Ten
Tony’s eating pizza in Rhodey’s dorm when he gets a call from his mom.
(“Tony, baby?”)
It’s funny, really, how much four words can change everything. One minute he’s having a nice late-night snack with someone he can tentatively call an actual friend, and the next-
(“Sandy’s in the hospital.”)
-he’s tearing down the freeway at 3 AM because it would take too long to get the private jet fueled and then to Massachusetts from New York and back again.
(“I’m not sure what happened exactly, but she- she just stopped breathing and she fell-”)
His knuckles clench painfully around the steering wheel, and he probably is violating every traffic law in the universe. He scrapes his tongue against his teeth, over and over as something bubbles hot and violent in his chest. He bites it eventually, going over a pothole, copper pouring into his mouth, and Tony can’t even bring himself to give a fuck because-
(“Your father was… upset with her. It wasn’t his fault, it just triggered something-”)
He’s pulling up to the hospital to see his father standing there. Not in the hospital with Sandy. No, that would require some basic human decency that the man evidently lost sometime after he stopped fighting nazis.
“Tony, I-”
Tony will never know what the man would’ve said, because he walks right up to Howard Stark and breaks his fucking nose. Justice tastes bitter in the back of his throat, and it feels like cut knuckles, but Tony ignores that in favor of going to see his sister.
(Because it’s an accident this time, but the fact that there’ll be a next time is damning.)
One phone call, and Dad becomes Howard.