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𝐶𝐻𝐴𝑃𝑇𝐸𝑅 𝑆𝐼𝑋𝑇𝐸𝐸𝑁
𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑂𝑤𝑛 𝑃𝑎𝑠𝑡
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"Come on, kid," Tony's voice echoed into the hallway from the kitchen. "You don't want to be late on your first day."
It was cheerful in a mocking way, calling out to him as a tease. Eddy was still half asleep. His eyes felt puffy and his nose full. Coffee was what he needed, but the only way to get the spike of caffeine was to go through Tony first, and he certainly wasn't letting that happen.
"I wouldn't need to worry about being late if I could teleport," he replied grumpily as he slouched onto the bar stool by the island.
"We talked about this!" Tony said as he pushed one of his power smoothies in front of him. It was green and sloppy. "Go. Get a life until we sort this out. And no messing this up."
Edward snorted. "When did you get responsible?"
"When I realised you weren't," he said. "We're working in the lab tonight. Well, I'll work and you can try to keep up."
Eddy ignored the playful dig.
"You'll be there?"
Tony nodded. "Promise."
With one of Tony's unused backpacks over his shoulder, filled with a pencil case and a single notebook, Eddy made his way toward the car that waited by the front of the compound. Happy stood beside it with his arms crossed in his usual joyful stance. When Edward made it to the passenger seat, the older man rolled his eyes and opened the back door instead.
For the most part, the long car ride to Midtown was filled by a thick silence, apart from the odd lines of advice that Happy would come up with. The majority of it wasn't useful, but he appreciated the effort. It also helped to keep his mind from deviating to thoughts of what Peggy would think. They were dangerous moments. Not only that, but the fear of attending a new, futuristic school was suddenly settling in.
The sun had been up for four hours by the time Happy pulled the car up to the curb a whole block away from the school. The sleek, black car with the tinted out windows didn't exactly fit his picture and Happy refused to drive anything else. The light warmed his face as he stepped out, shutting the door behind him as he pulled the backpack over his shoulder, rays the colour of sand staining the pavement.
"Hey kid," Happy shouted, his expression looking passive but his voice betraying the worry he felt. Eddy turned and smiled knowingly, making him roll his eyes. "Try not to get lost. I'll pick you up from the same place."
Dulled yet clangorous, the sounds of this part of the city brought Edward back to the first day he'd travelled to his current time. It felt like years had passed since he'd stumbled into the Avengers compound without really knowing where he was, when in fact it had only been a few months. New York had given him a shock, with the thick air and metallic front faces that lined each street. At least around the school, the true busyness was lessened to a calm sense of chaos, no matter how bizarre the contradiction sounded. Large, boxy cars still whizzed past him as he walked the rest of the way to Midtown, but the sun gave a soft, gentle glow that blunted the harshness of the journey.
Edward was on time as he strolled up to the school, gazing up at the proud, iron gates that wrapped around the tall, old-fashioned building, the Midtown name incorporated by dark, twisted bars, of which he walked under. The name decorated above the two front doors too, carved into an elegant, stained blue glass. Students came in from all directions, streaming into the school like a shoal of fish.
As Eddy stepped into the school, heading straight to the desk at the opposite end of the hall of lockers, a TV blared from high above on the walls.
"Rise and shine, Midtown Science and Technology!"
A collective groan was emitted from a group of older students, who hung around the first locker to his left. Eddy glanced up at the TV, eyebrows raised.
"Students, don't forget about your homecoming tickets," the boy to the left said. He opened his lips to ask another question, but paused, cringing as a light behind the camera faulted, lighting his brown skin with a deep, blue tint. He smiled. "Do you have a date for homecoming?"
The blonde girl beside him forced on a smile and stared at the camera as their names finally appeared beneath their flushed faces. "Thanks, Jason, but I already have a date."
"Heads up!"
Eddy ducked as a small plane-like object flew close to his head. Behind him, a boy held the remote.
"Damn it. You, in my office right now."
"Mr Carter, is it?" The woman at the desk smiled at him widely, shuffling closer to the bench as he reached the office. He nodded, biting down the familiar sense of not quite knowing what to do with what he had. "Brilliant to have you here at Midtown. You'll love it! Your first lesson of the day is physics with Ms Warren in room 038. The rest are written on your timetable on this sheet."
She handed him a pile of a few different papers, a sticker with his name scrawled on the front wrapped around the edged. Then she pulled out a pile of textbooks and dumped them on the desk.
"Your parents ordered these to the school so you'd have them all for your locker on the first day. This is your code and number for that, too. Do you need me to find someone to show you around?"
Eddy looked down at the pile of books in surprise, wholly shocked that Tony had even thought to buy him books. But he was quick to shake his head. "No, that's alright, thank you."
"So polite," she said, grinning down at him. He couldn't help the funny look he sent her way. He'd said the bare minimum for politeness. "Have a wonderful day."
"Thank you."
Taking the pile of books between his arms, Eddy hurried across the hall, scanning the lockers for the numbers that were scribbled on the crumpled paper. 355. He found it near the middle and fiddled with the combination one-handed until it clicked open, allowing him to slump the pile messily into the bottom.
"Join me, and together... we'll build my new Lego Death Star."
Edward startled as a voice hissed beside him. He turned to watch the source of the noise, eyebrows raising at the small figurine that was perched on the shoulder of the smaller boy of the two. The boy with the deep, tanned skin grinned as he moved the figure about. Beside them, a group of girls laughed, and Eddy watched humorously as the smaller boy widened his eyes, flickering between the group and then to Eddy. The boy covered his face with the door of his locker, but it didn't block the sound of his excited whispering.
"No way! That's awesome. How many pieces?"
Eddy smiled to himself. He was pretty in a boyish sort of way, his hair a light brown, and curled slightly at the front. His features were soft, and eyes kind, the apparent smoothness of his skin broken by the embarrassed cringe on his face.
Eddy shook the thoughts away and turned, bracing himself as he joined the crowds and headed toward the science block. The school, of course, was biased- the physics classrooms took up a whole two rows, with two supply cupboards for the technicians in between. Each was made up like a lab with lines of desks, every two seats separated by a sink and two Bunsen burners, with small, named cupboards beneath.
Edward had already noted the fact that Midtown was like no school he'd ever been to before, not that it was a surprise, but this was different. The white walls were covered in colourful posters, detailing scientists of which only some he'd heard of. In the front, Ms Warren was drawing on a smartboard with her finger, sketching out a simple gravity pendulum. His old chalkboards held nothing against the tech of this new school, though after seeing Tony's lab, he couldn't quite be fully impressed.
Making his way to the back of the classroom, Eddy lumped himself down on the last row of desks, sliding his new textbook onto the table. In front of him, he recognised the two boys from next to his locker. The smaller boy with the short, wavy hair noticed him looking, and flushed, remembering his embarrassment, digging his head into his open laptop.
"Okay, so how do we calculate linear acceleration between points A and B?" Ms Warren pointed to one of the boys in the front. "Flash."
"It's the product of sine of the angle and gravity divided by the mass," he said smugly, leaning back on his stool.
"Nope." The teacher smiled and began to scan the classroom, ignoring the raised hands as she looked to the boy in front of Eddy, whose head was still lowered to the laptop.
"Peter. You still with us?"
Eddy leaned over slightly, tilting his head to look at the computer screen. He had to hold back a snort as he saw the familiar red blur of a bug on the screen. Spider-boy. He hadn't thought of him in a while.
"Uh... Uh... Yeah, yeah," Peter said, snapping the lid of his laptop down as he looked at the smartboard. "Uh... Mass cancels out, so it's just gravity times sine."
The teacher nodded, smiling. "Right. See, Flash, being the fastest isn't always the best if you are wrong."
Flash turned to Peter with a glare. "You're dead."
☀︎︎
Everyone has lived through someone's history. That fact was easier to comprehend. But for Eddy, it was different. His past was everyone's history- even that of his oldest teacher, who was nearing the end of his sixties and coincidentally taught his history lesson. He didn't know what to expect from that subject.
Someone, somewhere was looking down on him and laughing. For a moment, he'd considered whether it was a joke, played on him by Tony, but even he wasn't so petty.
"After the brilliant scores on the last exams, we will be moving into our next topic early. Can anyone guess what that topic is?" Mr Blythe was cheery as he gazed around the class, who stared back at him blankly. "The Second World War!"
There was little reaction from the class. Eddy had noticed a significant difference between the STEM subjects and every other. Each face in the rows of students was new. Neither Peter nor his friend nor Flash was in his history class.
"What a fascinating but terrible topic this is! I'm sure one of you bright young persons could tell me when World War Two began."
Again, the class remained in its awkward silence, not for lack of knowledge, but with lack of interest. Eddy sighed and a minute later, he raised his hand.
"Yes, the new young man," Mr Blythe exclaimed, excited by his participation.
"1939, but America didn't officially join the effort until the very end of 1941."
"1939, the year it began."
The following hour of the lesson went by in a horrid blur. As Mr Blythe spoke about the war, Edward could see it all unfurl in front of him. He remembered the newspapers, plastered across the streets, practically shouting news of war. He remembered his sister and her work for Bletchley and the Special Operations Unit. It pained him to think of his brother, who they'd lost to the war. He could see them all acting out in front of him: Peggy, with her pinned-up hair and strict, Queen-like voice, Michael in his smart uniform, and even Steve with the warpaint of dirt and blood smearing his face.
He swallowed until the dryness pained his throat. It was only when the bell rang, that he was pulled back to active consciousness again, aware of his current surroundings, of the swarms of students that were already up and piling through the door.
"Are you alright, Mr Carter?" Mr Blythe asked as he stopped in front of his desk.
Eddy swallowed again and nodded. He knew the man was simply being kind, and yet he brushed him off. "I'm perfectly fine."
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(Also, I've literally got this planned for up past endgame and I'm so excited)