Harry dreamed in pieces.
Not scenes—scenes implied order, and order was something his sleep refused to provide—but fragments that brushed against each other without ever settling into place.
He was falling.
Not from anywhere specific. There was no ledge, no sky. Just motion, downward and endless, like gravity without a source. Wind roared past his ears, but when he opened his mouth to breathe, there was no air—only light.
Blue. White. Something brighter than both.
He reached for it and his hand passed through.
The light shattered.
—
A voice spoke his name.
Not clearly. Not the way voices did when they wanted answers.
It sounded tired.
Harry.
He turned, expecting to see someone familiar. Instead, there was a shape made of sparks and smoke, assembling and breaking apart faster than his eyes could track. Metal surfaces flashed into existence, then vanished again—curves, plates, angles that suggested purpose without revealing it.
The shape lifted one arm.
The arm was wrong.
Too many joints. Too much power held too close together.
Harry felt heat bloom in his chest—not pain, not fear, but pressure, like something trying to expand where there wasn't room.
"Stop," he said.
The shape didn't.
—
The dream jumped.
He stood in a long corridor that curved in on itself, walls lined with glass cases. Inside them, objects floated in careful suspension: a cube that hummed faintly, its edges too precise to be natural; a ring of light that pulsed once, then went dark; something that looked like a map until it moved and revealed depth where there shouldn't have been any.
Harry knew—without knowing how—that he was not meant to touch any of it.
Every case had a crack.
Not broken. Just… stressed.
Hairline fractures running through containment like promises that would eventually be kept.
He tried to count them.
The numbers wouldn't stay still.
—
Another jump.
Fire.
Not uncontrolled—this fire was disciplined, directed, contained within boundaries that strained to hold it. A figure stood at the center of it, hands outstretched, face unreadable beneath the glare.
The fire bent around them.
Harry felt the heat again, sharper this time, and something else underneath it: inevitability. Not fate. Not destiny.
Momentum.
"Why don't you stop?" he asked the figure.
The figure turned.
The face wasn't clear, but the expression was familiar—determined, exhausted, resolved in a way that left no space for negotiation.
Because then it all falls apart, the figure said.
Harry woke up gasping.
—
His room was dark. Quiet. Familiar.
He lay still, heart racing, the afterimages of the dream fading too slowly. His chest felt tight, like he'd been holding something too large and only just let go.
The clock on his nightstand glowed faintly.
He hadn't been asleep long.
Harry pressed his palms flat against the mattress, grounding himself in texture and weight. He focused on what was real: the hum of the house, the distant sound of a car passing outside, Tony's music muffled through the wall.
The images lingered anyway.
Not as memories.
As impressions.
Harry understood something important then.
Whatever those fragments were, they weren't instructions.
They didn't tell him when or how or what to do.
They were warnings without language.
Weight without shape.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there until his breathing slowed.
—
The next morning, the dream followed him like static.
Not loud enough to distract, but persistent enough to matter.
At breakfast, Howard skimmed the paper with one hand and stirred his coffee with the other, movements slightly out of sync. Maria noticed. She always did.
"Did you sleep?" she asked him.
Howard smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Enough."
Harry watched his father's hands.
They moved the way the hands in the dream had—not in shape, not in form, but in intention. Careful. Deliberate. As if handling something that could not be allowed to slip.
"What are you working on?" Harry asked.
The question came out softer than he'd intended.
Howard paused.
For just a second.
Then: "Old problems."
Tony snorted. "You collect those now?"
Howard chuckled, but his gaze stayed on Harry. "Some problems don't stay solved."
Harry nodded.
The cube from the dream hummed in his mind, distant and unreachable.
—
At school, Lena noticed before he did.
"You're quieter than usual," she said, sitting beside him as if it were already routine.
Harry frowned. "I am?"
"Mm‑hmm," she said. "Not the good quiet. The thinking‑too‑much quiet."
He hesitated, then decided against deflection.
"I dreamed something," he said.
She leaned back in her chair. "Good something or bad something?"
"Something," Harry replied.
She accepted that without pressing.
"Dreams aren't instructions," Lena said after a moment. "They're usually just your brain sorting things badly."
Harry looked at her. "What if it's sorting something you don't understand yet?"
She smiled faintly. "Then it'll probably keep doing that until you do."
The answer didn't solve anything.
It helped anyway.
—
That night, Harry didn't dream.
Or if he did, nothing stayed.
But as he drifted toward sleep, one thought remained—quiet, steady, unformed:
Whatever was coming wasn't his to use.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But it was real.
And one day, when the door finally opened, Harry knew he wouldn't recognize it by power or opportunity.
He would recognize it by pressure.
By the way everything he didn't understand yet suddenly demanded that he choose.