The voice lingered like static in his skull: "Leon... Take care of yourself, kid. Not sure if I'll make it through tomorrow's ambush..."
Another dawn broke.
Leon stirred awake beneath golden sunlight that painted his body like a storybook knight awakening beneath divine radiance. His jet-black hair stood in precise strands, lashes fluttering before revealing eyes holding captured starlight – pupils so dark they seemed to swallow the sun's glare.
"Tony!" The name tore from his throat before full consciousness returned.
Tony Stark – biological son of his adoptive parents, his brother in all but blood – had just spoken with finality echoing through Leon's skull. Yet the cramped spacecraft held no trace of the man. Leon's gut twisted like a rusted gear grinding in his chest. He actually went to Afghanistan. That stubborn bastard ignored every warning.
Leon slapped the touchscreen panel beside him. With a mechanical click, the restraint belt around his waist disengaged. His body floated upward, joining a constellation of drifting debris – napkins, food packets, duct tape – all suspended like plankton in some invisible ocean.
This wasn't water.
This was the belly of a spacecraft.
The "bed" Leon occupied wasn't furniture but a titanium slab bolted to the hull. For six months, he'd been strapped to this metal plate like some bizarre human satellite, enduring solar radiation that baked through the viewport. Meals came through tubes, waste recycled instantly, his existence reduced to biological functions monitored by AI.
"Two and a half years was the plan, but half a year under Sol's gaze... It's enough." Leon flexed his hand, tendons rippling beneath sun-kissed skin. Solar energy thrummed through his veins like glacial meltwater surging through thawing rivers. When sunlight caressed his bare torso, tracing the topography of muscle carved by months of zero-gravity atrophy, he could almost hear cells singing in chorus.
This... is Kryptonian power. Leon pressed against the two-meter observation window, staring at the distant sun. Nineteen years in this world, and he'd never imagined obtaining such world-breaking strength through something as simple as... sunbathing.
The starscape triggered memories.
Leon Stark – transmigrant.
In his previous life as Li Ang, he'd died pathetically: multiple stab wounds from intervening in a subway knife attack. Reborn as a one-year-old with fragmented memories, he found himself swaddled in burning wreckage – the sole survivor of Howard Stark's fatal car crash.
Tony's tear-streaked face became his first clear memory. The grieving twenty-something cradled him like a relic from the grave, doctors whispering about "miracles." From that day, Tony became both brother and ersatz parent – albeit a spectacularly incompetent one.
What kind of father brings his toddler brother to cocktail parties? Leon snorted, recalling nights spent on velvet couches while Tony entertained models. Salvation came via Pepper Potts, whose arrival finally granted Leon uninterrupted sleep.
He'd known this world's dangers from the start. Hearing "Stark" and "SHIELD" during childhood confirmed it – he'd been reborn into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No cosmic cube under his crib, no radioactive spider bite at sixteen. Just eighteen years waiting for Time Variance Authority agents who never came.
Maybe the Sacred Timeline's already shattered.
Between alien invasions and reality-warping psychopaths, survival required more than Stark wealth. Leon had tried steering events – nudging Tony toward smartphone patents years early, expanding Stark Industries beyond weapons. But critical interventions failed: Obadiah Stane remained trusted, Bucky Barnes stayed hidden, and the arc reactor blueprint gathered dust in Tony's "impossible projects" folder.
Ordinary. Powerless. Until his eighteenth birthday.