The Iron Façade

A/n: Here's basically a ramble of headcanons about Toni from There's Always A Catch. Largely inspired by a conversation I had with paisley15 about our headcanons so this story is dedicated to her.

EDIT: I'm fixing up all of my fics before I post anything new.

Toni Stark was not a narcissist. That was the first thing many people thought she was when they saw her but that was for a reason. A façade that she had developed to keep people out. For when people got in it wasn't pretty for them or for her. Somehow people kept crawling past her walls and inevitably ripped her heart out both figuratively and occasionally literally (Obie, Piper, Rhodey, Natasha) and she couldn't trust them. Not fully.

Toni divided her life into two separate sections. There was before Afghanistan Toni who was the person Toni knew she could never be again. After Afghanistan Toni had her flaws too of course. Toni was a flawed individual with several unusual personality quirks that she saw as a necessity and others saw as a nuisance.

When Toni had first been born she knew her father was disappointed. She was a girl. Howard Stark didn't want a daughter, he wanted a son. But Maria Stark was forbidden by the doctors to have another child because Toni had caused such a risky pregnancy. Howard blamed her for that too. Everything was her fault. Toni knew that; it always was.

As she grew older she began to show signs of intelligence equal to and sure to eclipse her father's within time. Her parents never bought her any toys despite their vast wealth so she stole from the scraps bin from her father's lab and made her own. The first time she did this she was only two years old. By the time she was three she had grown tired of the simple mechanisms in the toys and had started work on something bigger which had ended up being a computer circuit board made out of scraps. She didn't show it to her father. It wasn't any good; he told her she wouldn't come to anything so she truly believed she wouldn't. So she put that circuit board at the back of her closet but it was never far from her thoughts. She kept working on more and more complex versions of the board until at four she cracked the code on her father's laboratory door and took some proper materials to make her most advanced circuit board yet. Howard had caught her finishing it. She had thought he was going to hit her for a minute but then he had spotted the circuit board. It had promptly been confiscated; Toni now suspected copies had been in the newest computer upgrades her father had designed. But Howard had finally realised that having a daughter wasn't so bad as long as she was a genius. And as long as it didn't get out to the public of course. Toni had shown the next one to her nursemaid and suddenly she was in the news as a child prodigy. Howard had been extremely mad.

That had been young Toni's first encounter with the press as Howard showed her off at a conference convincingly acting like he was proud of her. Toni might have believed it herself if it hadn't been for the steely glint in Howard's gaze. She was certain that he had been planning on claiming her advancements were his own. After all he didn't believe a woman could run such a sensitive operation with any degree of competency. That was obvious by the way that his formerly opinionated wife was a shadow of her former self.

In fact the only influence Maria Stark had on Toni's young life was making sure that she would grow up to be a 'proper lady.' Toni sat through endless etiquette lessons, learned how to cook, how to dance, how to be a good host and through it all she was just wishing to go into her father's lab and fix up some of the cars in there. She had been six when her father had first caught her entirely rebuilding an engine to make his car go faster. He had shouted at her for it; it became the only car he drove.

The only people that Toni had throughout her childhood were her Aunt Peggy who was her real childhood role model and in a way her real mother and Edwin Jarvis the family butler. She supposed at one point she had had Rachael her nursemaid as well but she had been dismissed after leaking news of Toni's intelligence to the press. From that point on Toni had hated everyone in the media; they had taken Rachael away from her. That hate followed her throughout the rest of her life no matter how skilled she became at manipulating them to show what she wanted them to. Peggy had played with her with her toys until she got bored of them. She probably assumed that her parents had bought them for her instead of realising the extent of Toni's talents but that hadn't mattered to the little girl. What had mattered was the attention. She lost that when Peggy moved to London; she disliked travelling to London. Her father never told her where in London Peggy lived (she's better off without you). She found out for herself by hacking into Peggy's personal records later in her life. After Afghanistan. But Peggy had probably forgotten her by now so she didn't go out to see her. So she was left with only Jarvis who was another one of her role models. He stayed with her until he died and she was forever grateful. Of course her father couldn't leave a good part of her life well enough alone (if you don't want me to get rid of Jarvis you'll make this now).

She was eight when she saw someone die for the first time. It wasn't in person but it wasn't the blurry pictures they showed on the news either. Her father had forced her to design a bomb to keep Jarvis working for the company. He had tracked it and just as it was about to hit brought up the footage on the screen so Toni could see the 'good work,' she had done. Toni saw. Toni ran into the next room and threw up. Howard decided Toni was even weaker than he had originally thought to react so violently to terrorists dying. Toni only knew that her invention had killed people but she needed Jarvis. Jarvis died shortly afterwards. Toni was shipped off to a sophisticated all-girls boarding school.

At the school Toni finally blossomed in science classes but worked hard in all of the classes that weren't a cakewalk for her too (science is too easy) and was picking up foreign languages left and right. The school had plenty of daughters of diplomats attending who occasionally reverted to their mother tongue. Toni wasn't friends with them; Toni didn't think she needed friends. Toni's science teacher sent out a recommendation to her father when she was 13 that he should consider sending her to college earlier. Howard didn't respond. Eventually when Toni was 15 the teacher sent off applications to colleges with Toni's approval and the approval of her mother whom Toni had managed to briefly get on the phone just to say yes (it doesn't matter that she doesn't know what she said yes to).

She got acceptance letters from colleges from all over the country. Toni chose MIT because Massachusetts was 3,093.9 miles away from California where her parents were at the time. The fifteen year old hadn't liked college very much; first the other students looked down on her because of her age and then they grew to resent her genius. Except for Rhodey. Rhodey liked her for some strange reason. He was Toni's first friend and at the time she was fully convinced he would be her last. They had their arguments mostly about Toni's propensity for getting drunk and hitting on older students who would probably take advantage of her vulnerability. They would have; if it hadn't been for Rhodey. (I don't know what's wrong Toni but stop drinking yourself to death at fifteen. I might even miss you if that happened.)

Toni sleeps with him eventually. It's just a onetime thing and it was after she reaches the age of consent. It was nice but Rhodey was looking for a relationship and she didn't want to saddle him with her issues. Maybe it would have worked out for them, probably not. (You don't really want me Rhodey.)

Whilst at MIT Toni gains her first Bachelor's Degree in engineering and starts a second in Physics. But Toni grows bored with MIT. She's miles ahead of even those who are in the final year so despite the fact that she's been hiding most of her talents from the general populace she designed and built her first AI (Hey Dummy! Okay, maybe you need a few adjustments.) After she presented it to the board they were quite happy to let her graduate at 17 and even awarded her the summa cum laude on her degree. Howard wasn't satisfied with her achieving the highest honour MIT offered earlier in life than she should even have been attending the institute. (You should have impressed them enough to take up the highest honour there is. The egregia cum laude.) Howard dies in a car accident in the same car that he forced Toni to maintain. The first one he caught her mending in his garage. Her mother dies too. Toni can't bring herself to cry at the funeral. The sunglasses fool everyone.

She drops off the grid straight after the funeral refusing to make any public appearances although she still sends her smallest ideas on to her godfather Obie for him to put through production. She may hate her father but she doesn't want to degrade his work by ruining the company. Whilst in seclusion Toni finishes her Physics Bachelor online and finding that she feels empty with nothing left to do that isn't weapons design - which she has already developed far ahead of any of the stuff she's entrusting to the military – she goes into a manic frenzy of work.

Within a year Toni builds two further AI's and names them You and Butterfingers and sets them to work helping her in the lab. Just for kicks she does another Bachelor's degree in French online just for something different to do and then sets about extending her Engineering Bachelor to a Masters. Finally at the end of the year she creates JARVIS – the name of course in honour of her role model - her most sophisticated AI of all and the only one who actually speaks English – even if she understands the mechanical language of her bots just fine – and connects him up to as many databases as she can hack into without discovering state secrets. By the time the frenzy ends when she is twenty one the Engineering Masters has become a PhD officially making her Dr Stark, her Bachelors in French and Physics have become Masters along with an extra two Bachelor's in Biology and Chemistry on top of that and she's made practically all of her kitchen appliances at the Malibu mansion into AI's naming her beloved coffee maker after Peggy.

That's when she officially takes the reigns at Stark Industries relieving Obie of the position and getting back into her old partying lifestyle. Over the next five years she only manages to advance one of her degrees turning the Chemistry Bachelor into a Masters. Otherwise she's too busy sleeping with anyone who will agree to it attempting to find some sort of connection somewhere. It doesn't work but she keeps trying. Rhodey went into the military apparently; she hadn't kept tabs on him. He picks her up after a long night of drinking and tells her than she needs to get her act together. (You're ruining everything your father worked for Toni.) She still drinks and she still sleeps with anything that moves but she knuckles down and does more than the bare minimum of work that she had been getting away with before as it was far more than her father had ever been capable of.

People pretend to love her. Toni knows they don't.

She can't trust anybody, not after some of her 'relationships,' take pieces of her self-confidence away that she can never get back despite how she acts. That's what it is; an act. She just wants someone she can trust. Obie suggests getting a PA but all of the candidates be they male or female fall for Toni's charms too quickly and she fires them. Then she comes up with the system of periodically making a deliberate mistake in her calculations when testing her prospective PA's to see if anyone will report it to her. (If they don't spot it there's no way I want them working for me anyway.) It doesn't happen quickly. In fact by the time Toni finds someone who spots the problem she had advanced her educational merits severely. The Physics Bachelor became a second doctorate; she made her Biology Bachelor's a Masters and skipped straight over the Bachelor's stage in Computer Science and English and made them Masters Degrees.

Then Piper arrives, Piper who spots the mistake straight away and tells Toni about it the instant he sees her. She hires him on the spot and then does the usual test to see if she can seduce him. While it's clear that he's attracted to her he manages to pass and Toni is relieved. Although sometimes a little irritated when Piper insists she go to meetings she's been dodging for years so they clearly are not that important. As the time Before Afghanistan draws to a close Toni picks up a Bachelor's in Spanish and makes the Chemistry Masters her third doctorate. People think she has no work ethic; those people clearly don't know her daily routine.

Yet Toni is still arrogant. Toni still sleeps around. Toni still prefers to drink herself to sleep to overcome the problems of having a high-functioning brain rather than working herself to sleep. Toni is briefly suicidal but she gets over it; well she claims to get over it.

Then there is the day of the weapons presentation and Piper and Rhodey are both mad at her to a degree. Toni thinks that's the last memory she'll ever have of the pair. Them being angry at her. Young Americans die before her eyes and she's seen death before but never in person. It's different somehow. And then her own weapon blows her up and Toni sees the irony right before she passes out thinking that she is dead for sure.

When she wakes up she screams; screams of absolute agony as they perform a vivisection on her chest for what she does not truly know. But she knows it hurts so they haven't given her anaesthetic. Why would they? She's in a cave in Afghanistan even through the pain she can work out what that means for her. She's been kidnapped before after all although Howard always paid up eventually (don't see why I have to fork out to bring the brat home).

She doesn't know exactly what they do to her until she wakes up once more and Yinsen tells her what he had to do to save her life. That doesn't stop her being extremely shaken by the fact that she now has an electromagnet in her body especially since judging by the size of it she had to be missing muscle and her lungs and heart would have to have been shifted to fit it in. It hurts like hell but she doesn't tell Yinsen that. He was trying to help her.

Toni lost none of her legendary abrasive nature whilst in captivity (I refuse) even through the torture and the threats. The hot coal being dangerously near Yinsen's mouth almost bothered her more than the waterboarding. Almost. She's still very good at pretending but this time it's for a greater purpose. She builds a miniaturised arc reactor in the cave once again proving her genius (if my math is correct and it always is) and the Iron Man suit is just further proof of this. It's the first time Toni's ever directly killed someone. It doesn't make her want to throw up and Toni thinks she's finally lost her humanity.

Rhodey finds her; apparently he refused to let the military stop looking. Piper cried over her; he might have missed her had she been gone for good. Toni has friends who care. It's a novel idea to her. It gives her the courage to do what she has wanted to for years and shut down the weapons department of Stark Industries. Everyone's angry at her (you need some time to get your mind right) but Piper who is just worried about the drop in stocks.

There's an injunction filed against her to lock her out and Toni has never felt more helpless for Obie keeps telling her to lay low. But the Mark III Iron Man suit is done and she couldn't miss the opportunity to crash her own party. She danced with Piper that night and he nearly kissed her. Toni had to get away from him as she didn't want to ruin his reputation (just left me there by myself). She met Phil that day; she could like him but she doesn't know who he works for.

That night she hacks into SHIELD's information data banks and sets up a redirect for everything related to her where the file will be copied and sent straight to JARVIS who will file it away for her as she checked it at the end of each week. She might grow to trust Phil; she would never trust SHIELD.

Then all hopes of one day becoming more trusting were shattered, Obie takes the arc reactor, Obie tries to murder her. Twice. The one man she had ever let in most of the way and he threw it in her face. (You had one last golden egg to give.) Trust was now going to be even harder to earn even for those who had previously had it.

Toni had known the palladium would kill her eventually the moment she made the arc reactor. She knew that if none of the other elements on the periodic table would work she could have synthesized a new one but what was the point of her still being alive after she had given the world the arc reactor technology and made a small improvement. It would never make up for the blood on her hands and the red in her ledger. (This is a town called Gulmira. Oh Yinsen…)

Piper had practically been the CEO of Stark Industries since he started working with Toni so promoting him was simply a matter of officially doing the deed. Even if it doesn't work out how she wants it to (I am trying to do the job that you were meant to do). She trains Rhodey how to use the suit but he ends up stealing it when he decides she's irresponsible and she just knows it's going to end up in the hands of the military. She didn't want the suit to be corrupted and Rhodey had known that but he hadn't respected her wishes. She doesn't trust Rhodey anymore.

And then there's Natasha. Toni had known who she was from the beginning of course. Even so somehow the spy had managed to get beyond her walls. Tasha was the first female friend she had ever had. They drank together and shopped together and Toni even confided in her (I need freedom like I need air) and Tasha had offered advice in return (I would do whatever I wanted to do – with whoever I wanted to do it with). Together the pair had baffled politicians and kept condescending bastards off of each other's back. Toni knew 'Natalie,' was really Natasha Romanoff. It still hurt when she became complicit in locking Toni up when she had confessed that fear to the other woman. She doesn't trust Natasha anymore.

After the big fight against Ivan Vanko they both apologise. Toni says she forgives them; she doesn't really. She can't. Not ever. Unless… well she doesn't even know under what conditions she could forgive them.

Iron Man; yes, Toni Stark; no. Toni knows this wasn't Natasha's original report, she has both copies stored in her database but she still found it amusing. Because Toni Stark was not a separate person from Iron Man, they were one and the same and despite her willingness to hand over the suit to Rhodey she didn't really think Iron Man would be the same without her driving it (the suit and I are one. Look I'm no expert. In prostitution…) And the fact that Piper included the line textbook narcissism, of course it was textbook. How can you be narcissistic if you still hated yourself?

Then Loki happens and Toni is suddenly on the team despite the fact that Fury still believes every word of what Piper wrote in the fake report (You and I both know Toni that Piper used one of your profiles to hack into SHIELD). Piper doesn't want her to go but Toni swore that she was helping people now. Piper's become too overprotective. Toni doesn't want to lose him but if this continues then a break up could become necessary. She can't compromise Piper's work but she won't give up Iron Man; won't give up redemption. That's one thing that Piper never understood. She can't trust Piper anymore as he can't be objective.

Toni meets Steve and all the memories of her father's neglect of her in favour of the man come rushing back (you will never be one tenth of the person that Steve Rogers was; you aren't even worthy of that action figure.) She used to hero worship the man but he gets the wrong idea about her and Toni won't accept biased opinions. If he thinks she's a spoilt billionaire who isn't living up to Howard's legacy then that's what he'll get.

Toni meets Bruce and she thinks she's found someone that she can trust. She doesn't care about the Other Guy as Bruce calls him (and I'm a huge fan of how you lose control and turn into a giant green rage-monster). She tries to make him more at ease around the team. Give him the confidence to believe in himself so after this is over he'll have the confidence to come and live with her and work with her on her many projects (it's candy land!) But Steve ruins it; Steve always ruins it.

She can't trust the others; not yet. She still hasn't forgiven Natasha for taking away her freedom. She doesn't think she ever will. Clint was taken over by Loki so she doesn't know him; not the real him rather than the person who nearly took down the Helicarrier and killed them all. They're told the attack killed Phil; she thinks she trusted him towards the end. Thor's too alien. She can't get into his head like she could with Loki; his thoughts are too foreign.

The Hulk out is Natasha's fault (Loki's manipulating you. And you've been doing what exactly?) Toni losing control herself is Steve's. Blow after blow to her self-confidence rains down as Steve drags out all of her weaknesses and puts them on display. (Take that off what are you? People with none of that worth ten of you. And you're all about style aren't you. You better stop pretending to be a hero.) It gets so bad that Toni just can't take it anymore and locks onto one of Steve's own insecurities and throws it straight back (everything special about you came out of a bottle.)

Eventually the team comes together. The Battle for Manhattan however wasn't easy as the Chitauri force continued swooping down leviathans and soldiers replacing all those the Avengers managed to defeat. And the World Security Council sent in a nuke and it was Toni's turn to be a hero (and I know just where to put it.) She makes the sacrifice play proving them wrong before her death or so she thought because she wakes again as the Hulk saves her twice to find out that the battle is won. Loki and Thor depart as Toni tricks Bruce into becoming ensnared in the labs.

The rest of the team move in eventually and Toni still doesn't trust them. But she can't help but think that someday she might.

A/n: Here's a story loaded with headcanons for you. I've tried not to reveal too much of what will happen in TAAC but there are a few hints here, see if you can catch them.