Fandom: Marvel
Pairing: tonynat (can be platonic)
Characters: Tony / Natasha
Rating: T for non-graphic violence and death
Other tags: childhood friends | car accidents | canonical character death
written for day 20 of whumptober 2021: lost & found
When Tony was eleven, he lost his best friend. Her whole family just up and left town in the middle of the night, leaving everything behind – clothes, shoes, even the dinner on their table. The rumours went around town, from the grandparents at the park to kids in school hallways. That the family had money trouble, that they were on the run from the mafia, that they were abducted by aliens.
Tony wasn’t sure what to believe. He had seen Natasha just the day before, when they met at the park and swinged, daring each other to go higher. Natasha won. She always won whatever she put her mind to. At the end of the evening they said “see you tomorrow” and went home for dinner. That was how Tony remembered her – a girl with red and blue hair, waving goodbye, her face lit by the rays of the evening sun.
Tony didn’t know why they left town, but one thing he was sure of – Natasha didn’t know. Because if she did, that would mean she left him without a backwards glance, without even a goodbye. That he didn’t mean anything to her, when she was his best friend. His only friend.
He vowed to find her again. In his eleven-year-old heart and prodigy brain he fully believed that one day, he would find her. The world was a big place, but not big enough to hide a girl with red hair dyed bright blue.
The night he lost everything, Tony found what he was looking for.
He graduated from MIT at eighteen and was approached by SHIELD. He pocketed their card and considered taking their job offer. After all, they appreciated his skills, paid well, and he was determined never to live at home again. But he turned them down. There was a glint in Alexander Pierce’s eyes that he didn’t like the look of. It reminded him of Howard, of Obadiah, and Tony had always been good at sniffing out scumbags.
His relationship with Howard was strained at best and hostile at worst, and he was only civil to his father for his mother’s sake. It took her years, but she finally convinced her husband and son to take a trip together this Christmas, the first time in years that they would spend time together as a family.
She was the only reason Tony was in the backseat of his father’s car, one cold December evening. He would rather be back in his tiny studio apartment with his robots, but he loved his mother, so he would suffer the weekend with his father.
He was mentally writing code for his new AI when the car flipped over.
[continue reading on AO3]
