Story of My Life

"You knew Captain America?"

Tony is very young when he asks the question. Dad blinks, and suddenly he isn't just in the same room with Tony; he's here in both body and mind. He doesn't always notice when Tony speaks, but this time he does. This time Dad looks at him, and when he answers, it isn't just to say that he's needed at the office or his lab or the phone.

Dad actually smiles, a warm flash that cracks before it fades. "Knew him? Tony, your old man made Captain America."

There are old black and white photos of Steve Rogers scattered around Dad's home office. Photos of Captain America and the Howling Commandos, Captain America and a woman Dad usually calls "Peg," and the pride and joy of his collection: a photo of a young Howard Stark wearing flight gear and a grin, standing beside Captain Rogers in full, star-spangled glory. The photo is the only one placed on the desk in Dad's direct line of sight.

There is also a single color photo of Mom and Tony, taken by Dad by the pool. They were splashing and smiling at each other instead of the camera. It hangs by the door of Dad's home office, a distant smudge of color against the wallpaper when viewed from the desk. Tony's view is usually a little more up close, however; he always sees the picture in detail when Dad tells him he's busy and ushers him out.

Dad doesn't talk to him much, and when he does, he usually expresses disappointment. It's the only emotion he feels strongly enough to emerge from his office or lab long enough to confront Tony. Even then, he has an aura of distraction and suppressed energy, like he's being kept from infinitely more important things. Tony adds all the lectures to his mental list of Ways I Disappoint Dad. The list is long, and today it's getting longer still. Today he adds "Mentioning that I might want to take an off year instead of going for early enrollment at MIT."

"You're selfish, Tony," Dad says, sounding for all the world like he's giving a speech at Stark Industries. Or reprimanding particularly reprehensible subordinates. "Self-consumed, preoccupied with what you want and what will make you feel better right now. It's childish —"

Tony resists the urge to say "Wonder where I learned that?" and only narrowly succeeds, missing several sentences from his dad in the effort. Not that it matters — he could recognize his dad's disappointed-in-Tony voice in his sleep. He can probably give half the "be better" speech himself.

Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he practically does. The darkest of those thoughts always sound like his father's voice.

"Steve Rogers was selfless," Dad is saying, suddenly. Tony may have missed some connective tissue in Dad's rebuke, but it's not an unexpected comment. Dad's shining example has always been Captain goddamned America. "Determined. Nothing stopped him once he put his mind to something. You'd do well to be more like him. Or at least to try setting your mind to something at all."

Tony isn't sure why the words sting like a slap across the face. It isn't as though he hasn't heard his father sing Steve Rogers' praises for his whole life. He can't remember his father ever stringing two words of praise together for him, but Captain America…

They could engrave the Captain's memorials with Howard Stark's praises.

Tony wonders what they'd put on his headstone, aside from the obvious "Disappointment." There'd be no quotes for him, no stamp of Howard Stark's rarely-bestowed approbation. The uneasy falling sensation in his stomach rapidly shifts into anger.

It isn't his fault that he isn't Steve Rogers, God's perfect man. Maybe if Howard Stark had ever let his own son into one of his labs instead of locking him out, he would be. Maybe if Dad would stop criticizing him for who he wasn't, he might actually be able to decide who he was. As it is, he smolders in silence. Talking back only ever prolongs the tirades. Usually he's all in when it comes to making his father angry, but today his heart isn't in it.

Today, he waits for his dad to leave him, trailing a long-suffering sigh. Today, he digs out an old design for a repulsor weapon and tweaks it enough for indoor target practice. He scribbles a quick and messy rendition of Captain America's shield to pin over the target board, just so he can have the pleasure of watching it blacken and burn away.

"Talk to him," Mom urges quietly.

Dad is milling around just through the open doorway, gathering a few last items before their flight. He's irritated at Tony, as usual, not even the Christmas holiday relaxing his strict eye on Tony's grades and Tony's behavior. He wonders whether Dad will ever just breathe the air instead of breathing down his neck. Whether he'll ever hear about Tony's projects or his grades and say something beyond, "Hm."

Talk to him. Mom's eyes are wide and kind, filled with that distant pain she sometimes projects when Dad and Tony are a little frostier than usual to one another. He wonders if he could cave, just this once, for her. He always wants to smooth away the cracks behind her eyes. He tries out the concept of saying something affectionate in his mind, like an experiment. Traces the possible outcomes. After a moment, he draws nothing but a blank. Talk to Dad?

Dad never talks to him.

He turns away from Mom so he doesn't have to see her pained look when he says, "Goodbye," and not at all what she asked him to say. Her disappointment stings him even from a distance.

Howard and Maria Stark turn to leave. Tony isn't sure why he drifts to the window to watch them go, but he follows the urge. Mom turns to smile and wave one last time; Dad is all business, tucking suitcases into the car and disappearing inside. The car crunches down the drive and leaves only silence in the house.

Tony never sees them alive again.

The funeral is closed casket. Dad was a mess after the car accident, or so he heard. They wouldn't let him see. The funeral director thought it best to close both caskets instead of leaving one open and one conspicuously closed. Tony stays behind when the mourners file from the service to drive to the burial site. When the chapel is empty he cajoles and bribes and finally begs to see Mom before they take her away. Flustered and damp-eyed, the funeral director finally agrees.

She looks like she's sleeping. Strange and cold and wrong, somehow, but peaceful. Eyes closed, face graceful, even now. The high-necked blouse she loved is gauzy and angelic.

He can't think of anything to say.

Time passes, but he can't really feel it. He feels like he's floating, lost in space, maybe, with no gravity and no oxygen. With nothing at all.

Suddenly the casket is closed with murmured apologies and explanations — "I'm so sorry, son, but we really have to go now" — and he drifts behind them. He's in the cemetery and there's singing and soft weeping from some of the people around him as Howard and Maria Stark are laid to rest. The headstone is already carved and in place, proclaiming their names and the length of their lives. His eyes stick on Howard's half of the headstone.

The brightest mind of his time

Beloved husband and father

Two lines, the second almost an afterthought. He wonders who wrote it. Nobody asked Tony for input. Probably for the best.

The crowd drifts by, black as rolling storm clouds despite the sunlight all around them. So many of them offer condolences, varied versions of the same cloying sentiment. I'm so sorry.

It takes him the entire length of the ceremony to be able to look at Mom's half of the headstone. By then, he's alone.

Beloved wife and mother

An understatement, he thinks, and wishes that someone had consulted him on that one. The tears come all at once.

When Tony takes over as CEO of Stark Industries, he doesn't feel prepared. He hears Dad's voice in an endless litany of selfish, lazy, not enough.

The newspapers and magazines and news channels disagree. Tony delights in the attention, the adulation. The smiles and giggles and looks of admiration and awe. Business is booming and the CEO couldn't be more visible and popular.

Through it all, he can't help but think that the board of Stark Industries looked prouder of him than Dad ever did.

Tony Stark's time as a captive of the Ten Rings overturns his mind just as forcefully as the IED that sent his humvee soaring skyward in a pillar of flame and smoke.

He builds himself armor that's made of iron instead of sarcasm and apathy, and never can decide which one hurts the most to wear. He hammers and welds, sweat leaking from every pore and dripping with a salty sting to disappear into the sand at his feet. His reflection is stretched and misshapen in the slabs of metal he molds tirelessly, and his mind wanders as the memories of parties and drinking and girls fades into something more like myth. Like something impossible — a painting of a story.

The memories that survive the sand and heat and constant torment are small details, raised and burnished to shining beacons in his claustrophobic thoughts. He remembers mom singing, sometimes, when he was little. Her sweet, clear voice that came with reassuring smiles when Dad was too abrupt. He hums along with the memory even though the ring of pounded metal means he can't hear himself.

He remembers Dad's pride in his work. That shield was made of vibranium. One-of-a-kind. His eyes were happier in those moments, even if Tony only caught the fact from a distance. That particular look was never directed at him.

He wipes his forehead, wincing at the sting of salt-sweat in his eyes, and wonders whether the heap of metal before him would make Dad remotely proud.

"Focus, Stark," Yinsen scolds mildly.

He does.

Being Iron Man is a more rewarding job than weapons manufacturing. Doing good…it feels good, too.

Up until the palladium core of his arc reactor starts poisoning him from the inside out. He feels ragged, now, tired and ill. He spends a lot of time wondering what his own headstone will say.

Beloved Iron Man, he thinks when he has enough energy to think like a smartass.

Beloved Boss…well, appreciated, maybe, he thinks when he's feeling sick.

Beloved Son, he thinks when he's been drinking, and his laugh aches in his throat like tears.

Coulson brings him materials to work on a new element to power his arc reactor, his suit, his life. Fury, never content to keep his meddling to a minimum, brings him stories about a Howard Stark he'd never known. He paints a portrait of Howard as a loving and even proud father. Tony's laugh tugs at his chest like the shrapnel embedded deep beneath. Nick is trying to keep him motivated, he knows. A for effort.

But then he finds the old film reel. Dad looks into the camera, meeting his eyes across decades.

"Tony, you're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I'd put it on film for you." Tony hangs on his every word about his life work and the limitations of the technology of his time. "One day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation...is you."

The words drive the breath from his lungs. Dad had never looked at him with that much pride in life. Never with that much...love.

He walks through the next days — creating new elements and defeating the bad guys and kissing Pepper finally — in a haze of something like joy.

A Howard Stark who loved his screw-up son is still a difficult concept for Tony to get his head around, but he's almost worked his way up to really believing that last testament Dad left behind. He's so close, can almost touch the concept and feel it like a tangible weight instead of a drifting essence.

One day, he glances up at the tv feed playing silently in his lab.

Captain America Alive

First there's a cloud of shock and a wave of curiosity. He turns up the report and listens in disbelief to the report of a man frozen in the Arctic for decades. He tries calling Coulson to wheedle him for details, but ten tries later he still isn't picking up.

Behind his blatant curiosity, a corner of his thoughts freezes just as surely as Captain America apparently had, growing small and cold. Of course he'd survived. God's perfect man — and Howard Stark's favorite one.

But Pepper is coming downstairs with a smile on her face, and he's well again, and, for once, everything in his life feels just about right.

He twists away from the bitterness and buries it deep.

He sees Steve Rogers for the first time in Germany. Flying in to blast the wannabe space overlord who thinks horns and capes are acceptable fashion choices, he lands beside the red, white, and blue eyesore. Dad's collection of Captain America videos erupt in his mind and in no time at all, the old recruitment song Star-Spangled Man with a Plan is firmly stuck in his head.

"Mr. Stark," Rogers says, eyes fixed on their captive. Tony flinches under his skin at the title and turns over the thought that he'd called Dad the same thing.

"Captain," he acknowledges.

Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way…

"Dammit," he curses under his breath, drawing Captain America's confused and distantly reproachful gaze. Tony is instantly reminded of Dad.

Steve is square from his jawline down to his philosophy of life. Right, wrong, black, white — he's about as dichotomous as they come. And he's about as much fun as having shrapnel in your chest.

Tony sticks close to Bruce Banner, who is, by contrast, a lot of fun, and tries not to hate Steve for no good reason. Loki declaring space war on the entire earth helps him in that effort. As does the fact that Steve is also a great leader, as it turns out. When he calls out attack patterns, Tony listens.

He listens up until the comms go dead as he guides a nuke through a portal into actual space and still, still he can't help but wonder what Dad would think of this. He isn't proud of the fact when he remembers it later, but as consciousness drops away from him and he falls back to earth, he has one clear thought. I helped Captain America save the world, Dad, and I kind of did the heavy lifting.

The change started, Tony is almost sure, soon after he'd blown up his suits and promised Pepper that things would be different. They had been, for a long time.

He'd seen something crack behind her eyes the first time he summoned a suit and said, "They need me."

I need you.

She didn't say it, but he heard it all the same. It was one of Pepper's powers, to make herself understood, always. And she understood him, too.

Until she didn't.

The Ultron debacle is carved like bloody streaks in his mind; it was then that he lost Bruce, the dream of Ultron, and the bigger dream of a world that was protected by the Avengers and wasn't afraid of them. It was also the first time Pepper looked at him like he was a problem she couldn't quite find the solution to.

He isn't even surprised. He never deserved Pepper.

"Tony."

He knows what she's going to say the moment he hears her voice. There's something cracked in her tone, something that's never been so strained before. Pepper, strong and perfect Pepper, Pepper who can handle anything, even Stark Industries, even supervillains, even Tony Stark, is going to throw in the towel.

He'd thought they would make it after the Extremis fiasco, he really did. He doesn't want to hear her say it, so he lingers stupidly beside his workbench for as long as he can, adjusting something that he can't see anymore because his sight is screened by memories. Mom and Dad, sometimes arguing, sometimes exasperated to the breaking point, but always looking at each other with love. Mom sometimes looked like she wanted to kill Dad, but she never looked like she didn't want to be with him. Affection and pride were the unchangeable components in her eyes, always visible when she looked at Dad. The North Star you could navigate by.

He wonders how Pepper is looking at him just now. He turns to see, finally.

She looks disappointed.

He listens carefully as she explains that they need to take a break, that she's just going to move out for a while so they can think and evaluate. She loves him, and she wants both of them to be happy, she's just not sure what that means for the two of them right now.

He sits still and silent for once in his life. She kisses him goodbye.

Tony watches her leave, her car pulling away and leaving the house in silence, and wonders about Mom. Maria Stark was nobody's fool. She was strong, kind, invincible. A lot like Pepper, in fact. Dad was a hard man to love, but she more than managed it. She made it. They made it, and they went out together.

But Pepper left.

Two perfect women, two Stark men.

The problem, he reflects, must be him.

Childish, selfish, no thought of the consequences, says Dad's voice.

Dad haunts him a lot in Pepper's absence. The silence she used to fill with good sense overflows with his darker thoughts instead.

Get a grip, he thinks, but it still comes out in Dad's voice.

His nagging fears solidify when a woman named Miriam slaps a photograph of her son against his chest. He's dead, she tells him, and it's his fault. She leaves him, but he isn't alone. The ghostly guilt that's been trailing him has been given new life and walks, tangible, beside him.

Steve manages a mission to stop the theft of biological weapons. Tony gets a call from the Secretary of State and flinches as he recites the number of casualties. He agrees to a meeting, and is already directing Friday to get the Stark Relief Foundation involved before Secretary Ross hangs up.

They'll manage this. Ross wants government oversight and he can have it. Steve is still the all-but-official leader of the team, so he needs to be brought onboard, but he won't fight against measures designed to minimize casualties and collateral damage. He won't fight the government.

Still, he thinks of Steve running pellmell from SHIELD and starting a coup from the inside, and he isn't quite sure where he'll come down on this. But that was Hydra. Steve won't oppose his friends, surely.

He sits in the empty conference room, hand draped over his eyes to combat the headache pounding at his temples, and waits for everyone to arrive. He should be planning his arguments, he thinks, just in case there's disagreement. He scans the photo of Miriam's dead son into Friday's memory and thinks that will be argument enough.

The team arrives, and the aching silence is replaced by the uneasy variety as Ross speaks.

Maybe, Tony thinks, we can fix this. Maybe we can make this better.

They don't, and it all goes to shit.

The video Zemo shows them doesn't make sense at first. It's like a dream, seeing the car after all these years. The old security tape is distant and grainy, blurred like seeing underwater. He recognizes Bucky Barnes stopping a motorbike beside the smoking wreck, climbing off, hauling the driver up by the neck. Suddenly Tony feels completely submerged, like he's hearing underwater, too.

Because the man dying on the screen in front of him is Howard Stark.

Barnes dispatches him with a few silent but brutal blows and walks around the car to reach for the passenger. Mom, Tony realizes with a sensation like ice and fire in his veins, is still moving. Barnes reaches for her with one hand and the movement stops.

There's no sound, but Tony can hear her trying to scream. The tape is far away and old and can't touch him, but he feels fingers around his throat nonetheless, feels the terror of having your life threatened and your body broken and all your power drained away. It's the feeling he'd struggled against in a cave in Afghanistan. The feeling that had almost smothered him when Obadiah Stane stood over him and pulled the arc reactor right out of his chest. The feeling that froze him down to the bone when he marched bloody and alone through the Tennessee snow. Paralysis and pain and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Tony remembers the high-necked blouse they'd buried his mom in. He realizes far too late that the fabric had been hiding the blue-black of bruises. Her gently closed eyelids must have masked blood red eyes, the vessels burst from the lack of oxygen in her final moments. He wonders if her tears ran scarlet at the end. Her bloody eyes...

But it's Tony who sees a sudden, violent red.

He attacks The Winter Soldier the way a muscle spasms when the right nerve is hit — mindless reflex. When he can think, finally, he gives Steve his strongest, most unassailable argument.

"He killed my mom."

"I'm sorry, Tony."

Steve Rogers is staggering and bloody and he looks nothing like the old Captain America posters that Dad kept in glass cases. The ripped suit — red, white, and blue, scuffed and scraped and wet with blood and sweat — is about as unheroic as you can get. He's framed by the ancient concrete of a Soviet-era bunker and the massive Siberian snowflakes that would sting the exposed skin of his face if he was a normal man. He's not, of course.

Even like this, Steve still looks like God's perfect man.

I'm sorry.

He doesn't look sorry. He looks like the bomb-proof bunker will crack before he will. Like he'd stand between Tony and Bucky forever, looking at Tony with the flinty stare that was reserved for Nazis in his decades-old wartime films.

I'm sorry, Tony.

Tony's lost count of how many times he's heard those words.

Pepper had said them before she bit her lip against the tears and turn on a perfect heel to leave him. I love you. I'm sorry.

Rhodey's doctor had spun a variation on that theme when he stepped out of surgery. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news…

Tony's eyes slide past Steve's rigid stance to land on Bucky Barnes, half-collapsed behind him. He remembers taking the call from the police just hours after his parents had left for their flight. The dreaded next-of-kin call. Tony Stark? Son, I'm so sorry…

Tony has had enough sorries for one lifetime, so when Steve says, "He's my friend," he barely hears. "So was I," he answers and listens instead to the whine of his repulsor as it primes to fire.

Tony wishes the sensation of betrayal was less familiar to him. But he recognizes it like he recognizes the scars on his chest. More brittle than crumbling concrete, colder than the ice crusting at the seams of his armor. It shoots and stings like poison in his veins, like shrapnel crawling toward his heart.

And the pain is useless.

It doesn't offer lessons or greater wisdom with time. Betrayal doesn't age like wine.

It just gets old.

"You don't deserve that shield — my dad made that shield —"

Tony knows he's sputtering. He knows he's grasping at things he's never bothered about before. Dad's legacy always seems important to him at the oddest times. Like when he's dying. He isn't dying now. He'd thought for a moment that Steve was aiming for his neck, for exposed and breakable bones. But Steve aimed at the arc reactor.

Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.

The proof dies.

But Tony's words freeze Steve where he stands, rendering him a ragged, heaving statue. He drops the shield, defiance ringing in the impact. It sounds like something breaking.

But vibranium doesn't break; nothing Howard Stark made was breakable. Well, he allows after a moment, except me.

Steve limps away, pulling Bucky with him. Tony could trigger the manual release on his suit and climb out of it like a man clawing his way from a coffin. But the fight's gone out of him. The sound of breaking wasn't just external. He feels it now, delayed by adrenaline and rage, the fault lines cracking open inside his chest and filling with molten pain he hasn't felt since he saw Mom's body at the funeral. Sadness is a paralytic, he finds, and wonders if this is anything like Rhodey feels, stuck in a hospital bed, the use of his legs denied him. The thoughts triggers a fierce sting in his eyes and a freezing tear on his cheek.

It's a good long while before he triggers the manual release.

Steve writes him a damn letter. An honest-to-god, paper and pen and stamps letter. By the end, Tony forgives him a little bit. He's just so tired of the hating and the fighting. He wonders how his mom felt when he wouldn't stop arguing with Dad. Whether this empty, stinging feeling is anything like it.

Tony has the law on his side. The government. The secretary of state. He hears Bruce's grumble about Ross in the back of his mind, and almost smiles at the memory of his voice.

Which is pretty pathetic. Or would be, if he would stop to think about it. So he doesn't.

He leans back against his chair, watches the light indicating Ross' on-hold call, and tries to feel happy about snubbing him instead of acknowledging how empty his office feels.

He wonders what Dad would say now, if he were here. If he would've changed his mind about what qualified as his most meaningful legacy if he'd known that Steve Rogers wasn't dead after all. He wonders whether Pepper will call him or if she'll pick up if he calls her. Wonders whether Rhodey will get better with time and physical therapy and advances in prosthetic technology, or if he'll eventually grow thin and weak and need help to get around.

Most of all, he wonders where Steve and the rest of the guys are, and why Pyrrhic victories never feel like winning.

But how should he know? As Dad used to say, Steve's the expert on being a hero.

Tony thinks he's really just an expert on war. And if there's one thing Tony is glad he has never mastered, it's war.

He waits for Dad's voice in his head to reproach him. But for once, there is only silence.

Notes: Last year, after Age of Ultron was released, I wrote a number of ficlets from various POVs, and I never quite got around to Tony's. It was going to be a funny oneshot, I remember, with a little angst for flavor.

This year, Civil War came out, and this, my only Tony POV fic to date, turned out to be unmitigated Tony angst. D:

Just to be clear, I'm not on either Team Iron Man or Team Captain America. I'm on Team I-Love-Them-Both-And-Everyone-Should-Stop-Fighting. Hopefully we'll see a fully reconciled team of Avengers in the future.

Let me know what you think! Especially let me know if you suffered as much as I did from an overload of Tragic Tony Feels in Civil War. D: