Headcanon 1: Jane's Parents, Erik Selvig, and Her Early Education
Jane's mom was a nurse and her father a scientist. Their names were Dean and Lucinda and they met when studying at Culver University. Lucinda was studying to become a nurse (though minored in English) and Dean pursued particle physics (though he also studied archaeology and cultural anthropology). They met on a lake, and Dean loved taking his family out on the lake. They married after college and had a daughter, Jane Penelope. Her middle name came from The Odyssey--Queen of Ithaka and wife of Odysseus, who was very clever, favored of Athena, and waited a decade for her husband to return.
They were a good match.
He was very serious about work, but he had quite a sense of humor. It was hard for anyone to stay mad at him. He had a nice singing voice and was rather charming.
Lucinda was very serious about everything, and very loving and poetic. She loved Arthurian legends. She was incredibly nurturing.
Lucinda enjoyed her career as a nurse at a VA hospital.
When Jane was still very young, things got really serious. Lucinda became ill and bedridden. She had cancer. Dean had traveled a lot, but wanted to stay closer to his family. Erik Selvig helped him get a teaching position at Culver. When Dean would visit Lucinda after work at night at the hospital, Erik would watch Jane. Sometimes he stepped in for Dean, though Dean always made the parent teacher conferences.
Jane was seven when Lucinda died. Dean was devastated and never the same, but he still smiled and played around and pretended to at least be his goofy self for one person--Jane. "If you really love someone," he told her, "no amount of time or distance or state of being can keep you apart. You know how the universe works, here," he said, pointing to her heart. "Just trust that."
Just after her mother died, Jane received her first telescope, a gift from Dean. She was immersed. Dean liked that they could spend time together looking at the stars and reflecting. He told her stories about the constellations and as she got older, he taught her the basics of astronomy and basic principles of astrophysics. Still, Jane wanted to be a doctor because she also held a keen interest in medicine. She wanted to cure cancer. This was her sole motivation for maintaining straight As at school, even as a child.
Jane grew very serious and after talking to Erik, Dean decided it would be best that Jane see a psychologist. She didn't have very many friends for her age, and the psychologist said that Jane had a high "emotional intelligence" as well as a strong intellect.
Her IQ tested at 153.
Jane lost her dad when she was fourteen in a work-related accident. Erik was the one who came to tell her. Jane found out that her father had been meticulous with paperwork, and Erik was set to become her legal guardian should Dean ever die, and so he was. A week later she won her first science fair. Erik brought her flowers and it was the first time she ever got them.
Everyone who knew Howard has begun remarking in recent years how like him Tony is. It's something he can't stand, much as he pretends otherwise, and it's on his mind as he sits watching the reel.
Howard's not as comfortable in front of the camera as Tony is himself, giving him a vindictive kind of pleasure as he works. One thing I can do better than you Dad, isn't it? Normally there isn't that undertone - as usual, memory idealises the dead, making them better than they could ever have been in life - but after watching his younger self be ordered from the room, the old resentments have been brought to the surface.
He's absorbed in a pile of notebooks when he hears his own name again - and this time when he looks up, it's his father looking out at him from the screen. It almost feels as though he's being watched and he's not entirely sure he likes the sensation. The speech, meant for him as he is now, is unexpected, angering and touching him in equal measure.
Well, no one could make Tony doubt everything (including his own emotions) like Howard Stark.
