Heroic Histrionics

So, in a world where Howard and Maria had twins, things went a little cockeyed.

1970
• May 29th: Anthony Edward Stark and Antonio Gregory Stark born.
• Antonio was a complete surprise.
1976
• The twins decide it would be funny to only answer to Tony for a while. It sticks.
1985
• The Twins head to MIT in the spring semester, Anthony for Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, Antonio for Chemical Engineering and Programming.
• They meet Rhodey, who is horrified they drove up since neither had a license yet.
1987
• December 16: the Stark parents die.
• Neither twin returns to classes after winter break, and Antonio goes on a bender with Anthony trailing after.
1991
• The twins finally get their shit together to have Anthony take over the company.
• They build JARVIS from notes made in Italy the year before.
• Antonio makes inroads to starting to build a non-combat related part of R&D.
1995
• The twins have a fight that has them part ways for the first time in their lives. They have no contact for two years.
• Anthony stayed in Malibu to take care of the company, and Obadiah took advantage of his distress to encourage him to lean on alcohol.
• Antonio fled to New York and found out about SHIELD in his dad’s files, getting in contact with them after finding out they were handling the Captain America expeditions as an ongoing thing.
1997
• Antonio comes home rejuvenated from his travels and visiting the Arctic, and Anthony looks like he’s about to keel over, his health got so bad.
• Time is taken to repair things and Antonio wants to punch Obadiah in the head.
1999
• Anthony hires Pepper as his assistant and they get along, even if it is a little shaky.
2001
• September 11: National catastrophe strikes and Anthony was running late to a function where it happened. Only his habit of not showing up on time stopped him from being inside the Twin Towers when the planes hit.
• He ends up in a coma after being hit with falling debris.
• Antonio is left in charge of the company while his brother is out.
2002
• June: Anthony finally wakes from his coma, but has no idea how to handle his brother anymore, putting distance between them as Antonio doesn’t seem to need him to take the company back over.
• The situation is misunderstood.
2003
• On hearing about the Hulk situation, Anthony bolts to go find him and help the guy out. Weekly check-ins are instituted.
2007
• Anthony finally comes home, calmer and more level, to find his brother flailing at the Jericho project. He helps.
• Obadiah convinces them that since it’s their mutual project, it should be treated as such.
2008
• The twins go to Afghanistan.
• Anthony comes back with shrapnel in his chest and an arc reactor.
• Antonio comes home with burn scars up the left side of his body.
• They close down the weapon division of the company.
• Anthony delves into Iron Man.
• Antonio rips into SHIELD to make sure they’ll never be caught off guard again.

Antonio Gregory Stark was a surprise. Howard and Maria had planned for one baby, had picked out a name for both a boy and a girl, and that had been that. There had been debate on if a boy would get Anthony, as Howard preferred, or Antonio, which Maria did, but ultimately, they decided if it was Howard’s heir, then he got the final say on that front.

And he did. The firstborn of the twins was Anthony Edward Stark.

It was the surprise baby, smaller and hidden behind his larger brother in the ultrasounds, that got the name, Antonio, because Maria was a stubborn woman, and saw a chance to get her way. Thus, Antonio Gregory Stark.

Of course, then came the trouble of making up a whole other nursery for the child, and Howard quickly grew fed up with the process, leaving it to his wife and the Jarvis couple to take care of. That more or less was the trend that followed Antonio through life, as even if his brother had time for him, his father definitely didn’t seem to, and his mother, once she decided that the boys were on the right path, left them to it.

Neither boy got the dubious joy of being the ‘favorite’ exactly, but if one of them managed to ever attract the notice of their father, it was Anthony. Part of this was probably because he took more after the man and they communicated better. Antonio, unfortunately, took more after his mother in terms of temperament and never quite seemed to connect with his male parent, often suspecting deliberate favoritism in that quarter. On the upside, Antonio always was the target of Captain America stories since he was the twin who would actually sit still and listen to them, unlike his brother.

Anthony definitely seemed to draw the man’s irritation more often of the two.

This, in turn, led to Anthony deliberately cutting in either time one of their parents was in a bad mood since it was clear to him that Antonio wasn’t exactly taking the high expectations the best, and if he was going to irritate them anyway… It didn’t exactly help his brother’s confidence any, unfortunately.

One thing that should be noted is that the boys both answered to Tony. This was likely due to the fact that in spite of their father trying, in vain it should be noted, to refer to them by their middle names, it just plain never stuck. It helped that they were both just as smart as one another, and if they put in a little effort, could pass as each other as well.

In public, it was admittedly pretty funny to make the world doubt that Howard Stark actually had two sons.

Thus, Tony Stark was the public face of the twins, while in private they actually tended to be Anthony and Antonio, because they weren’t just alike, no matter what they pretended sometimes.

Antonio trusted more, while Anthony was warier. Anthony was more impulsively reckless, and Antonio was the planner. Antonio was the quieter twin, while his brother constantly threw himself into the limelight.

So no, they weren’t the same, no matter how they looked, or that they both tended to chatter and deflect. They understood each other and were smart, brilliant, kids. Howard wanted to find out who was smarter, but they didn’t tell each other the results. They never wanted to be sure if one was better than the other, and thus was more what their father would want.

It wouldn’t do them any favors.

So they grew up, keeping pace and sticking together. Anthony drifted deeper into weapon design, while Antonio grew ever more fixated on AIs. College was wonderful, and both became admittedly too attached to a certain airman to be. Anthony ended up getting the lion’s share of his time largely because he was the twin more likely to end up needing to be bailed out of trouble.

They collaborated their projects, even as their interests grew further apart, but it was the death of their parents that resolidified their united front.

Anthony took it hard. Antonio took it harder, and the next year was a mess as, for once, it was Anthony taking care of his younger brother and keeping him from being too much of a spectacle, kept him from making mistakes he’d regret in the morning. It was, frankly, the first time Antonio really understood the appeal of being in the spotlight like that, and it lit a fire under him to keep doing it.

But fires burn out, and there was a company to take care of.

Obadiah didn’t want to wait for one of them to step up, and Anthony didn’t have the patience to deal with the man’s bullshit. Antonio had the patience but did not want a weapon company. In all, it was a mess, and it took until they were nearly twenty-one to sort out, especially given the parties and general reputation crushing events that lay between the death of their parents and taking up the company.

The only good thing that really came out of those four years was a solid plan between the brothers, and JARVIS, who had been conceived of on a blackout bender in Italy, then created back in the US once they were coherent enough to decipher the notes that had been written before.

The plan turned out to be simple enough when it came to it. Anthony would design and be the public face of the company, and Antonio would help from the background, doing what he did best. And maybe taking over R&D enough to set off a whole new branch of the company that wasn’t weapon related at all.

He had to be careful, of course, given Obadiah got… cranky if there wasn’t a regular turn out to ‘show he was making something of his time’ but that was simple enough, and just as he helped Anthony with his projects, so too did Anthony offer help with his. It worked for them.

Or it did, up until they were twenty-five and there was a knockdown, drag-out fight that left them not on speaking terms for more than a year. This resulted in Antonio fleeing to New York while Anthony stayed in Malibu with the company.

That was the first time Antonio had really taken the time to go through his father’s workshop and his papers. His history. It was also the first time he’d really ever been away from his sibling, and it had, frankly, driven him deep into the files so that he didn’t feel the loss of it.

It’s what made him aware of the thing called SHIELD, and reminded him that his father’s quest for one Steve Rogers had never actually been canceled. So he went.

It was, frankly, exactly what he needed. It was also really cold out there. The people were rude, and rough, to say nothing of the horrible sense of humor that most of them had, but they looked after him because he was new, and not because he was one of the Tony Stark pair. They reminded him of his brother in the best ways, and honestly, he liked that.

Of course, they didn’t find anything.

When he came back, he didn’t lose touch with the people, the agents if he was being specific, that had gone out with him. And it was nice. Really nice, to not have to share his friends for once. He could run around as Anton if he pleased, and no one would look at him sideways and wonder where his brother was.

It might have gone to his head, and it never actually occurred to him that Anthony would do worse with the separation than he would. That he’d blame himself for running him off. Suffice to say, he wasn’t thrilled at all when he finally returned to Malibu, nearly a full two years later, and found his brother passed out drunk on the floor at barely noon. He was a wreck.

And Antonio felt horrible. Still, he picked him up, dealt with the clinging and half incoherent apologies as his twin came around, and set about getting him to rights. Where Antonio had drowned himself in work, Anthony had turned to liquor.

It only took an hour to find out that Obadiah had put the first drink in his hand.

It took about two for him to stomp out the pure rage that the man had played on his brother’s vulnerability enough that Anthony wasn’t giving him wide-eyed stares for his ranting anymore. Worth it, though. It convinced Anthony that he still loved him, at the very least, which eased things considerably.

They didn’t spend all their time together after that but it was… better. They’d needed the distance, the breathing room, because without it they’d been suffocating and hadn’t even noticed. But there wasn’t another bout of no communication like that. Sure, Antonio spent more time poking around the whole SHIELD thing, and they still went to events together, but they had their very different interests, or at least, he had his specific interests while Anthony shelved his real ones for the sake of the company.

He was never really sure. Not until years later, well after his brother picked up Pepper to make his life infinitely easier at least, and everything suddenly became horrible. In 2001, his brother had actually been too close to the bombings, only really saved from being dead because he’d been running late due to a project they’d been collaborating on, and he’d ended up in a coma for over a year due to getting clipped by falling debris.

It left Antonio squarely in charge of the family legacy, and too distressed to do anything but go where he was pointed, and design what he had to design. He didn’t immediately shove his brother back into running the place when he woke. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that to him, and he instead just told him to do what he wanted to for a while.

Somehow, in 2003, this resulted in Anthony taking off for god knows where in a quest to track down a Dr. Bruce Banner when he vanished out of the public eye, only checking in weekly to reassure his twin wasn’t dead and giving absolutely zero details as to what that even meant.

When he finally reemerged in 2007, it was at the tail end of a project that Obadiah had put into Antonio’s head, and he’d really gotten invested in because he wanted, no, needed, to try and get the weapon side of the business aimed a different way.

His brother helped him get past the block he’d had on the final touches, things that Anthony had spent a lot longer invested in. Somehow, this resulted in Obadiah encouraging them to present it together.

Thus was how Afghanistan came around, and Anthony ended up with an arc reactor, while Antonio landed burn scars up the entirety of his left side, mottled from knee to shoulder.

But they made it out, and home, and Antonio finally learned that no, Anthony never really had liked weapons for the sake of weapons, and they shifted the direction of the company together.

The Iron Man thing was a whole other issue, but that they definitely worked on together too. After the last several years, they really couldn’t afford to not watch each other’s backs again.