Soulless | Book 1 of 2 | Stark's daughter x Natasha Romanoff

Chapter 18

Tony and I got to MIT and we were greeted by the administration. Tony went and set everything up for his presentation. About an hour later students showed up. Twenty minutes later the presentation started a young Tony Stark layed on the couch while Maria Stark played the piano and sang. Howard Stark enters

"Who's the homeless person on the couch?" he asked.

"This is why I love coming home for Christmas right before you leave town," Tony said. I tuned most of the presentation out.

"Say something. If you don't, you'll regret it," Maria said, Tony walked into the room.

"That's how I wish it happened. Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing or BARF. God, I gotta work on that acronym, it's an extremely costly method of hijacking the hippocampus to clear traumatic memories," Toby blew out a candle on the piano. "Huh. 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," the illusion started to disappear leaving Tony alone on the stage. "but plus, $611 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, and work with others," Tony and the students said together, "To bring it to bear on the world's great challenges. Well, you are the others. And, quiet as it's kept, the challenges facing you are the greatest mankind's ever known. Plus, most of you are broke," laugher filled the auditorium, "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," everyone gasped, this was my favorite part of his presentation, "As in all of your projects have just been approved and funded," everyone was clapping, cheering, or too stunned to do anything, "No strings, no taxes just reframe the future! Starting now," Tony froze I peaked out of the wings and saw that Pepper's name was on the hologram teleprompter thing. He snapped back into reality, "Go break some eggs!" Everyone continued to cheer including me. Tony walked off stage, I wanted to give him a hug but I knew that he would need some space. People went up to Tony thanking him for the grant, trying to get money for their own projects, or apologizing for the teleprompter. Tony walked up to me, "I'll be right back," he whispered, I nodded.

Twenty minutes later Tony came back up. "Did you forget about me?" I joked, then I looked at Tony's face, he looked worse than when he left. "You good," I asked.

"No," he said, "we need to go." We left MIT, went straight to the hotel got our stuff, and got straight in the car. We got back to New York. "We have to make a stop before we go to the compound." ten minutes later we pulled up at a house, "I'll be right back," Tony said.

"Ok," I said. Tony got out of the car and I got a phone call, it was Pepper. "Hey Pepper!" I said, "how are you?"

"Good Aj, I actually wanted to check on you after the mission, just to make sure you, Wanda, and the others are ok, Also, sorry I'm calling so late, I've been super busy, and this is like the only free time I've had."

"Ohh don't worry about when your calling, I'm doing ok, I mean I feel horrible about it, I was a part of you know something awful. And poor Wanda, I mean she hasn't been doing well, obviously, she blames herself, and she won't get out of her head about it. She won't stop watching the news where they are talking about how horrible and dangerous she is," I said.

"Yeah," Pepper started, "I'm glad you're doing ok, or ok for this kind of situation, I mean, you just need to be there for Wanda, that's what she'll need right now," Pepper said.

"Yeah, and I'm trying to be there, but I had to go to MIT with Tony, and I was away from her, I feel so bad about that but she insisted that I should go."

"How was MIT?" Pepper asked.

"Great, Tony did great until your name showed up on the teleprompter."

"God."

"Yeah, he went silent for a second then he finished the presentation, and went away for like twenty minutes then he came back up more upset than he was before. We had to quickly go back to the hotel and leave, hasn't been like himself since." I said, "Oh shit," I saw Tony, "Pepper Tony's coming back with someone, I'll call you back later." Tony walked into the car and got into the back with the man.

"Aj," Tony said, "This is Secretary Ross, the Secretary of State." Secretary Ross reached out his hand for me to shake it. I shook his hand,

"Nice to meet you," I said. 

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I think that you all know what's coming next