…
Two months.
It felt longer than the twenty-five years I remembered. Time moved differently when you were trapped in a body that couldn't hold its own head up, when every day blurred into the same cycle of sleep, feed, and the maddening absence of anything resembling thought.
At first, I tried to act like a normal baby. Cried when I was supposed to, stared blankly at mobiles, let my limbs flop around like they weren't mine. It lasted maybe three days before the boredom became physically painful. I was an adult mind with nothing to do, no way to communicate, no stimulation except the ceiling of a nursery that cost more than most houses.
So the act slipped. Then broke completely.
I climbed out of my crib at six weeks old. Hooked my fingers over the rail, pulled, swung a leg up and over. Dropped to the carpet and landed on feet that shouldn't have been able to support me.
Walked to the door. Opened it—reaching up, turning the handle, all of it smooth and deliberate.
No one saw. That time.
After that, I stopped pretending. What was the point? My mother already knew I wasn't normal. She'd been there for the birth, seen the test results, watched me watch her with eyes that understood too much.
What I hadn't expected was how little she cared.
[Cybele Goldman]
She found him in the kitchen at seven weeks old, standing on the counter to reach a glass from the cabinet. Just… standing there, balanced on two feet that shouldn't work yet, holding crystal in hands that had crushed a nurse's finger without trying.
Midas turned when she entered. Looked at her with those impossible gold eyes, and said, clear as anything: "Thirsty."
Not baby babble. A word. A complete sentence with intent behind it.
Cybele set her purse down slowly. Crossed the kitchen. Took the glass from his hands, filled it with water from the fridge dispenser, and held it while he drank.
"You'll break your neck on that counter," she said. "Ask next time."
He'd looked at her then—really looked—and she'd seen something in his expression that had nothing to do with infants. Calculation. Surprise. Then something softer that might have been gratitude.
That night, she'd sat in her bedroom for an hour, staring at nothing. Processing.
Her son was a miracle. A medical impossibility. The doctors had used words like "anomaly" and "potential threat" and "further testing recommended." She'd fired them all and hired new ones who knew how to keep their mouths shut.
But this—talking, walking, thinking—this was beyond even what she'd prepared for.
And still. When she thought about him, about the way he'd looked at her in that kitchen, she felt only one thing.
Mine.
Whatever he was, however he'd happened, he was hers. That was enough.
[Midas]
I learned about the money by accident. Overheard a phone call my mother took in her office, something about liquidating assets, numbers that didn't make sense until I really thought about them. Then I started paying attention.
The house in Manhattan—full floor of a building where square footage cost more than most people made in a decade. The cars. The clothes. The way she never checked price tags, never worried about bills, never said no to anything I asked for because I was too young to ask for anything expensive yet.
Cybele Goldman. Supermodel by profession, apparently famous enough that people stopped her on the street. Investor by obsession, with a mind for the market that bordered on precognitive. She'd turned a modest inheritance into something that made "wealthy" sound quaint.
And my father?
Nowhere. Not dead, not gone in any dramatic sense. Just… absent. A blank space my mother refused to discuss, her expression going sharp and closed whenever I tried to ask. I'd stopped trying. Whatever wound that was, it wasn't mine to open.
"You're awake."
I looked up from the floor where I'd been doing push-ups—actual push-ups, at two months old, because my body craved movement the way normal infants craved sleep. My mother stood in the nursery doorway, smiling, beautiful in the unfair way of people who'd never had to work at it.
She scooped me up, kissed my forehead. I let her. The contact still felt strange, too intimate, but I was learning to want it.
"Mommy… hungry," I said, pitching my voice high, adding the slight lisp that made me sound childish. It still cost me something, every time. But I'd learned that people expected certain things, and giving them those things made my life easier.
"Alright, my little golden boy." She carried me downstairs, settled me into the high chair that I'd long since outgrown in terms of actual need. "Mommy will fix you something."
The kitchen was ridiculous. I'd thought that at first and still thought it now—dark stone walls that looked like obsidian, white carpets that somehow stayed spotless despite my existence, framed photos of me and her everywhere. No other family. No father. Just us, frozen in moments she'd chosen to preserve.
I love having a rich mom.
I didn't bother feeling guilty about the thought. In my last life, I'd grown up in upstate New York with parents who fought about money more than they ever fought about each other. I'd learned to want things and never ask for them. This—abundance without anxiety—was new. I was allowed to enjoy it.
She set a bowl in front of me. Porridge. Again.
I didn't mind. My new body burned through calories like they were nothing, and the porridge was good—honey and cream, not the bland mush I'd expected. I inhaled the first bowl before she could sit down herself.
"More."
She blinked, laughed that light, surprised laugh she made when I did something that reminded her I wasn't normal. Poured another bowl. Then another. Then another.
By the time I finished, the pot was empty. She stared at me, equal parts amused and something else I couldn't read.
"Oh my, Midas… you're eating more every time."
If only she knew. If only I could explain that my muscles rebuilt themselves constantly, that my bones were denser than steel, that every cell in my body screamed for fuel to maintain what the doctors had called impossible. I couldn't, so I just smiled, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and stood up in the chair.
Jumped down. Landed clean, no wobble, no stumble.
Took off running.
"Ohh, Midas~"
Her voice followed me, playful, not worried. She knew I wouldn't fall, wouldn't hurt myself, wouldn't do anything a normal child would do. She'd stopped worrying about those things weeks ago.
I ducked into a closet near the stairs, pressed myself against coats that smelled of her perfume, and tried to hold in my laughter. Failed. It came out in giggles that sounded wrong coming from me, too high, too innocent.
A second later, the door flew open.
"I got you!"
She scooped me up, hugging me tight against her chest. I laughed into her shoulder, feeling the vibration of her own laughter against my skin. This—this was what I hadn't expected. The joy of it. The simple, stupid pleasure of being chased and caught by someone who wanted to catch me.
In my last life, I'd had no one who looked at me like this. No one who touched me with such easy affection.
I slipped out of her arms, dropped to the floor. Without thinking—without planning—reached up and wrapped my arms around her legs.
Picked her up.
My mother. A grown woman, taller than average, solid with the muscle that came from actual work. And I held her above my head like she weighed nothing, my two-month-old body already looking closer to four years than newborn, my muscles not even straining.
She gasped, then giggled as I started running in circles, carrying her through the living room like she was the child and I was the parent.
"You're such a strong boy, Midas!"
I set her down gently, carefully, the way I'd learned to be careful with everything. She immediately picked me back up, smiling, no trace of fear or discomfort at what I'd just done.
"Ice cream," she said. "You earned it."
I gave her a thumbs up. She didn't comment on the gesture, just carried me toward the door.
The BMW M4 G80 purred to life, and I felt the familiar thrill of it—the engine's vibration through the seat, the promise of speed and power. My mother glanced at me, saw my expression, and grinned.
"Midas, it looks like you're going to grow into a car lover like your mother."
Honestly? She wasn't wrong. In my last life, I'd been the kind of person who watched car reviews on YouTube at 2 AM, who could name engine specs for vehicles I'd never afford. Now I was sitting in a car that cost six figures, and I was two months old.
Life was strange.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot. The building looked exactly like I remembered from childhood trips upstate—same red logo, same vaguely desperate aesthetic, same smell of fried sugar that hit the moment we stepped inside.
She ordered a chocolate caramel milkshake. I got Oreo.
The first sip hit my tongue, and something cracked open in my chest. Not the taste itself—the sugar and artificial flavor, the texture of crushed cookies—but the memory attached to it. Summer evenings in a town too small to matter. My mother—my other mother, the one from that life—laughing at something I'd said. The feeling of being young enough that happiness was simple, was this, was a milkshake on a hot day.
Nostalgia, sharp and sudden and almost painful.
For a moment, I forgot about Quirks and reincarnation and bodies that shouldn't exist. I was just a kid with a milkshake, and the world made sense.
"Ms. Goldman."
The voice cut through the memory like a blade. I looked up.
The man was tall, built with the kind of casual athleticism that came from money and time. Dressed in slacks and a button-down that probably cost more than most people's rent, carrying himself with the absolute certainty that he belonged wherever he stood. He smiled as he approached, and the smile didn't reach his eyes.
"What is a beauty like you doing here at DQ?"
My mother's expression didn't change. She turned slowly, deliberately, and the temperature around us dropped ten degrees.
"Howard." Flat. Final. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not interested."
"Ouch." He placed a hand over his chest, mock-wounded. Then his eyes shifted, found me, and sharpened with something I didn't like. "I'm guessing this is your child?"
"Yes." She moved slightly, putting herself between me and his gaze. "And no—you will not be his stepfather. Pervert."
He winced, but the smirk returned almost immediately. "Damn… harsh."
Then he paused, and I saw the calculation in his expression—the need to score a point, to land a blow that would matter.
"Well. One of my spouses recently gave birth to my son." He let that sit, watching my mother's face. "His name is Anthony. Anthony Stark."
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Anthony. Stark.
My milkshake forgotten, I stared at the man—really looked at him for the first time. The arrogance. The genius that leaked out of every pore even when he was being an asshole. The way he stood like he owned the room because, in most rooms, he did.
Howard Stark.
Which meant—
I turned slowly, looking at my mother with new eyes. Looking at the world around me with new eyes. The MCU and MHA didn't coexist. They couldn't. One was a universe of superheroes and alien invasions, the other a society built around genetic mutations and professional heroism. They were different stories, different rules, different everything.
Unless they weren't. Unless I was in some twisted fusion where both were true, where the Tesseract and All For One might both exist, where—
Thanos.
The thought came unbidden, and I felt actual fear for the first time since waking up in this body. I'd take All For One any day. I'd take Shigaraki and the League of Villains and every Nomu the world could produce. But an alien warlord with infinity stones? A snap that could erase half of existence?
No. Absolutely not. I did not sign up for cosmic-scale threats. I wanted to go to UA, to fight villains, to be a hero in a world that made sense. Not to watch the sky turn purple while some purple chin tried to balance the universe with a glove.
I snapped back to reality to find Howard still talking, still smirking, still unaware that he'd just rewritten my understanding of everything.
SMACK.
The sound cracked through the restaurant. My mother's hand connected with Howard's face hard enough to send him stumbling, to turn his head, to leave a red mark that would bruise by morning.
"Don't you dare talk about 'him,'" she said, and her voice was ice, was winter, was the kind of cold that burned.
She grabbed my arm—not hard, but firm, urgent—and pulled me toward the door.
"Come on, Midas. We're leaving. That man is making Mommy angry."
Her voice shook slightly, tight with something I didn't understand. Rage, yes, but something underneath it. Pain. History.
I let her pull me along, glancing back once at Howard Stark. He was touching his cheek, staring after us with an expression that wasn't quite anger. Something more complicated. Something almost like regret.
Then we were in the car, and the engine was roaring, and Manhattan was blurring past the windows. My mother drove too fast, hands tight on the wheel, jaw set.
I didn't ask about the slap. Didn't ask about the pain in her voice when she said "him," or who she meant, or what Howard Stark had to do with the father I didn't have.
Some questions could wait. Some wounds weren't mine to open.
But as we drove, I thought about infinity stones and Quirks, about Tony Stark growing up somewhere in this same city, about a universe that was bigger and more dangerous than I'd allowed myself to believe.
Two months old.
Already running out of time.
To be continued…