Tony Stark. Anthony Edward Stark.
Tony’s biggest adversary is his own mind.
Now that he thinks about it, his mind is his greatest asset, but it also caused almost all of the problems he'd experienced.
On bad days, when his mind runs rampant and it's too awake, too active, insomniac, he can hear the voices.
Anthony, they call. You're not good enough. Never good enough. Don't cry. Stark men don't cry. Stark men are made of steel. You're not worth it. Hopeless, useless brat. Nothing but a mistake.
Howard had never loved him, barely aware of his existence. Maria had barely blinked an eye at him, ignored when yelps of pain and sometimes sobs came echoing from the lab, when Tony emerged, beelining for his room, sometimes limping, sometimes bleeding, sometimes bruised and sobbing.
Social butterfly, yes. Good hostess, yes. Good wife, maybe. Good mother? Hell no.
But that was nothing.
Nothing compared to Howard. The neglect, the sometimes abuse, wine bottles and cutting words, scathing comments, yelling and roaring and pure anger and fury. Drunken rants (you're not worthy; not good enough; worse mistake I ever made), glass smashing on concrete ground, even that one incident with the soldering iron.
He still has the scars.
But he can’t stop wanting to make Howard proud. He wants to measure up, to be something in the man’s eyes, instead of just that boy who’s related to me by blood but is a disgrace to the Stark name and I hate him and he’s not worthy and he’s just a mistake.
He wants to be Steven Grant Rogers, he wants to be Howard’s greatest creation, wants Howard’s affection, his pride, his acknowledgement.
He wants Howard’s love.
He's an eccentric genius, yeah, and they're all supposed to have their quirks, right?
So he doesn't like to be handed things.
He doesn't like their reactions to the scars, the burns. And he doesn't like the vulnerability that he feels when he reaches out, hands unprotected, to take something.
Because that leaves him open and unguarded, easy to injure, oh, so easy.
That's not the only thing about him.
He usually sleeps on his stomach, or on his side, curled into a fetal position.
Never on his back.
The softest of sounds wakes him, and he never takes off his locator bracelets now. He's done about the best he can to keep them on his body short of fusing them to his skin, and he's more against body modification than just about anything else.
The Arc Reactor is enough.
He tries not to get his face underwater, at least not for long periods of time, or without the suit.
But all these quirks, these little things that make up Tony Stark, all stem from one thing.
His mind.
And he wouldn't be Tony Stark without it.
But he'll never give up his mind for anything. It's his greatest asset, his crowning glory, his very essence. He's nothing without it.
He wouldn't have the suit, wouldn't have Stark Industries, wouldn't have the Tower. Wouldn't have met Yinsen.
And by default, wouldn't have Pepper and Rhodey and Happy.
Wouldn't have the Avengers.
Hell, he wouldn't even have S.H.I.E.L.D.
So yeah, his mind is everything to him.
Even though it was his mind that made Howard hate him, his mind that made Maria distant, unable to keep up with her genius son, his mind that drove away all the people he knew, his mind that kept him segregated from the other kids in MIT.
His mind that got him captured and held in Afghanistan.
His mind that created weapons of mass destruction. His mind that earned him the title Merchant of Death.
But all these made him stronger, made him who he is today, let him meet all those amazing people who now make up his life, who he would be nothing without, rotting away in his own lab, alcohol racing through his veins and the blood of innocents on his hands.
If he didn't have Pepper, didn't have Rhodey, didn't have Happy, didn't have the Avengers, well, he didn't like to think of the end results.
But think of them he did, and he knew he'd probably be dying in a hospital bed hooked up to a dialysis machine after getting his stomach pumped, or he'd be lying in his lab, unnoticed and uncared for, face down, where he'd probably drown to death in a puddle of his own vomit.
Or maybe he'd die of liver or kidney failure, but never mind the semantics.
The bottom line is, he's nothing without his friends, his family, and by affiliation, nothing without his mind.
And yes, he's weird and eccentric and strange, incomprehensible, both beloved and hated by the world, but his life turned out okay. More than okay.
And he's happy.