an: so this is a very different style than the last chapter. This came to me a few nights ago and I had to write it because I wanted to explain to myself why Tony would act the way he did in Civil War/beginning of Homecoming, and then I figured I'd post it and see what others thought. I don't know where I'm going with this fic, but this seemed like the best home for the word vomit that you're about to read. Please review and let me know what you think!

"No, like somebody will call you."

It was a classic Tony Stark line—detached, with just the perfect amount of indifference to make the listener hate him and want to be him all the same.

To an outsider, it might even sound annoyed. After all, Tony Stark had a billion-dollar company and a team of superheroes to think about. His time was expensive and limited—he couldn't afford to spend it on some teenager from Queens.

But an outsider can only see what one wants him to see, and Tony Stark was an incredible showman—a man of many roles. The aloof billionaire. The mad scientist. The narcissistic genius. The Iron Man.

And his most recent role—the reboot of Howard Stark. An unavailable father figure that wanted a child just as long as he was useful. The dad who bragged about his kid to everyone he met but left him high and dry as soon as he was home.

Tony had no intention to call Peter Parker again, that much was true, but it wasn't because he thought himself above the menial task.

He'd been a tornado of a child, always needing to play with things, touch them, take them apart and put them back together, intricately and delicately arranged like wires in a circuit.

His curiosity set him up for a life of engineering, which was just the grown-up version of what he had always loved. His mind was a raging wind that broke things down and then rebuilt them from the scattered fragments.

Tony Stark was a mechanic. He thrived in his shop, perfectly content among his robots. It was when he had to deal with other humans that his problems arose.

Because Tony Stark had always been a wild tempest—but people were not machines. They couldn't be put back together again when his storm touched down a little too close.

"I'm good, I'm good," the kid promised, hoarse from carrying an entire jet bridge.

But he was stumbling and wheezing and Tony didn't buy his "I'm good" for a second.

When Peter Parker went tumbling to the ground, every last remnant of Tony's focus and attention were on the kid. The airport and Team Cap and even the rest his own team be damned, when Peter Parker was down he was right there next to him.

He was never supposed to get hurt.

When Tony made his last-minute appearance Queens, he did so with full knowledge that the crime-fighter from YouTube was young. Everything from his build to his shoddy costume to the fact that he still lived under the care of an adult exposed that truth.

But that didn't mean his distinctive front of nonchalance wasn't thrown when he saw the fourteen-year-old walk into May Parker's apartment.

He could've backed out right at that moment. He could've offered the kid a made-up scholarship, shook his hand, and went on his way.

Maybe that would've been the right thing to do. Perhaps he'd sleep better at night if he had waltzed out of the kid's life as quickly as he had waltzed in and never looked back.

After all, he was barely even a teenager.

But he also knew Peter Parker was so much more than that.

He'd seen all the videos—analyzed his strengths, his (clearly self-taught) combat skills.

He had heart.

When Tony watched the footage, he didn't see a fragile little thing playing grown-up. He saw a hero—someone that was more than capable of holding his own in a fight, if not horribly underdressed.

So, he built the kid a suit. Then scrapped it. Then made another one.

He planned for everything. He added a parachute. Five hundred and seventy-six web-shooter combinations.

And instant kill mode.

He hoped it would never have to be used, he really did. But he had seen what was out there and couldn't afford to take any chances. If he was going to bring the kid into this world—he was going to damn well cover his bases.

When Tony had maxed out on the suit's design, he created a fake internship.

He drafted an email to the kid's legal guardian—an aunt. May Parker.

He didn't hit send.

Some would argue that bringing a child to Berlin was reckless. Steve Rogers sure as hell would.

They'd be wrong.

Tony Stark was a lot of things. Flawed. Occasionally misguided. But reckless—at least with Peter—was not one of those things.

Peter Parker had remarkable potential to be an essential asset to their team, to be an amazing superhero. Tony had seen it over and over again in the footage. He couldn't ignore it.

But he also wasn't going to throw him into the thick of things without thinking about it first.

He kept up with the kid on YouTube for nearly a month, observing. He spent a few more months designing the suit, followed by several weeks of bringing it to life.

And throughout it all, Tony wrestled with the idea of bringing a kid into his world. He came up with running lists of pros and cons, his ever-running brain constantly debating within itself.

Tony was a genius. He'd engineered creations that put NASA to shame while he was in middle school. His father, however, had never cared about any of that. Howard had never given him a place at the table because he was "just a kid".

And it was that latent hurt—that never-fulfilled desire to be acknowledged that pushed Tony over the edge. He had to give the kid a chance.

Berlin was his ticket in; Tony didn't know it was a one-way trip at the time. All he knew was that he was in desperate need of an ally.

It was perfect, really. The mission was in and out—get Team Cap and bring them in, safe and whole, before someone else could. And yes, they might've been trained superheroes, but Tony knew them.

He'd lived with them, fought next to them and for them. They were his friends. His family.

And he knew that, despite whatever turn this argument took—however irreparably divided they seemed—that meant something. He still believed in that.

He still believed in them.

When he rocketed into space four years ago, it wasn't because he had a death wish. It was because he had finally had something worth fighting for.

He thought, after the dust finally settled on the Accords, that maybe the Avengers could be a family for Peter Parker, too.

Tony would've never convinced May Parker to entrust him with the one thing she had left if he'd had any inkling that he wouldn't return Peter in the same condition as he took him.

He never thought that Cap would drop an entire jet bridge on him.

He had blind, absolute trust in the cohesiveness of the Avengers, and that was his first mistake.

Yes, Tony Stark screwed up. He made an error in judgment.

All he wanted to do was keep his team together and give the kid a chance to get off the ground.

But irony won the day and he was left to helplessly watch as his team crumbled and Peter Parker went crashing down.

No matter how hard he tried, despite his best intentions, everything he touched was worse off afterward.

So, he took the kid home and he told him they'd call and then he did what he should have done from the start—he walked out of his life.

He never wanted to be like his father.

It was only fitting, that, in his desperate attempts to avoid his father's legacy, in giving a child the time of day that he so desperately deserved—time that he'd never been granted himself—he had run head-first into it.

Peter Parker was better off without him. Safer.

Tony's whirlwind of a life drowned everything in its path: Rhodey, Pepper, the Avengers—even himself. Especially himself.

He wouldn't let his rolling currents drag Peter Parker under, too.

Tony told the kid someone would call, but it wouldn't be him.

Then he told himself it was for the best and hid from the sting of inadequacy that flashed in Peter's eyes. The boy had just wanted to be taken seriously for once, and God did Tony know that feeling with a strangling, intimate familiarity.

But he had to let him go, and he did it the only way he knew how. He made like Howard Stark, leaving a brilliant boy to his own devices while he cared from afar because somewhere between Berlin and New York he had lost his family and it had hurt like hell.

If he got attached to Peter, he could lose him too. Kids were not toys that he could put back together again when they were broken.

He had to beat the system before the system beat him.

He gave the teen with the puppy-dog eyes a hug that wasn't a hug (it was a good-bye) because they weren't there yet, and if Tony had anything to do with it, the would never be there.

He couldn't ruin a child that wasn't his. He couldn't lose a game he didn't play.

That philosophy was his second mistake.

No, you couldn't lose a game if you walked away before the start.

But you couldn't win it, either.

Tony Stark could play the role all he wanted, could fool even himself, but he was wrong about one more thing: he wasn't Howard.

He'd realize that soon enough.