The bottle smashes against the wall. Thick drown booze glistens under the light as Tony's eye traces the liquid down the walls. At the second smash, he cowers backwards tucking himself further into the small alcove. The shadow moves, arm swinging. His mother is on the floor, hunched over crying. It breaks his heart, to see his mother in such a state. Her youthful, beautiful face was ruined by tears. He presses into the wall as his father starts screaming and storming out.
His heart beats rapidly against his chest, and he struggles to breathe as his throat seizes up.
"Mother?" he whispers. Why was she not moving? He feels sick. He checks behind his shoulder for his father, but nothing. No sounds, no smashes. Why is she not moving?
He holds the ice against his mother's face, just above the eyebrow. Her hands rest above her own. She is so pretty despite her makeup being messed up. The colours smudge against her pale skin. He does not know what to think, maybe he thinks and feels too much. He knows he is angry when he watches his father's too-aggressive hands hit. He knows he is scared of his father. He doesn't name anything else and does not care for them.
"Anthony" she says "The ice is dripping" he almost misses what she says, her voice too quiet.
"Mother" he questioned "Are you okay?" Tony's gut twists as she smiles. This starts it all, this moment ruins it all. They will go through the same ritual for the years to come, a performance, an act. They are a happy family, no one is hit. Maria is the perfect wife to the perfect husband. He is a genius, an inventor, a sensation. Now, at 12, he is an actor. He does not fail this role.
The mask that develops turns into a personality, he is lost in body and soul to this act. They do not escape. They will never escape. He becomes the perfect son. His mother falls into her own role. In this, when they become two people who broke apart their very being, they found it hard to love the people the other changed into. By changing, by tearing apart their vulnerability - what they had in common - they lost the small aspects of humanity that bound them together.
At 13, he did not have a mother or a father. He found himself spending more and more hours in the lab, working long hours on whatever project he could get his hands on.
He was 14 when he worked on his first car. He found peace, a moment to breathe as he worked in that cramped space. His stained hands worked day after day. He loved the tightness, how dark it all was, how hidden he could become how isolated and how silent it all was.
Being able to hide away, and tuck into a small groove means being able to survive, being able to observe and adapt. His mother rests across the sofa, limbs stretched out showing the slit in her dress that rode up her thigh. The flashing of soft pale skin that drew you in. A taunt. She had this power over the room, the men that created a power from her sexuality. She weaponised it, and used it without fear. No one stood any chance.
Tony watched from the walls, learning as his mother laughed lightly, innocently. How her hands fluttered, and how her chest taunted. She was always giving, but never too much. She kept them hungry, wanting more, desperate. She held that power over them.
He could see the lust in their eyes. How much they wanted and needed her. How much they needed her top off. How much they desired. He truly saw his mother's skill in a few months when she charmed an investor into throwing his money at Howard. Maybe in that moment, if he had to look back and choose, this moment made him who he is and who he would be for the next few decades of his life.
Tony Stark does not want to be a father. Children annoy him. He does not want such a responsibility. It had nothing to do with the fact to do with Maria or Howard, or how he was raised. It had nothing to do with how Maria stopped being a mother way too early. He does not want a wife. He does not want to end up like his father, and he would not put a woman through that. He will not wake up with a woman he does not love, and who does not love him. He does not want the silence.
He's 5 when he watches his mother play the piano, her fingers sticking the ivory with grace and elegance. The sound dances through the halls and he falls in love. It's a secret love, one he won't admit.
"Anthony" she called, stopping him in his tracks. Her hair droops across her face." Come here" she asked him, her voice drawing him in, making him sit down. "Do you wish to learn?" Her perfume is strong, he still remembers it today.
"Yes" he remembers how gentle she spoke, how parental she seemed. How well, he now knows, she acted. It scared him how easily she played the role of a mother. Did she ever love him? What did she think, that she could be a mother? A good mother? That if she was forced to play this role, she would drown them all to fight her way to power.
The knife cuts his hand as it drops to the floor. His eyes land on the deep red of his blood as it pools on the floor, staining the blade. Drip. The blood runs down his fingers. It hurts, mostly. It is not his first knife accident.
"Anthony" his mother screams as she runs towards him, so desperately. He notices her feet are bare. The six inch heels abandoned in her fight to get to him? Why is she doing this?
"Anthony!" she cried out, her face twisting in ways he's never seen. He can't read the emotions that swirl in her eyes, maybe it was fear, maybe worry.
At 10, he saw a side of his mother that he will never see again. SHe would never create such an exploitable moment again. Maybe, this was the seldom moment where she loved him? Where she did not look at him and see Howard. That she did not look at him and think about her forced marriage, her ruined body, and how much she truly despised him.
"Mother?" he whispered "I'm okay" he reasoned with her. Her gentle eyes look down at him and he feels too much. This is what a mother's love is.
His mother does not cry as he leaves for college at 15. Did not cry as he prostituted himself. She disappears to her room and art and alcohol, and to the people who drank her every word. He was 15, but he was not her child. She chose to survive rather than help him survive. He stares at the woman on the campus, their hips and curves and boobs. None of them have the power his mother did. They did not have the lessons he had. It was as easy to seduce them as it was to breathe, to give them a little and watch them desperate for more.
He saw their eyes, just like the men who preyed on his mother. These women stared, hungry. They were not his friends, they wanted his shirt off and his body on top of theirs. He wanted the power, he needed to fight his way to the top socially. He needs to walk into a room and draw eyes, make or break someone if he talks about them. His intelligence meant nothing if he was not known, hated and loved if he was not talked about.
He lied, he used people, but he does not feel bad about it. He was forced to survive. Rodney showed him what his father did not, and what he did not know, and things he didn't realise he should know. he lied and cheated his way to the top. When we wakes, Rodney is holding a glass of water over his bed.
He can't remember getting home "Do you want a drink?" he asks, voice gentle. His hands reach out and brush Tony's hair to the side. When Rodney sits next to him, he looks into his friend's eyes. It's hard, at that moment to distinguish his mother from Rodney.
He snorts "I don't remember anything"
"I practically had to fight you to get you home" Rodney tells him, the man's eyebrows furrow, his lips tightening in thought "Why do you do it?"
"Do what?"
He sighed "So this to yourself" he pointed out "What do your parents think of their 15-year-old drinking until he blacks out"
"They think I'm doing what I have to do"
Natasha Romanoff is an uncontrollable, unpredictable and powerful wildfire. She blazed, a double-ended sword. She was powerful and she knew it. He saw her, and sometimes saw his mother. They were women born in spite and shaped through anger. Put them into a box and they'd tear it apart with their teeth.
She was dangerous. He knew that. She was probably the most dangerous person on the planet, she also knew the power of her sexuality. It was a thing that women did, how they managed to run the world and control everything and yet, no one saw it - as everyone was too busy wanting their tops off, or too desperate to see them fail.
Natasha Romanoff knew how to seduce, she wrote the book on it. If he had not grown up learning it then maybe he would have fallen for her charms. The dress slit that exposed a thigh, the low-cut dress that revealed just a little too much cleavage, or the too-tight trousers. The way she shook her hair and it tumbled down her shoulders. She was art.
Maybe that is why they created their odd friendship, which was only theirs to understand. He thinks the beginning started when he did not fall for her. He saw her methods and he respected them. She saw his methods and respected him. They levelled with each other when others would have seen them as nothing but meat.
They were children forced to survive. Maybe it was annoying for her, to see her methods work on every teammate but him. Maybe it wasn't.
Tony Stark did not want children. They annoyed him. Natasha Romanoff could not have children. She craved children.
Tony sometimes thinks about his mother and her role in Howard's life. How she gave an heir on the first time so she did not need her womb any more. He does not think Maria and Howard had sex after that. Maria was left to her own devices unless she was needed to hang onto Howard's arm. She was the perfect wife. How quickly she grew tired of being a mother.
"Do you. No, would you ever have children in our line of work?" he asked Natasha one night after one too many glasses of wine.
The dull light did not hide her pain, despite the emotion showing up on her face for a slit second "I can't" she admits, the control over her voice failing. Slightly. All emotion slips from her face.
He does not need any more words, he feels sick. He thinks he's actually going to be sick. He does not know what to say, his mother's lessons never cover this. His mother did not teach him how to handle vulnerability, her lessons in trickery and seduction failed him for the first time.
He does not know how to handle her vulnerability. He struggles to get the words out "Do you wish to be a mother?" he asks again.
"I do"
Natasha Romanoff wanted a child biologically. She could never have that. Tony Stark did not want children, and despite this, that is how he ended up.
He does not care for Peter Parker. He has no interest in Peter's life, or how he feels, or how his day is. He only has interest in what he can get out of Peter, and how much he can benefit Tony now.
He does not feel bad about this, his mother raised him better. The kid is annoying, constantly rambling on. The kid is more useful than he realised. Peter is smart, possibly more so than him.
Peter crashes his plane. He lays in bed that night, tossing - he cannot understand why he had such a strong worry for the kid - thinking of Peter crashing the plane. His young face, his innocence. Tony learns about Peter and this time he learns every single last detail. He throws up.
Now, he cannot bear the idea of Peter not being his son, and he would not change anything so long as it meant he always met Peter, and they always ended up like this. He feels so much for Peter, in such a wide display of emotion. If his mother did not treat him how she did, or if his father was not a dick that hit, would he feel so much?
Sometimes he sits on his hands, forcing them to stay down and away from Peter. Just incase he looses control. He looks at Peter, looks at the innocence and kindness and he fears he will become his father. He will not let his hands hit or turn angry. He feels stupid for believing that he would not want children. How could he have felt that way?
Peter gets dropped off every Friday and spends the weekend with him. He did not know it was possible for his heart to shatter the way it did as he saw Peter's face. The feeling becomes a constant, the constant fear or panic that peter is not well, has not been treated well.
He wants to throw everything at Peter, take his hand and hide Peter away from reality. He does not want to mess this up, he will not. It's easy to find books on parenting - books on babies, books on teens, books on friendship in teens. He finds and reads them all.
He learns to listen, and not just listen to find information that will help him gain the upperhand, but he truely listens. He learns about Peter, he wants to learn more. His is a father. His mother raised him well.