Antoinette is seven years old and already insisting in the clearest possible terms that she should be called Tony, Tony, with a y. Her parents have been known to joke that 'with a why' is exactly what she is.

She gets into everything. She talks to herself because there is almost never another option available. She runs full-tilt down the stairs and skids across the air above the floor, then smashes flat into the wall on the other side of the foyer. She stays up an entire night with a breadboard, a piece of black construction paper, and a box of assorted electronics, and in the morning presents to her father the Stark Industries logo picked out neatly in glowing blue LEDs that turn on one by one.

He pats her on the head and calls her his little rocketship and then disappears into the mythical lands of Downstairs, where little rocketships are not allowed to go.

She builds an actual rocketship - not a large one, granted. Her father laughs.

And then one day the door to the basement swings open when she tries it, and she rattles down the stairs to explore, she bets there's fantastic things to be had—

There's a workshop, and there's her father wearing a clear curved mask, and she remembers to be quiet because it's important to be quiet when her father is doing work, but she creeps closer because the red glow of hot metal is fascinating.

When he sees her, his hand jerks and the blowtorch leaves a sullen red trail down the side of whatever he's working on. He turns it off and bellows, "YOU GET UPSTAIRS RIGHT NOW, LITTLE GIRL!"

Tony blinks, shakes her head, opens her mouth. Her father points at the stairs. "Out!" he yells.

She turns and runs upstairs, and up the other stairs, and into her rooms and into her bedroom and finally she flings herself down on her bed in tears.

"It's not fair," she whimpers, "it's not, just because I went where I wasn't sposed to, just because he screwed up his thing, why's he so mad at me, it's not fair it's not fair it's not it's not..."

She buries her face in her pillow and hugs herself, because nobody else is going to do it, and complains to herself, because nobody else is going to listen, and

herself

hugs

back.



Tony blinks and stares into her own face, and herself stares back with equal confusion.

"Where'd you come from?" she asks.

"I don't know!" says the other person with her face. "You did it, not me!"

"I didn't do it on purpose," she mutters. (This is something Tony says a lot.)

The new person shrugs, then hugs her again. Tony sniffles. Questions, she decides, can probably wait.

Except—

"Do you have a name?"

"No-o," says not-Tony. "I don't think so."

"Well what am I gonna call you? Tony's my name, you can't have it."

Not-Tony blinks. Tony declares imperiously, "We'll think about it later."