"I didn't know you knew what that was." Tony Stark accepts an oblong metal tool from his guardian's hand, the one he's just asked for.

Jarvis smiles. "I wasn't only your father's butler, you know."

Tony looks around and thinks of something he's been too self-absorbed to notice. "You've—been spending a lot of time with me in the lab, Jarvis. I'm—sure you have other things you need to be doing."

The two are standing quite close together, so it's not much of a stretch for Jarvis to put a hand on his shoulder. "It's been too long since I've had something interesting to do. Besides, now that you're home, you're our first priority."

"I wish my parents had felt that way," Tony mumbles before he can stop himself, staring at his shoes. It's been a few months since their deaths, and he doesn't miss them much. He wishes he did. It feels wrong for their absence from the world to have affected his life so little.

"Me too," Jarvis agrees matter-of-factly. Tony looks up and meets eyes that are as wet as his own.

To outside views, the Stark heir is doing very well. He's at the top of his class at the local high school, and even if he didn't have the Stark money, he'd be invited to any university he'd like to attend in a few years.

Inside, he feels younger than his years. Inside, he's come to realize the unhappy truth that as long as his parents were alive, something in him, some part he hadn't realized was even still there, had kept wishing and hoping and aching for something to change—for the three of them to be a real family. That part is the part that aches unbearably now, even though nothing in his life has changed without them. That part makes him, a teenager who feels like he should be older and stronger, cry himself to sleep every night over the fact that his hope of a family is gone forever.

As boy and butler are finishing up for the day, Jarvis clears his throat. "I almost forgot. Dinner will be a little early this evening, six-thirty instead of seven, because Mrs. Jarvis is preparing it, and she's got a head start on us. She's making her speciality—a Hungarian stew. You're in for a treat."

"I'll be there."

Tony steps through the door of the Jarvises' suite at six twenty-five, holding a rose from the garden. Mrs. Jarvis loves roses.

"Hello, darling." Accented English reaches his ear, and Jarvis's beautiful wife comes out of the kitchen to greet him, wearing an apron and a smile. She envelopes him in one of her famous hugs and puts the rose in her hair, behind her ear.

"Go watch television for a moment, sweetheart. Dinner will be on in a tick." He goes to his butler's small living room and sits on the old, comfortable sofa, but he doesn't turn on the TV. Instead he savors the smell of stew and watches through the kitchen doorway as the butler and his wife collaborate to finish the meal. They're loud—laughing, bumping into each other, and, once, he catches them kissing. So much happiness.

Tony eats dinner with them every night now. There's no need to open the dining room when there's no one to entertain, and there's no need for the fancy dinners the chef used to make. Jarvis is a good cook anyway, and his wife doesn't cook much, but she's very good company.

Within ten minutes, the table is filled, and the three of them sit down to a dinner of hearty beef stew and dark brown bread. "Darling," says Jarvis, when they've all been served, "Tony's had another—what do they call them here—oh, report cards, yes—he's had another one of those from school, and I don't quite understand how they do the grades here, but his teachers say he's doing terribly well."

The boy blushes. He always has straight-As. No need to make a big deal out of it every time. But Ana leans over and puts her hand on his arm. "That's wonderful, Tony. We're so proud of you." He can't help smiling. They've dispensed with the "Master Tony" now. No more need for it.

Over dinner, they talk about inventions—Tony's and Ana Jarvis's. She's nearly as clever as he is, though he doesn't think she realizes it. Her talents lie in the direction of weapons concealment for espionage, and she's very, very good at it. The butler, of course, knows about the boy's robots and his wife's disguises, and he discusses both easily.

When dinner is over, Tony helps Jarvis with the dishes. "Would you like to stay in for The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?" the butler asks.

Tony shakes his head. "I have a research paper to write for English class."

The dishes finally dry, their evening ritual commences. Ana Jarvis is already on the couch, waiting for David McCallum to grace the TV screen, and she blows him a kiss. "Good night, sweetheart," but Jarvis walks him out to the mansion hallway.

"Good night, Tony," he says gently. The boy isn't put to bed any more. That would be ridiculous at his age. But, as always, Jarvis puts warm arms around him and holds him tightly for a moment. It's non-negotiable. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Jarvis." He's used to saying it every night; that doesn't mean he doesn't mean it.

Tony goes to his room, feeling warm and light and, well, happy. "That's what it's like," he suddenly realizes, lighting flashing through his brain, exactly like it does when he reaches the answer to a perplexing problem with one of his inventions.

That's what it's like to have a mom and a dad who adore each other. That's how it is to be a family together, to eat a delicious, imperfect dinner at a normal-sized table in a regular-sized house. That's how it feels to be home, to be surrounded by love. He hasn't lost his chance after all; he just didn't see that it was happening all around him.

For the first time since the accident, he doesn't cry himself to sleep because he's heartbroken. The tears that soak his pillow come from the overwhelming feeling of how lucky he is and how much he's loved—by a family who didn't have to love him but chose to anyway.

Tony Stark is cuddling with Pepper Potts. "You're quiet today, Mr. Stark," she says playfully, pulling up the blanket that's fallen off the sofa at their feet and wrapping it securely around both of them against the winter chill.

"You're my family," he says softly, kissing her forehead slowly and gently, almost reverently.

"And you're my family." Her tone matches the seriousness of his. Pepper never makes light of his moods. After so many years, she reads him perfectly, and he finds it deeply comforting.

Tony's house is nothing like the small suite where the Jarvises lived, and nothing in his life is much like it was when he was a teenager who'd just lost his parents. But when he holds Pepper, the feeling is just the same, the warmth and absolute security of belonging, of being totally enveloped in love so thick it can't be measured.

"JARVIS," he calls out. "Tell the chef to make Ana Jarvis's Hungarian Stew for dinner."

"As you wish, Sir," is the polite reply.

Pepper doesn't ask why. She just settles against his chest, her robe-clad body a soft, soothing weight against him, anchoring him to earth and to everything that makes him feel whole in the world. He opens his eyes and looks down at her, and she feels his gaze and meets it. "You're never going to leave me." It's a statement, not a question.

"No," she echoes. "I'm never going to leave you."