(no subject)

[quigonejinn]

montana_crows keeps bugging me to write. This is not really story she is looking for, even though there is a serious creepy content warning.



This story is better told in summary: you are born. You go to school. You go to war, not so much for your country, but to seize, with both hands, an opportunity that comes maybe once in the lifetime of a once-in-a-century genius. For a number of years thereafter, the current of history and work bear you along until, one day, some years later, you find yourself touring a Rust Belt town. It is almost like waking from a dream: the town three hundred miles from nowhere. You fly to the nearest regional airport, then take a helicopter. The population is a third of what it was thirty years ago, but the mayor and governor, who are both there, assure you that if jobs come, the workforce will be there.

Around the town are soybean fields. They crowd close to what was once the main drag of the town; individual farmers left the area, and you're pretty sure that Stark Industries supplies pharmaceuticals and enhanced crop seed to the. Interrupting the conversation that Obadiah and the governor are having about possible tax incentives, you put down the tumbler with Scotch and chipped ice into a leather cup holder, and you reach forward and tap your knuckle on the partition.

"Stop the car," you tell the driver.

He does. You open the door and walk up, through the hot, close Indiana summer, to the sidewalk in front of the the boarded up cinema. It's pristine. The posters from May 9, 1963 are still in the windows.

"Mind if I look around?"

Your company is thinking of building tactical satellites there. The governor looks at the mayor, and the mayor shrugs. You ask the driver for the crowbar out of the spare tire kit, and you pry off the boards on the door, and you go inside to look for parts to -- it isn't easy finding parts to keep your old-fashioned newsreel projector in shape these days, and eventually, the mayor and the governor and his bodyguard and even Obadiah come in to climb around the inside structure with you. The roof is mostly intact, so the seats are pristine.

Somebody tells the driver to bring the Scotch and a bucket of ice. You tell stories about working on the Manhattan Project because you're still not authorized to talk about the other project you worked on, the one where the test subject was four months and six days older than you and was the real reason Oppenheimer called you the Nazi-killer because the bomb ended up killing Japs. There are stories. There is drinking. Everybody has a good time, drinking and talking, until you fall off the beam where the bunch of you are sitting.

You break your arm.

You have a vague memory of drinking some more anyways, of being flown by helicopter to a hospital. You take painkillers, and after the plane lands back in New York, you and Obadiah go and have a little more fun -- you meet up with some ladies, and you wake up in the family hotel suite on the other side of dawn. Your head aches, but someone has a head on your knee. Obadiah's blazer is over the two of you.

The mouth is damp, and the hair is dark, and the lips are willing, and --

...

Your son is thirteen years old when he goes to college outside of Boston. Trains run between Boston and other cities; trains take students home after the end of classes. Tony ditched the family chauffeur, who waited outside his dorm with one of the Rolls, and took commuter trains south.

It costs money to take a taxi out to Long Island, but they knew him at the St. Regis.

Having inherited both his mother's taste for alcohol and your taste for getting blind drunk, he remembers nothing about it, and years later, Tony will get on a podium and make a speech talking about watching newsreels and learning what it means to be an American on the knee of his father. You are dead then, but Obadiah Stane is there to smile, quite broadly. He raises a glass of Scotch in memory.


SHE ASKED FOR HOWARD/TONY, OKAY? OKAY.

Comments

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

the one where the test subject was four months and six days older than you and was the real reason Oppenheimer called you the Nazi-killer because the bomb ended up killing Japs

Holy jesus fucking god.

That is all I have to say.

(Damn, it feels good to use the IM icons again.)

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

OH JESUS FUCK.

True story, Jam and I quoted the same bit at the same time to each other in chat:

the one where the test subject was four months and six days older than you and was the real reason Oppenheimer called you the Nazi-killer because the bomb ended up killing Japs

Obadiah and Howard something like heroes to a dead end town with a job market dryer than scotch and Tony was already out of the house and Howard had already stopped caring when this happens, so that's not his excuse for being a shit dad. And jesus. Rhod.

We missed you, is what we're trying to say. EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY GO ANYWHERE.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

goddamn it, as I was telling Dafna, I'm out of practice with the WRONG.

LEARNING WHAT IT MEANS to be an American on the knee of his father...

And Howard, and how the Manhattan Project wasn't his top secret, and looking for parts for his projector, and ...

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

I have a face I reserve for reading your crazy shit that's halfway between horror and glee.

I AM WEARING THAT FACE RIGHT NOW.

I I I I-

I want the follow up story about that town now. Because you can't turn every plant into something that doesn't make things for things that blow up, and they still remember how Howard Stark came and gave them jobs, and industry, and that smile, and now they'll remember how his son stole it all back.

[pensive]

//the test subject was four months and six days older than you and was the real reason Oppenheimer called you the Nazi-killer because the bomb ended up killing Japs. //

Was just telling montana_crows the other day that there's no way Howard wasn't involved in some srs black ops SHIT, man. You don't work on the Manhattan fucking Project and just blow things up in THAT DECADE to be a hero.

//learning what it means to be an American on the knee of his father. //

I MISSED YOUR WRONG. I MISSED COVERING MY MOUTH IN SILENT SCREAM. I MISSED MAKING THIS FACE :O but in font size="70".

[prosodi.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I can't even. I'd quote things, but it'd really just be the whole damn thing because Jesus. JESUS. There's a certain horrible pleasure in reading something like this that's so so so indescribable levels of wrong, but still...

Still.

I've been sitting here for a few minutes and keep scrolling up to reread parts. Oh.

[tonpep1.livejournal.com]

I think I need to go wash off all the wrong now. yep, that is about all I can actually think to say after reading this. (oh and that you rule at the wrong)

[montana-crows.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet bleeding mother of fuck. YES.


YES.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

Oh jeez, this made me shiver. And then I re-read it. And still shivered.

[esme-green.livejournal.com]

You're like an icy glass of water in the burning desert. I don't care how wrong it is; it's awesome.

[obsession-inc.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

YOU ARE KIDDING ME. OH MY GOD. OH JESUS.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Gah, you make me shudder in the best ways.

[notexotic.livejournal.com]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK