girl genius ¹ ≫ young tony stark

sixty nine

POST-SNAP, 2023

AVENGERS COMPOUND, UPSTATE NEW YORK

Shelby hadn't been to the Avengers compound since shortly after the Snap, and she was comforted to see that it hadn't really changed much. She and Tony walked in slowly, relying on each other as they walked through the door. They'd lost so much since the building had been built. It had been constructed with such hope and promise for the future.

They made their way to the Stark family quarters, and two photographs caught Shelby's eye. One of their family, the three of them on vacation in Italy a few years before the Snap. Mary still had braces.

The second photo was of Tony and a teenage boy Shelby hadn't seen in a long time. Her heart ached in a similar way it did for Mary.

Peter Parker. Tony's protégé, in more ways than one.

The brave young boy had been in space with Tony when he'd been lost in the Snap. He was a juvenile vigilante from Queens, who roamed the streets of New York in a red and blue suit, slinging synthetic webs from his hands and looking for people to help. The people called him Spider-Man. Shelby and Tony knew him as Peter.

He was Mary's age, only a few months younger than her, and now they were both gone. All that was left of them at the compound were those two pictures.

Shelby pressed her fingers to her lips and then to the pictures before following Tony into their quarters.

"I know this is hard, Shelbs, but I appreciate you coming with," Tony said. "I know you've always been wary of my ... superheroing ... but we have to do this. We have to try. And we can't do it without you. I can't do this without you."

Shelby gave him a rare smile, and the motion felt tight on her face. "What if we can't do it, Tony?"

Tony sighed. "Then at least we tried, right?"

Her green eyes welled with tears. "I ... I'm not sure I can handle it if we fail, Tony," she said, collapsing onto the couch.

He sat beside her, sliding his hand over hers. "Shelby, you know I miss Mary as much as you do, and I'm scared that if we fail, it's going to hurt like we lost her all over again. But we have to give it our all, and we can't do that without at least a little hope that this is possible. You're the strongest person I know. I know you can do this."

"The old me was strong," Shelby replied, resting her head against his chest.

"And she's still in there, somewhere," he said, tapping the side of her head.

"I'm not so sure she is." As far as Shelby was convinced, Old Shelby had been killed with the other half of the universe's population the day Thanos snapped his greedy purple fingers.

"She is," Tony replied, a soft smile filling his face. "I know it. We're going to do this for Mary. For Parker. For Robbo. For everyone."

Shelby's eyes drifted over to the picture of Mary on the wall. "For Mary."

When she was younger, she never imagined herself as a mother. Perhaps that was because she'd never had one herself. As far as she knew, all parents did was let their kids down. She didn't want to do that. She didn't want to be responsible for trauma in her child's life. She was scared.

When she'd first found out that she was pregnant with Mary, Shelby was terrified. So was Tony. Neither were entirely sure they wanted to be parents, or should be. Nothing in their own raising had taught them how to care for children.