More Harm Than Good

I'm gonna tell you a story.

It's about Stark and Rogers.

Howard Stark was young and still rather idealistic when he and Steve Rogers met. Life was good, women were beautiful and science could solve any problem.

Howard Stark and Steve Rogers were at very similar places in their lives. They believed in the American military. They believed in the rightness of the war. They both wanted to work inside the organization when they could, but weren't afraid to stand up and go their own way when it seemed necessary.

Howard was brash, flirtatious, a character but he was within the variance of his time, never less than polite to Steve, outrageous but just short of offensive with women. Steve didn't necessarily approve of everything he was and everything he did, but they got along. Howard wasn't too different from Bucky in those ways, after all. The intensity came part and parcel with the genius and the fame, Steve supposed.

Then Steve got frozen, and let me tell you what Howard had to deal with then. A woman he'd really liked was falling apart in front of him. All she'd talk about was Steve, and there wasn't much he could do to help except continue to look for him, long after it stopped making sense that he might be alive. All he found was the evil object that had allowed Red Skull to get as far as he did, that had led to Steve's disappearance in the ice.

Then the bomb was detonated over Japan and the world saw for the first time what truly devastating effects the fruit of the Manhattan project could inflict.

Howard felt sick at heart over the war, the whole thing, the destruction and the loss and the heartbreak. But he still worked with the military because he still believed America was in the right and that his inventions could make wars easier, faster, protect more soldiers.

Working with Erskine had been fruitful; the man had been...more than friendly, he'd been a delight to work with regardless of his country of origin. So when Howard was given a chance to work with a brilliant physicist from Russia, Anton Venko, he had no reservations.

The arc reactor design was a thing of beauty. Howard knew by this point that power and energy were, by nature, volatile and dangerous, and though the arc drew inspiration from two such technologies - atomics and the Tesseract - Howard did his best to ensure that the Arc would be stable, safe, easy to control and shut down.

Howard was still fairly idealistic, and it really pulled the rug from under him when Anton showed his true colors. Dealing under the table. The world was more cutthroat than Howard could have imagined. No one was as good as the men he used to know, the men who lost their lives in the war.

And the things that they were learning about the long term effects of the bomb on Japan just got worse.

In his personal life, Howard was still a bit hung up on Peggy, for years afterwards, and she couldn't stand to be around him after the search for Steve moved to a back burner. It brought back too many memories. So she moved on, and Howard, being a Stark, threw himself into his work.

Weapons. Armor. Tanks. Planes. It was what he knew, and everything outside of work just seemed empty, uninteresting.

It was twenty years after Steve had disappeared into the Arctic that Howard found someone who could push through all the gathered darkness and bring joy into his life again.

Maria was a rare woman indeed, with all the fire Peggy had had, but with a softer, more forgiving nature, which was fortunate, because Howard had dark moods, fits of anger at himself and the world, an inability to accept what his life had become. Maria was young and bright but she was not so idealistic and knew that life was give and take and that people must sacrifice some things to get what is most important to them.

Maria knew what she was marrying, a middle aged, somewhat broken genius who would never get back all the things he had lost in the war. Who could never quite give himself completely to her because of how much of himself he had left behind.

She knew when to leave him to himself and when to insist that he come out of his cave and hunt down some of the good that the world had to offer. Most of the time. At other times, she let herself be intimidated by Howard's authority and intelligence.

So the family Tony grew up in was a little unbalanced, his father drinking, tinkering and sulking more often than not, his mother soft and caring but bending to Howard's will when he said that educating the kid was more important than anything else and he would go to the best schools, no matter how far away.

Maria only allowed it because she knew it was Howard's stilted way of showing he wanted the best for Tony.

Tony grew up thinking this was the way of things. Men hid in their caves and built brilliant inventions, because that was the work and work was important; women did their best to take care of the men and smooth the way.

And Tony grew up in the early computer age, at MIT as a young teen where intelligence and wildness go hand in hand, in a world of loud music and hardware and software and media everywhere.

And he learned from his mother to let things slide, to let other people be what they were, to tolerate them and not call them on their shit unless it was absolutely necessary. But he learned from his father to collect the best people, to use them, to get things done.

And all those habits were in place long before Iron Man, long before Tony learned what he was, what he had allowed, what he had to do to fix it.

Tony's maybe forty when he learns to sit up, pay attention to what's going on around him and maybe do a better job at bringing the world closer to the way it should be. To see people for who they are and not just what they can do.

The establishment can look pretty bad when you think you're running the establishment and then one day you wake up and the establishment is running you over with a tank.

Cue Steve Rogers, freshly woken up and reeling at how much things have changed. Remember the twenty-something Howard he knew, energetic, optimistic, smooth, flirtatious, fearless. Steve's suddenly back in Germany, punching a tyrant in the face, and Stark: The Next Generation pops up next to him. Loud, arrogant, witty banter all in place. It's just like old times - except everything is wrong.

Tony isn't working within the system and one of the first things he says is "there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you." Everything's moving too fast; Tony's not much of a communicator and in any case tends to multitask at such a high level that people besides Jarvis just slow him down. But Steve can't see this. What he sees is loud music, rudeness, blowing raspberries at authority and a refusal to engage in cooperation. All this on top of a level of sensory overload that is probably overwhelming and a huge dollop of deja vu that makes him miss Howard, that bright mixture of brains and humanity that he knew 70 years ago, but it feels like weeks.

Tony's dizzying spiel on entering the Helicarrier just adds to that, and when Bruce replies in kind, Tony compliments him, "someone who speaks English." But to Steve it feels like Tony's mocking the rest of them. All this is so far out of his league and he can't dismiss it as easily as the others, who know not only Tony's reputation but the value of their own knowledge bases and abilities in the modern world. They find it mildly annoying. Steve finds it disquieting.

The next thing Steve sees Tony do is prod Bruce. He tries to call Stark on it and he gets a flood of references, more evidence of unrestrained genius and multitasking, more distrust of the establishment. Tony freely admits he's stealing government secrets. This man is a loose cannon and Steve's afraid he'll do more harm than good.

This man is so much like Howard, but he's harsher, older, harder, less happy, less optimistic, less trusting. It breaks Steve's heart to see him and wonder what happened. It hurts him that this wisecracking self-styled superhero for whom nothing is sacred is here, and Howard and Bucky, so similar but so very different, are long dead. So he lashes out in retaliation for that pain.

He's got the attitude but not the warmth, so Steve calls him on being "all about style," and everything goes downhill from there. They are just jabbing back and forth because as much as Tony's very existence hurts Steve, Steve's disapproval hurts Tony. Howard is standing solidly between them, the most unbreachable ghost.

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?"

When Tony was growing up, Steve was thirty, forty years frozen and Howard was still thinking about how much better things could have been if he'd managed to save Steve. Haunted by that instead of appreciating the living, breathing, brilliant son in front of him. Of course Tony resents him, and the jabs don't endear him either. If there's anything worse than knowing your father doesn't think you're good enough it's hearing the person who was good enough saying the same.

Steve is pushing to see if he can find any of the nobility that he misses in Howard and in Bucky. They went into battle without armor and they got shot at and Steve wonders if Tony would even consider that. Who is he under the armor, under all the layers? Steve's been looking for a sign of the man he knew, looking so hard and he can't find Howard's heart anywhere in this ruined mess of an attitude problem.

"Stop pretending to be a hero." Steve just wants to see something genuine.

And oh, that hurts, because Tony is really new at this 'being a responsible, aware human' thing, and shit, he's trying. He's trying to fix the world with the tools he has and mostly he has his brain but apparently that's not good enough. So he reminds Steve what science did for him.

"A hero, like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

So they hate each other.

But then everything blows up and Steve gets to see what Tony is like when it really matters. Throwing himself in a giant blender and trusting Steve to be there with the off switch. That's cooperation.

Grieving over Coulson, in his own way. That's heart.

Figuring out what Loki's doing and why, getting inside his motivations. That's compassion, in a weird way.

Knowing Banner's going to show up. Prodding the doctor must have been the right call. That was good instinct, not insanity.

How many times can this Stark kid prove him wrong?

One last time - he sacrifices himself to save the city. And one more time - because the Hulk saves him, and who knew prodding Banner could earn you the place of Hulk's beloved comrade?

Tony isn't Howard. But Steve's finally learning that that's maybe not a bad thing. Tony's even smarter than his dad. Turns out he's everything his father was and more. In the following days Steve learns about his generosity, his adaptibility, his focus. Tony does even more in the cleanup than he did in the fight, and Steve sees him rushing, leisurely but energetically somehow, about the tower at all hours, and wonders if the man's really just human.

Banner gets close to Tony using science and tries to get him to slow down. When Steve asks the doctor what's happening with Tony, he gets more of an answer than he expected. Banner explains the physical pain that Tony experiences every day because of the arc reactor, the restlessness of his mind, the problems that geniuses and famous people have fitting in, leading a normal life. How a celebrity can't give himself away to everyone who asks or there'll be nothing left. Bruce looks honored to be one of the few, and threatens Steve with the Hulk if he abuses his own leverage in Tony's psyche. Explains that sometimes it's near impossible to say no to people. Steve remembers a stolen kiss and starts to understand.

Steve asks Miss Potts about Howard and though they never got to meet, she can tell him a lot, and he trusts it objectively the way he wouldn't from Tony. There's footage, Howard drunk and hopeless, obviously wanting to talk to Tony but failing completely at it.

"What made him so sad?" Steve asks, to himself, watching his friend destroy himself and damage his son.

"Life. A lot of things," Pepper says. "but I think he never quite got over not finding the plane. Not finding you."

"I owe you an apology," Steve says to Tony.

"Do you? Eh, don't worry about it," Tony replies absently. "Apologies hold little to no practical value, and I don't believe in them anyway."

"Still, if you don't mind, it would make me feel better," the captain continues.

"Knock yourself out, then," says the inventor, eyes still barely breaking from the screen in front of him.

Steve fights down irritation. From the way Bruce raves about the projects going on in the labs here and Tony's work on them, Tony's probably working on six different ways to save lives and two ways to brew better coffee, and still sparing enough attention for this conversation to make sense.

"I misjudged you," Steve says. "There are all different kinds of heroes that work in all different ways and I had no right to judge you by my standards. The fact that you were there to help should have been enough."

Tony snorts. "You're the yardstick, you know that? First superhero ever. if I had a dollar for every time I've been judged by your standard..." he pauses. "Actually I think I might. I have a lot of dollars."

Steve chuckles briefly, then grows thoughtful again. "But you shouldn't be. No one expected Howard to do more than science, because that was what he was good at. Not everyone has to fight bad guys to make the world a better place." He sighs. "I've been hearing a lot about how Howard changed, after I...disappeared. You should never have felt that you needed to be like me. Or like him for that matter. There are all kinds of heroes."

Tony looks at Steve steadily for the first time in the conversation, his eyebrows rising slightly, and Steve can feel all the intensity of this man's mind brought to bear on him and he can see how it could be overkill.

Then Tony's face scrunches up on one side like he's deliberating, separating, judging, then he shakes his head no, and finally he speaks again. "You don't get to be the reason for Iron Man. I need Iron Man. I need Iron Man, and maybe that's a less than noble reason to be a superhero, but it's all I've got. Iron Man is the only way I can do the things I need to do." He's poking at the screen again, working on one of those virtual wireframes he's always got spinning around in his displays. He frowns at it, or maybe at his thoughts. "Never claimed to be the hero type. And I'd be crazy to try and measure myself with the Captain America yardstick of heroism." He shakes his head again, spinning the model with a flick. Then his mouth quirks. "Crazier than I am. You read the psych profile SHIELD has on me? Not exactly prime recruitment material."

Steve makes a painful noise in his throat, somewhere between a cough and a sigh. "That's the thing. You do measure up. I was wrong. You don't have to be, you do enough for the world just being an inventor, but you are a hero. I've seen it myself now. I just...it makes me wonder if anybody's ever told you that you're good enough. That you don't have to do everything yourself."

Tony makes another one of those odd deep-thought-and-discernment expressions, this time with his tongue poking out slightly. "Sounds like something Rhodey might have mentioned in between lectures on his deep and meaningful relationship with his dress blues. You're not the first soldier to try to keep me from coloring outside the lines."

Steve sighs deeply, then smiles, sad but fond. "Will you just...let me apologize? Just listen. I'm trying to say you're a good guy. You're a good guy and I should have given you a break, because you certainly deserve one."

Tony shrugs. "Wish I could believe that. All I've done is mop up my own messes, you were right about that. And there's a lot I've broken that I can't fix."

Steve bites his lip. "You really do just run hotter than the rest of us, don't you? You really believe you have to burn the candle at both ends, use yourself up as fast as you can, just to start being good enough. I don't know how I didn't see it. I just...I was looking for the Howard I used to know and it turns out that man died long before you were born. You don't care about making people comfortable because you're too busy trying to save them, save all of them, and it's too much for anyone to ask. The world has always been screwed up and it's always going to be, no matter how much of yourself you give."

Tony smiles gleefully. "Why, Captain. Is that a case of modern cynicism you've developed? Congratulations."

"So you think you can fix the world?"

"Sometime you should ask Fury about the present my dad left for me. I'll give you a hint. It was a message saying he expected me to fix the world. Finish what he started. Technology to fix the world's problems. People keep telling me he wasn't the man I thought he was but I haven't heard anything to change my mind. He didn't care whether I was happy, as long as I lived up to some mysterious, seemingly infinite amount of potential he seemed to think I had. And he was right. How can that matter, when I could be out saving the world?"

"It matters, Tony. It's allowed to matter. You're human. You're allowed to need human things."

"Nope. I don't have time."

Tony taps the arc reactor, indicating his own mortality in a way that strikes Steve like a blow. Then the inventor refocuses on his work, seemingly indifferent to Steve's presence.

Steve stands there for another minute before it occurs that needing to fix everything is exactly what he's trying to talk Tony out of. He shakes his head and leaves.

Tony turns to look at the retreating superhero. The real superhero. The man who's as good as Howard always said he was.

He huffs a sigh, and goes back to work.