Father of the Slain (II)

To his surprise (there sure was a lot of that going around tonight, wasn't there?) Richard didn't lead him out when he tracked him down in the small locker. Instead, he showered in the undersized cabin – this was a fancy dive apparently – and then took Tony upstairs to the bar where he ordered drinks for them both. Non-alcoholic. Much to the bartender's lack of scorn.

"You fiend!" Tony cried in dismay. "I so could hold my liquor. And why didn't this order get us laughed out?"

"Because the ones running places like this know better than to mock people for wanting a clear head in case they get jumped on the way home," Richard said next to him in the corner booth that had been reserved for the champion. "Especially us tired fighters."

Tony's humour popped like a large pimple. "What kind of life have you been living, man?" Then he realized something even worse. "Shit, does that mean the bombshell and the mutt are going to have trouble instead of us?"

"Depends on how good she did with the bookies."

"Oh. Well, she didn't. She only bet once, that the other guy would win the final fight."

"They'll probably be fine then. Lowlifes like that stick near the bets to see who cleans out."

"That would be me, your reassuringness."

"Which is why we didn't leave immediately and are instead here, having a drink waiting for me to get my second wind."

"You mean that wasn't your second wind? Jesus Christ!"

They couldn't stay too long though, because Richard apparently had an appointment back at the Merry Quill. Fortunately, they weren't jumped on the way out. Or in the alley. Even more fortunately, Richard's ride was parked nearby. It looked even more rundown in the darkness, but the interior was as fine and new-ish as it was when they drove over, once they pulled the fake inside tarp off.

"Are you sure you're good to drive?" Tony asked as they pulled out of the parking lot, eyeing the man's… eye. What could still be seen of it beneath the swelling anyway.

"The day I let you drive my car is the day I get into drive-by shoot-outs."

"Well gee, mister Nova, tell us how you really feel." Tony scoffed.

Tony fell silent and stayed that way for much of the drive. An admittedly short drive, but not so short that he couldn't count the minutes it took for wary tension to leave his body after worrying they'd be jumped in the night for about an hour prior. He couldn't keep quiet forever though. "How did you get this car?"

"The underground tournament in New York. This is the prototype the company test-drove into the ground and then wrote off. It was a choice between it and the money, but I figured it'd be a good fixer-upper that could still take me where I needed to go. I was right."

"You lucky bastard, you'd better let me in on the revamp, and what the hell kind of tests were those? This thing looks like it went ten rounds against the sandpaper monster and lost."

"That's because it did. The car had a lot of problems when I got it, but looks weren't one of them. Which would've seen it stolen before I made it out of Manhattan. I had to improvise."

"I-Improvise!?" Tony Stark sputtered, utterly speechless in front of this disrespect shown to the holy grail of the next best vintage collection. "IMPROVISE!? Good God! Everyone, I give you Richard 'the risk I took was calculated, but man, I'm bad at math' Rider!"

"Ha ha."

"No seriously. That's as terrible a risk assessment as anything I've ever seen. What next, will I be shocked to discover you dropping college had nothing to do with your family and everything to do with some new-found disdain for learning itself? Because that's the only thing that could top this!"

"College learning is horseshit."

Tony Stark gaped, affronted and seized by such stupefaction that it took ten full seconds to push past his sputtering outrage. "Oh you are so full of shit!"

"Alright, I'll amend: college science is so-so. College physics is horseshit."

"Physics? Excuse you! Physics is-"

"Exactly what you said it was. What were your exact words? 'It is a gentlemen agreement that there are three assumptions of physics: causality, relativity and faster-than-light travel. And that of these three, only two can be true.' And let's not forget la piece de resistance: 'we picked the first two but do not have experimental confirmation for the first.'" Richard said derisively. "Physics these days is magical theory based on unproven theories that didn't even evolve naturally. Everything that came after Newton and Planck is complete bullshit whose only use is in showing how thoroughly every new major breakthrough 'proves our entire understanding of physics wrong.' But then, Einstein himself said as much didn't he? When he admitted Tesla was the real genius of his time. Tesla, whose stolen research I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that that only people like Reed Richards and your father can get ahead in the field. And of those two, we both know who's more likely to have rediscovered everything from first principles, now don't we?"

Tony Stark leaned away from his friend, feeling like he'd just been slapped over the face. In his defence, he had studied robotics and could make a pretty strong case right now that at least half of college physics was on point. Though his delving into the politics of it had been admittedly half-assed and-wait! Didn't Bohr kick Einstein's ass later too?

And had his friend just insinuated that his old man was part of some Tesla science-hoarding conspiracy?!

Richard sighed as he pulled into a parking spot near their destination. "If it makes you feel better, kid, family issues really are the sole reason I squeezed out of our bet. Otherwise I'd have gotten myself expelled from high school long before college was even a thing."

"Okay," Tony said flatly as he got out of the car after him. "Okay. This I gotta hear."

Richard huffed, stopped and turned to face him. Even bruised and with his face swollen as it was, he was still intimidating as fuck. Especially at night. Jesus. "In ninth grade, I did a paper on the hole in the ozone layer and why its causes were most likely natural. It was thoroughly researched, structured and referenced to standard. But the teacher gave me a failing grade and made me re-do it because the conclusions were not in line with the textbook."

"I do not relate." Tony gaped, astounded and fairly outraged at this violation of research ethics. "That teacher would've had his license revoked if it were me!"

"You're a rich boy with the spectre of your powerful father looming over your shoulder and enough money to donate your way into preferential treatment everywhere you go. Yes," he raised a hand to stop his impending squawk of outrage. "Even fair treatment as I'm sure you insisted upon. But for the rest of us who have more than two brain cells to rub together – but make the mistake of assuming anyone cares about what we think – there's just rote regurgitation of whatever useless textbook we pay the school system to stuff our heads with. And yes, the aforementioned did repeat for almost every other course in high school and up." Richard turned away and resumed his walk to the store. "Either the school system is like this to raise useful idiots for the government, or it's meant to keep everyone dumb so that the elite's privately-schooled kids can secure all the high-end positions. Failing that, the aim is to form some sort of cult in ten or fifteen years. In case my grades didn't clue you in, I'm not interested in any of that shit."

Tony huffed as well and followed, half offended and half irritated at having opened this can of worms. An all of him fairly disquieted with all the implications. He needed to think about this. He needed to buy himself time to think about all this. Evade. Deflect. Deflect, deflect, deflect! "Why did you go to school at all, then?"

"Family and peer pressure, which I was neither old nor disillusioned enough back then to say 'fuck you' to. Why do you think I'm traveling from one ocean to the other fighting for money even though ma has a job now? It's so she can quit and damn well homeschool Robbie already."

"… She did not give me the impression she even considered something like that when we talked. At all."

"Don't remind me," Richard said grimly. "I'm still working on her. And him, now that he's a freshman. One way or another, I will have my way."

The Merry Quill had the sign flipped to 'CLOSED' when they got there, but the lights were still on and the shopkeeper could easily be seen reading at the counter, as implausibly beautiful as ever. Richard knocked on the door, prompting her to look up and come over to open the door.

"Goodness! That's one mighty shiner you got there. Come in and let me take a look at it."

"Are you a qualified practitioner?" Tony asked as if he had any right to intrude on Richard's decisions.

"Uniquely qualified," the woman said as she motioned for them to follow.

Uniquely. That word again.

"It looks worse than it is," Richard said but followed anyway, glaring warningly to Tony.

"Believe me, I know what you mean," she replied. "I know very well."

Rather than a storage area or whatnot, the back room turned out to instead be a surprisingly cosy sitting area. Which, okay, maybe it fit the theme if she also did séances or whatever other fake shows she put on. The boxes and jars she brought out of the various shelves certainly fit the theme, with how naturistic they looked. And smelled. Ugh.

Which is why Tony was so surprised to see Richard almost slump in surprised relief the moment she sat on the double seater next to him and began to rub a thick, yellow ointment over his swollen face.

"Huh," Tony murmured. "Seems like even the hippies aren't wrong about everything."

"Plant medicine is only seen as a left wing hippy dippie deal here in the West because of negative big pharma propaganda," Meredith Quill said casually. "In traditional shamanic and druidic use, it's the warrior cultures who uses the medicine. Warriors and truth seekers." Wow, she did sound like she knew what she as talking abou- "Of course, the Earth Mother welcomes all." Aaand she ruined it.

Oh well, it wasn't anything he hadn't expected.

Tony spent the next ten minutes watching raptly as Richard's swollen eye visibly deflated along with his various other bruises. And scrapes and cuts and welts. Almost from the moment she applied her various ointments and leaves and poultice to them.

Maybe not entirely a hack after all, Tony thought silently.

Then the bell rang and the shopkeeper went to welcome her other appointment of that evening. So, being neither of them the sort of man to wait idly around, they followed Meredith Quill back to the front of the shop as well.

Her appointment, it turned out, was the same beauty and the beast from the fight. Unfortunately, any delight Tony might have felt at the extra opportunities inherent thereof – notwithstanding the suspicious glares from short, stocky and scruffy looking – withered the moment he saw who else had oh so coincidentally arrived at the same time.

"Son," Howard Stark said, flanked by two bodyguards and looking angry and pissed off. "Say your goodbyes. We're leaving. Now."