father and tear at him until he felt warm, sticky blood running over his fingers and down his arms - finally ebbed away, receding like the waves of high tide in the ocean. That was a good thing to compare it to, Tony thought. The rage was as violent and unpredictable as the ocean, pushing, pulling, ebbing and flowing with the storms and tides. If his father was the warm air currents that formed a hurricane, then his mother was the cool, calm day with gentle breezes and a low tide that was perfect for swimming, or going out on a boat.

The darkness over his eyes drained away, revealing the sad, chocolate eyes hidden away underneath. As Maria pulled Tony into a hug, he could actually feel the hate and blood lust leave his body. It reminded him of coming down from an adrenaline rush, until all that was left was exhaustion.

Chapter Text

The… particularly different nightmares started around the time he graduated high school and got into MIT, at the age of 15. He was used to the screaming and the smoke and the smell, though he still lost sleep over it. But these nightmares were different, in every sense of the word.

Normally he would feed off the fear in his nightmares. He would relish in it like a monster enjoying the hunt of its prey - until he woke up in a cold sweat, that is. But in the new ones, a fear so cold and ancient and instinctual flowed through his veins. It surged into his body like a frigid, crashing tidal wave. A sudden rush of water through his heart and lungs, a fear so potent that it suffocated him, drowned him.

The nightmares never seemed to last longer than a few split seconds, during which Tony was more terrified than he was during the first incident with Jarvis. More terrified than he’d been when he realized he’d killed those students so brutally. Even more terrified than when he had woken up wishing he wouldn't relive the memory each night.

Most of the time, he saw nothing during the new nightmares, only felt the fear. As if he had only just closed his eyes, and everything would go back to a blissful normality if he just open them. But then there were the particularly bad nights. On those nights, Tony would catch glimpses of rocks, jagged and dark. Glimpses of caves. Creatures stirred in the dark corners of the caves, though he could never make out what they looked like. They seemed humanoid enough, with two arms and too legs and a head - but that was all the darkness would ever let him see.

They circled him like sharks - whoever they were - slinking through the cave with practiced ease. Tony got the impression that the hunter had become the hunted during those nightmares. Fear sunk into his bones and filled him down to his core - an ice to his fire, one that never seemed to melt. His power was snuffed out like a candle in the dark. Candles were never enough to fend off the night, anyway. The wick always burned itself out sooner or later.

The first time he woke up from a nightmare like that, Tony hadn't been alone. Rhodey was there. They shared a dorm on campus, and James stayed up to make sure Tony didn’t slip off to join a party, as the young teen was prone to doing. Rhodey hadn’t like the idea of a minor getting blackout drunk, even if he was an arrogant little shit (a mask Tony wore 99 percent of the time) and the heir to Stark Industries (something Tony wasn’t sure he could live up to).

Tony had woken with a scream.

Rhodey startled, whipping around to see his friend thrashing in his bed in a desperate attempt to kick the covers off. Sweat beaded on Tony’s forehead, but the teen was trembling so vigorously that it wouldn’t have been hard to believe if he’d claimed to have been in an arctic snowstorm minutes prior.

“Woah, Tony! Tony, calm down!” Rhodey tried, gripping Tony’s shoulders and holding him still. “Dude, calm down, it was a bad dream.” Rhodey didn’t want to even think about what could cause a 15 year old to have dreams that cause him to wake up like that.

Tony stopped thrashing, but his thin frame continued to shake like a leaf under Rhodey’s fingers.

“Are you okay?” Rhodey asked him quietly.

“I’m fine,” he rasped, looking very much not fine.

“Uh huh,” he raised a brow, “Try that again when you aren't shaking like a chihuahua.”

Tony gave his friend what he hoped was his best scowl, but it probably looked more wounded and scared than anything else.

“Look, man, just breathe,” Rhodey told him, demonstrating several long and slow breaths. “Like this.”

Tony did as he was told, letting the gentle breaths and steady hands on his shoulders calm his heartbeat. He wouldn't dare let himself loose control of his fire here. Not where Rhodey could get hurt.

Suddenly his sheets were being smoothed over, and Rhodey perched himself on the mattress next to him and leaned up against the headboard with one arm around Tony’s shoulders. Tony grumbled about personal space, but secretly, he was glad his friend was there. Pulled up against his side, Tony could feel the thrum and beat of Rhodey’s heart competing with his own. A slow, steady rhythm alongside a racing song of drums.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rhodey asked him eventually. Tony shook his head, despite the need to let someone know. But he feared that if he opened his mouth, the words wouldn't come because they were trapped behind the lump in his throat.

Tony became scared of sleeping. The nightmares became more frequent. Sometimes they were the fire and the screams,. Sometimes the caves and the darkness. Other times it was a horrible amalgamation of both.

So he left his dorm at night. He went to parties, hosted parties, and drank enough liquor to rival his father. Tony knew that Rhodey disapproved. Disapproved was a weak word - Rhodey was furious with him, and hated Tony’s late night activities. And maybe he was just a smidge jealous of the fact that Tony still kept his grades up despite the parties and poor life choices. But Rhodey also understood. He had been woken up by Tony’s screams more often than not as the year wore on. He knew Tony was scared of sleeping, though he didn't press for details. Rhodey never let go of the suspicion that it stemmed from Howard.

So when Tony stumbled back into their dorm - which was a miracle in and of itself, he tended not to come back most nights - Rhodey would be there for him. He would sit with him until he fell asleep, and help Tony calm his breathing if he woke up screaming.

About six months into the nightmares, they seemed to get better. At least, to Rhodey. They were still the same, they still instilled in Tony the same level of terror as before, the creatures still circled and taunted and threatened him in the darkness of their caves. But Tony had adjusted, at least a little bit. He woke up whimpering, instead of screaming. He woke up frozen still and cilled, instead of thrashing and sweating.

Rhodey didn't hear the whimpers, and wasn't awake half of the time anyway. He had thought Tony was getting better. But Tony still drank and partied and did all of the things Rhodey knew he did when he wanted to push his body so far into exhaustion that he didn't have the energy to dream. It was the only warning sign he had that told him something was still wrong, But until Tony talked to him, there wasn't anything Rhodey could do.

Tony never spoke up, and his nightmares continued.

It was raining on the day Ana Jarvis died. She had been like a second mother to him, and her death put a crack in his heart. The rain soaked into his clothes as he and Edwin (he wasn't used to calling him that, he was always just Jarvis to him) stood over her grave, only the sounds of rain hitting the ground and their quiet words of remorse filling the gap between them.

The first snowfall of that year’s winter was falling on him when his parents died in the car crash. He missed his mom with a burning passion; he wanted to hear her words and feel her arms around him in a hug. He regretted all the times he had made excuses not to practice fire magic with her. He missed the glow in her eyes, but hated the glow he saw when he looked in a mirror.

But for his father, all he felt was the winter chill seeping through his clothes. Cold, cold, cold. Ice. He regretted never making him proud, but loathed the fact that he knew his whole life that if he ever did do enough to make him proud, it wouldn't ever happen in his father's lifetime.

He went back to wearing hoodies and long sleeve shirts after their deaths.

Jarvis and Rhodey went on with their lives none the wiser.

The scars went unnoticed.

He thought he couldn't get any lower, and then Jarvis had to go and have a heart attack. When Tony stood over his grave, the day was sunny, and comfortably warm. He liked to think that Jarvis parted the clouds with a smile, to tell him everything would be alright.

Tony never had many friends, or many loving family members. But in the span of a year, the number of people close to him dwindled down to a very measly one. He half expected whatever cruel-hearted god that had taken them to take Rhodey too. It was only a matter of time.

It would be easier for Rhodey to walk out of his life than for him to be taken like his parents, and like Ana and Edwin. So Tony shut himself away. He locked himself in his room and created the robots that he named DUM-E and U and he started coding a program with a very familiar name. (It would some day grow to be much more than a program, though he didn’t know it yet.)

Rhodey tried to reach out to him. But Tony never answered his calls, never agreed to visits. If it was the only way to keep him safe, whether from Tony himself or the fates surrounding him, then so be it.

Sooner or later, though, Tony had to return to take over the company. He was nearing eighteen, it wouldn’t be long before Obadiah stepped down so that Tony could take the throne. Tony came back, staying in one of his father’s - his, now - old private properties. Rhodey dropped by unannounced.

Tony wanted to yell at him to leave, to tell him that it was a danger to be friends with Tony Stark. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Rhodey wrapped him up in a hug, and for the first time since university, Tony felt safe again. Somewhere near okay, if he wanted to be optimistic.

It didn’t last long enough.

Chapter Text

Rhodey ended up staying with him at the house for as long as his position in the military would allow, which ended up being a total of three days before Rhodey was called back in for a mission. That was early in the morning on the day of Tony’s eighteenth birthday.

Tony decided it would be best to spend his birthday alone, anyway, rather than holding some kind of expensive party. It was too soon after his parents, and Ana and Edwin. He didn’t want a party.

It was a damn good thing he hadn’t hosted a party that day.

Because that 29th of May, at 11:56 at night, was 18 years to the day since his birth. Which meant he had come of age - the well of power in his chest had reached its maximum potential, and it was ready to burst.

The first thing he felt was a searing heat under his skin, his blood turned to magma in his veins and it was agonizing.

Tony looked down at the bed sheets underneath him, and found them to be nothing more than a blackened crisp of soot and embers. His shirt was falling away in burnt and smoldering tatters. Tony stumbled to the center of the room, the floor under his feet left charred in his wake. Smoke wafted up into the air, and the familiar screech of alarms broke through the silence.

But it wasn't silent. Ringing echoed in Tony’s ears, sounding almost like bell chimes. Not just any bell chimes, but the deep baritone of bells like Big Ben, or the Liberty bell or any old behemoths that could be found in churches or cathedrals. The noise was loud enough to drown out the fire alarms, reduce them to the equivalent of white noise. His skull shook with each resounding boom of the bells in his head, and suddenly it felt like his entire skeleton was trembling and it hurt so bad and oh god-

His feet and hands and shoulder blades felt like they’d been dipped in an erosive acid. Blood oozed out of the pores in his skin, running down his back and through his fingers and pooling around his toes in thick rivulets of red that boiled in the heat. A jolt of pain, worse than any he’d felt so far, burst through his shoulder blades as the skin ripped open, and he thought he could see bone in the mirror only it wasn't bone, but feathers tearing their way out of his back.

A scream ripped out of Tony’s throat as he sunk to his knees, his feet in too much pain to hold up his weight any longer. The world spun, and it felt like a thousand needles were pricking his skin but it wasn't and it hurt too damn much for him too tell anymore and his vision was going dark and little dots lights spun over his eyes, looking more like a long exposure photo of stars than individual dots as the world spun.

He only got a blurry glimpse of flames consuming the room before he fell flat on his face and blacked out entirely.

Tony didn't expect to wake up. He figured destiny, fate, whatever it was that was deciding his life had finally had it's fun in making his life hell. That maybe he was finally being granted peace in death.

Destiny was only just beginning.

Tony blinked his eyes open, only for them to flutter closed again at the wave of dizziness that wracked his head. Maybe he could just lay there awhile… his entire body was aching like he'd just gone ten rounds with a professional wrestler, and he didn't even want to think about the weight stemming from his back. Yup. He would prefer to lay on the ground and pray to God that this was all just a horrible dream that he would wake up from soon enough.

“Get up.”

Tony almost groaned. The voice sounded impatient, gruff, and held an air of authority that Tony begrudgingly admitted he couldn't ignore for long. Evidently, though, he sat still for long enough, since the man kicked his arm roughly and repeated his order, with a bit more bite to his words. Rude.

He did groan when he moved to stand. The muscles in his back felt worn down and raw, and the slightest movement caused it to burn in pain. He vaguely heard murmured whispering around him, but he couldn't make out what they said. But he did take it to mean he and the other man weren’t alone.

“Have some compassion,” A female voice said somewhere, though she sounded worried. “The transformation was rough for him.”

“Of course it was rough,” The first voice bit back. “He’s been tainted.”

Tony didn’t know what they were talking about or what the hell was going on, but he did know that “transformation” and “tainted” did not sound good. This was further confirmed by hushed, worried murmurs that broke out again from whoever else was around him.

Tony found himself attempting to open his eyes again. The dizziness that assaulted him was considerably less than before, so he took that as a good sign. Of course, the first thing his eyes landed on were claws, which was probably not a good sign.

He scrambled off of his stomach and onto his hands and knees, wincing at the movement as a jolt of pain shot through his back and arms. Which were, of course, the next thing his eyes landed on. And instead of the normal, everyday human hands he expected to see, he found his fingers to be clawed and what the hell is going on here?!

Did he say that out loud?

“Your mother never told you, then.” The man huffed.

Evidently, that was a yes.

Tony looked up to see the source of the voice, and… where could he even begin to process what he was seeing? Did he focus on the man in front of him, or the sprawling scenery in the background?

As it happened, the wings drew his attention first. Massive wings, with feathers in hues of red and orange and gold sprouted from the man’s back and unfurled in one swift, fluid movement as Tony gaped like a fish out of water. More feather’s sprouted from the man’s skin. Smaller ones layered themselves on his arms and legs in the same way and area body hair would grow on a human, though the feathers grew in size and plumage on the man’s shoulders to look almost like pauldrons. A crest of feathers crowned the man’s head in place of hair, and he could glimpse the trail of elegant tail feathers spreading out behind him.

His feet were that of a bird of prey - razor sharp talons that reminded Tony of the falcons he saw at a zoo his mother once took him to. Claws adorned the man’s fingers as well, and more tiny feathers were pressed flat on the top of his hands, extending into a bracelet of larger feathers that protruded around his wrists.

He was dressed in robes that reminded Tony a bit of Roman togas, but made with a far finer material and fashioned to have an open back to accommodate the wings. A plethora of necklaces and jewelry hung around his neck, some made with crude bones and others with glimmering gems.

His eyes held a constant golden glow, one familiar from his childhood.

Tony’s surroundings were another matter entirely.

He appeared to be on some kind of courtyard or balcony, paved with white marble bricks in intricate patterns akin to celtic knots. A tower climbed into the sky ahead of him, dotted with arched windows and painstaking attention to detail in the architecture - it reminded him vaguely of his time studying the gothic era of medieval Europe.

That idea was solidified when he looked farther, finding a sprawling palace of white stone, built to conform to the land around it - rocky mountainous cliffs, topped with rolling seas of red grass and gnarled trees cloaked in a canopy of autumn leaves. The palace was adorned with flying buttresses that supported a taller central hall, and several branching wings with towers climbing into a pink tinged sky.

“...What?” Tony choked out, glancing around at the other “people” surrounding him. There seemed to be ten of them in total, an even split of five men and five women. All of them looked like the man standing in front of Tony, and they were all staring at him with piercing golden eyes and murmuring amongst themselves. Their whispers stopped when Tony spoke again. “What the hell?”

“Get up,” the man repeated, though he offered him a clawed hand this time. Tony blinked and took it, letting himself be dragged to his feet.

He didn’t have to look to know he had wings and feathers and talons, too - he could feel the difference, the weight pulling on his shoulder blades, the soft tickle of feathers against his skin. While his shirt was gone, his jeans had somehow miraculously survived the fire, even if they were a bit torn and soot stained.

“I am Elios,” the man told him. “I’m sorry. Raela’k is right, I was being harsh.”

“Uh… yeah. I’m…” Tony began, but Elios held up a hand to tell him to stop.

“We know who you are, Anthony Stark.”

For claiming to know he was being harsh, Elios didn’t seem to be making an effort to be nicer. Tony furrowed his brows, seeing that Elios had stepped back from him after helping him up. The others around him were watching him with wary eyes, and not daring to step closer.

“What did you mean I was ‘tainted?’” Tony eventually asked, shooting confused glances around the small crowd. They shrunk away when his eyes landed on them.

“You were given your powers to fight off a demonic virus. It would have worked, but you let the virus take control several times during your childhood.” The woman who had spoken before, presumably Raela’k, answered cautiously. “...Your wings.”

A demon virus. Right. Because that didn’t sound absurd at all. But then again, he currently had wings and talons and clawed fingers and feathers all over his body, so who was he to determine what was absurd and what wasn’t? Tony glanced around at his wings, and at first saw nothing wrong. They looked just like the others’, didn’t they? It came to him after he ran his eyes over their wings once more - all of their wings and feathers were bright, warm hues. The colors one would see in a sunset. Mostly yellows and oranges.

Tony’s feathers were black.

Or, mostly black. Blood red coated the outer edges of the primary feathers, and dark greys dotted his wings in a pattern reminiscent of a barn owl. There was a bare minimum of orange or yellow mixed in with the greys.

“I’m not- I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re concerned about…” Tony muttered.

Elios crossed his arms, fixing his hard gaze on Tony. “You very well might, and that is the problem. You never learned how to properly control your powers, so the virus became more rooted in you than it ever should have. You can keep it at bay if you learn, but until then, it could take control at any time. You are a danger, Anthony.”

“I think I’ve got this pretty well under lock and key,” Tony retorted, raising his eyebrows in a challenging gesture.

… It might have been a bad idea to keep up his smartass facade here.

“Arrogance!” Elios hissed, taking a step towards him and waggling a finger in his face. “You cannot run from your problems or try to ignore them. And don’t try to tell me that you don’t, because I know that you do! You bury things. You bury your problems and you wallow in guilt and you don’t do anything to fix it. You have spent your whole life wishing to keep those you love safe from the danger you can cause, and now that we are offering you help, you refuse it?”

Tony shrunk back, wings slumping with his lowered gaze.

“Do not think you can fool us into thinking you are who you are not. We have seen your life, we know the difference between how you act in public and how you act when you are alone,” Raela’k told him quietly. Tony could feel all ten sets of eyes on him, judging.

“What do you want from me?” he mumbled, studying the marble bricks as if they were suddenly the most interesting things in the world.

“What we want is for you to learn to control your powers,” Elios growled. “A member of the Elder Council gave his life to give you that gift. We are trying to ensure that his sacrifice was not in vain.”

“I never asked for these powers.” Tony stared down at his hands. “I never wanted them. Not for a long time, at least.”

“Nevertheless, you have them, and it was decided long before you or your mother were ever born that you would need them,” Elios snapped back at him, hands clenching into fists. “Can you not see that you must control them?”

Tony was silent for a long time, long enough for Elios to think that he was ignoring him. But before Elios could chew his ear off - and he could see the lecture coming a mile away - Tony spoke up again.

“...Fine.”

Elios looked taken aback, as if he expected Tony to put up more of a fight. And Tony was half tempted to, just to spite Elios, but something the older man had said stopped him from opening his mouth in an argument. He had said that his powers had been pre decided. It was prophesied. He didn’t know exactly what he would need his powers for, and he wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to know. But if it helped him protect his friend, helped keep that killing calm he kept in a cage from rising to the surface… he was willing to listen.

Elios nodded slowly and smiled, looking pleased. “That’s good. Very good. We are glad you could see reason.”

“What is the Elder Council?” Tony asked abruptly. He had more important questions, like where the hell are we? and what the hell am I? But he found himself ignoring those questions, in favor of focusing his mind on sacrifice. Elios told him that somebody died to give him powers, and that was the last thing Tony ever expected anybody to do for him.

“We are the Elder Council,” Elios told him, spreading his arms in a wide gesture. The sharp bitterness in his tone had vanished, and Elios seemed almost likable. “We guide our race, and protect those the deities deem important enough to warrant the need of what your parent race would call a guardian angel.” Then Elios preceded to list off the other council member’s names - all of which were far more complicated to pronounce than “Elios” or “Raela’k,” and he was already forgetting the names before the man had finished introducing them.

“Uh huh… because that clears things up,” Tony drawled when Elios finished, raising his brows.

“Come with us, I think it's time you have a much needed history lesson,” Elios chuckled to himself as he turned toward the elegant arching doorway at the base of the tower. The rest of the Elder Council turned to follow him.

“Wha- Wait! Where are we? And what about my house? It was burning when I passed out…” Tony called. His questions about the one who sacrificed themselves for him got swept away as the council kept walking.

“You needn't worry about that,” Raela’k said over her shoulder, “Time passes differently here. You won't be gone for more than a moment. As for where you are… you phased out of your own dimension, and into ours when you shifted.”

He did what now?

Tony could only follow in dumbfounded curiosity as he was led into the castle.

Elios’s “history lesson” turned into a four hour lecture on the phoenixes and their dimension, customs, “sacred duty” to protect, and a crap ton of other stuff that Tony probably wouldn't remember and didn't particularly care about. It wasn't as if he needed all of that useless information, he was here just to learn how to use his powers without creating a wildfire in the process.

Tony had spent the greater part of those four hours marveling at the vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows, and overall skill and dedication that must have gone into making the palace, only half listening to the council as they gave him a whirlwind tour. However, he did retain some of the information they threw at him.

The phoenixes had three different classes, the Elder Council being the highest in rank, akin to kings and queens. The council was in charge of determining who in other dimensions needed to be protected, based on the prophecies received by the Oracles. The Oracles were the second class in their system, and spent hours a day meditating, often receiving visions and prophecies from what they believed to be gods. They called the gods “Ath’aekria,” which loosely translated from their ancient language origins to “divine protectors.” The third and final class were the Guardians. The phoenix population was made up of mostly Guardians, and they had the job of phasing through to the dimension of their charge - the one they were assigned to watch over until the prophecy associated with them was fulfilled.

On rare occasions, when the fate of a particular dimension (or even the universe as a whole) was balanced on the knife’s edge of falling into nothing, a member of the Elder Council would take on the charge that was to play an important role in that series of events. It had only ever happened twice in the past, and never before had an Elder given their powers over to their charge. Some of the lesser Guardians, sure, but never an Elder.

There was a grand total of maybe a hundred Guardians, twenty Oracles, and only ten members in the Elder Council; so the loss of any life was devastating. Especially since new phoenixes were born only once every several thousand years.

Elios also told Tony of the demons.

They hid in the dal’thek; the massive cavern under the surface of the phoenix home world. Except “cavern” wasn’t the right word. Calling it a cavern was an understatement - abyss on steroids might be more accurate. It was also what baffled Tony the most about the planet - it was just a shell. It had no core from what he could tell. It only had tectonic plates holding the planet’s crust in pace. Everything beyond the bedrock layer was completely hollow, with the exception of stone pillars stretching every which way across the width of the planet to act as internal support beams.

The shadows within the dal’thek were lethal, Elios told him. It drained the energy from everything it touched. It was a parasite living in symbiotic harmony with the demons, who drew prey into the depths. The phoenixes had tried to defeat the demons several times in the past, but each attempt only ever ended in mass death. Demons and phoenixes lived in a constant stalemate. Neither could venture far into the other’s territory without winding up dead.

Raela’k had taken the liberty of explaining to Tony just why he was part demon. She explained to him that demons could phase through the borders of reality, just as phoenixes could, and end up in other dimensions. Only, the demons weren’t as skilled in the art of phasing. They could bring themselves partially into another world, but they were nothing more than echos. Uncorporeal, not really there.

But the demons had thought, perhaps, that instead of phasing while full grown, they could instead send just a speck of their existence through. A seed, one that would grow and root itself into Tony’s soul as he grew, acting as a virus that would kick in full strength when the time was right. This sent a chill running down Tony’s spine, but Raela’k assured him that he would be okay. It was one of the main reasons he was given the phoenix blood - to keep the demon in him at bay. As long as he learned not to let emotions control his use of the powers, it would be alright.

The council slowly broke away as Elios led Tony through the castle, until only he and Raela’k were left. Elios brought them to a halt at the end of a hallway, where Tony could look out through a large window to the rolling hills beyond. A door stood at his right, leading onto a small balcony.

“If you will follow me,” Elios gestured to the left towards a spiral staircase, “I’ll show you to your room. You need tonight to rest.” Raela’k nodded a farewell to Elios and turned away, claws clicking on the floor as she left. It reminded Tony of the clacking of high heels, but far more intimidating.

“My room?” Tony asked as Elios started up the stairs. Tony could only follow, so as not to be left behind.

“Where did you think you were going to go when you got tired?” Elios queried. “You don’t know how to phase yet, how did you think you were going to get back?”

“Well I was kinda thinking I could piggyback off of one of you guys,” Tony replied, yawning and wondering just how far up the staircase went.

“No. You must learn how to do it on your own,” Elios commented, and they continued up the stairs for what felt like ages before the older phoenix finally led him to a long hallway, dotted with several doors and windows. Elios brought him to one of the rooms and opened the door for him.

Inside was a large bed with silky sheets, a sitting area complete with a hearth and lounge chairs, and an attached washroom. A wardrobe stood adjacent to the mattress, made of carved stone with gold etched into the corners and edges for decoration. An empty bookshelf leaned against the opposite wall, as did a desk holding a quill and inkwell, along with a stack of parchment. Large windows adorned one wall, and a door led out onto yet another balcony that oddly had no railings around the edge. A double sun hung low in the sky, casting the room in a warm glow.

“I will have Raela’k come get you in the morning, and we can begin teaching you the basics. I assume you at least know how to make a flame?” Elios asked, looking to Tony.

“Of course,” he answered, holding up a hand and letting a small flame lick over his fingers.

Elios nodded approval, turning to leave. “Rest up. You’ll be fetched before dawn.”

With that, the phoenix shut the door behind him and left Tony to his own devices.