With the power of Mind, Space, and Power I give you... MORE CHILDHOOD TRAMUA
Tony doesn’t go to bed, of course he doesn’t. He’s 70 for fucks sake, a year older than his mother not that she’d ever know that.
No, instead he heads up with her, kisses her cheek and makes her promise not to kidnap any more assassins trying to kill her tonight, then heads back down to her lab.
“JARVIS, activate Operation Red Snow.” He sits on the table Bucky had been put on to remove his arm and watches as JARVIS opens up data streams so he can see all digital traces of Bucky being deleted. A hundred new windows pop up and he watches his stealth legion units hunting down all of Bucky’s little red books, killing the handlers who owned them.
Should he have told his mother that he’d been creating a robot army to fight the angry shrivelled up space grape? Probably, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that the child she adored was actually a grown man playing pretend, that the past 17 years had been essentially a lie. His eyes flicker towards the sleeping assassin his mother claimed to be friends with and the fucking underground bunker she’d built him, clearly, he’d not been the only one keeping secrets.
“Operation Red Snow has been completed, father.” JARVIS informs him.
“Thanks J, run over the next assassin.” He says as he turns his attention back to the information in front of him, swiping it away and bringing up his specs for BARF.
“With pleasure.” JARVIS promises before slipping away to give his mother his full attention.
“Tata?” FRIDAY asks quietly after a few hours.
He looks up from were he’d been creating the inner wiring for the rims. “Yes, FRI?”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if we told grandma what was coming?” She asks making him sigh a tad. The bots hadn’t liked keeping secrets but were happy playing dumb while JARVIS had not only understood but agreed with why he was keeping his future knowledge a secret. FRIDAY hated it, clearly more of a grandma’s girl than the rest.
“We’ve talked about this, FRIDAY.” He says softly. “Mamă has enough to worry about here and now, she doesn’t need to be dragged into future problems too.”
“Stop lying to me!” FRIDAY snaps making him straiten instantly. His baby girl had never taken that tone with him before. “Why can’t she know? You know she can handle it! She could be helpful! She could…”
“Enough, FRIDAY.” He snaps back, the lights dim.
He knows why he’s angry about this and it has nothing to do with FRIDAY’s line of angry questioning.
When Pepper first realised that he was going to go along with Steve’s stupid time travel plan she’d dragged him to the sofa with Morgan to watch a move called the butterfly effect. He’d joked with her about the lack of scientific fact at the end before putting Morgan to bed, Pepper had made him promise to be careful as he was leaving. Told him that if she turned into a fish person because he’d stepped wrong, she was going to stab him with the heels she wouldn’t be able to wear anymore.
He'd promised but not taken it to heart, hopped about time and fought Thanos. Died to bring everyone back. He hadn’t taken it to heart until the waves from Steve Fucking Rogers and his need to have everything in the goddamned universe hit. It was little things like people who were alive the day before not being born, then people who didn’t exist popping into existence like they’d always been there, then the really bad stuff hit. Hydra spawned out of nowhere, legions upon legions of loyal super soldiers marching to the order Captain fucking America.
Nukes were launched.
The world was burnt to cinders.
Tony was left, floating in a radioactive wasteland. Until he wasn’t. Three out of six infinity stones seeped into reality around him, offering condolences and promising solutions. Go back and fix it, do it all again and again until the world was a happy ball of sunshine and rainbows. Give more and more of yourself until you’re dust again.
He says no. He doesn’t want to deal with the betrayals and pain again, he’s too tired. Someone else can carry the world on their shoulders for once, to bare the weight of the future and be sneered at for it. Of course, he should have expected that the glowy little fuckers would care as much for his opinion as his ‘team’ did. Tossing him back into his four-year-old body with echoed promises that this time would be better, he just had to find the other displaced soul. Fuck them and whoever agreed to this bullshit.
Tony’s plan was to keep his head down, take over the world before Steve could, and marry Pepper because he loved her more than he knew how to breathe and these years without her were going to be hell. To do this Tony decides to make his computer motherboard early, so very sure that his parents will act the same as last time, but this time leave him behind.
His father is still as coldly dismissive of him as he was before, flickering his eyes over the motherboard then away like it was worthless. His mother though, she’s on her knees smiling at him with more love than he can ever remember and asking him about it. It’s not the reaction he expects but then again, his mother had always been affectionate behind closed doors, he’s also not tugging on her strapless dress in public. It’s a small change, minuet in the grand scheme of things but it opens him up to a world of information he’d never been privy to.
Like the fact that his father could strike his mother and all she’d feel was mild annoyance, as if this was something that happened every day and she was bored by it. So bored of it that she thought he’d been upset by the stupid motherboard breaking like her being forced to bleed didn’t even make the list of things he’d be upset about.
It’s startling, and distressing, and making him re-evaluate every interaction he’d had with her in his life. Every time she’d pat his head sadly and talk about the good man she wanted him to grow up into. Every time she’d argue with him about putting more energy into the company he was going to inherit. Every aborted attempt to try and bridge the gap between them.
A gap his father had been more than happy to widen at every opportunity. When his father breaks his mother’s arm then tries to take him away to punish her further, he comes to another, no less devastating, realisation. Tony was the reason she stayed instead of divorcing Marcus, the reason she let Marcus hurt her instead of fighting back.
Tony was the gun pointed at his mother’s head that made her behave and he fucking hated it. He hated being the reason she was in pain, hated that he’d been too lost in his own pity party to see what was happening. Most of all he hated that the only reason he knew this was because he’d gone and done the same thing as Steve, gone back in time and immediately changed everything with a tiny act.
Building the motherboard early and dancing with Aunt Peggy felt like different things but they weren’t, not really. A small butterfly crushed under a boot, an almost non-existent shift from the path. He’d completely understand if Pepper stabbed him to death for ignoring her warning but he also knew deep down that he’d make the same change if only to save his mother.
“You’re like me, Tony. So like me it breaks my heart. You’ll let the world hurt you endlessly if you think it will keep people safe.”
She’d been right, he had been falling into his old habits then. Habits he’d forced himself to break these past few years.
The difference between a hero and a villain was a hero would sacrifice his loved ones to save the world and a villain would sacrifice the world to save his loved ones.
“I’m sorry for snapping, FRI. I’ll think about telling her, okay?” He wouldn’t because he knew she’d do something completely reckless like go to Afghanistan instead of him.
“… I’m sorry for snapping too, tata.” FRIDAY says quietly.
“Why don’t we focus on a new project? Let's call it Operation Wrecking Ball.” An empty project folder springs to life, and he spins so he can face the still sleeping super soldier while he types up his new plans. The Avengers had labelled him a villain and you know what they say, a broken clock was always right twice a day.