Pumpkin- Tony Stark

General Ross

"Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green. . .

"Wake up dear, and say goodbye to your father." Tony's mothers voice stopped singing to say. Her fingers played flawlessly against the piano as Tony watched his white haired, much older father lift the blanket off of young Tony's face, who was sleeping on the couch.

"Whose the homeless person on the couch?" Howard Stark asked, buttoning his suit jacket. Tony smiled, watching young Tony sit up with a santa hat upon his head.

"This is why I love coming home for Christmas," Young Tony said. "right before you leave town."

"Be nice, dear, he's been studying abroad."

"Really? Which broad? What's her name?"

"Candice." Young Tony said while Howard plucked the Santa hat off of his head.

"Do me a favour? Try not to burn the house down before Monday."

"Okay, so it's Monday? That is good to know. I will plan my toga party accordingly. Where you going?"

"Your father's flying us to the Bahamas for a little getaway."

"We might have to make a quick stop." Howard said.

"At the pentagon. Right." Young Tony replied. "Don't worry, you're going to love the holiday menu at the commissary." Young Tony replied to his mother.

"They say sarcasm is a metric for potential." Howard replied. "If that's true, you'll be a great man someday." And then to his wife, "I'll get the bags."

"He does miss you when you're not here." Mrs. Stark said as Howard left the room. "And frankly, you're going to miss us." She said, getting up off the bench. "Because this is the last time we're all going to be together. You know what's about to happen." She said, slinging her purse onto her shoulder.

Young Tony nodded as his mother ran her hand up his arm. "Say something." Howard entered the room. "If you don't, you'll regret it."

"I love you Dad." Young Tony said. "And I know you did the best you could." He said to his mother. She kissed his cheek and then Young Tony was left, watching his two parents walk off the set.

"That's how I wished it happened." Tony said, addressing the crowd that he was standing in front of now. A group of college students, all in the engineering field. "Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing or BARF. God, I gotta work on that acronym. An extremely costly method of hijacking the hippocampus to clear traumatic memories."

He pretended to blow out the candle, but that couldn't happen because it wasn't a reality and he let out a small laugh, "It doesn't change the fact that they never made it to the airport or all the things I did to avoid processing my grief, but,"

He took off the glasses and the entire, familiar home scene around him started to dissolve, "Plus, Six hundred and eleven million for my little therapeutic experiment? No one in their right mind would've ever funded it. Help me out, what's the MIT mission statement?"

"To generate, disseminate, and preserve knowledge." Tony said as the college students chanted it with him at the same time. "And work with others to bring it to bear on the world's great challenges. Well, you are the others. And, quiet as its kept the challenges facing you are the greatest mankinds ever known. Plus, most of you are broke."

He got laughter from the crowd on that one. Didn't stop it from being true either.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Rather, you were. As of this moment, every student has been made an equal recipient of the inaugural September Foundation Grant." Students started to murmur, talking to each other in whispers, "As in, all of your projects have just been approved and funded."