Chapter Text
“Again.”
Tony groaned, rolling onto his back and blinking up at the ceiling for a nanosecond before pushing himself back up.
He barely had time to get himself standing without swaying before he was tackled to the ground again, head slamming so hard it took more than two minutes to blink the stars away.
“You’re still fairly lousy, Stark,” the woman stretched her hand out for the fourteen-year-old sprawled spread-eagled on the ground.
Wincing, he accepted the hand and pulled himself up, staggering slightly. He glanced at the clock.
“Okay, Aunt Peggy, it’s 12 am already, training’s officially over. You can start calling me Tony again instead of Stark.”
Peggy grinned and ruffled his hair. “Since I’m dropping the tough-trainer act, might as well tell you that you’re coming on quite wonderfully, Anthony.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, busy prodding at his bruised ribs. Accidentally poking a particularly tender spot, he hissed. “I’m gonna go get some ice.”
Everything hurt. That was the first thing he registered when he opened his eyes to the sunlight filtering through windows.
Tony moaned. He had forgotten to draw the curtains again the previous night.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he willed himself to go back to sleep, to escape into the blissfulness of his dreams, where his head did not ache and his ribs did not send a spike of pain through him every time he moved. No such luck.
Sighing, he sat up slowly and grabbed the former ice pack that had slipped off the bump on his head sometime during the night, now just a bag of water. Stiffly, he limped over to his desk and started rifling through the pieces of paper on it. Finally, he settled on one —— the one Howard had handed to him with the impassively delivered instructions, “Finish these designs by the end of this week.”
Placing the floppy bag of water gently back on the black and blue lump on his forehead, he began scribbling on the paper.
Seeing as that day was a Sunday, he would have to finish the designs in an hour and a half, before his day at Stark Industries began at 6 am.