When The War Dies Down

Chapter 13

AN: I've changed Hope's age in this, so she's a year younger than Tony.

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Hope was just about ready to go to bed when she decided to head down to Tony's lab.

"Hey Tony, you going to bed anytime soon?"

"What time is it?"

"11 o'clock."

"Dang, I thought it was like seven." Tony murmured, and stood up, knocking down a pile of papers. "Kill me." He dramatically dropped to the ground and Hope laughed, Tony's antics were always entertaining, something she had missed seeing out of him these past few months.

They spent the next half hour repiling the papers, and Tony regretted not numbering them.

"Kinda reminds me of my senior year." Hope muttered as she shifted and straightened a stack of papers.

"When the printer exploded?" Tony smiled. It had been a huge mess, ink everywhere and the printer spitting out papers like Steve spit out reprimands.

"Yeah." Hope nodded, and then glanced over at the genius, who was hunched over stacks, marking them up with a highlighter, gold of course. "We barely ever spoke after that."

Tony looked up, and Hope could see the confusion in his eyes, and then the sudden realization. "That's because I knew your dad would hunt me down." It was not a lie, but it sure wasn't the real reason. He wasn't afraid of Hank then, and he sure wasn't afraid of him now.

"His bark is a lot worse than his bite."

"Especially when it comes to Peter." Tony chuckles, and stood up to get a soda from his mini fridge, "You like seltzer right?"

"Yeah. Tony?"

"What?" He asked as he sat back down on the floor.

"What happened to us? You and I? We used to talk everyday. We used to have so much fun together."

Tony's hand stopped writing and his body froze. He and Hope has decided a long time ago to leave the past in the past, so why was she bringing it up now?

He had met Hope in Washington DC. He had been ten, and she was nine. It had been at the presidential campaign, where both Howard and Hank were speaking. Naturally, the wives, Maria and Janet, had caught up and that's how Tony had met Hope. Even then she was smart, capable, and ready to fight. That's why Tony was the first one to suggest her as the other Avengers Captain. He knew she could. She was the deadly combination of gentle yet a force to be reckoned with.

When Tony was fourteen, he realized he liked her-she had been his first crush. He had told her over his new messaging system StarkMS. She had told him she felt the same, but they didn't act on it because he had been ready to go to MIT, and their parents would've been angry, and angry parents were not healthy parents. They hid it, like they hid everything else in their lives from their parents. Rhodey had known, and Janet had some sort of idea, but she didn't know it was Tony who Hope had liked.

During the summers, they got together and blew stuff up, went hiking, and even sneaked off to Egypt Hope's junior year. There they had a private tour of the pyramids and stayed in a classic Egyptian house. They had caught up on lost time, and Hope had her first kiss.

--

They had come home from the restaurant slightly tipsy but not to the point that they were drunk. It was only wine, and they both knew how to stomach it. Regardless, they flopped on the bed and began hysterically laughing at the ceiling.

"Did you see that man?" Tony giggled, refuting to the man at the hotel desk who had face planted because he had seen Tony Stark.

"Duh. I was right there!" Hope rolled over next to him and smiled.